17 May 2021 
Daria Novikova Let’s say that your company has launched an award-winning product or service, and now your main headache is how to monetize your creation and introduce it to the public at its best.
With the abundance of traditional B2B selling tips and tricks, it becomes more and more challenging to promote anything on the immense expanses of the market, and that’s when social networks come into play.
In recent years, social selling has become a powerful tool for global companies, from startups to enterprises. According to the stats provided by LinkedIn, social selling generates 1/2 of revenue for such leading industries as cybersecurity, fintech, health care, etc.
However, this type of sales has its own pitfalls and, in this post, we are going to explain the essence of social selling and give useful tips for deploying this strategy effectively.
Social Selling Essentials
Rather than rushing into signing up in all possible networks and bombarding your potential clients with messages, first define your audience’s needs and be ready to earn the trust of your customers.
When it comes to social selling, it’s vital not to neglect the “social” part of this combo, because developing trustworthy long-term relations is the key ingredient for the win-win partnership and successful deal closing.
As opposed to cold calling and mailing, social selling is all about understanding your client’s pain points, establishing mutually beneficial communication, and identifying the right moment to present your product as a solution to the problem. No pressure, no spam, but real relations with your customers.
Well, easier said than done. That’s why further we are going to have a look at the main difficulties of social selling in detail, accompanied by the actual tips of how to implement this practice into your business flow maximum smoothly.
5 Mistakes to Overcome in B2B Social Selling
Basically, social selling, done right, can provide excellent business opportunities and generate numerous leads. Thus, as a professional, your responsibility is to envisage various challenging scenarios in order to prevent them from happening. Forewarned is forearmed, after all.
Here are the main mistakes you may face when implementing your social selling strategy:
Making Use of the Wrong Channel
Before actually starting to operate simultaneously in all popular B2B networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, a considerate salesperson should create a portrait of the B2B decision-makers to understand how to reach them and become an invaluable resource for solving their problems.
Though the most obvious B2B space for engaging social selling is a professional network LinkedIn, your target audience may also actively use some other platforms, so don’t neglect to make a thorough investigation not to omit your potential clients.
Posting Inefficient Profile Content
Treating your profile as an advertising channel is a one-way ticket to being ignored by your prospects. Let’s just face it: endless promotional materials are irritating.
A mighty condition for creating a successful profile for social selling is credibility. Imagine you are looking at your page from a customer’s point: does the profile highlight your expertise relevant to your market? Do you have any recommendations and endorsements from your contacts? Do you create and share valuable content on your page?
All these factors affect the first impression of you as a professional and a potential partner for your network of contacts. So, instead of realizing pitchy sales, make sure to optimize your profile with some relevant and useful insights.
Choosing a Failing Communication Approach
People want to collaborate with somebody they or their friends know. In case you jump into a conversation with some sales offer, or worse, asking for some favor right away, you are likely to end up on the blacklist.
It is a good idea to reach out by making comments, giving likes, and sharing some top-of-the-agenda ideas. Plus, you need to find and join groups and communities relevant to your industry to get in touch and socialize with your prospects. Participation in discussions will help better understand your outreach’s goals and pains so that you can send more personalized messages and establish solid bonds.
Note: If you communicate with a foreign audience, make certain that you are able to overcome the language barrier (if there’s any) and address all cultural aspects of your client.
Neglecting Tracking Your KPIs
A systematic approach to your social selling tracking is an inevitable part of the whole process as it keeps you updated if your selling efforts become fruitful or not.
In fact, measuring page likes and followers is far from enough. Of course, you can monitor, for instance, the LinkedIn SSI score to find out if your sales team achieves certain visible results in social selling, but turning to CRMs and more professional automation tools will allow you to evaluate your success deeper and to pivot your social selling strategy if needed.
Lacking Sufficient Social Selling Skills
The last but not the least issue that may prevent you from executing efficient selling in social networks is the lack of training. Though you or your team may have years of sales experience under your belts, the shift from a hard-selling mentality will definitely take some time and practice.
It is essential to consult with an expert or trainer, able to provide insights and real-life cases on how to locate and reach out to your potential customers, what techniques to use to establish authority and trust, what social selling tools to use to optimize the process, etc.
The internal LinkedIn study confirms that sales representatives mastering the art of social selling have 45% more sales opportunities than their less networking colleagues. Well, quite a convincing additional argument for making social selling a priority, isn’t it?
On a Final Note
All in all, social selling has become a sustainable trend in modern B2B activities so if your company is not actively engaged in this, you are likely to have a bunch of missed sales opportunities.
We hope that this piece will help you to overthink your approach to promoting your products or services and start using the power of our automated social selling platform to bring in more sales.