Social Selling White Paper – What is it and what are the best industries to utilise it?

February 2016

Alex Lofts – Marketing Director, Pitch You Pty. Ltd.

What is Social Selling? Social selling is the fasting growing channel for sales. It includes all digital mediums used to promote a product or service that allows some interactivity. Social Selling techniques include sharing relevant content, interacting directly with potential buyers and customers, personal branding, and social listening. Some of the more prevalent social mediums include Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and even Instagram and Pinterest now. There are dozens. Social Selling has become more norm than outlier. Amongst other benefits for the seller and consumer, it enables customer interaction with their suppliers. User Generated Content (UGC) is taking more control over the public perception and go to market messaging of a business – businesses have little choice but to be available and responsive in social channels or risk being forgotten about in the new age of customer research.

Still a relatively new concept, social selling began being talked about just as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter started to take off, in early 2007. As the Google Trends analysis shows, the term social selling is becoming more and more relevant as businesses and customers recognise its ability to deliver results.

Why Use Social Selling? Social selling is an incredibly cost effective medium that has been enabled by the online revolution. Social selling delivers extremely current, rich details about clients, target company structures and prospect interests and activity on the social channel. B2B sales are now, on average, passing through 5.4 approvers before acceptance and working out who those parties are, let alone how to appeal to all of them, is a challenge easily solved via social selling channel.

A conscious effort to engage in social selling delivers sales results, and not just through social selling channels. An effective social selling strategy includes an articulated content strategy, which is the primary form of collateral for any sales agent. Adding structure and at least the understanding of social selling enables a socially-capable team member to be a valuable resource for ‘tiger teams’ – account teams assembled to win tenders and new accounts. Social Selling is a good platform to take advantage of the three core events that provide sales opportunities: Triggers, Providing Insights and Referrals.

Social Selling is the most efficient way to inform a sales team of a Trigger - when a potential client has changed jobs, changed roles internally or other company news that has effectively changed the way the business operates. These are found to be catalyst times when potential clients are looking for new solutions – they are looking to make changes, offer insight or the business is looking for new advantages in the marketplace. By providing Insights, a consultant displays an ability to provide consultation and advice – immediately and into the future. Providing timely insights is typically done through client meetings or digital communication. By utilizing the social marketing platform, clients can be made aware of new developments and conduct research in their own time. The insights of a businesses’ salesforce can then be multiplied across the full sales team as they share and apply colleagues’ posts across their own network, applying vertical-specific information tailored to their own audience. Finally, Referral business is strengthened through the use of social networks, as clear validation can be traced through a customer referral if done through LinkedIn. The referral case study can still be built

If a prospect changes: -jobs

-roles

-or there is company news

Providing prospects: -best practice improvements

-new ideas

-new ways to do business

Leveraging previous customer experiences to passively or

actively prospect

The average number of approvers per sale

through traditional methods but by using social media, it can be linked to the original referrer which adds credence to the document.

Which industries are best suited for social selling? Social Selling is appropriate for any sales teams that are engaging in more than account maintenance; that is, as the factors below become more prevalent, the more need there is for effective social selling strategies.

Social selling is therefore particularly effective for businesses that need to prospect, respond to tenders, deal in long sales cycles, have a complicated sales cycle, have long periods between client and representative contact or have multiple decision makers.

What are the most effective uses for Social Selling and Marketing? Social selling, like most forms of marketing and sales, is not effective without a strategy and some unity across sales and marketing employees. A business wishing to undertake a social selling strategy is well advised to unify sales and marketing functions around a ‘post, share and comment’ strategy – that is, to engage in taking organisational or colleague material and interacting with it – ideally by tailoring the information to their targeted audience or, at the very least, by viewing it and liking or commenting on it (without being overzealous in doing so). Social selling is highly effective for the following activities:

Providing information to prospective and current customers. Even if a single employee is not particularly engaged in social selling, the marketing output from a teams’ social selling endeavors are highly beneficial.

Providing insight into key accounts. LinkedIn can provide organizational information, personal information (including recent articles viewed or shared, interests and alignments) and organizational charts that are otherwise quite difficult to come by.

Providing prospects. LinkedIn, in particular Sales Navigator, provides a powerful search tool to locate potential sales targets.

Customer has multiple decision makers

Customer solutions may be complex via multi-layering, long or large roll-outs, many stakeholders, or advanced technology

Either vendor or buyer has complex technology implemented in their systems

The customer has a presence online

The seller has employees that add a layer of value beyond a fixed product offering (or theemployees are the offering)

Account mix includes any of: new business, tenders, long visit cycles, multiple agents and/or points of client contact

Establishing thought leadership. Thought leaders are the first people customers go to when seeking a solution; thought leaders, according to Forrester Research, win 74% of the jobs by being the first invited to create and deliver on a vision, rather than just responding to a tender request.

Social marketing content has the broadest reach through being shared by company employees. A recent study showed that 52% of consumers trust an ‘average’ employee more than the CEO. Better than that, content shared by employees receives 8x the engagement of content shared on brand channels.

