“That’s one of the best parts of LinkedIn: Who is social stalking me? So, when I see those profiles, I’m most likely to click and view them back at that time.”

Today on Social At Scale we are excited to sit down with Liliana Christensen, our Head of Business Development and Partnerships here at EveryoneSocial.

Lily wears many hats. From sourcing new partners, to implementation and activating resellers, she’s always on the balls of her feet and keeping us on our toes. Which is appropriate, because she has a background in dance and fitness entrepreneurship as you’ll hear.

Some topics Lily and Cameron go over:

• Personal brand building
• Employee influencers
• Importance of partnerships
• Consolidation, and synergies
• Hunter gatherer mindset
• Sales leaders on social
• The long-tail is a big deal
• Start with relevance
• And much more…

Watch the Full Episode

Three valuable takeaways:

Key takeaway 1: Sharing content helps close deals

As a seller you’re just trying to close as many deals as you can. So how does social media factor in?

Lily explains why sharing social content wins in the long-term.

Leaning on the longtail, so to speak, of building out your social presence (and profile) with branded and non-branded content helps buyers understand who you are, and what sets you apart as a vendor.

Especially if you curate your content according to a targeted industry, beginning conversations and trust will be so much easier.

If you’ve ever been in a sales role, you understand that at the end of the day, activity and closed-won dollars are the two things you’ll be graded on at the EOQ. Sales leaders are often stuck on call-email-call-email, get on ZoomInfo, and they set metrics around that. 

Getting social might seem out of the ordinary, but it’s increasingly how buyers weigh their options, and how lucrative long-term partnerships are formed.

Key takeaway 2: Build influence like a dance studio owner

“End of the day, people buy from people.”

What does your profile and content activity say about you in the eyes of a prospect? Do you stand out as an expert in your field compared with all the other vendors they’re considering?

Through her past experiences of business ownership and entrepreneurship, Lily has found that influencing with your personal brand is the best way to start your pipeline on social media. 

What does fitness have to do with social selling?

NOTE: If you’re interested in taking a page out of Lily’s strategic playbook, you’ll want to make sure your profile is set up for social selling.

For sales, building influence through content engagement will prompt meaningful conversations that can lead to deal-making. 

Or, as Lily learned while running a dance studio, influence is how she got people to sign up for her fitness classes. By sharing her authentic self and why she loved the routines, people were enticed to sign up and get dancing!

Key takeaway 3: Hold off on the InMail until later

What’s the number-one no-no of social selling?

Sending cold InMails.

You probably already know that. But instead of blasting prospects, start out with your funnel wide open by sharing industry content that resonates with them and the greater group they belong to. This is a solid first step for building an effective social selling pipeline.

NOTE: An employee advocacy program can drive 16% better win rates, 2x pipeline, and deliver 48% larger deals. (EveryoneSocial)

After your content has started conversations with prospective buyers or partners, that’s when the InMail direct messaging becomes appropriate. 

We can all relate to Lily. After all, who doesn’t ignore the cold InMail or upfront DMs? A message without a shared (and often public) context doesn’t hold anyone’s attention. Social content is the conversational context.

Hear how sharing social content ultimately scores.

As you’ll hear Lily mention, relevance is key. Building trust, or a conversational context depends on relevant content — relevant to their industry, their business needs, their opportunities for growth, etc.

“You really need to be creating a persona.”
Getting in the comment section of your prospects is one of the best ways to get the attention of anyone across all social media. In addition to liking their content, also tag them on relevant content you see elsewhere if you think it would resonate with your prospects.

Lily has more tips on our blog for how to drive ROI with your social content strategy.

Learn more about the foundational value and future importance of employee advocacy and why everyone’s an influencer. Thanks for checking out this week’s Social At Scale episode, and until next time, happy sharing!

The post The Long-Term Value of Partnerships and Social Selling appeared first on EveryoneSocial.

Companies that don’t provide their people with essential sales technology, however, are getting left behind.

If you want to empower your salespeople, boost their win rates, and improve the company’s bottom line, these are the tools your sales team needs.

What is Sales Technology and Why is it Important?

Sales technology is typically a SaaS (software as a service) tool that assists sales professionals with various aspects of the sales process.

This could include prospecting, data entry, call scheduling, customer management, sales analytics, and more.

It’s useful because it helps salespeople identify and target prospects, provides insights into their performance, and frees up their time to focus on closing deals instead of wasting it on manual tasks. In other words, sales technology generally makes sales professionals’ lives easier.

So it’s no surprise that businesses’ investment in sales technology grew 53% from 2019 to 2020.

Sales representatives that are happy with their sales technology tools are 18% more likely to think of themselves as successful at their jobs, according to Pipedrive’s State of Sales Report. Plus, they’re 28% more satisfied at work.

Companies with satisfied employees also boast such benefits as healthier cultures, more engaged workers, higher employee morale, better worker retention, and an increase in overall productivity.

Sales Technology Tools to Drive Success

Now that you understand why sales technology is essential to your sales team’s success, let’s take a look at the kinds of tools available today.

Sales management and sales enablement

These types of sales technology tools encompass a wide range of solutions because they’re simply any tool that makes the sales process more manageable and effective.

This could take the form of email marketing automation, lead management, reporting, and more — essentially anything that helps the sales team do its best work.

Sales management and sales enablement software benefits more than just salespeople though.

Your customer success team may use it to track interactions, marketing may want access to conduct research, and executives may benefit from the reports and analytics.

There are numerous sales-enablement tools available today, including Salesforce, Highspot, Fision, and Ambition.

Customer relationship management

This type of sales technology relates specifically to solutions that organize, store, and manage customer data, and there may be overlap with many of the software options discussed above.

That’s because these tools do more than simply make customer data easily accessible in one place.

Other common features include tracking customer communications, aligning sales with other departments, and setting follow-up reminders so nothing slips through the cracks. All this frees up sales professionals’ time to focus on sales strategies and improving customer relationships.

And this has incredible benefits. Just take a look at what CRM software can do:

• Reduce lead costs by 23%
• Shorten the sales cycle by up to 14%.
• Increase sales by 29%.
• Grow productivity by 34%.

There’s no shortage of customer relationship management sales technology tools available. Some of the most popular include Salesforce, Sugar, Hubspot, and Pipedrive.

Social selling

Sales professionals consider building trust among prospects to be one of the top challenges in selling. And nearly 50% of salespeople don’t use sales technology of any kind to assist with prospecting.

The solution? A top-notch social selling tool like EveryoneSocial that makes it easy for your sales team to share content, establish credibility, gain visibility, deliver value, and foster customer relationships.

Companies that utilize social selling generate more and better leads, increase pipeline, improve their win rates, and win larger deals — up to 48% larger deals, to be exact.

