To think like a marketer, salespeople need to be taught by one. Koka Sexton argues why marketing needs to be leading the social selling charge
As an industry commentator, I often find myself teaching brands about the rewards of social selling. And B2B Marketing’s What B2B marketers need to know about social selling guide gives me confidence that I’m not alone.
The guide builds on the foundations set by my well-respected industry peers. Even though Nigel Edelshain doesn’t operate solely in this area anymore, his Sales 2.0 framework has evolved into the social selling pillars many of us work with today.
My work with LinkedIn familiarised me with a number of the tools and principles highlighted in the report. By applying them I was able to help businesses create more successful social selling programmes. However, I believe we can dig deeper into some of the questions the report raises.
Frameworks help us to make sense of complex issues. However, we should also look at the steps involved in laying the groundwork in the first instance. What are the building blocks that will set you up for success, and how does the relationship between marketing and sales affect the outcome?
Sales versus marketing, a tale as old as time
As the guide shows, we’re starting to settle an age-old discussion on what team holds the key to the success of a corporate social selling programme. In the early years, the responsibility lay firmly at the door of sales, with the term ‘social selling’ giving little room for doubt on who needed to make this work. We’ve wasted a lot of time as a result. Marketing needs to be leading the charge.
To make social selling ingrained, sales teams need to think like mini-marketers, and to think like a marketer, they need to be taught by one.
Visibility creates opportunity. Through their strategic efforts, marketers know their buyers better than anyone else: who they are; what they do; what they read, watch and listen to; their frustrations and their priorities. Marketers can help the sales team to understand how best to engage in conversations with the people who matter. Once you know exactly who you should be talking to, then the guidance from the pillars can make much more of a difference.
Preparing for the pitfalls
Even with the best framework, there are challenges to overcome. The guide picks up on a number of considerations, including providing your audience with the right content. You can have highly sophisticated targeting, aimed at the most relevant people, but if you’re giving them irrelevant content, there’ll be no returns. All companies must think like publishers.
You’ll do well to avoid all the common mistakes listed below, however, you should make sure everyone across your organisation is aware of them:
- Pushy – constantly trying to sell you something
- Lazy – all posts and messages appear automated, and involve no interaction
- Selfish – only interested in promoting themselves and their content
- Confused – no consistent message (or idea how social selling works)
- Neglected – profile appears to be dormant.
Another big mistakes teams make is being purely revenue focused when it comes to measuring success. You need to think short and long term. Short-term successes – such as engagement levels and network growth – will show you that the groundwork is paying off. If the signs are good, the likelihood is the pipeline will follow.
The term social selling is also slightly misleading. While it works on a base level in developing qualified sales leads, it’s less about selling a product and more about providing value to your customer.
There should be very little to no direct selling via social channels. The aim should always be to develop a relationship to the point where the sales conversation can be taken offline. I would also focus on creating educational content. It’s your brand’s responsibility to do the inspiring and your job to be practical and relatable.
The future is bright
With marketing teams at the helm armed with this advice, I’m confident social selling programmes will succeed. With the right tech stack, and their own skills and experience, marketing teams can integrate social selling in lead generation and customer nurture programmes, and be responsible for its success.
Of course, it’s great to see our name included in examples of tools that help teams to do this, but there is always more to do. Scheduling and measuring activity is great, but companies should think about creating the right content and identifying the best moments to engage.
Look ahead to a time where, just like telesales, social selling becomes simply selling, or social! It will come. The rise of AI is putting power in the hands of marketers, allowing you to run data led programmes and know your customers better than you have before. It starts by listening to what your customers have to say and by talking to them.
There are now approximately 3.28 billion active social media users worldwide – up 121 million since April 2017. It’s probably a good place to focus.
