In her guest appearance on Seth Price’s podcast The Craft of Marketing entrepreneur, consultant and sales guru Jill Rowley defines social selling as “using social networks (such as LinkedIn and Twitter) to research the buyer and their sphere of influence, to be relevant and to drive revenue, customer lifetime value and advocacy”. She describes it as an additional channel (it doesn’t replace phone or email) – that helps sales people find, listen, connect and engage with their buyers – as it’s not not just who you know its what you know about who you know. And done well, social selling is ultimately about being found by your buyers.
If you’re reading this and wondering if social selling is relevant to you consider this:
By 2020 50% of the world’s workforce by 2020 will millennial (aged 18-30). By 2025, 75% of the worlds work force will be millennials. As this generation becomes a bigger portion of the workforce – these are your buyers, your competitors and your employees – and they are digital natives. Navigating ‘social’ is a natural to them as reading or writing. The end is nye for the old school sales professional.
Social ‘selling’ is about serving your customers. Yes you can use social channels to talk about new news, product launches etc but to be interesting you have to be interested in your customers and what they find interesting first. It’s about using social networks to not only find about your buyer but to help/serve them and their interests. And what’s great about social is that these interactions will then be amplified and seen by a much wider audience.
To ensure social selling becomes second nature in your business, here’s what to look for when recruiting a modern sales professional:
Do they have a compelling online profile?
This is something you can assess when weighing up whether to even interview a candidate. Indicators that they ‘get’ social are not only a full and updated LinkedIn profile (with headshot picture) but evidence that they are connecting with and researching existing and potential customers. It’s also a great sign if they are using social to build their personal credibility through involvement in group discussions and blogging. Some candidates may even have their own personal website.
Have they worked successfully with other functions?
Social selling is a cross-functional exercise. You need input form marketing especially in order to create content that serves and engages the target customer and their influencers. So look for evidence in their CV that they have worked closely with marketing, feeding into the strategy as well as shaping relevant marketing collateral.
How would they like to be measured?
This is a really interesting question to ask at interview. Social selling is a much longer ball game than some of the other sales tools and is about investing in longer-term relationships. Finding out their thoughts on how this aspect of their role could be measured and incentivised will reveal how comfortable they really are in using social as a channel for sales success.
Potential KPIs for social selling on LinkedIn include:
- Number of 1st degree connections
- Number of 1st degree connections in prospect companies
- Number of 1st degree connections with influencers
- Number of updates per week
- Number of shares or comments on updates in a week
- Number of blogs published a week
- Number of blog shares a week
- Number of inbound requests to connect
- Number of profile searches
- Number of profile views
But you don’t necessarily have to buy in new resource to expand your social selling activity. Your existing team may just need some good training. The ‘bread and butter’ sales skills of cold calling, email etc are still crucial. And the softer skills of relationship building couldn’t be more relevant – it’s just that now they can be enhanced and showcased through effective use of social media.
To discuss your recruitment and training needs contact theHRhub – the ultimate HR support service for startups and SMEs.