Why? Because when your sales team is active on social media, they showcase their expertise, connect with prospects and start building trust and establishing relationships with potential buyers.

Social selling sales technology can certainly pay off in the short-term, but it’s also a long-term investment.

Even if someone isn’t currently in the market for your product or service, interacting with a sales representative on social media will ensure that rep — and your brand — is the first one they think of when it’s time to buy.

E-signature and document tracking

You may not think of this type of software as sales technology since it’s used by far more departments than just sales, especially since COVID and the growth in remote work.

However, e-signature and document tracking tools are essential in modern business, and your sales team can’t adequately do its job without it.

These solutions digitize processes that require signatures, such as contracts and agreements, simplifying sales proceedings and making deals official that much faster.

Once again, there are lots of options when it comes to this type of sales technology. Popular e-signature and document tracking solutions include DocuSign, PandaDoc, Eversign, and Adobe Acrobat Sign.

Add EveryoneSocial to Your Sales Technology Stack

We know there are a lot of important sales technology tools you need to empower your sales team, and we firmly believe that EveryoneSocial should be one of them.

Satisfied customers like IBM, Qualtrics, and American Family Insurance would agree.

Want your sales team to drive more deals, bigger deals, and better deals faster? Book a demo to see what EveryoneSocial can do for you!

The post The Sales Technology Tools Your Sales Team Needs appeared first on EveryoneSocial.

Your content should always be created with a strategic purpose in mind: to describe, entertain, inform, or persuade.

But why should sales enablement content be important to you? Isn’t making sales the job of, well, the sales team?

I mean, yeah, but I bet they’d REALLY like your help in doing that.

Besides, content that helps the sales team close more deals actually winds up benefiting pretty much every other department, anyway.

Before I get to that, however, we have some other stuff to cover. Stuff like…

What Is Sales Enablement Content?

…and how is it different from other kinds of content, specifically?

Admittedly, there can be a lot of overlap — particularly with marketing content. It mostly comes down to how and why you’re presenting the information.

For example, marketing content is written for the express purpose of generating interest or attracting attention from your target audience.

On the flip side, the strategy for sales enablement content is to finish the process that your marketing content started.

Sales content is also created to meet the reader exactly where they are in the buyer’s journey (or if you’d prefer, the “sales funnel”).

That means that a blog post targeting the awareness stage — the top of your funnel — will have a slightly different feel than a case study or how-to guide that’s geared toward the later stages.

Hubspot has a wonderfully concise sales enablement definition: “It is the iterative process of providing your business’s sales team with the resources they need to close more deals.”

Those resources are often based on documentation created by engineering or client success teams, and they fall into two main categories: internal or external.

Internal sales enablement content generally includes:

• Product demonstration scripts
• Presentation decks
• Buyer personas
• Whitepapers

External sales enablement content can closely resemble marketing content and often taking the form of:

• How-to or product-comparison blog posts
• Case studies
• Customer stories and testimonials
• Email distribution campaigns
• Short-form video

Also, I’m speaking from experience when I say you should base your sales enablement content on internal documentation!

Writing about new platform features is made SO much easier by referencing our engineers’ detailed notes that cover exactly how everything works.

Why Does Sales Enablement Content Matter?

The benefits for your sales and marketing teams are pretty self-explanatory; after all, “tightly aligned sales and marketing operations achieved 24% faster three-year revenue growth.”

“For me to do my job well, I need to be on the same page as the sales team.” – Megan Stewart, Enterprise Customer Success Manager at EveryoneSocial

That’s one of the reasons that our marketing team here at EveryoneSocial regularly convenes with the sales folks to discuss customer pain points and improve our sales enablement strategy.

These discussions help us reach our audience with the information they need, and help sales increase the quality of their leads. They just make everyone’s job easier!

“This all sounds great, but still — why should I care?”

I did just say everyone’s job, didn’t I? A high-performing sales team impacts everyone else down the line.

As a company continues acquiring new customers, other departments like product, customer success, implementation, and engineering usually all see expansion. After all, someone has to take care of those new clients!

The Best Types of Sales Enablement Content

In addition to what we listed earlier, here are a few more pieces of sales enablement content you’ll want in your sales arsenal:

• Competitor analyses and product information
• Market research 
• Case studies, customer stories, customer quotes
• eBooks and other detailed guides
• One-pagers with scannable information
• Internal sales training materials
• Company product and service sheet
• Content for social media, such images, gifs, and video do well
• Data, statistics, and reviews
• Podcast episodes that positively reinforce your brand

Ultimately, your audience will benefit from better sales content too since it’s created to meet them wherever they are in the buyer’s journey.

In fact, 95% of B2B buyers choose a solution provider that “provided them with ample content to help navigate through each stage of the buying process.”

If you provide these folks with interesting and relevant insights about your product, they’ll stick around.

What Are My Options For Sales Enablement Platforms?

There are many, many options you can choose from when deciding which sales enablement software to use. You might opt for using multiple platforms concurrently, and if that’s what will best meet your needs…go for it.

Clearly, we can’t NOT promote EveryoneSocial, since it’s our own product. Besides that, our platform is great for social selling — just read this if you don’t believe me!

That being said, in the interest of fairness, here are some other popular sales enablement platforms:

• Hubspot
• Outreach.io
• Highspot
• Seismic
• Guru

How Do I Build A Sales Enablement Content Strategy?

Now that we’ve covered what sales enablement content is and why it matters, it’s time to get started. Here’s a short list of steps you can take to get the ball rolling.

1. Open the lines of communication.

One of the first things you’ll want to do is establish who’s responsible for planning and implementing your sales content.

Is it one person, as part of a larger content team? Is it a whole team? Well, that’s really up to you.

One solution we’d suggest is to start by creating a cross-functional Slack or Microsoft Teams channel, if your organization uses either of those tools.

Another option is to create a new group within your employee advocacy platform. It just so happens that we know of one with some pretty slick Slack and Teams integrations…

(Just so we’re clear, I am indeed referring to EveryoneSocial.)

Like I mentioned earlier, consider creating a recurring internal meeting between sales and any other relevant departments. Let the sales team tell you exactly what they need!

“To create effective sales enablement content, you need to talk to your sales team, to your customer success team, and to customers themselves. Ask about their pain points and what questions or concerns they repeatedly encounter. This is often how some of the most valuable content is created.” – Laura Moss, Sr. Content Marketing Manager at EveryoneSocial

2. Audit your existing content & create new content.

What do you already have that can be repurposed to function as sales enablement content? Is it organized and easily accessible?

Appropriately categorize your content based on what stage of the buyer’s journey/sales funnel it’s targeting: awareness, consideration, or conversion/purchasing.

Make sure that things like sales email templates are standardized (and customer-centric), blog posts are SEO-optimized, case studies are current (and accurate), etc.

