Social Selling Today
79% of sales reps that incorporated social selling achieved their quota over the last calendar year!
The Value Of Social Selling
Not all B2B sales teams have incorporated social selling into their sales process, but many others have seen that social media can be transformative.
This is true for companies large and small, across all industries. Certain industry studies and experts are documenting these shifts; consider the following statistics:
Sales professionals who use LinkedIn for social selling are 51% more likely to exceed their sales quota than sales professionals who don’t use LinkedIn for social selling.
Sales professionals that use LinkedIn for social selling are 3X more likely to crush their sales quota for the year than any other sales rep.
Directors that use LinkedIn for social selling get promoted 1.6X faster to VP.
The strategy
LinkedIn’s 318 million members and see what information is available about prospects on their profile pages. For copier dealers, this alone can tell you a lot. Leads generation is made easier when your LinkedIn network is big enough, as you can often request that one of your first-degree connections introduce you to a third-degree connection. This leverages LinkedIn as a social selling platform, producing copier leads where no prior direct connection exists.
Step 1: Use LinkedIn as an engagement platform. Keeping people informed and engaged will lead to increased copier sales. Through status updates or comments in groups, simply start sharing content and responding to content posted by others. As Sexton says, these interactions add up to stronger relationships, which can help build your leads generation pipeline and reduce churn.
Step 2: Create CRM tabs, one in Accounts and one in Opportunities. Use these tabs to monitor and measure your social selling success. Think of LinkedIn as a lead generation source to use in conjunction with all your other sources. Create a tab in Accounts to track where your sales team is acquiring net new company information for the CRM with LinkedIn as one of the choices. This will allow you to clearly see how effective social selling is for leads generation within your business.
Step 3: Automation will enable you to add the connection to your CRM, and you can follow up the day after with “Thanks for connecting on LinkedIn” email as the first of a series of automated emails.
Step 4: On day 3, you will send a link to your E-Book lead magnet opt-in page, which is a key part of the process. People who opt-in to receive the E-Book are your prime leads, and getting people to the opt-in page can be done in several other ways including using an affiliate program, through a Facebook chatbot, via content on LinkedIn or a Facebook group, through social media posts on Twitter or Instagram, etc.
Step 5: On day 3, you will send a link to your E-Book lead magnet opt-in page, which is a key part of the process. People who opt-in to receive the E-Book are your prime leads, and getting people to the opt-in page can be done in several other ways including using an affiliate program, through a Facebook chatbot, via content on LinkedIn or a Facebook group, through social media posts on Twitter or Instagram, etc.
Step 6: The automated email process allows multiple direct points of contact, as you will be able to follow up with more emails to encourage the prospect to join your Facebook group, etc. If interest is shown (by clicking a link) then a ringless voicemail can be left or an SMS sent. The ultimate aim of all sources is to get them to opt-in and download the E-book.
The E-Book will give access to a LinkedIn private group from where it is easy to schedule a strategy call with the prospect.
With multiple sources of lead generation, your copier sales are likely to increase, especially as the opt-in separates those with a passing interest from those who are fully invested in your service. Social selling can attract a much greater number of targeted leads than almost any other method of lead generation, and the self-qualification through opting in gives you confidence that the lead can be more easily converted into a customer.
The Social Selling Funnel
The social selling funnel using LinkedIn will help you to generate leads for copier sales by cultivating an audience that is specifically tuned to your business.