Social selling is a valuable sales tactic that allows sales teams to increase outreach while growing their revenue streams. As the owner and founder of Winbound, Greg Mischio has seen this first-hand in his work with small sales and marketing teams.
According to LinkedIn, salespeople engaging in social selling outsell their peers who don’t use social media and are 51% more likely to reach quotas. Despite this research, however, many salespeople have yet to harness LinkedIn’s sales professional.
Greg shared his top tips for engaging sales teams on LinkedIn during this past month’s Social Media Breakfast. View the event replay and check out the awesome photo recap of the event on the SMBMad Facebook page. You can also view the presentation deck here.
Understand their reason for not engaging
First and foremost, it is important to remember that salespeople are not marketers.
“What I see with a lot of salespeople, and I feel it when I work with them, is that they don’t feel like they are content creators,” Greg said.
According to Greg, a lot of this correlates with the communication styles of salespeople versus those of marketers. Salespeople thrive in face-to-face, off-the-cuff conversation while marketers are more comfortable producing structured content and strategic messaging.
Sell them on referrals
If you ask a salesperson to post something you drafted to LinkedIn, they are going to want to know how it benefits them – will it generate leads? That’s not the true intent of LinkedIn. The platform is designed to grow your network. Instead of promising them leads, take the approach that you’ll be using LinkedIn to create referrals.
“[LinkedIn] will build your referral network,” Greg said. “Any good salesman will react to that because they know that’s how they get their business.”
Encourage them to comment
Here’s a link to a Winbound post on how to use comments and other strategies.
Connect with value
Sales is about wins and getting people to say yes. For marketers, it is important to share with your sales team what a win looks like in the social space.
“If they can connect with someone and build a connection, that’s a win,” Greg said. “If they can connect with someone and get a meeting, that’s huge.”
Greg suggests making connections and sharing ways your business can be of value to the individual or their business through genuine, direct message contact. Encourage them to share their expertise with you, then use their insights within your content. Feature them, and they will help share your content into their own networks.
“Offer them value and pay it forward,” Greg said.
Combine metrics
The key to winning over the sales team is knowing their goals and helping to contribute to them.
According to Greg, “The number one rule of sales and marketing alignment: your number is my number.”
The revenue goal for the sales team has to be the marketing goal as well. Webpage visits and engagement rates mean little if they do not help the final numbers. Keep track of activity such as comments, invites and meetings generated from your content.
“Get them thinking in the mindset of activity and get them working towards these things,” Greg said.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Greg Mischio is the Owner and Founder of Winbound, a digital sales and marketing agency. Winbound helps small sales and marketing teams use content to create a “digital twin” of their sales team. The approach includes collaborating with clients to produce insight-driven content, then using marketing such as SEO, social media and paid online ads to distribute the content to prospects.
Winbound specializes in manufacturing and industrial clients, but the approach works for any B2B company with complex sales. Their clients have enjoyed double and triple digit increases in website traffic and qualified leads.
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