The Myth of Social Selling

Yes, you read right. The wave of experts you have been listening to about the new way of selling and social selling is dead. RIP Social Selling. It was great while it lasted.

Yes I know, I know. I can hear you screaming at me… “I have a huge pipeline of closed deals that came from my time selling on social. Life has been a breeze since all my social selling techniques enabled me to close so many deals on my laptop”...

For the last few years, there has been so much debate about cold calling vs social selling. A debate that simply won’t go away. We see it all the time, ‘experts’ who sell Social Selling programs spruiking this message so they can sell their courses.

This is not another article that has been developed to start the debate between cold calling and social selling. As Trish Bertuzzi says it’s the cold that is dead not the calling.

What you will learn in this article is how social selling is a myth and what steps you can take to drive your pipeline activity by using proven methods these social selling experts don’t want you to use.

The world of social is such a wonderful thing. It enables us to connect with people from all over the world by simply clicking a button. So what has inspired me to write about this topic? I recently attended a fantastic LinkedIn Local event. Yes - that’s right. Online moving offline. People actually engaging face to face. Can you believe it! At the event, I spoke to someone with over 20,000 followers. He said “I am getting heaps of engagements on my posts. Spend loads of time on LinkedIn, commenting, engaging with other peoples content. However, I am not generating any leads”…Wait what? Really? This is actually happening out there? You have a huge audience of connections yet an anemic pipeline?

This is an interesting case, isn’t it. Is he alone? I recently an read an article from Business Insider about an influencer on Instagram with over 2 million followers who couldn’t sell 36 t-shirts, a minimum order required by the t-shirt manufacturer. 

What’s interesting about this Influencer, is she was selling into the consumer market. A market all too familiar with buying without human interaction. What about the B2B selling environment? Is human to human connection required? Absolutely! In many cases, sales don’t occur until a conversation is stimulated by a Sales Professional. This is where the magic happens. This is where high sales performers, who are top of their class, excel. They are order makers.

The difference between an order taker and order maker is regardless of how much research the buyer has done, the amount of information they have, and even if the buyer says they are ready to buy - a true sales professional will ask questions and determine why the customers wants to buy.

That’s crazy talk Luigi!!!….Are you telling me that when a customer is ready to buy, we don’t sell to them? Yes, exactly what I am saying. The difference between a Sales Professional and as Larry Levine calls it, empty suit salesperson is a Sales Professional will conduct a discovery process to ensure the product or service will solve a problem the customer is looking to fix.

Let’s look at what separates order makers and the steps you can put in place to ensure you don’t fall victim to the social selling myth sweeping the world of sales today: 

1.      Define your target market

Firstly, before even thinking about going to market, think about the market you are engaging with. What industry vertical does your product or service best fit? What is the ideal organisation size within that vertical: small business, medium to mid-market, or enterprise/tier 1? What business problems will your product or service help solve. This is key, and one of the most important questions requiring to be answered and clearly articulated.

Remember, people don’t care about you or what you do. They only care about how you can help them solve a problem and that problem is sometimes one they don’t even realise they have. To learn more about this read GAP Selling by Keenan. https://www.asalesguy.com/gap-selling/

1.      Identify your ideal customer and the buying personas within the target market

Within your target market, determine the organisations your product or service is the best fit for – what your ideal customer profile is. To do this look at your existing customers and where you have had the most success, look at whom you work well with. You’ll start to see a pattern emerging, what is their geographical location, revenue, budget, business objectives, technologies used, if they provide referrals, how they make decisions, etc. Doing this allows you to focus your resources on leads that will have a higher propensity for you to convert. Once you have determined your ideal customer profile, think about the buying personas within those organisations. Break down the profile of the user and consider the problems they are experiencing as a result of not using your product or service. Think about the influencers and how certain problems are affecting them then finally think about the decision maker and what will the impact of fixing key problems will have on them personally and business.

1.      Develop a value narrative that talks to the problems your persona experiences

Once you have identified the personas within your ideal customer profile, you need a narrative that will engage with each of the target personas. Why is this important? We are given a limited amount of time to engage. We might use social to make an outreach attempt. Create a blog post which talks to the problems of a persona. If you are not confident writing one - find an existing blog and tag them or send to them – becoming a source of value. Regardless of the method of engagement, we must be very targeted in our messaging as this message is what is going to pique our customer's interests. When reaching out on social, remember - you are not selling, social avenues are methods trying to find a way to start a conversation. 

1.      Create an outreach process that uses multiple platforms to engage with your target persona

One of the biggest issues I see impacting salespeople is the lack of planning and process when it comes to sales cadence. So many salespeople use only one method when it comes to outreach. Either social or phone or referrals. In order to ensure you always have a healthy pipeline, it's crucial you use a Combo prospecting methodology. (For more on Combo Prospecting, take a look at this book by Tony Hughes: https://www.tonyhughes.com.au/combo-prospecting-book)

In a world where we are bombarded with so many communication platforms - Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger, LinkedIn, Slack, Yammer, Teams, email etc etc etc.. It’s easy for our message to simply get lost. To mitigate this, we need to develop a road map where we break down our message across each of the platforms we will use to engage with our prospects. The days of Marketing departments owning the nurturing process are over! We need to be giving small pieces of value throughout the outreach process. This will ensure you get engagement and ensure you have a full pipeline. There are so many studies globally which now show the required outreach attempts to engage a prospect ranges between 9 and 13. Yet most salespeople stop at 2.1. Remember, each time we attempt to engage with our prospect we have an opportunity to leave an impression. Think about the current messages your contacts receive: does it sound like ‘Hi [Prospect Name] this is [Sales Person Name] calling from [Company Name] following up on my previous email to talk about how my company works with……STOP. This is about you! Think about this, your customer doesn’t want to hear about you. Whether it’s a phone message, LinkedIn mail, email, WhatsApp, whatever…the message we reach out with needs to provide value. Example: [Prospect Name], the purpose of my call is to help you by providing some insight into how companies just like you are working through problems such as [List top 2-3 problems experienced by your ideal customer]. I would like to share this insight with you during a 20 to 30 minute meeting in a time that suits you…” 

When you know your target market, ideal customer and craft a value narrative talking to your customer's challenges, and implement and execute an outreach process encompassing multiple mediums, watch your pipeline grow. This is the start of your sales process because unless you are selling a product or service that requires no human interaction then selling in a completely digital environment without any human engagement is a myth and thus the phrase social selling is dead. So let’s all call it what Social Selling what it truly is: Social Lead Generation. Is there room for Social Lead Generation? Absolutely! However we all need to remember in the B2B world, buyers regardless of the research they do require some form of human interaction. The day they don’t need a human will be a dark day for all of us.