Plan your future sales enablement strategy with input from the meetings you have with sales to ensure that you’re able to meet their needs.

Look into diversifying the kind of content you’re producing! Have you considered a video case study? How about a blog where you interview a long-time customer about why they’ve stuck around?

3. Ensure your sales team is effectively equipped to USE your content.

This is one of the most important parts of the process. If the people you’re creating all this stuff for don’t know what to do with it, it doesn’t do anyone any good.

Look into using a sales enablement platform if you’re not already. When you choose one, make sure your team knows it inside and out.

Host training meetings to discuss what kind of sales enablement content they should target their pipeline with. Run through practice calls using new product one sheets, or show them where to find the newest email templates.

The great thing about most modern organizations is that these things can all be done via video conferencing or screen recording.

In other words, you don’t necessarily have to fill up your sales team’s calendar with training sessions — just make the training resources readily available!

4. Track content performance and report your findings.

Talking about the analytics of different kinds of content to see what’s helping drive lead generation and conversion is crucial.

If you don’t regularly check what’s performing well and adjust accordingly, you’re missing out on key insights that can drive business!

A lot of the guesswork is taken out when you use sales enablement platforms, like the ones listed above, since they track this stuff for you.

You’re able to know exactly which emails people are (or aren’t) opening, which blog posts regularly funnel demo requests to the team, and so on. So consider sales enablement software.

Supercharging Your Sales Enablement Strategy

Throughout this article, you’ll have noticed that I repeatedly suggest using EveryoneSocial as part of your sales enablement efforts. That’s for good reason.

First, I’ll just share these three stats:

• You’re 7x more likely to close on leads generated through social selling
• Sales reps who use social media as part of their technique outsell 73% of their peers
• 67% of consumers surveyed say they are likely to purchase an item or service they see on their social feeds.

In other words, our platform can help streamline your organization’s content sharing strategy AND boost engagement, both of which pay off big for sales teams.

Skeptical? Don’t just take our word for it — ask the sales team at Genesys about their 165% increase in deal size. Or read about it in our case study!

The post Sales Enablement Content: It’s Not Just For Salespeople Anymore appeared first on EveryoneSocial.

Because just as social media has evolved in recent years, so has the sales profession itself.

In fact, connecting with a prospect takes 18 or more calls, according to Harvard Business Review, and callback rates are below 1%. Plus, only 24% of outbound sales emails are ever even opened. Yikes.

That’s where social media for business — more specifically, social selling — comes into play.

It allows salespeople to use social networks to research, identify, understand, engage with, and provide value to prospective customers no matter where they are in the sales funnel.

And it works: More than 90% of B2B buyers and more than 80% of senior executives conduct research on social media before making purchasing decisions.

Before you can tap into the power of social selling though, you need to optimize your own social media for business and learn the art of engagement.

1. Add a high-quality headshot.

People want to connect with — and do business with — people, so your profile image should be a picture of you.

Not a group photo, a vacation pic, a Bitmoji, or an avatar. Your mug front and center.

You don’t need to hire a photographer to take your picture. Today, even a smartphone pic can take excellent photos.

And you don’t necessarily need to a professional headshot in your nicest suit. You can still have some fun and let your profile pic and showcase your personality.

However, your headshot needs to be high-quality and representative of your brand.

It’s also important to use the same image across all your social networks, so you can build your personal brand and so that people can easily identify you.

Related: Is your company ready to kickstart an employee advocacy program? Head on over to our fancy new quiz page to find out.

2. Upload branded cover photos.

When it comes to social media for business, you need more than just a professional profile pic. You also need a relevant cover photo or header image for every social channel you’re on.

LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and other networks give you the option to add these, so take advantage of it.

Not only do these images make your page look complete and stand out, they also help communicate who you are and the brand you represent.

For these visuals, focus on creative that’s consistent with your organization’s presence. This means using company logos, fonts, slogans, calls to action, and other relevant marketing messaging.

You can update your cover photo or header image regularly to inform users about your company’s offerings, new products, current promotions, upcoming events, and more.

Here at EveryoneSocial, for example, we’re stoked for Employee Advocacy Week, so we supplied all our employees with custom banner images they can use on their profiles.

Each social network has its own custom sizes though, so be sure the header image you upload to your profile is the right fit.

3. Optimize your bio for search.

The whole point of social selling is to focus on being found versus having to seek out every customer on your own. That’s why it’s essential to use relevant keywords and hashtags in your social bios so that potential customers can easily find you.

This is important both for search within a social network itself — Instagram released new search features just a few months ago — as well as for organic search results on Google.

Today, you’ll find more and more search results from social media appearing on Google’s first page and even garnering featured snippets, like in the example above.

So do yourself and your customers a favor and make your social profiles a cinch to find.

While your social bio doesn’t have to be the same across all your networks, it’s important to use the same relevant keywords and hashtags because you want the way you market yourself and your brand to be consistent.

4. Revamp your LinkedIn profile for social selling.

LinkedIn profiles tend to contain the same information we’d list on a resume, but you need to do things a little different when using social media for business and sales.

Instead of creating a profile to catch the eye of a potential employer, you want your LinkedIn profile to target prospects. 

In addition to utilizing all the tips outlined above, it’s also important to do the following:

Craft a compelling headline.

It should be brief and clear, and it should communicate the value you and your company bring to the viewer just like in the example below.

Expand on your headline.

Provide more details on how your business benefits customers in the About section.

Need a little help? Look at your organization’s sales documentation or chat with someone from marketing to help you compose an engaging pitch that’ll pique prospects’ interest.

Take advantage of the name pronunciation feature.

Fear of mispronouncing someone’s name can cause anxiety, and it can even affect people’s career progression. You can help mitigate this with LinkedIn’s pronunciation feature.

Using a mobile device, simply create a recording of your name pronunciation, which will be accessible right on your profile.

But sharing the correct pronunciation of your name isn’t all you can do with this feature — it’s also a wonderful personal branding opportunity.

LinkedIn gives you a 10-second audio clip, so in addition to introducing yourself, you can also record a friendly greeting, share a little about yourself, or include a call to action.

Show some personality.

The About section doesn’t have to be all business — after all, you’re more than just sales.

So take this opportunity to tell potential customers a little about yourself, your family, your hobbies, etc.

Don’t include everything you’d put on your resume.

You may be tempted to highlight your wins and the value you’ve brought to companies in your previous roles, but remember that social media for business isn’t about landing your next sales job.

“You don’t want include any information that relates to how much money you’ll make off your prospects,” writes Karly Wescott, lead growth adviser at New Breed.

“Prospects don’t want to be reminded of the transactional nature of your relationship. Instead, your individual job descriptions should discuss how that company, and you in your role at that company, provided value to prospects and customers.”

