The Art of Social Selling

Through social selling, brands, salespeople, consultants, and small business owners can identify new leads by pinpointing people talking about their brand, competitors, or industry. The ‘seller’ can then engage these prospects in a way that is useful to them.

Social selling is great for creating relationships with people that fit the profile of a potential future customer.

Social media users often share a lot of information about themselves online. For example, a LinkedIn profile could contain most of the information you need to make a personalised and relevant first point of contact with a prospect.

Social selling does not disrupt its target audience in the way traditional marketing does; it is a two-way conversation, unlike traditional sales, which are only one-way.

The low cost of social selling is a significant benefit. Firstly, social media profiles are free. Many of the activities you can use to grow your brand and reach customers are also free or low-cost, making social selling an affordable marketing strategy for any business.

Sellers can gain introductions to potential customers through existing mutual connections or viewing your content , which may be unbeknown to you but create a sense of trust and rapport.

“Salespeople have long leveraged offline social networks… All things being equal, people prefer to buy from those they know and trust.

Now, sales professionals need to replicate their networking strategy online because social media is where peer conversations are happening.” (Schaub, 2014)

Through social selling, a salesperson can grow their personal brand to increase their credibility with prospective customers.

Linking to your website from your content increases the number of visits to your website.

Social selling is great for lead generation from social media. And because you have already established credibility and trust through your content and engaging, the leads generated through social media are of high quality.

There is an improved conversion rate with better quality leads than from leads generated from activities such as cold calling.

Social selling also encourages a more substantial alignment between sales and marketing, which I’ll further discuss later in this article.