Last update:
We see it, according to the friend's prediction Lois Simon in his article of 28 December 2016 (only 2 years ago, as time passes, eh), the "Social Selling Washing" is now among us. Hard to miss him.
The actors on the subject are now legion; a company seeking to be accompanied on this subject has more than the embarrassment of choice.
And abound the content, videos, articles, which deal with "The Art and the Way to exploit social networks to develop its sales / sell”.
I do not escape this trend, I exchange almost daily with my counterparts on approaches, concepts, techniques of Social Selling. We are living a period of permanent invention and, frankly, it is quite enjoyable; I imagine that the pioneers of Aviation at the beginning of the twentieth century felt about the same thing.
And what exactly are we talking about? What thoughts come back most often?
Small florileg not exhaustive obviously:
- Soft Skills or Hard Skills, what is most important? (discussed by Bruno Fridlansky no later than this morning, when we say we're thinking...)
- Place of Inbound Marketing in Social Selling?
- Social Selling BtoB Vs Social Selling BtoC?
- The content best suited to a Social Selling practice? Video or written ? (subject dealt with in particular in these Article)
- Teamwork in Marketing / Communication Vs Sales ?? Under what terms, what tools on a daily basis?
- The place of automation tools in Social Selling? And then it's good? Not good? Too dehumanizing?
- Social Selling is not – at all – that LinkedIn is understood, but what other social media/networks prefer?
- Growth Hasking in Social Selling? And then again it's good? Not good?
- Personal Branding and its corollaries?
- Digital Recruitment is also Social Selling, right?
- ETC.
...But, back to Earth, let's be realistic, What really interests decision-makers in companies, business management, is not theory or concepts; no, what interests them is the results.
And so: Training your salespeople at LinkedIn or Social Selling, what's it like?
Most recently, a BtoB SME conducted a full survey 3 months after training its salespeople at the Social Selling on LinkedIn (I'll let you guess by who); here are the main points resulting from this survey (about 14 respondents):
- LinkedIn has become firmly established in salespeople's working habits80% of them say they are "very comfortable" on LinkedIn, more than half believe that LinkedIn is "today an indispensable tool in their daily activities". In short, what used to be a "side-by-side", a "potentially useful gadget on occasion" – and even for two or three, an "an idiotic thing that serves nothing and will necessarily be super time-consuming" – is now seen as an important tool like emails. This is a step – and even a course – not negligible!!
- They saw all the possibilities of the tool, they understand the power of it. In particular, at the level of the search engine, the possibility of "crapping the shell" of the potential customer on LinkedIn before switching to the traditional commercial approach.
- They understood that we are all now community managers (CM) ; and first and foremost the commercials. They are generally OK to be ambassadors of their company on the social network.
Perhaps the most important question in the questionnaire is: "Since this training, have you managed to...?"
The detailed answers are as follows:
- “Increase the number of your subscribers in a significant way and pass the fateful 500 bar” : 71,3 %
- “Have regular interactions (at least every week) with your network potentially business generator” : 57 %
- “Having at least one telephone contact following interactions on LinkedIn” : 71,5 %
- “Have at least one physical appointment following interactions on LinkedIn” : 35,7 %
- “Have had... The Holy Grail: a sale!” : 14,4 %
To the question "What do you think is LinkedIn's main interest?", the answers:
- “Finding and getting in touch with the right interlocutor(s)" (by an overwhelming majority)
- “Making customer and prospect appointments"
- “Avoid filters (secretary, welcome) from the phone"
- “Observe what customers do"
- “Observe what competitors are doing"
...In the end, what conclusion can be drawn from all of these answers?
Probably a course has been taken. It's a fact, the salesmen started it.. And they got there with the good understanding of the tool; especially with the idea that the purpose of Social Selling is certainly not to stay in the Digital, that Digital for Digital is just stupid. No, the goal of Digital is to make real.
And so, perso, all this makes me very happy. 🙂 After the next episode!