Overall, the key to optimizing your Linkedin profile for social selling is to consider every aspect of it from the customer’s point of view.

Ask yourself what you’d want to know about the person and the brand they represent. Determine what would draw you in or would entice you to reach out. Use those insights to make your LinkedIn profile more compelling and useful for social selling.

5. Follow people, brands, and groups relevant to your industry.

If you want to use social media for business, you need to fill your feed with relevant content and potential customers.

So take the time to connect with current customers and dream customers, as well as follow colleagues and thought leaders. These are the people you want to engage with, build relationships with, and perhaps someday work with.

Join groups that pertain to your industry as well.

This gives you access to a rich prospect base, and it provides opportunities to share your own expertise and provide value to people so they’ll think of you when they’re ready to buy.

6. Create and share a variety of useful content.

Consider the kind of content that your customers would find helpful, interesting, and engaging, and create and share this content regularly.

While your company blog no doubt has plenty of great stuff, don’t limit yourself to branded content or to articles alone.

Create custom videos, share your hot take on a popular trend, invite followers to an event, link to a podcast episode, or post an industry-specific meme that’s sure to get a laugh.

You can also experiment with new social features to win favor from algorithms.

Don’t simply continually pitch your business and its products or services. The key to winning at social media for business is to be helpful, not salesy.

When you consistently share valuable content, you’re likely to serve up the right blog post or video to the right audience at the right time: when they’re ready to buy.

7. Engage and make connections.

Yes, it’s important to share content that people want to engage with, but it’s equally as important to engage with others’ posts. That’s how you build your network and make genuine connections — and, of course, win customers.

You don’t have to like every post a prospect makes or comment each time a current customer shares a win, but engage regularly and authentically.

Leave a “congrats” when a contact shares news of a promotion, answer a question about your product or industry, or join a discussion and share your insights.

Not only will this kind of engagement raise your profile on social media, but it’ll also help you better understand your customers, connect with them, and serve them.

And that’s what social selling is all about.

Take social media for business to the next level

Now that your social profiles are set up to catch the eye of prospects, it’s time to delve into creating a successful social selling strategy.

But this isn’t something you should do alone — heck, it’s not even just for the sales department.

Social media for business affects the entire organization and should therefore involve everyone at the company, from the intern to the CEO.

See how EveryoneSocial can elevate social selling at your company and so much more. Book a demo today!

The post Social Media For Business: How To Optimize and Use Your Social Profiles for Sales appeared first on EveryoneSocial.

Because social media is one of the most important channels for businesses to develop relationships with their buyers. In fact, customers who feel engaged by companies on social media will spend up to 40% more with them than other customers.

Using a combination of social monitoring and social listening can lead to better interactions with leads, prospects, and current customers on social networks.

So it makes sense to put real thought and planning into the way that your teams incorporate insights from when they “listen-in” on what people are saying about your brand online.

Here are the steps you need to take to get the most out of your social listening strategy.

Social Listening Strategy Tips

1. Understand the Value of Social Listening

We define social listening as the method of gathering consumer conversations on social media and utilizing them to uncover insights and inform business decisions.

It’s more than just tracking sentiment and mentions of your brand. It’s applying what you hear and learn from digital discussions to improve your overall brand experience.

Listening should be a part of your social media strategy because it helps you hone in on the interactions on social that matter most to your company.

It can also be used for competitive intelligence. Social listening is perfect to see what type of content your competition is producing and how it resonates with prospects.

Social listening can be used as valuable market research that leads to improvements for sales, marketing, product, customer success, and engineering. Because the more that you understand about how your brand and products are perceived, the more value you can provide.

2. Identify Goals

To create the best social listening strategy for your company, you need to choose the goals that you want to achieve with your plan.

Because the tools you use and the results you measure may change depending on what you want to do. 

Here are just some of the departments and functions that can benefit from social listening support:

• Product strategy
• Content marketing
• Customer service
• Event management
• Crisis and reputation
• Sales enablement 
• Lead generation
• Competitive intelligence
• Audience research

Talk to other departments about their challenges to determine the best goals to focus on with social listening.

Some brands want to prioritize increasing engagement with target audiences. While others are focused on creating better content for their customers and prospects.

Another goal could be to acquire more leads and followers on brand channels.

There are a lot of benefits for businesses that use a strong social listening strategy, so thinking about your goals and identifying them will help guide the rest of your plan and strategy.    

3. Choose the Best Channels

Where is your audience most active? When you’re getting started with your social listening strategy, you want to focus on the channels that make the most impact.

Pick two or three channels to monitor where your target buyers interact most with content. You may want to consider investing in a social listening tool so that you don’t miss any valuable conversations that are happening elsewhere.

A social media platform audit will help you figure out the channels that matter most for your brand and have the most engagement. Look back at your buyer personas and customer profiles. Are they heavy users of LinkedIn? Twitter? Reddit? 

What’s most important here is to identify the platforms that your customers use the most and where they go for advice and recommendations.    

4. Use A Social Listening Tool 

Companies that are serious about gaining the most from their social listening strategy are using tools that make it easier to manage.

These tools can track keywords, topic areas, and mentions in one place that teams can access, which makes social listening much more efficient.

This is something our own software does well, and many customers are using it to strategically monitor brand keywords and competitor content beyond employee advocacy. Our platform makes it easy for all teams to have access to social listening in one dashboard.

It’s powerful when employees have access to the conversations that will help them make better business decisions. It will help you identify trends, see when keywords or hashtags are trending, and set you up for more relevant and timely interactions with customers and prospects.

One tip that we have is to choose keywords that aren’t too broad – that way you get the most helpful and focused results.

5. Create An Engagement Plan

When you have your goals, methods, and process in place to track conversations, you’ll want to have a plan for responding and interacting on social media.

Part of the great value of your social listening strategy is that you will have real-time updates that you can respond to quickly and join conversations when they are happening. 

It matters to customers when brands engage in conversations or respond to complaints. According to research, 79% of consumers expect brands to respond within a day of reaching out over social media, but average brand response rates across all industries are lower than 25%.

That’s a major gap! Brands that are fast and proactive on social build trust and offer a more genuine and complete customer experience.

And it’s visible to future prospects that are considering working with you. Having the tools and processes in place to engage in conversations quickly and efficiently will lead to stronger brand loyalty and sentiment for your company. 

6. Measure Results

Reporting can help show the value of your social listening efforts. 

Metrics you’ll want to track and analyze could include engagement, conversation volume, mentions, sentiment, and response time.

Reach of mentions is a great way to measure brand awareness and take into account any influencer conversations that may be happening about your brand.

By keeping tabs on your results you can adjust your efforts and provide the most value for customers and prospects.

7. Apply What You Learn

What makes social listening so impactful is the business applications. You can listen and uncover insights all day, but turning them into action is where you’ll see real value.

