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With more than half of the world’s population active on social media, social selling has become vital for any business. But LinkedIn Social Selling does it work, and how to get results? Social Selling helps companies leverage their network, connect with the right audience, and build long-lasting relationships. This, in turn, allows businesses to achieve sales goals by improving lead generation and building sales prospects without the need for cold calling.
Over the years, LinkedIn has become one of the most effective tools for social selling. While Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram help you gather information on customer persona, LinkedIn provides a platform to reach out and connect with prospective customers. Thus, lead you to better business opportunities.
Before you can start your social selling journey, it is essential to understand the basics and get started with social sales in no time. As a leading sales organization, be an early adopter to reach new zeniths and avail the best deals.
Basics of LinkedIn Social Selling:
Social selling is a process of connecting, interacting, and networking with customers on various social media channels, notably LinkedIn. Sellers can do so by re-sharing or posting customer feedback, commenting on the posts, and liking customers’ posts. It also allows them to build a meaningful relationship with the buyers and boost their credibility.
Instead of cold calls, social selling allows you to nurture the leads and prospective customers for a loyal consumer base. This is why social selling is not for sales reps looking for a quick deal with rather short-term benefits.
For social selling, you need to spend time and efforts for effective customer engagement on an ongoing basis. Here are four basic pillars of Social Selling:
Establish a Professional Identity
Today, customers are highly selective with their choices and connect with brands that they trust. Having a strong online presence shows the agility and experience you hold in the industry. As a result, it generates the interest of prospective customers. It will also boost customer engagement on your posts and open avenues for communication.
The first step to build brand identity is creating a professional business profile, generating information important for customer inspiration. LinkedIn, being a selling platform, lets you connect with potential buyers; therefore, it is important to build a strong LI profile:
- Use real name
- Upload a professional picture
- Make an engaging headline
- Create compelling work summary
- Use slideshow or videos to share content
Target the Right Audience
Through LinkedIn, you can effectively connect with the right target audience compared to traditional channels, such as email and phone calls. More than 76% of buyers are interested in holding a social media conversation with the chosen brands. Through LinkedIn, B2B marketers can identify and reach out to the right market based on your established criteria, including job roles, responsibilities, and industry.
However, content is highly important to entice the right target market. According to a market survey, Millennials and Gen-Z startups are 4.1 times more likely to rely on content, such as product descriptions and testimonials, for an online purchasing decision.
Showcase Your Expertise
As per the market report, more than 60% of B2B buyers reach out or connect with brands that offer data-centric and insightful communication. You can share current news, latest updates, predict trends, and share tips to improve within the industry to establish your rapport.
By staying up-to-date and networking with industry experts, you can establish a leading reputation in the field of sales.
Create Meaningful Relations
For effective social selling, you need first to empathize and then sell. Thus, you should focus on your buyers’ needs and help them with a relevant or piece of information to strengthen the bond. Talking about the common pain points will improve your business integrity and sincerity towards the community.
LinkedIn as a Powerful Social Selling Tool:
Staying in the game of social selling for long will reap exponential benefits, as declared by experts. According to successful social reps, with a 51% more close deals rate, social networking platforms an important tool for success.
With social selling, you tend to get an 18% higher pipeline volume and 21% increased selling speed. Moreover, LinkedIn also improves social selling by more than 25% through its Sales Navigator tool, which decreases the sales cycle by at least 20 days.
It also increases the chances of getting referrals and establishes credibility, effective for sales and marketing activities. To enhance the experience, LinkedIn also offers a Social Selling Index (SSI) that measures the effectiveness of networking on LI for B2B activities. Based on the four pillars, LI, the marketing social site measures your networking activities to reap social selling tactics’ benefits.
Earlier, the sales process was one-way communication, in which sales reps would make the cold calls and offer sales demo to qualify leads. Though still important factors for selling, they need additional elements to support the revolutionizing buying process.
Today, more than 90% of the customers research online for the desired products and services before corresponding with the sales rep. Each buyer review 3-5 articles before deciding on the brand or company he wants to interact with.
During the last stage of the process, buyers use social media to find user experience, quality, and assurance. If, at this stage, businesses and sales rep leverage the opportunity to fill and speed up the sales funnel.
Social selling does it work? Definitely, social selling works for not only B2B marketers but also B2C businesses, and they can cap on it through various social platforms. Prospective customers usually, posting on various platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, to discuss their needs and expectations through comments, posts, and status updates.
As a business owner or a sales rep, all you need to do is listen to the noise and provide a solution. During the process, you can also highlight your product and services without hard-selling. Today, social media savvy salespeople can dive deeper to gain customer insights for a tailored response. Equipped with the right data, you can devise a creative, emotive, and insightful sales pitch to improve the selling rate.
Useful Tips For The Successful LinkedIn Social Seller
By far, we know social selling is important in the times of today. But as the competition is increasing, the rate of success is declining even among the early adopters. So, how can you strengthen your LinkedIn Social Selling skills and improve your success rate? Here, we have useful tips to help you throughout the journey:
