Hint – Like Most Things in life, it’s More about Listening than Talking
My Grandma Mattie was a very wise woman. We lost her at the age of 97 several years back before social media had really arrived. I do remember wisdom she shared with me about life in general that I certainly think applies to best practices in social selling. She shared with me “God gave you two ears and one mouth to do more than twice as much listening as talking.” I think Grandma would have been a great sales trainer. The biggest lesson we teach is how to ask the right questions to help our prospect (and us) figure out if we have the solution to their problem.
Today I will share with you 5 Do’s and a couple of Do Not’s to engage in social selling.
Be clear about who you are talking to. The more crystal clear you can be with your prospect profile, the easier it is to align your messaging, create content and share insight. A big nugget here – the more narrow your prospect profile the better. Interview your clients that fit your perfect prospect profile, find out what their biggest goals are in the next 18 months and what obstacles they see in accomplishing those goals.
Understand the challenges they face. This is another reason the narrower the vertical market segment, the easier it is to really engage in their world. Subscribe to their industry publications. Follow their thought leaders and truly become an ‘expert’ in their space. An easy example – I have never been in the manufacturing space myself (in a production capacity) but my husband spent 23 years in this market and provided me an insider’s perspective that allowed me to understand their challenges. And while one may think the tariffs are the biggest challenge they face, most when surveyed, will relate that staffing challenges and engaging their workforce far outweighs what is going on in the headlines. If I were marketing my services to manufacturers I would want to ensure my insight shared would be relevant to their current and very real challenges with their workforce.
Recognize their buyer journey. You can have the best marketing and sales program in the world, but if it doesn’t align with how the prospect recognizes their issues, builds rapport (the know, like and trust factor) evaluates your approach to their issue, understands your solution and where it fits into their life/organization – you know, the first 2/3rds of their buying process, you are going to miss the boat. You don’t even make it to the dock to send them off with your competitors.
Look for Opportunities to Share your “Why”. Buyers today really want to understand the values of the people they do business with. This has nothing to do with political, religious or economic status. It’s about what gets you out of bed in the morning to do what you do. Behind the financial success. Millennials are very in tune to what they align with and seek out companies that also support their causes or others similar to theirs. Look to the client examples that you are inspired by their success with your solution. The ones that make you so excited to jump out of bed and work with them each day and those that you would work for free because you enjoy them, but they pay you well because they appreciate you. BTW this also adds to the social proof that is a necessary element to your marketing effort.
Deliver Value. A good rule of thumb with your social selling effort is to look for and solve at least a couple of problems for your prospects during their buyer journey. You recognize that this investment in emotional equity will make them more comfortable and confident in engaging you. This builds your authority over the subject matter and also creates a sense of ‘reciprocity’ that makes your buyer want to spend money with you. Also it weeds out the dabblers from the doers. I realize that most people want to dabble in their prospecting. They like to pay lip service and talk about it, but won’t ever really follow through. And that’s ok. I still feel good about serving people who like thinking about getting better at prospecting. How I serve them is through blogging and my weekly newsletter and my social media, not through 1:1 time that costs me money and won’t ever generate a return. There is also a large group of people who really really really want to do something, but fear is holding them back. Eventually, something will push them over the edge and they will be ready to do something, and I’m here for them. The final group that is my Tribe are the lifelong learners who truly believe relationships are the key to opportunity in their life, career and business. This is who I really want to attract, engage and recruit to my business. That is my community.
These are a few of the Do’s I follow in my own social selling efforts and have experienced great success in practicing. I did promise a couple of Do Not’s that may seem pretty obvious but I’ll talk about them anyway.
Stay away from topics that divide. I find the conversation on social media especially vitriolic right now about anything related to politics. Most of my very good friends do not share my political views, nor I theirs. But I still love them and enjoy my relationship with them greatly when we don’t talk about politics on social media. What I find most interesting is that we often have 1:1 conversations and we aren’t too far apart on the majority of issues and often the distance between us is where the art of compromise on both parts would create a more workable solution. But this conversation doesn’t happen well with social media, that medium doesn’t create an effective dialogue, there it’s more about a monologue.
Take it offline. When you are having a conversation that seems to be going sideways, pick up the phone or reach out 1:1 to deal with the issue. The exception to this is with haters and trolls. Manage your account so that you can delete comments that are not constructive to a conversation. That does not mean anyone who doesn’t agree with you, sometimes welcoming these conversations helps you improve your service or product, this is where you engage them via PMs, email or even calling.
Don’t be afraid to let your personality out. Many of my favorite clients share my hobbies and passions. I’m all about animals. So much so that if you don’t like puppies and kids we probably can’t be friends. My social media feed is filled with horses, puppies, kittens and babies. I have some clients who think I don’t ever really work, because I don’t share my day job on Facebook, with rare exception. I really don’t post much about what I’m having for dinner, but I do share recipes (mostly so I can find them to try to make them, the operative word being try here). I’m probably a 50/50 poster – 50% of the content is my fun stuff and 50% is career/life/inspiration that I find builds great relationships with my audience.
These are a few best practices on social selling I have found the most valuable and easiest to apply while having a full time job, four kids, a couple of side hustles and an addiction to trashy novels. Social media can be a giant black hole sucking away all of the time that you should be spending living life. Make sure you pay attention to THAT balance and you will find social media a fantastic tool to add to your prospecting toolkit.
I want to leave you with a thought from Proverbs 17:28: Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent and discerning if he holds his tongue. Take the high road in your conversations. Be ok with not having the last word. Recognize that the need to always be right about your opinion may not lead to the right outcome of engaging your prospects and clients.
Thank you for taking time with me today, if you enjoyed the conversation, I would love to invite you to join my Prospecting Challenge group , or connect with me on Linked In. I look forward to hearing of your success in finding opportunities through social media.