You can use the new questions, interests, and concerns that are uncovered through social listening to better position your products and services.

Content marketers can use social listening strategy to create more relevant content types for their audience and mirror the language that real people use to talk about your products.

Sales teams can improve their social selling by engaging in real-time conversations and finding better leads that are already talking about you or your competition.

Recruiting teams can use these conversations to determine the values and benefits that matter most to jobseekers. This can benefit your employer brand and improve your talent pipeline.

Social listening offers many opportunities for brands if you implement it wisely. Using the right tools and social listening strategy, brands can leverage real-time trends and conversations to make a real impact on brand perception and performance.

Why a Social Listening Strategy Matters

Once you have your strategy in place, you’ll have a better idea of what your customers and fans are saying about you and what they want.

You can then use insights from social listening to help with a wide range of use cases for your business, such as:  

• Identifying new advocates (customers and employees)
• Help you find more potential sales opportunities 
• Engage and delight customers on various channels 
• Track competitors and analyze their social posts 
• Get ahead of any brand crisis or negative brand sentiment 

Social Listening Strategy Examples

Sometimes it’s helpful to see the different ways that brands are engaging with customers, fans, and users online.

Keep reading to see social listening strategies at work.

1. Qualtrics

Fast response times to positive recommendations of Qualtrics customer service helps to encourage advocacy. 

2. Netflix

Netflix wasn’t directly tagged in this fan art for one of the actors in their original series but supported and amplified it thanks to social listening. 

3. Unity

Unity engages with users on social to share other valuable resources on their website they might not know about it. 

Looking to boost your social listening strategy and amplify your brand with a powerful social selling platform? See how EveryoneSocial can help.

The post How to Create a Powerful Social Listening Strategy appeared first on EveryoneSocial.

“It’s like COVID hit fast forward and we jumped five years into the future,” says Marcus Sheridan, author of Visual Sale: How to Use Video to Explode Sales, Drive Marketing, and Grow Your Business in a Virtual World.

Today, employees are scattered throughout the world, there are fewer in-person meetings and events, and salespeople have to master new technologies to succeed.

Closing deals via Zoom instead of in a conference room or on the golf course takes some adjustment, but sales can still build relationships with customers and crush quotas even when working remotely. That’s the power of virtual selling.

Here’s what we’ll explore in this post:

• Virtual Selling Statistics
• Challenges of Virtual Selling
• Virtual Selling Tips To Help You Succeed

Virtual Selling Statistics

There’s no shortage of data on virtual selling, so let’s take a look at some of the statistics around making sales remotely.

• 60% of sales reps increased their time meeting with customers and prospects virtually since 2015.
• 65% of buyers in North America work remotely more than half the time, so the best way to reach them is virtually.
• 70% of buyers and 91% of salespeople would prefer to work remotely more than half the time.
• 63% of sales leaders believe virtual sales meetings are equally effective or more effective than traditional, face-to-face meetings.
• 81% of sales professionals rely on video conferencing over face-to-face meetings.
• 80% of B2B customers say they prefer virtual selling.

Clearly, virtual selling is here to stay, but there are challenges to closing sales in a digital environment, as evidenced by the statistics below.

• You need roughly 3x the number of slides to communicate the same amount of information in a virtual conversation.
• Buyers remember only about 10% of what a salesperson said 48 hours later.
• Only 26% of buyers believe sellers are skilled at leading a thorough needs discovery virtually.
• Just 34% of buyers report that sellers are skilled at showing them what’s possible or how to solve a problem.
• A mere 26% of buyers say sellers are competent listeners.
• Incredibly, just 16% of buyers say sellers are very effective at making the ROI case when selling virtually.

Yikes. Those stats are pretty discouraging, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t be successful at virtual selling.

The key to overcoming these issues is understanding them, which we’ll explore in the next section, and then taking steps to overcome them, so keep on reading.

Virtual Selling Challenges

Despite the rise of virtual selling and the sheer number of tools at salespeople’s disposal today, there are some inherent challenges to selling in a digital world.

Let’s take a look at these virtual selling challenges:

Maintaining buyers’ attention. When you meet online instead of in person, you may have to contend with Zoom fatigue and compete for your target’s attention with other work on their screen or even their home life, such as kids and pets. This makes it tough to keep people engaged throughout a conversation, and sales reps will have to adapt their presentations and communication styles.

Establishing rapport. With fewer opportunities to meet in person or attend industry events, it can be difficult to build relationships with prospects. (This is where social selling comes in — more on that later.)

Demonstrating value. As noted in the previous section, a mere 16% of customers say that sellers are skilled at proving the ROI of their company’s product or service with virtual selling. This could be due to a variety of factors, including poor sales training or an inability to use digital communication tools effectively.

Communication barriers. Much of human communication is nonverbal, so another downside to virtual selling is that it can be challenging to read body language and glean information from prospects’ nonverbal reactions.

Technology issues. Virtual selling relies on a strong Internet connection for every participant, and even in today’s technologically advanced world, there are still frequent problems with connections.

Growing pains and adjustments. The virtual sales process may be especially unfamiliar, stressful, and uncomfortable for sales professionals who have been in the industry for decades.

However, these challenges also create valuable learning opportunities for sales teams, and as we’ll see in the next section, there are plenty of tips and strategies to help your sales team succeed at virtual selling.

Virtual Selling Tips to Help You Succeed

Today, remote selling is the new normal, so it’s essential to have a strategy in place to help you effectively sell when you can’t be face to face.

Below are a few virtual selling tips that can help take your sales game to the next level. 

1. Get the right sales tools.

We’ve covered the best remote tools that for teams, and there’s certainly some overlap when it comes to virtual selling tools. But there are also sales-specific platforms and technologies your team may benefit from.

Here are a few of the most popular virtual selling tools in addition to the more obvious ones like GoToMeeting, WebEx, Clearslide, Zoom, and Google Meet.

• Salesforce: The customer relationship management platform keeps everything organized and up to date.
• Owler: This solution makes it easy to discover new prospects, research them, track them, and personalize your sales communications.
• Vidyard: This video tool allows you to create easy sales videos to answer questions, demo your product, and more.
• Khoros: With this customer-engagement software, you can partake in social listening, community management, and more.

Not sure which virtual selling tools your team needs? Ask them.

Connect with your sales team, survey the tools that people like, analyze your strategies, and find the sales technologies that will help everyone succeed.

2. Be prepared.

Chatting with a prospect by phone or video call may feel more casual, but preparation is still incredibly important.

Before you even schedule a call, you need to research the customer and know the business, its values, its pain points, and the buyers themselves.

Armed with this information, you can customize your presentation to showcase exactly how your product or service solves the customer’s problems.

You’ll be able to knowledgeably answer any questions that come your way, provide supporting materials, and cite relevant customers stories to strengthen your case.

