Today, winning organizations are increasingly using social selling to laser-target prospects, establish rapport with their networks, and thereby streamline the sales process.

FREMONT, CA: Digital transformation took a 360-degree turn in the way people buy. Brands have had to tailor new strategies to tackle these advances and sell more. Recently, social selling has gained special relevance as a technique that has vast potential to bring changes in traditional sales strategies. Today, it has become the most effective sales technique that revamps the entire sales process.  Here are the benefits social selling can provide.

Shortened Sales Cycle

Buyers are 60-70 percent through the buying process before they are ready to speak to a sales representative about their solution. The buyers are engaging in online communities, having discussions with their peers to give feedback on products, and researching prior to any sales conversations. So, the sales team should be in a position to listen and monitor what is being said in social channels and need to respond to the conversations through thoughtful, value-adding responses, not with sales pitches.

Building Relationships

Social selling offers the opportunity to brands for building relationships with a limitless amount of possibilities globally. Favourably, most of the social channels are free to join or create accounts. Through this social media platform, the sales department has the ability to access unlimited information, prospects, and partnerships.

Lead Generation

Lead generation is an activity that is usually at the forefront of the sales process. Once the marketing team has established themselves on the appropriate social channels, they should constantly be monitoring and listening to what is being said about the brand. Within many social media platforms, there are subgroups of prospects raising hands when they are interested in looking at certain products or services. The information gathered from this process will be useful for the sales team in lead generation.

Competitive Intelligence

Social selling platforms allow brands to categorize, list, or file prospects into specific segments. One of these segments should always be the sales team’s competition. Analyzing data on what the competition is saying and customers contacting the competitors will provide the sales team a competitive intelligence on selling products and services. This is an ideal situation where brands can steal a deal for their biggest competitors, thereby reducing the time being invested in researching, prospecting, and identifying trigger events.

Keeping up with upcoming sales strategies is challenging. Yet, social selling is more than a buzzword and has been proven to increase company revenue.