Don’t call it social selling. Using social media to network has been a concept around since Reid Hoffman founded LinkedIn in 2002. But the art of using social media as a salesperson to build an empire has recently found its way into B2B sales organizations to help discover the right prospects, build trusted relationships and ultimately drive revenue.
So if it’s not social selling, then what is it?
Dan Swift, CEO of Empire Selling, answers this question with host Colin Day, Managing Director EMEA at Oktopost on this episode of Stuff You Should Know About Our Changed New World.
Back in 2012, Dan was a senior sales leader at LinkedIn and responsible for training LinkedIn’s very own global sales team. The success didn’t stop there as he then went on to become the VP of Sales at Sprinklr, before going out on his own. Today, Dan Swift has trained 10,000+ sales people over the last 2 years with his Empire Selling methodology on how to strategically leverage social media. Dedicating his entire career to helping B2B companies achieve their sales goals and create meaningful customer relationships through social media, he joins the conversation to confirm that social selling is just selling in today’s digital world.
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Key takeaways from Dan Swift
The power is in the network
Social selling requires you to be where your clients are and be active. Oftentimes, people think because they have a profile on LinkedIn and share content they are engaging in social selling. That is simply false.
Social selling today is literally just selling and using social media to build and initiate relationships. On LinkedIn alone, there are over 706 million people. If sales professionals focused solely on LinkedIn, the opportunities to spark conversations with the right prospects are endless.
A key to building a strong network is figuring out the best way to engage with your buyers and starting a conversation by simply being a compassionate and empathetic human being.
Research and engage
When growing your social network, it’s helpful to think multi-channel. Why? A person’s persona on LinkedIn may look and feel very different from that of a persona on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or WeChat.
Through researching multiple social personas of a single person or brand, as a social seller, you will be able to engage more meaningfully based on their interests.
For instance, let’s say you are looking to break into a target account. The first step would be to research the brand and the people. Look for what the company cares about. Take a close look at what the people of that company find interesting.
Researching across channels becomes powerful because while you may be connected on LinkedIn, perhaps you see that someone you are selling to is interested in ‘X’ on Twitter. You can use that information to then create a video speaking directly to that person. The engagement becomes personalized. The conversation is started all because you took time to research and engage in a meaningful way. If you are able to combine speed of engagement with quality content, hyper-targeted and enriched with social data you’re on your way to ABM gold.
Build a social selling empire
Dan Swift uses the Empire Methodology to bring humanity, transparency and trust back into the sales process to help sellers be more productive. As sales professionals, he shares…
“We have to build an empire in a target account or a target region to be successful. We need to build trust. We need to win over detractors. We need to be able to find, relate, and engage with everyone in today’s consensus purchase. We need to go wide and deep into a company to win new customers. We need to go even wider and deeper to expand and enrich relationships with existing customers.”
When you are able to build a network quickly and over time, suddenly the world becomes a very connected place. If you want to use social in your selling process like a pro, learn more about the Empire Selling training programs.