3. Share presentation materials before the call.

If you don’t already do this, now’s the time to start.

This not only allows your prospects to read a bit more in advance, but it also makes it easier for your audience to focus on your talking points. 

Additionally, technical difficulties can happen at any time, so if a call drops or the video lags, at least your prospect already has your valuable materials in hand.

4. Explain the sales process.

You may not be the only one who’s still adjusting to virtual selling, so take the time to outline what buyers can expect in terms of calls, demos, and more.

This helps prospects feel more at ease and gives them an opportunity to ask questions about your process. Plus it’s an opportunity for you to establish trust and start building rapport.

A buyer who feels comfortable with you and your virtual selling process is also more likely to be comfortable making a purchase.

5. Engage in social selling.

Today, 97% of consumers go online to research products and services. Plus, more than 90% of B2B buyers and more than 80% of senior executives use social media to conduct research research before making purchasing decisions.

Stats like these are why its essential for your sales team to be active on social media.

It’s called social selling, and it goes hand in hand with virtual selling.

Social selling is all about leveraging your social networks to identify prospects, engage with them, build relationships with them, and provide value to them — not matter where they are in the sales funnel.

And it works. In fact, 64% of sales reps that invest in social media hit their quota compared with only 49% of reps who don’t engage in social selling.

Get started by optimizing your social profiles for business.

And take social selling to the next level by utilizing a platform like EveryoneSocial, which makes it easy for sales teams to:

• Share relevant content to important social media channels
• Organize sales collateral for quick access to share
• Create unique content for other employees to share
• Monitor keywords or competitors via social listening
• Collaborate and provide feedback on content

6. Increase your alignment with marketing. 

When you’re virtually selling, you need to work even more closely with marketing.

Why?

Because your marketing team creates the majority of the resources and collateral that you need to aid your sales process, including blog content, whitepapers, e-books, emails customers stories, presentations, and videos.  

Additionally, the marketing team has experience using social media, engaging with followers, and building a community, so they can provide guidance for your social selling efforts. 

7. Monitor buyer interactions closely.

Not meeting in person can make sales calls feel more impersonal. And when you can’t look someone in the eye or read their body language, it makes connection and conversation challenging. 

Still, there are a few things you can monitor that help you understand how buyers engage with your company. 

• With video calls, watch people’s facial expressions, note the questions they ask, and discern if they’re genuinely interested in the conversation.
• Track email opens to buyers and click rates you get on the material you send them. This will help you prioritize customers and ensure that the content you provide them matches their needs. 
• Monitor the opens and clicks on any documents or contracts you share as well. This provides insights into overall engagement with your company.

You can also use email tracking software, a CRM, chatbots, and other tools to alert you when a prospect is on your site or interacting with your content.

8. Don’t skimp on the basics.

Lastly, we must mention that you shouldn’t skimp on the basics when it comes to virtual selling. 

This includes the following:

• Ensure you have fast internet since video streaming and other programs can take up a lot of bandwidth. Try to get the best speed possible without breaking the bank. And even check with your company about potential reimbursement.

• Purchase accessories that’ll improve the quality of your sound. Get a nice microphone or headset, and test how the audio sounds from your computer before calls. Popular USB-computer mics include: Blue Yeti and the RØDE Mini (also: the NTG is awesome and my personal choice).

• Work on the positioning of your computer or camera, and adjust the lighting as needed. The last thing you want on a sale call is your prospect looking at a mysterious and shadowy figure. Need a little help? Get your hands on an inexpensive ring light.

• Don’t forget branding! You don’t need to be cheesy with video backgrounds, but put a brand touch to your videos, presentations, and educational materials. You want to look like a tight-knit professional brand. 

• Write things down and document your sales process! It’s a great way to remember your strategy and determine what’s working and not so you can make adjustments.

Final thoughts on virtual selling

Remember, things will go wrong and even when you are completely prepared, virtual selling is not going to be 100% perfect. 

Accept that fact and always remain calm and respond in a professional manner. It can be easy for frustrations and reactions to show, but take it in stride. 

Your buyers are also experiencing issues occasionally and more than likely, they will be understanding if you handle any challenges with poise.

Want to level up your virtual selling and social selling skills? Book a demo to see how EveryoneSocial can help.

The post Virtual Selling: Strategy Tips to Help You Sell Remotely appeared first on EveryoneSocial.

Ensure that your sales team and company is closing more deals, achieving new business, and even upselling current customers who are using your products and services. 

Naturally, there are plenty of strategies to increase sales and drive more revenue. One of the more popular ways is through the use of social selling. 

If you work in sales currently, you’ve definitely heard of this term and strategy before. But additionally, a great way to drive more sales and improve results through social media is by utilizing a social selling platform, like EveryoneSocial. 

Below, I’ll cover how employees outside of the sales department contribute to results and ways to utilize a social selling platform like EveryoneSocial to maximize a sales team’s effectiveness.

How Non-Sales Employees Can Help Sales Efforts

First and foremost, every salesperson on your team or within your organization should be active on social media in some way. It’s a fact that being visible with current prospects, customers, and potential customers plays a major role in sales results.

If you know social selling well, then by all means skip some of these next few stats as you probably are well aware of the impact. But, the numbers are clearly in sales favor: 

• 73% of salespeople using social selling as part of their sales process outperformed their sales peers and exceeded quota 23 percent more often. (Aberdeen Group)
• 80% believe their sales force would be more effective and efficient if they could leverage social media. (Sales Management Association)
• Sales reps using social media as part of their sales techniques outsell 78% of their peers. (Forbes)
• 90% of top performing salespeople now use social media as part of their sales strategy. (LinkedIn)
• Companies with consistent social selling processes are 40% more likely to hit revenue goals than non-social sellers. (SalesForLife)

However, what you might not realize is how impactful employees outside of sales can be on the results of your team and overall sales efforts. 

While employees may not be the sales experts, your co-workers can help assist the results of things like new sales qualified leads, improve win rates, and increase deal sizes. Just by sharing, creating, and engaging with content your team recommends or general content to their own social channels. 

That’s called “employee advocacy,” which is pretty interchangeable with the concept of social selling. Other terms you may hear include “employee activation” or creating “employee influencers.” 

Utilizing An Employee Advocacy Platform to Boost Sales

Hopefully if you are reading this post, you are ready to do these few things:

• Improve overall sales efforts
• Drive better win rates
• Start closing more deals
• Reach more potential customers
• Coordinate with the marketing team better

I mean, aren’t all sales teams looking to accomplish some, if not all of the above? And to accomplish those items an employee advocacy platform is now a key tool in any company’s sales tech stack. 

Naturally, these programs aren’t just for sales, but it is essential to helping overall sales efforts. Wondering how? Let’s dive in further.

