An Interview with Mike Allton. How would you build a Social Selling Strategy the 'Art of Building yourself'.

So lets get right underway with this interview with Mike Allton voted No 1 Chief Marketing Officer on Richtopia. Mike answered how would you build a Social Selling Strategy.

The answers he shared are an important reminder Social Selling isn't easy as you expect. When you dont have a network who can you sell too? Who can you turn too? What will happen? I like to share this content that Mike wrote, as a base for foundation 'What is the true meaning of a sale'.

There are lots of articles out there that might discuss social selling principles, but it maybe be a little unclear to you. I hope this gives a baseline how to build that strategy. Being a sales man is great when you have thousand of contacts. But for those people who dont have any contacts and are just beginning what is going to happen to them will they be left in the dark? I hope this interview can give you a baseline where to start from and what you need to do to build your strategy.

Great books that also talk about this is:

Timothy Hughes- Social Selling: Techniques to Influence Buyers and Changemakers

Lee Odden-The No.1 Best Seller: A Unique Insight into the Mind, Strategy and Processes of a Top Salesman

Interview:

Questions 1- Thank you Mike for finally connecting with you. Social Selling is becoming a hot topic. Its the readiness to sell yourself without sounding to aggressive. Therefore my 1st question to you is how do you advise one to first build a Social Selling Strategy? What does one need to do to prepare themselves in the art of this new concept? What sort of tips can you give somebody who wants to build a social selling strategy first time?

Thanks Nazareth, and that's a great question.

To me, it starts by taking the time to understand your audience and the solution that you're trying to sell, and then mapping out the complete "buyer journey" that you want to take them on.

This is important because when people talk or hear about 'social selling' they might think that the discussion is about how to sell people on Facebook. The truth of that matter is, for most businesses, there's no selling on Facebook at all. In fact, rarely should you expect to "make a sale" directly through social media (again, that's for most businesses - ecommerce sites are entirely different).

Instead, what you're selling on social media is YOU. You're selling yourself, your brand, your authority & expertise... a relationship that the prospect can opt into and use to determine whether or not they wish to invest further.

You do that by creating an environment on your social channels where visitors can become fans, and get to know, like and trust you. But you have to do that in a way that relates to your business and has the potential to ultimately guide each of those individuals into a path where it's possible they will want to do business with you.

This is what we call a Sales Funnel. And it starts, as I mentioned at the outset, by determining who your audience is and what solution are you actually selling them.

Note that I didn't say what product or service that you're selling - no one really wants to buy your product or service. It's the result of that purchase they're after. Will it make them happy? Remove a pain? Make life easier? Whatever that product or service solves - that's what you're selling.

Once you've gotten a good handle on that, you can then proceed to set up a sales funnel where you'll have landing pages and content on your site that directly speak to those people about those solutions. Use your content to talk about all the possible problems / aspects and then use that content to fuel social media activity and discussions.

As you grow your social audience and continue to share information & insights, your followers will then be drawn into your funnel and moved towards a purchase.

Question 2- Social Selling is all over LinkedIn, with countless reports and articles, you just need to ask the experts who cover the topic well enough such as Timothy Hughes, Koka Sexton and Ian Moyse. My question to you however, is Social selling important with your peers? Should you also use every opportunity to sell yourself out to the group of people who can then be a tool to spread your brand else where? Or is this the wrong approach to take and you should just focus primarily your customers?

In my space, we refer to this as "Influencer Marketing," and it's incredibly important.

Through influencers - as well as peers, colleagues, mentors & masterminds - we gain opportunities to improve ourselves, as well as tap larger audiences.

Influencers might give you direct access to their audience through a share or a mention, and can also be willing partners on collaborative projects.

The key to influencer marketing is to be open to the myriad of opportunities available!

Question 3- As Social Selling is becoming a new buzz word, What is exactly the art of selling yourself? What 3 important things can you tell our readers in this subject which is often a subject that is becoming more and open to debate?

To be sure, it is important to sell yourself, but not from a perspective of selling in any literal sense.Instead, I look at this as Personal Branding. And that's where much of the debate comes into play.

First, some will claim that businesses should not use personal profiles for marketing. I respectfully disagree. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ - these are all phenomenal networks for marketing that, when a personal profile is used, add elements of personal branding and social selling.

The truth is, most people would rather talk to a person rather than a brand. Which means that you're going to be far more successful talking to people on LinkedIn as you as opposed to your Company Page. Why not then embrace that fact and make sure that your personal profiles are ideally suited for the task?

