The Problem with Social Selling

Sales professionals are now expected to use social media tools to find leads and convert clients, especially in B2B. The main problem with this, is many sales professionals aren't taught how social media works circa 2016. They don't realize they have to be active, communicate and be authentic on social media and not just use LinkedIn. A successful Twitter social selling technique, will always beat LinkedIn for the creation of partners, generation of sales, quality leads and making professional connections that matter. 

The reason for this is simple, Twitter is a micro channel that's more mobile, has a higher information density and is easier to target. Few Sales professionals know how to use twitter properly, compared with LinkedIn. Few sales professionals have a knack for using LinkedIn Pulse for inbound lead generation. They still believe in the old-model sales funnel, they trust it exists, and that cold calling 40-50 times a day, having to call back an average of 6 times, works. It doesn't. It's not a good ROI of their time. Its an old model of a sales process that is changing. Sales professionals have to change with the times. 

Show me a sales professional who is good at social selling, and I will show you one making $ with bonuses and in commission. The reality is also, Twitter has many hacking tools, that when used in conjunction, can boost a profile's lead generation and targeted followers for less $ than it would take for them to do it themselves, to a point. The modern social selling professional has to think like a hybrid marketer, even veer to the boundary of content marketing, to see what their audience really cares about. 

It's the job of a sales professional to convert leads, not necessarily to find them, but in a small company in B2B, sometimes it falls on your shoulders to do both. So in that case, check out twitter automation tools like Follow-Rocket. The Sales professional has to use "hacks", software, social dashboards as part of their social selling strategy, and not just rely on vanilla twitter and LinkedIn accounts that are not optimized, boosted and re-targeted. 

What I like about Follow-Rocket is they are a new service, this means they are hungry to get it right. 

FollowRocket, real followers, unreal results. 

Their Big-Bang package goes for 60 targeted tweets for about $300 per month. That's just 5$ a tweet, and while the value of a follower on Twitter is not perhaps as valuable as a LinkedIn contact in your industry, if you are selling a quality B2B product, the targeted tweets go a long way. If I'm a successful sales per, what's $300 a month split by as many sales people as our company has, for our company Twitter page? For a Small to medium sized business, let's say its split by 3, that's $100 for 1000 guaranteed followers, not a bad ratio at all for the potential cost to acquire a customer. 

Twitter automation tools in 2015 evolved to such a degree that B2B Making and Sales teams who are upgrading their techniques have to seriously consider testing them out and doing trials to boost their social selling in 2016. B2B lead generation requires social media, persuasive webinars, expert demos and quality leads themselves in 2016. This requires sales professionals getting more comfortable with SaaS services, mobile app tools and for once and for all, using LinkedIn and Twitter to their full potential. 

In the content marketing and attention economy, it's no longer consultancy who claim to be "digital experts" that are going to give you a high ROI, it's SaaS services and software tools that help you automate your job. Why spend $ on consultants who come with a big price tag, when you should be trying out tools to augment your social selling strategy and performance. Social media is just a tool, and for sales, you need tools for social media to get those conversions finally. What companies like FollowRocket offer is not just the tools, and results, but the analytics, the smart data that can help you optimize doing your job better. 

I'm impressed so far with what I've seen from FollowRocket, at the bottom of this page, are a bunch of case studies that might be worth taking a look at, because chances are, you aren't using Twitter aggressively & socially enough in your social selling strategy. 

 Follow Michael@ on Twitter.  

____________________________________________________

Michael Spencer helps companies improve their content marketing, blogs, social media & video marketing initiatives. If you are a startup or smallbizz you may want to outsource some of your digital marketing needs. 

Follow my digital marketing tips on Instagram.

 Marketing & Advertising on Pulse. 

Social Media on Pulse.