What are the most effective activities when Social Selling and Marketing? There are four key activities to undertake when working on social selling or social marketing: Building, Engaging, Learning and Monetising. At all times you should be performing one of these ‘social activities’. Building is undertaking efforts to either expand your network reach, or improve your profile. Having a larger network improves your posting reach, and beyond that, puts you closer to more 2nd level connections (those connected with one of your connections) and beyond. This is valuable as the more people that like or comment on your posts, the more potential for your post to be pushed to their 1st level contacts and beyond. When building out their profile, a user is looking to provide social credibility to their digital portfolio. Common across all professions are the basics of a profile like extended personal summary, qualifications, referrals, posting history, skills, job history, a professional headshot and the like. Advanced profiles contain a personal video summary, digital publications and other content.

Engaging your audience is a critical task as it builds reputation and a provides a catalogue of professional advice to your connections. By commenting on other user submissions, you are demonstrating your expertise, and signaling that you are both able and willing to assist in solving problems for both the original poster and whoever may also read that post. Publishing articles is desirable to demonstrate knowledge on a topic – and prompt prospects to interact and hopefully share your articles. Publishing is not just relevant for the few days the post stays active on connections’ walls, but also deep into the future when prospects are viewing your page and looking for the social credibility that qualifies the services you offer. A good social marketer or seller should never stop Learning by utilising social media. It is a fantastic medium for staying up to date and relevant in specialised industries, and by listening to competitors and customers alike, you can ascertain where new challenges may come from, or where needs are not being fulfilled. As a research tool, social media (in particular LinkedIn) is a fantastic resource that provides rich data across an industry, a company or an individual, including the ability to find out how a company is structured, who the key decision makers are and what they’ve been interacting with recently on the platform.

Tip: Use the ‘view recent activity’

dropdown arrow underneath a connection’s photo to view

recent activity on the LinkedIn network; This can give you ideas for discussion points in face to

face meetings or offer an opportunity to interact with

them directly on the platform.

Finally, Monetising social platforms is critical, and should always be considered when investing time or advertising money into the platform. Your work with the platform, as someone looking to perform sales or marketing activity, should always be to drive an outcome that leads to more sales. On your posts and your profile, look to drive your prospects to, at a minimum, an email address as part of a direct mail campaign, or ideally, drive them to an opportunity to set up a traditional meeting off the platform. There are two ways you are engaging your prospects on LinkedIn – actively or passively. Passive/Reactive The following three tips are for passive or reactive sales – that is, not proactively engaging a prospect prior to them undertaking their own research. Three recent studies show potential customers having between 57% and 70% (CEB, Dell & Carnegie Mellon and Forrester) of their sales journey research complete before reaching out to a sales rep. The statistics really only back up what we feel, and what we do ourselves when looking to purchase something – we do online research first, to educate ourselves, before reaching out for specific solutions. It is only prudent, therefore, that you make your organisations’ sources of information the easiest to find and the richest in content, so that your information is the information used for reference. Improving Your Profile Establishing a strong base is imperative for successful social selling and marketing. When a prospect comes to visit your profile, it needs to be rich with content and reflective of a professional. There are many guides on having the ‘complete profile’ online. Succinctly, an excellent profile should have:

Clear profile picture, head only

A status line that is customer centric (not your role)

Your location

Over 500 contacts

All relevant experience and education

A detailed, customer solutions-centric summary, written in first person

Ideally a personal video in that summary

A detailed list of customer-centric content available – the collateral you want your customers to see.

A clear path for contacting you in the summary, not relying on LinkedIn Inmails.

All sections such as recommendations, skills, interests completed. Completing all of these points builds social relevance, reach and authority. Pitch You highly recommends personal video in profiles as a way of introducing yourself, to detail the way you can help potential clients and as an ‘icebreaker’. Professional video in profile is more cost effective than ever and provides an instant connectivity with the prospect and the company employee.

“Video is even more effective and important when we're trying to engage with the audience on a personal level. We're built to read faces. Pareidolia -- our psychological tendency to perceive a random stimulus as significant -- is what makes us see faces in

tree trunks, the moon, and grilled cheese sandwiches.

We like to see faces, we want to see faces, and we subconsciously look for them. There's a reason people want to "look someone in the eyes." Our brains are built to establish trust through face-to-face contact, hence we see the "talking head" as an integral component

of many corporate presentations, politician's speeches, classroom lectures, product presentations, and even video ads.

When someone tells you something, face-to-face, the message has a greater impact than if you read it. Through video, you can replicate that essential, nearly in-person human

connection, with thousands of people at once. Video gives us the ability to communicate "face-to-face" on a bigger, asynchronous scale.”

Vitaly Shter - Kaltura.

