Start Social Selling Now

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Meet your social selling expert

#SocialSellingNow

Lindsay Brothers@LindsayBro

@LiveHive

Brought to you by LiveHive

Sales Engagement Solution with analytics to better understand your prospects

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Agenda

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1. Why you need to start social selling2. Where are your customers?3. Getting Started4. Developing your social selling “rep”5. Q & A

Social Selling Defined

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Social selling is selling via established social networks and relationships.

Leveraging your personal and social brand is extremely important in social selling.

Social Selling | Where are your customers? | Getting Started | Developing your rep | Q&A

Why Social Selling?People want to buy from their friends and network.

75% of B2B buyers will likely use social media in the buying process.

Social media engagement keeps leads warm and can turn into conversion• According to a 2011 study at the Keller Research Center at

Baylor University, 4 out of 5 cold calls lead to outright rejection

• 10-12 touches on average required to convert a lead

Social Selling | Where are your customers? | Getting Started | Developing your rep | Q&A

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Source: BEM, “A Case for Social Selling” 2013http://bit.ly/1lvVwgS

Where are your customers?If you’re selling B2B, you need to spending time on LinkedIn, Google+ and even Twitter.

According to a Forrester Report from 2013, 74% of B2B decision makers use LinkedIn. 42% use Twitter.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, stick to LinkedIn.

Social Selling | Where are your customers? | Getting Started | Developing your rep | Q&A

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Where are your customers?Facebook is generally used for personal sharing.

Pinterest, Facebook and Instagram are image-focused, which is great is you’re selling to consumers or if marketing tends to produce lots of images.

Social Selling | Where are your customers? | Getting Started | Developing your rep | Q&A

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Understanding your customers

• What do your customers care about? What interests them?

• Work with marketing to understand the buyer persona

• Learn from customers you have sold to. What would they like?

Social Selling | Where are your customers? | Getting Started | Developing your rep | Q&A

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Social Selling | Where are your customers? | Getting Started | Developing your rep | Q&A

Create a profile for sellingThe key isn’t to just share, but also make sure your profile reflects your messaging.

Include original content on your profile, link to interesting materials, and cater everything to how you can help your potential buyer.

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Social Selling | Where are your customers? | Getting Started | Developing your rep | Q&A

Refine your profile

Checklist Picture Complete summary Contact info Current position Content useful to buyer LOTS of connections

Check out LinkedIn Diva Lori Ruff’s fantastic profile for inspiration:

Linkedin.com/in/loriruff

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Social Selling | Where are your customers? | Getting Started | Developing your rep | Q&A

How do you grow connections?Connect with everyone!• Past and current customers• Anyone you’ve ever worked with• New connections from groups• LIONS (LinkedIn Open Networkers)• Friends, family, even people you

forgot from high school

The more people you connect with, the larger your audience.

If you feel overwhelmed, remove people from your newsfeed.

Connect 4? No, connect as much as you can!

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Finding content

Browse the web and company materials for content that is valuable

There are a number of great resources for finding content• Flipboard, Feedly or other RSS

reader• Industry blogs & publications• Company blog• Twitter - follow thought leaders,

hashtags, relevant publications• Follow thought and industry

leaders on LinkedIn

Social Selling | Where are your customers? | Getting Started | Developing your rep | Q&A

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Finding content

Clip and save content that you can share. Save good content for a rainy day.• There are many web clippers

online. Evernote and LiveHive have web clippers.

Content can be anything: invites to webinars, ebooks, blog posts, pictures… be creative!

Social Selling | Where are your customers? | Getting Started | Developing your rep | Q&A

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Share and personalize

• Sharing interesting content needs to be consistent and varied

• The 4-1-1 rule• 4 pieces of interesting/useful

content• 1 soft sell• 1 hard sell

• Personalized content goes a long way

Social Selling | Where are your customers? | Getting Started | Developing your rep | Q&A

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“Rep” = Thought Leadership

“A thought leader is an individual or firm that prospects, clients, referral sources, intermediaries and even competitors recognize as one of the foremost authorities in selected areas of specialization, resulting in its being the go-to individual or organization for said expertise.”

Social Selling | Where are your customers? | Getting Started | Developing your rep | Q&A

“A thought leader is an individual or firm that significantly profits from being recognized as such.”

Source:What is a Thought Leader?Russ Alan Prince, Bruce Rogers, Forbes, 3/16/2012http://www.forbes.com/sites/russprince/2012/03/16/what-is-a-thought-leader/

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Developing your social selling “rep”

Reputation matters in sales, especially on LinkedIn

Become known as a thought leader

Consistently share material that informs, educates, helps, and even entertains. The key here is being valuable!

Yehuda Cagen$100K new business

Sander Biehn@sanderbiehn$47 million new contract

Social Selling | Where are your customers? | Getting Started | Developing your rep | Q&A

Source: Social Selling with the Sharks Presentation 2013http://slidesha.re/OVPvwX

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Q & A

Social Selling | Where are your customers? | Getting Started | Developing your rep | Q&A

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