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Skillset is Not Optional to Be Successful at Social Selling

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Do you have the social selling skills you need to be successful?

Many of you have LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook accounts. Maybe you have a CRM like Salesforce, Dynamics or Nimble.

And the leads are, well… not rolling in.

You need more than just the tools to be successful at social selling. Once you are sure that your company has the right mindset to move forward with a social selling initiative, you need to make sure that they also have the right social selling skillset to do so.

Here’s a common scenario that happens at companies interested in social selling: someone downloads a course, or reads an article or book, and feels they now have what’s needed—the skillset—to make their team successful. But then no action is taken, and suddenly “social selling doesn’t work.”

There is no digital sales transformation because they don’t have the skills needed to implement sales activities the right way. Making sure your company offers the right skillset will help you to become a more digitally mature organization, resulting in the behavior change that’s necessary to drive sales results.

The single biggest reason that salespeople, do not participate in digital engagement is that they don’t know how. And they will not tell you they don’t know how. They’ll just ignore the tools you’ve given them (like Sales Navigator & Sales Force etc.)

I’ve worked with several companies that are spending tens of thousands of dollars on LinkedIn Sales Navigator – and the Admin didn’t even know how to check to see if his team was using it or not! Because while they were given a product demo, they weren’t given actual strategies to implement.

Are you wasting thousands of dollars on tools your sales people don’t know how to use? #GoVengresoClick To Tweet

These sales people don’t know what to say, they don’t know what to do, and they don’t know how to use the different social platforms because they lack both social selling skillset and strategy.

They are afraid they might do the wrong thing, so they don’t do anything at all!

Even worse? When a company doesn’t trust its sales team to take initiative and implements a social media policy that actually inhibits them from engaging in the very activities that will help to get the company more visibility, credibility, and SALES results.

If your sales team has the right skillset and the right mindset, and they know how to use the right tools, they can be incredibly successful in the social selling arena, driving your company’s revenue WAY up!

Does your sales force know your Buyer Persona? Maybe Sales & Marketing should talk! #SocialSellingClick To Tweet

If they don’t, it’s a big fail.

One crucial skill that many salespeople lack is the ability to engage with their clients at the client’s level. In their language; where they are.

And it’s not their fault. They may assume they know their buyer persona – but, in reality, they are making huge assumptions based only on their own experience. Marketing needs to clearly define the different Buyer Personas of the clients and customers they will be dealing with.
• What kinds of individuals are they reaching out to?
• Who, exactly, is going to buy my product and service?
• What is my buyer’s culture? Are they formal, relaxed, traditional, modern?
• Where does my buyer like to engage? Would they prefer an e-mail, a Facebook message, or a Twitter DM?

These are the things you must know to create the right content and engagement with your audience.

You may be the best #socialseller on Twitter, but what if your buyers are only on LinkedIn?Click To Tweet

Once you’ve initially engaged with a buyer, then what? Your sales people must know how to continue the conversation with their buyers. You might even want to create unique scripts – at least to get the dialogue going.

And then what? What is the follow-up? Do you have a system? Should they book another call right way? Do you send them to a lead magnet? Tag them in Sales Navigator to make sure they’re engaging?

Having an awesome brand, great content and great tools mean nothing if you don’t have a system in place, and a skillset to follow-up with and stay top-of-mind with your audience.

So, you can see that when it comes to best practices in digital selling and marketing, you can’t leave one of the crucial ingredients out. Too many people skip from personal brand to toolset without the social selling skillset they need to implement.

Think about how your team can benefit from LinkedIn training.

If you feel like you might be missing out on some crucial skills in your social selling repertoire, we have an effective Social Selling Bootcamp that will help you adapt and develop the skillset you need to be successful.

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