Cold calling and ‘blind selling’ are yesterday’s games. This Dreamforce session introduces the power of Social Selling and shows you seven steps to help you harness it. Speakers include:

Karl Goldfield
VP of Sales, Teambox
@karlgoldfield - Karl's Blog

 

Lee Odden
CEO, TopRank
@leeodden - Lee's Blog

 

Scott Holden
Senior Director, Product Marketing, Salesforce.com
@scottiholden

 

Nathan Freitas
Community Manager, Salesforce.com
@natespeak

 

Ben Pruden
Product Marketing Manager, Sales Cloud
@bsupakrunk

 

Watch the full ‘Social Sales Revolution’ Dreamforce session.

Social Sales Stats

Why is social selling vital now?

- 22% of the time spent on the Internet is on social media sites.
- 85% think companies should interact on social media.
- 56% of people feel a stronger connection with companies who engage on social media.

What is social selling?

Social selling uses the power of social media such as LinkedIn, Facebook, blogs, forums and Twitter, to identify opportunities, get insight into prospects, earn the first engagements and deepen relationships.

The difference:

Traditional Selling

• Lots of cold calling
• Unaware of customers’ needs and purchase cycles
• Left out of critical conversations about your product and market
• Meet heavy sales resistance
• Learn about opportunities too late

Social Selling

• Focus on prospects who are ready to talk
• Able to offer the right solution at the right time to the right people
• Engage in relevant conversations, becoming a trusted expert
• Deepen relationships through better listening so customers come to you
• Spot opportunities early

 

In short, selling through social media helps you swiftly spot new opportunities, smoothly start conversations and successfully close more deals.

The Social selling action points

7 steps to get ahead:

1. Get in the game – A short daily routine will help you find customers, help customers find you, and close more deals. Don’t worry about the right order of doing things, the ‘rules’ are still being established. Just start using social media to connect with customers every day.
2. Know your customer hangouts – Go to your customers rather than expecting them to come to you. What blogs do they read (or write)? Are they on Twitter? What hastags do they follow? Are they in LinkedIn or Facebook groups? Find the right conversations to join, connect with prospects, and make new leads.
3. Make yourself like-able – Join relevant social networks, publish your profile, post on blogs your customers read and help customers with questions. Connect with people in a way that engages them. Help them further their goals, not just yours.
4. First friends, then leads – Don’t dive in with hard sell. Soft sell sells more. Identify who’s influential and win them over so they can tell your story for you and endorse you. Create content designed to help people do their jobs.
5. Tweet-up your pipeline – Be useful. Listen for problems and share solutions. Show you care and build your reputation and authority. Provide information that’s easy to share to generate more leads. Don’t nurture your product, nurture your network.
6. Connect with social intelligence – You’ve put hooks out there and brought prospects to you. Next, connect with them in a way that engages them. Find their point of need. What are they saying? Who are they connected to? What do they want?
7. Get together, sell smarter – Accelerate your deal with all your company’s expertise. Access internal intelligence so you can sell to external people more easily and effectively.

Social Selling Soundbites

Lee Odden

"I started blogging in 2003. I own a small agency. We have no sales people. We never have. We do no advertising. How in hell do we book millions of dollars of new business each year? They come to us. Everybody comes to us."

 

Karl Goldfield

"I built a business completely around LinkedIn. Every client I ever got is through LinkedIn… I used social media to build a business… If you’re not already doing it… other sales people, competitors, are."

 

Karl Goldfield

"I use LinkedIn for a couple minutes each day. It changed my life."

 

Social Selling links

The Mini-Guide to Social Selling
The Mini-Guide to Social Selling will show you how to harness social media to improve sales of your products.

The Social Sales Revolution
A Salesforce slideshare