How to Become a Winning Salesperson in the Social Selling World

As the landscape of selling advances at a rapid pace, you need to stay up-to-date with emerging tools, technologies and trends in your industry as well as new developments in the sales profession, in general. Social networking is a necessity in today’s sales culture. Why? Because networking in this way is a cost-effective approach to communicating in our fast-paced society. Utilizing social media as a sales tool has become a great approach to creating and building relationships as well as sharing relevant content to position yourself as a leader and credible resource to your peers.  As a salesperson, you may face a lot of pressure to succeed through social selling. Today, we’ve put together a few simple tips that will help you identify what your “social selling style” is and how to enhance your professional social media presence.

Here are 5 steps to get you started today:

1. Be Confident, Be You!

What made you get into sales in the first place? Love working with people? Your outgoing nature? Passion for persuasion? In sales, it’s your personality and the way you make connections with others that will contribute to your style and success. This is typically true and can impact both your “in-person” and “online” presence. Often times, if you are unfamiliar with a new technology or sales approach, it can be difficult to make the transition. But remember, regardless of the technology you are using to communicate, stay true to yourself and think of ways you can translate your “offline” personality into your “online” personality.

2. Drive Direct Engagement.

Once you’ve established your individual social selling style, now it’s time to get to know your target audience and their online behavioral patterns. After you’ve gained some insight into who your target audience is, what challenges they are facing and what type of content they are interested in, it’s time to start engaging them as much as possible. You can begin this process with your target audience by (1) leaving thought-provoking comments and questions on group discussions or industry blogs (2) monitoring and sharing emerging/relevant content that would be valuable and useful (3) publishing your own articles or blogs to establish yourself as an expert. These are just a few things you can do that will directly engage your audience and promote further opportunities to interact and start a conversation.

3. Focus on Quality Content.

Content is King! We know, we know. This is the tune that a lot of marketers have been singing for awhile. And they’re right, content is definitely king, but what does the quality of your content say? Top-notch? Subpar? You must take content quality into consideration when you’re sharing information through social media. One subpar “share” could diminish the credibility that you’ve been working so hard to accomplish. Remember, what you share on social media not only reflects you as an individual but also reflects back to your company or the company you work for. The key to selling through social media is to have clear, concise, and compelling information to share in order to get the message across to your target audience.

4. Create Relevant and Relatable Posts.

Now, you might be thinking, “what could I contribute to the social media conversation that would be useful to my target audience?”  Let me give you an example. Jessica, a VP of Sales for a mobile gaming company, just read a recently published article about the newest developments in mobile gaming technology. Jessica shared her comment about it with the link to the article. Later that day Jessica receives a direct message from Jake, a mobile advertising salesperson for company ABC, who is looking to continue a discussion about what Jessica posted earlier that day. Posting relevant pieces of content that other people in your industry will relate to is a very powerful thing. It can create new sales opportunities as well as an alternative way to gain awareness and momentum among other professionals in your industry.

5. Develop a Clear Brand Message.

In today’s selling landscape, it’s important to have a variety of options when it comes to creating brand awareness and providing information about your product or service. Being an advocate for your brand/company is a great way to take advantage of all that social media has to offer. It’s important to be clear and consistent as well as stay in-sync with the bigger brand message to avoid confusion among coworkers and your target audience. We want to make it easy for people to know what we do and how to find us.

Start building your social selling style by using the five steps mentioned above. And remember, It’s important that you continue to test these ideas so that you can customize for your needs as well as improve and optimize your approach for future opportunities. 

Do you have any tips you can share with us?