Five Benefits Of Social Selling

Benefits Of Social Selling

Social selling refers to finding and connecting with potential prospects via social media to increase sales.  The Aberdeen Group defines social selling as the utilization one of three techniques, which includes: Social Collaboration – sharing information internally or with partners to pool knowledge on how to generate more leads & sales External Listening –  the gathering and interpreting of information or content produced by clients and  prospects External Participation – providing prospects with relevant and helpful content or information to build relationships and positively impact future buying decisions.

• Engaging directly with prospects boosts your brand awareness.
• Establishing a trusting relationship builds likability in the eyes of potential customers.
• Allows you to track your competitor’s online activities against your business activities.
• Allows you to hide damaging content about your brand by pushing it down the search engine rankings.
• Instant notifications of customer feedback which helps you improve your product or service.
• Receive an immediate notification if your name is mentioned online.

A whopping 71 percent of all sales professionals—and 90 percent of top salespeople—are already using social selling tools (source: hootsuite.com). Among younger salespeople, the numbers are even higher, with 78 percent of all millennial sales professionals using social selling tools and 63 percent saying those tools are critical or extremely critical to their sales performance. If you’re not allowing your sales team to use social tools and equipping them to do so, it will be more challenging for you to recruit top sales performers, especially from the millennial demographic.

Statistics collected by The Aberdeen Group provide further compelling evidence as to the benefits of using social selling. Top social selling businesses or marketing teams:

• Were 36% more likely than the average business or sales team to achieve their quota.
• Saw a 12.2% higher year-over-year increase in total company revenue than the average business or sales team.
• Saw a 7.2% higher year-over-year increase in the average deal size or contract value than the average business or sales team

(source:topdogsocialmedia).

Are convinced yet? Social Selling is selling 2.0. Social selling is still a relatively new concept, one that is severely under-utilized by most companies today. Give your business an unfair advantage against competitors by capitalizing on social selling and experience the benefits it can bring to your business today.