Hi, Emily here today!
You’ll hear a lot about social selling across the marketing and social media world. You may already know how it can work for you (and if not, you NEED to talk to Sam!!)
One thing we hear a lot is the pained excuse of “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”. You’re a great salesperson in the real world! It’s just too much of a change to learn how to sell online.
Here’s the deal: the digital IS real! As real as the hand I’m typing with (but let’s not get too deep into existential philosophy on a Wednesday afternoon). It’s time to stop disconnecting the so called “virtual” realm of social media and the physical world of door to door selling and face to face business meetings. As you will know, not only do they overlap in many ways, but weirdly enough you’re still selling to people online. So don’t forget your humanity!
Social selling involves transferrable skills that you probably already have. Do you spend time finding out more about your clients and customers personally? Do you regularly check in with them? Chances are you’re a relationship first seller – 73% of whom regularly outsell their traditional peers.
Nurturing your online leads is the best example of where social selling involves “digital” and “real” skills. Except the digital actually helps make this easier to track and record all your work!
For example, do you value timely and efficient response times to customer queries? Facebook handily monitors your average response times and displays these. This helps you to track how well you’re actually doing, while giving you the motivation to show your prospective leads that you are attentive.
Think of yourself as a great listener? Don’t think that Twitter is just for information dumps! You can use it to listen to your leads, which means you can see benefits before you send a single tweet!
Nurtured leads make LARGER purchases (47% larger) than customers left to their own devices. Whether that’s a physical purchase, or an exchange of digital commerce, you can’t argue that it’ll get you very real PROFIT!