Which means that, second, we have to understand the importance of our personal networks and recognize that they are not truly personal. Anytime I post to Facebook, I'm reflecting on my brand, whether I'm talking about my business or not.

And that leads us to the third point, which is that it is OK to talk about our businesses on our personal profiles! We just need to do so in a way that's potentially interesting to our connections. Instead of bragging about your 3rd Quarter Results, for instance, try sharing an impactful story about one of your clients, and how proud you are to be part of that team.

Question 4- People sometimes get often put off, through aggressive selling tactics, or people who want to sell you something but it doesn't haven't any validity for you to buy and its a waste of your time? What approach should one take when it comes to approaching people who want to sell through using social tools like LinkedIn or even beBee? 

The point of social networks is to be social. That's why people are there. Which is why pure sales messages generally are ignored. What's worse, almost all of the social networks now measure the response of your fans and the success or failure of a particular post can now have an impact on your next post.

What do I mean by that?

Suppose you share a post to Facebook that tries to encourage your fans to go buy something, and you get 0 Likes, Comments or Shares. The next time you post, Facebook will begin to think that some of your fans aren't as interested in your content, and your post will be seen by fewer people.

The louder you shout, the more deaf to your posts your fans will become.

Instead, the goal on social media must always be, first and foremost, engagement. The more engagement you get, the more interaction with your audience you and the networks see, the deeper your relationships will be and the more often you'll be able to successfully reach them.

Those who want to push heavy-handed sales techniques through social media are just looking for shortcuts where none exist. (Similar to how other people will try and migrate their LinkedIn contacts into MailChimp so they can mass email them [https://thesmh.co/2lqCKLi]).

Question 5- And my last question to you is, Social Selling really important? I see it as a phrase that pops up but do we really need it- does the seller need it? And if anything in 2017 and beyond is it going to change the way people buy and sell through this strategy?

While the strategy I outlined above of creating relationships is extremely important, I'm not convinced the phrase "Social Selling" is, itself, important. I think it's too ambiguous. If taken literally, it represents an approach to social media marketing that's simply wrong, for most businesses. And as a result, it's actually dangerous. 

A business that tries to pursue a strategy of aggressive sales on social media risks far more than just wasting their time with no sales to show for it. They put their brand reputation in jeopardy, as well as the efficacy of their social channels. Instead, I prefer to use more precise terms like Influencer Marketing, Relationship Marketing, Personal Branding and, of course, Social Media Marketing. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Nazareth Qarbozian interviewed- Mike Allton, Voted No 1 Chief Marketing Officer on Richtopia.

This interview was accepted and given to me by Mike Allton.

Credit of Photos- Goes to Stock Snap I.O.

All Rights Reserved 2017.

All Rights Reserved 2017.

Who am I:

Nazareth Qarbozian, is the founding startup of Webcspecialists who has interviewed many big names. My knowledge has grown me to become one of the best interviewers that enjoys interviewing some of the best people in the tech and digital marketing industry today. As I grow so does my name. I consider myself fortunate to work with some of the very best names that some other people may not have got the opportunity to do so. My personal portfolio keeps on growing and I am considered one of the best young stars to appear on the web today. Put simply everything I do involves hard work. Just check out some of the people I have interviewed below. I only work with the best and will continue to grow!

1. Michael Brenner: Sought-after keynote speaker, author, and CEO of @MKTGInsiders. Teaching leaders to focus on the work that matters to them, their teams, and the world.
2. Sam Hurley: People Connector, Top Growth hacker, Seen on BBC, MOZ Fast Company Social Guru and Entrepreneur. (149K Thousand Twitter Followers)
3. Timothy Hughes: Voted No 1 Social Seller on Onalytica- Top Online Social Speaker and Influencer; Founder of the Social Selling Lounge. (200K Followers)
4. Ian Moyse: Voted No 1 Cloud Expert and 18th Social IoT Influencer of 2016; (Over 50k Followers)
5. Ed Leake: Top 100 Digital Marketeer, PPC Expert, (Seen on BBC, BBC 2, NBC NEWS)
6. Dennis Koutoudis: LinkedIn Expert, Social Media Expert, Featured in Huffingdon Post, and Entrepreneur.com. (1.36 Million Social Media Twitter Followers)
7. Michael O Connor (LION)- Service Professionals Network (SPN)- 18k+ See my projects section to meet my personal recommendations. 

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