Participating in Relevant Groups Groups are not as strong a concept as they once were however being involved in groups gives you more chances to reach potential clients (without needing Inmail) and to become a thought leader for people outside your immediate contacts (by engaging in group posts). Groups are an opportunity to expand your influence beyond an immediate circle. Posting and Sharing The aim for posting and sharing content should be to enrich a stage along the sales pipeline – either to establish yourself as a thought leader (create awareness), inform your connections about how you can help them (engagement), make specific offers (offering) or provide credibility to your ability to deliver solutions (closing). When creating content many different types of content types, content mediums and included content should be considered. Please see suggested combinations of format, medium and included content below (information appended from Pitch You eLearning Module).

Strategic Sales Research and Prospecting Once engaged in an opportunity, or even before an opportunity has presented itself, the tools of social selling are particularly useful in guiding a sales team on when to engage. The following tools are part of the Sales Navigator program of LinkedIn. Prospecting is still highly valuable without a paid LinkedIn account, but is not as efficient. Salesforce.com/Microsoft Dynamics Integration Employees can compare information from either of the above CRM systems. The sync can compare the CRM and LinkedIn lists of an employee and notate which accounts are listed in both. Note, Salesforce does not log interactivity with the CRM platforms. Leads and Accounts From there, a salesperson should fill in the accounts assigned to them, or establish which accounts are available in their geographic/vertical assignment. After loading in the accounts, suggested leads will be provided and drawn from the employees’ first contacts list. Navigator then offers a different dashboard to the standard LinkedIn, based around account and lead activity. This is incredibly useful as you can monitor account activity in real time, or delve into a specific lead or account and inspect all of their recent activity on the platform. In limited cases, it can also provide mentoring beyond the platform (such as an instance where a specific lead account was in the news recently).

This is valuable information to enable a timely response to a trigger event (discussed previously), discussion points for your next appointment, or opportunities to interact with the client.

TeamLink Sales teams can leverage each other’s contacts through the use of the TeamLink tool. Whilst doing research, an employee can see who within their own team has connections within an account, or with a specific individual. As 87% of buyers or influencers have a favourable impression of someone who was introduced to them through their professional network, that is incredibly powerful referral mechanism to leverage, particularly if you work in a large team. Prospecting Prospecting is cheaper and easier than ever with LinkedIn, in particular when coupled with Sales Navigator. A real-time results tracker gives you the amount of hits you’ll return with your current search terms; Search terms can be ‘banked’ – IE look for sales managers, sales directors, directors of sales, etc. – through the 8 key search terms seen below. Finding new targets, and researching their interests, their activity, their history, and any commonalities you may have – has never been easier.

What are the success rates behind social selling? Social selling is a longer burn. As a sales and marketing channel, it is still in an innovation/early adoption phase, with many unsure how best to approach it or whether it is worth the time and effort. Early analysis has provided some insight which proves its effectiveness: Consumers are 5x times more likely to schedule a first meeting if you have a personal LinkedIn connection. (Sales Benchmark Index) 77% of B2B purchasers said that they would not even speak to a salesperson until they had done their own research. (Corporate Executive Board) 78% of sales people using social media outsell their peers. (Forbes)

84% of B2B decision makers begin their buying process with a referral. (Influitive) Effective use of sales intelligence increases revenue productivity per sales rep by 17%. (Eloqua) Stats aggregated by Payfirma. The early evidence is insurmountable; utilising the benefits of social selling will improve sales performance. As time passes and professionals begin to further utilize the social selling platforms in their research and to validate their decision making, it becomes counterproductive and potentially destructive to not have a salesforce aligned to selling on social media; if your customers go to your representative’s portfolios, what are they going to see? And although social media is a slow burn in terms of building social credibility and standing, ‘boosting’ individual or company posts and content is cost effective, extremely customisable with placement (targeting) and can be limited to just a few dollars for thousands of impressions. By paying for placement, your content will be seen by more eyes and drive more awareness of your activity. What does Pitch You provide? Pitch You can assist businesses in a number of ways around social selling and marketing. Our most popular offer, the ‘Pitch Pro’ package, includes a four stage process:

Further services are available on top of our ‘Pitch Pro’ offering above, including tailored workshops (i.e. introduction to social selling, content building, prospecting, advanced strategies), ghostwriting of content and additional video services. Alex Lofts is Marketing Director of Pitch You, a B2B social selling consultancy and content creation organization. Pitch You helps businesses monetize the social channels and drive results. For an obligation- free evaluation of your sales team, mention this white paper when emailing us at info@pitchyou.com.au For more articles like this one visit our company page here, or visit our website at http://www.pitchyou.com.au/

Copyright 2016

Profile Evaluation: 30 point analysis of every employee listed against a business.

Content Creation: Pre-scripted elevator pitch video for each employee, and a professional headshot

eLearning Guide: Comprehensive online course enabling individuals to optimise their profile, learn how to utilise the platform, build a strategy and succeed in social selling.

Ongoing Analysis: Providing individuals and organisations visibility to the performance of their videos, enabling Call To Action events and ongoing free hosting.