Easily organize content for sharing

One of the simplest ways to maximize social selling is to have access to important content at the right time.

Depending on the size of your organization, it can be hard to keep track of all the content your company produces, company news, industry insights, and other sales collateral. 

An employee advocacy platform like EveryoneSocial becomes the central location where content can be organized and categorized.

Now the latest content can be streamlined into the platform and in various groupings, to make it easy to find, engage, and share specific content to social networks. 

Content sharing and creating

Organizing content is important to helping you find what you need faster, but employee advocacy programs make it easy to share content and also create it too.

For example, when you have access to various kinds of content you can share it immediately or choose to schedule various pieces ahead. You can set up a few days or week’s worth of content with unique personal commentary. 

Additionally, you can’t underestimate the power of user-generated content. That is content you specifically create, share, and even add to a stream in the employee advocacy platform.

This could be content you recommended from a third-party source, a picture of a company event, showing a new product highlight, etc. 

Social listening of prospects and competitors

Although content sharing and engaging is important, you cannot forget the power of social listening.

With an employee advocacy platform, you can link up RSS feeds, keywords, and Twitter accounts to monitor conversations and what people are talking about. 

This allows your sales team to quickly comment, start conversations, or share content to your platforms when prospects are talking about something relevant. Plus, you can keep tabs on competitors and news they share to stay ahead of the industry. 

Internal communication about sales 

While access to content, creating, and sharing are key to a program, you can’t leave out internal communications either. For sales, it’s a great way to keep everyone in the company in the loop about sales results, efforts, team news, or start discussions.

A good employee advocacy program values internal content that is not added for sharing too. Plus, it’s a great way for sales and marketing teams to communicate with each other.

For example, you can share internally what content is resonating with their audiences, maybe what content is needed but doesn’t exist yet, etc. 

Mobile apps for on-the-go

Any good employee advocacy platform will be equipped with mobile app versions. Prior to COVID-19, many companies have sales people traveling, whether to visit prospects, go to various events, or even to meet with current customers. 

But having access to content, sharing, information, and creating on-the-go is important for sales.

Even now without traveling, it makes it easier to do everything you need in social selling, without having to be logged into a platform on your computer.

Some of the most impactful UGC from our own sales team was created on the EveryoneSocial mobile app during a sales trip abroad.

Keep teams motivated with gamification 

While gamification and activating a leaderboard to drive sales efforts can be important, at EveryoneSocial we recommend to never lead with gamifying a social program.

However, there are many ways to effectively use a leaderboard to drive friendly competition, ensure engagement, and get your sales team and whole organization more active in these social selling efforts. 

Boost engagement on specific content

While personalized content and content shared to individuals channels will generally perform better, efforts can be boosted in another way.

With EveryoneSocial, sales teams can also share their social post link in the platform to request engagement on the specific post. 

This can be to get more likes, comments, re-shares, or a combo of things which can increase social reach.

Not everyone in your company is monitoring employee posts or knows they have posted, this easily informs everyone of your recent content. 

And it can be any links or posts from LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Youtube, etc. Getting extra engagement on specific posts or uploads can fuel discussions with your social connections and expand the reach or impact of your content.

Why Sales Teams Trust EveryoneSocial 

Hopefully you are seeing the bigger picture as to why employee advocacy platforms can boost sales efforts and drive real value. 

Yet, there are a few solution options to consider if you want to boost social selling, but also get employees outside of sales involved too. How do you choose? 

Naturally, I will tell you EveryoneSocial should be your choice, but it will definitely depend on things like features, user experience, budget, integrations, etc.

You can read the reviews of all platforms in the G2 Employee Advocacy category to get more insights. 

However, what I can share with you is why sales teams trust EveryoneSocial and have for years. Below is not every important reason organizations choose us, but some highlights to give you an idea. 

Built for enterprise organizations

Since 2012, EveryoneSocial has been leading and innovating in the space of employee advocacy for enterprise businesses.

While companies of all sizes can benefit, the platform was designed to easily enable thousands of employees onto the product with ease. 

Whether that is only for sales teams, or looking to go company-wide to really elevate results, EveryoneSocial is built for scale and cross-team network effects.

Recently, we had a well-known telecommunications company onboard and additional 25,000 employees in less than a week to help boost sales, marketing, and communications among these employees. 

Built in Salesforce application

A few years back, one initiative EveryoneSocial took was building a complete solution of the product within Salesforce. While there are now a few employee advocacy tools who offer a variation of this, we were the first to do it. 

We realize that many salespeople are consistently in Salesforce for most of their workday. Giving them an easier way to use EveryoneSocial and eliminating them having to login to another tool just made sense.

It’s the entire functionality of the desktop application, but without ever having to leave Salesforce. Boom! 

Streamline communications with discussions

A product feature we have been super excited about is discussions. Previously, any posts had commenting and tagging.

We still have that capability, but now it is streamlined in a chat messenger which allows less clutter on the feed timelines and offers real-time messaging between co-workers. 

So now besides tagging your colleagues, you can interact with reactions to their comments, include emojis, gifs, paste links, and even upload a file or picture.

This makes it much easier for sales teams to communicate internally, but also to engage other departments or employees. 

Support team for strategy 

Since day one, a main differentiator for us has been our focus on customer success. Now we all know most SaaS businesses say that, but EveryoneSocial has lived and breathed that since launching. 

Our goal is to be your strategic partner with employee advocacy and social selling.

Not only does our team help troubleshoot anything that comes up, but we also provide strategy tips, quarterly business reviews and results, insights and tips, on-going training, workshops, etc. 

Success goes beyond providing a platform, and our team is about building long-lasting business relationships. 

Ready to see EveryoneSocial in action, boost sales efforts, and increase social selling results? Schedule your demo to see more, ask questions, and learn about our product and process. 

The post Best Ways to Maximize Sales Efforts With EveryoneSocial appeared first on EveryoneSocial.

Learn everything about relationship selling, why it is still an important tactic to master and more.

As the world of sales continues to change and evolve, so has the number of sales tactics and various technologies to help teams close new customers and retain current ones.

Many of the old school sales tactics don’t always necessarily work and having too many new ones in place can also cause challenges.

It’s a tough world for salespeople, especially in B2B. But there is also a wealth of knowledge and techniques out there that will help sales teams achieve success and reach their goals.

While it is easy to be inundated with information thanks to the internet and the thousands of sales gurus saying different things — there is still one sales tactic that every salesperson should still master: relationship selling.

What is Relationship Selling?

Anyone in sales might be familiar with the term and may even be perceived as an “old school” tactic, but it is still one that is incredibly important today.

As the name generally implies, relationship selling is all about the connection and relationship a salesperson builds with their customers and potential buyers.

A human interaction, where the salesperson generally cares about connecting with their customer or buyer.

