Social Selling on LinkedIn

Social Selling on LinkedIn: social selling on LinkedIn has become a go to sales tactic to connect, share, influence and engage with both prospects and customers.



Social selling has overtaken many of the older methods of interacting with business
audiences because while they can still deliver results, activities such
cold calling and unsolicited emails are not as powerful as they once
were. However, as smart salespeople are learning, if you combine the
more traditional methods of selling in in conjunction with social
selling on LinkedIn, your success rate improves. The main activity
involves the use of the LinkedIn platform as part of the B2B sales
process to create awareness and influence while gradually cultivating
new connections.

Social selling on LinkedIn is great for building business relationships before a prospect
even starts a buyer’s journey, to use content and articles to close the
conversion gap and eventually move social conversations into an offline
sales conversation. Social selling on LinkedIn is an additive process to
existing sales tactics to connect with decision makers and influences.

Social selling on LinkedIn

Social Selling on LinkedIn consists of five main steps:

It starts with establishing a professional presence on LinkedIn with clear Goals and objectives.

Next, it’s about finding the right people via research into Buyer Personas or Ideal Customer Profiles.

Then, engaging with those people with content, articles, research, insights etc.

Building trust which is about Credibility and Connecting (read below) is next step.

Ultimately, it’s about measuring the impact of our social selling activity, ROI factors
such as Conversions, Mentions, References and Leads.

Social selling on LinkedIn should focus on building a communication channel between social
media activity such as sharing content, information or articles and the
sales call to maximize buyer interactions. So, Social selling
concentrates on sharing quality content to kick start one-to-one
communication between the social seller and the connection.

The 6C’s To Social Selling on LinkedIn

The 6C’s to social selling on LinkedIn are;

1. CREDIBILITY
2. CONNECTING
3. CONTENT
4. CONVERSATIONS
5. CONVERSIONS
6. CONSISTENCY

1. CREDIBILITY

Social credibility is about positioning yourself to have influence and high levels of
perceived value to prospects or customers. At the practical level it is
about creating professional social profiles, adding value in online
discussions, demonstrating knowledge, writing and sharing quality
content, being aware of industry trends plus seeking referrals from
clients and co-workers to build our social brand. We should strive to be
viewed as a subject matter expert and a go to resource in our industry
or market for information.

2. CONNECTING

Connecting on LinkedIn. The silver bullet of social selling is timing. Getting the
attention of the right person for the limited time they are using the
LinkedIn platform.

When it comes to social selling, the ABC of selling has moved from “Always be closing” to
“Always be Connecting (with a purpose)”. It is important to note here
that we need to build connections that lead somewhere, we all have had
the experience of slowly realizing the relationships we have been
building is only a bridge to nowhere. No point in having 5000 useless
connections, so plan out your ideal customer profiles.

3. CONTENT

Social content is about adding to the experience in the buyer’s journey with quality,
useful and insightful articles or information. Also, the shared content
should be a healthy mix of our own content plus content from other
sources. A coherent social content plan maps to the buyer’s journey,
giving it purpose and vision, and aligning all the content around a
common set of goals for what that content should achieve.

4. CONVERSATIONS

Great social conversations should happen on purpose. To have conversations that win,
your messages, content, and social selling skills need to work together.
A key building block in social selling is for us to have valuable
conversations with various decision-makers and adapt our value
proposition to the unique situation of each buyer. When engaging in
social conversations, we need to ask ourselves;

What do I want my connection and audience to learn?

What do I want them to feel?

What do I want them to do?

5. CONVERSIONS

Social selling on LinkedIn has to have an ROI, taking a targeted social connection to a
qualified sales lead. For this to happen, we have to use LinkedIn to
incite buyers to do something different and do it with us. Our goal in
social selling is to take the connection (lead) through Awareness and
Consideration. The Presentation, Negotiating and Decision stages etc in
the sales process is not part of social selling. We need to utilize
social selling to create a buying vision in order to convert a
connection into a qualified lead so they may engage in a sales
conversation.  Remember, that 80% of buyers actually make it to the end of the sales cycle and
make NO DECISION according to Stanford Business School

6. CONSISTENCY

To succeed, thrive, and prosper in social selling on LinkedIn, we need to be
consistent, insistent, and persistent.  The principal of
P.D.O comes into effect here, as Process, Discipline, and Ownership
(P.D.O.) is the key to unlocking social selling success.

It is also important to point out that social selling
is not a shortcut to generating sales leads as starting purposeful
relationships via social selling can take many touches and
conversations. Consistency is part process (what you do) and part skill
(how you do it).

Within 5 years, 80% of the buying process will occur without any direct human-to-human interaction.” – Gartner and Forrester

Sales training
may be required to master social selling on LinkedIn, to learn how to
influence and how we can bring to bear on customers and prospects’, by
sharing content which is consumed, shared and commented on, then being
visible via social conversations for the market topics we serve.