#SocialSelling is dead, long live #SocialProcurement - the End of looking for the Needle in the Haystack

I am old-fashioned and believe success usually is and should be the result of hard work. Thus, I was honestly never a friend of the influencerism, where some people think they should be paid for the sheer fact that they are existing or wearing a specific piece of garment. I never understood why people follow "influencers" who did, in many cases, not achieve anything in their lives except being on TV. But hey, everyone shall be allowed to make money as they want and every company should spend their marketing budget where they want. And maybe being an influencer is more work than I see at first sight. Instead, my question would be if it is worth the money that many companies invest in it.

The Rise of Business to Business Influencers

After all that, the business to business influencerism started to gain traction. Social Selling became a big trend, not only here on LinkedIn but also in other social networks. The fellows who were named Salespeople 20 years ago became Key Account Managers 10 years ago, ending as Business to Business Influencers today. The idea of social selling is to establish "thought leadership" in a specific business field. The content that these influencers are posting should be of high-value and specific to the target audience. Instead of approaching potential customers, one should establish as the go-to person. The most successful business influencers are not even selling something themselves because they are CEOs, IT-Heads or R&D-Leaders. But ideally, they are setting the pathway to their employer for the interested audience. Whenever someone is about to buy something, they shall remember the influencer and his expertise first, followed by the advice he gave in the past. You might call it a subtle way of manipulation, but on the good side, it is not a pushy sales approach that annoys buyers every day.

Many sellers still understand Social Selling as connecting with aggressive offers. Potential buyers might therefore mute them in their stream.

Not everyone was that adaptable to new trends. Many sellers still understand Social Selling as connecting with aggressive offers, phone or zoom call invitations trying to sell their products like on a bazaar. The disadvantage of this approach is that you will upset your potential customers, resulting in the fact that you are probably not being accepted as connection and rather chase off your lead instead of getting to a closing. A similar fate might happen with promising social selling approaches, too. If someone always posts about the same topics, it becomes too marketing-like, or it is just too frequent, potential buyers might mute them in their stream resulting in the situation that the one big message does not arrive anymore at a later point in time.

Is Social Selling worth the Time and Money invested?

What all these different approaches have in common? The waste circulation is still huge because you might entertain many people who are neither potential buyers nor people who can positively influence the decision-makers' buying decision. Additionally, if you sell a service, you might already give away 80% of the service for free by advertising it. And last but not least, a person who is not looking to buy something might not even register your courtship, resulting in the fact that whenever a need is arising, your prospect probably does not remember your product or service at all. You are looking for the needle in the haystack. By impressing all the non-buyers in the market, you might miss the contact with the one buyer who is really interested in what you have on offer. Thus, the question is again whether the whole thing is worth the time and money invested.

Talking to my contacts in the area of procurement, the general consensus is that the presentation via Social Media might be something we take note of when it comes to the innovative systems, tools, software or solutions we did not even know before. But the vast majority of the money we spend is still on the direct material we need to build our products. Taking the machinery industry as an example, we are hunting for suppliers of structural components, machined parts, sheet metal parts, electrical and electronic modules, amongst many purchased standard parts and sub-assemblies. More and more, we need supply partners who can offer higher value-adding processes such as assembly work for modules or even whole devices. Unlike buying a product which the supplier develops, we order drawing parts specified by our R&D people. We need manufacturers who understand their operations very well and which can support us in further innovation. Having that said, we often need technical engineering expertise, process control, as well as excellent order and delivery management, but we are not willing to pay for your thought leadership.

Leveraging Social Media from the other Side of the Business

So what is the solution then? Instead of shouting to a world where no one is listening to you, why not listening to your potential customers asking questions? I hypothesise that it would be much more efficient to use social media business networks the other way round. Social Procurement instead of Social Selling. Buyers looking for products or services should post their sourcing requests marked with some clear and crisp hashtags showing they are looking to source new suppliers. Sellers would then follow the respective hashtags on social media and/or search for the hashtags combined with the products or services they offer. Modern social media platforms' algorithms might even learn and bring the right posts straight to their feed. Besides that, specific groups might be established to place posts for sourcing requests. In such groups, buyers could help each other by pointing to known and proven suppliers or tagging salespeople of known companies directly if they assume they are a good fit. Salespeople could join the group and monitor the buyers' requests, offering their products whenever appropriate.

Buyers looking for products or services should post their sourcing requests marked with some clear and crisp hashtags showing they are looking to source new suppliers. Salespeople could monitor the requests of the buyers, offering their products when it is appropriate.

But why are buyers not widely using social media for their supplier searches already? Honestly, I don't even know why I did not have the idea before. It is as simple as evident. But I assume it is the traditional thinking of not telling your competitor that you are looking for suppliers, not wanting to show the world that you don't know every supplier yet. Leveraging cross-company synergies is still considered a bit fishy by some buyers and also their company leaders.

A Win-Win Situation

To conclude, I see clear advantages for sellers and buyers. The benefit for the sellers would be to generate more sales leads with less time and money investment. The mouth-to-mouth referencing would make the buyers feel more confident because they directly refer suppliers to other buyers. Leveraging the network of buyers consolidates know-how and can therefore also foster innovation. This can contribute much more value to the company than just providing cost savings. Consequently, both sides of the business have the potential to save plenty of time instead of looking for the needle in the haystack. While I think some detail work will be needed to figure out how to approach it in detail, I consider it important to start this discussion within the procurement community.

What do you think about the concept? Do you have input or ideas on how to develop the concept? I am looking for feedback!

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#SocialProcurement #SocialSourcing #WeAreBuying #IamBuying #SocialSelling #Influencers #Management #BRUGGMANNAGEMENT