Instead of salespeople solely focusing on the pricing of a product or services (or even all the details about said product or service), the priority is on the interactions and trust built between sales and the customer/buyer.

Of course, product details and pricing are important topics to discuss, but without building a rapport with a buyer, you can miss out on long-term revenue and much more.

Additionally, relationship selling is generally used for companies who have longer sales cycles, expensive products or software, or things that require more commitment when it comes to purchasing.

Many times a software solution may take weeks or months for a decision made based on the buyer researching, comparing to competitors, working to get budget, etc.

By caring about building relationships with potential customers and taking an interest in their world, it can significantly improve the odds of securing a sale and retaining that customer for the long-term.

Why Relationship Selling Matters

Typically, this sales technique is prominent for companies selling products and services that rely on repeat business from customers, such as insurance policies, but it also is valuable to B2B businesses in general.

There were a few stats for B2B that stood out in this article:

• 82% of B2B decision-makers think sales reps are unprepared.
• In B2B, 68% of customers are lost because of indifference or perceived apathy, not because of mistakes.
• According to Gallop, only 46% of customers said vendors deliver on what was promised.

Those kinds of stats show why focusing on relationship selling and generally showing an interest in more than a sale is important.

Plus, with all the tools and sales technology it can be distracting and make it seem that those items are enough to build sales.

But building a rapport with customers and new buyers matters. Here’s why:

Current customers or clients

One of the main reasons relationship selling exists is to boost salespeoples’ personal connection to their customers and clients.

Without building a working relationship, customers may feel like they are just a number.

Worse, they may not view you as a trustworthy person, especially if you aren’t delivering on things you previously discussed.

Now when it comes to re-signing a contract or continuing a working relationship, they may feel less important have a much greater chance of churn and moving on to a competitor. Costing you a long-term sale.

But it can also affect the chances of up-selling them and hurt your word-of-mouth marketing to their colleagues, who may have also bought your product or services too.

For B2B, word-of-mouth praise and recommendations can really elevate sales and deals.

Potential buyers

While relationship selling techniques are important for customers and clients, it also can affect potential buyers who are talking with you and closing in on a purchasing decision.

It’s true that it is generally easier to keep a current customer than trying to securing a brand new one. But it is why relationship selling is even more important for new potential buyers.

Without trying to build a connection, the buyer may feel like they are only a bunch of dollar signs to you.

While you make get some sales that way, there’s not much trust or confidence built that way. People coming to you who are brand new don’t know you well and will generally start formulating an opinion of you right away.

Even if you have the best product or pricing, you can still cause a sale to not close because of your own selfish interests or lack of interest in their challenges.

Relationship Selling Techniques

Because the tactic of relationship selling has been around for quite awhile, there are plenty of techniques out there.

However, with the shift of technology, platforms, and industries, some of those techniques may not necessarily be useful.

Yet, there are many that still matter and new relationship selling techniques have also developed in the last few years. Let’s explore some of the ones all salespeople should be practicing for success.
 

Become an active listener

It’s easy for sales to ramble on because of excitement about the product and being focused on closing the deal.

But in order to find success and connect with a customer or buyer, you need to speak less and actually engage more in listening.

Prospects and customers will like you more, but it will help you understand what their needs are and their challenges. Thus, helping you tailor your pitch and solutions to them effectively.

Practice social selling to add value

B2B sales cycles can be long, some can easily take a few months or even close to a year. During this time, a great aspect to building a relationship is connecting with the person on social media accounts.

Social selling itself is a whole separate tactic but is the perfect technique to add to your relationship selling practices. Why?

• 9 out of 10 B2B buyers say online content has a moderate to major effect on purchasing decisions. (Source)
• 84% of CEOs and VPs use social media to make purchasing decisions. (Source)
• 80% of business decision-makers prefer to get company information from a series of articles versus an advertisement. (Source)
• 55% of B2B buyers search for information on social media (Source)
• Sales reps using social media as part of their sales techniques outsell 78% of their peers (Source)

Interact with their social content, leave comments, and share company and third-party content on your own social accounts.

This way you are keeping your name in front of them online during the sale cycle and providing value too. Same applies to current customers, keep nurturing them through genuine social interest.

Related: Wondering what type of content you should be sharing to your networks? Here are 7 Types of Content B2B Salespeople Should Be Sharing to Their Social Networks.

Relate on a personal level

For relationship selling to work, you need to connect with prospects and clients on a personal level, essentially building a friendship.

This doesn’t mean small talk, because that is all-too-common and doesn’t add value to the conversation.

Instead, learn about their outside interests, see what they are posting about on social media as talking points, follow their company news, etc. Start finding unique ways to spark a conversation where you both have common interests or can relate in some way.

This helps build your profile as not just another salesperson, but an actual human being who has something interesting to say.

Keep your word and be honest to build trust

The second you break a promise, do not deliver something you said you would, or follow-up when you said, you are damaging your trust and reputation.

Of course, things come up and life happens, but stick to any commitments or dates as best you can.

Building a positive working relationship with someone takes trust and you being reliable. If you are missing deadlines and not delivering what was promised, you can easily lose a sale or find your working relationship going nowhere.

Same goes with honesty. Salespeople sometimes unfairly are portrayed in a negative light, so some prospects will already tread lightly.

However, if you can be honest from the start about everything from pricing, solution fit, no hidden contract surprises, etc. your relationship will be off to a better start. Even if your product or services is not a good fit, say that and refer your competitors.

You might lose that particular sale, but they’ll appreciate the honesty and may refer others to your product or services.

Don’t fake it until you make it – be real

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying before, “Fake it ‘till you make it,” but with sales, this is not the approach you want to take.

Your prospects and customers can tell when you’re are faking it for the sake of a sale, which is never good for a working relationship.

Being genuine is key technique and being a real person will go a long way in your relationship selling and connect with your prospects and customers.

Plus, if you love the product or services and company you work for, being genuine should come naturally without a need to “pretend.”

As a salesperson, you won’t have all the answers and may make mistakes, but if you are being yourself an act like a normal human being you’ll be treated with more respect.

Final Thoughts

The concept of relationship selling has been around for a long time, but even in the digital age with advancement in sales tools, this is still an important tactic to master.

But it makes sense, building positive working relationships will be key to closing a new deal, retaining current customers for the long-haul, and developing a trust that can lead to new referrals.

While the relationship selling process seems pretty simple, many sales teams forget the basics and the importance of caring more about the individual than just the sale. Whether you are new to the concept or just need a reminder, this post should be helpful.

Looking for sales tech tools that will help drive real results for your business and the overall success of your sales team? We compiled a list of the top B2B sales tool to consider.

The post Why Relationship Selling is STILL One of the Most Important Tactics Salespeople Need to Master appeared first on EveryoneSocial.