CHAPTER 33
THE ABC'S OF SOCIAL SELLING
The movie, “Glengarry Glen Ross” featuring Alec Baldwin, created the now‐popular sales phrase:
“Always Be Closing”
His speech to motivate the team to stop waiting around for sales and instead focus on getting them the buy has helped plenty of sales professionals over the years. This was actually a very effective approach in the past, where selling required more push.
To be fair, closing sales is still a big part of sales success.
Unless you close the sale, there is no sale; everything else means nothing until the deal is done. However, the way we close and, in fact, the way we sell has changed over the years.
Part of that change includes the introduction of social media into the sales process.
Social Selling is quite simply the effective use of social media in the sales process. Sales professionals can use social media to find, connect and communicate with prospects and customers in the same way they might use the phone, email or face‐to‐face.
With people now spending more time on social media every day, it has become a crucial platform to help salespeople reach more people and enhance the way they sell.
There are key fundamentals to achieving success with social selling. Many salespeople spend a great deal of time on social without generating many, if any, results. It's the same as those sales professionals who don't know how to cold call effectively, making hundreds of calls every day with no results in the end.
The key is to learn how to do it properly.
To help, here are the ABC's of Social Selling that focus on the core fundamentals:
1) Always Be Connecting
The first ABC of Social Selling is to Always Be Connecting. Effective social selling comes from your ability to find and connect with potential prospects and customers. The more prospects and customers that you have in your network, the more opportunities you'll have to generate in the short and long term.
2) Always Be Creating Content
The second ABC is to Always Be Creating Content. Successful social sellers create engaging and great personal content to share with their network of prospects and customers. Their content helps showcase their expertise, build trust and start the all‐important sales conversations.
3) Always Be (Starting) Conversations
One of the most important fundamentals and ABC number three is to Always Be (Starting) Conversations. Social media is fun and likes and followers make us feel popular and important. But they certainly don't equate to pipelines and revenue until you turn them into REAL conversations that become meetings, pitches and presentations.
4) Always Be Consistent
The last ABC is to Always Be Consistent. Social Selling success comes from this on a daily basis. For example, if you only cold call someone once and they don't answer, that's it. It's the same if you participate in some social activity but then don't for a period of time—the results won't come. You need to build it into your sales process and do it every day.
And there they are, my ABC's of Social Selling!
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