In the U.S. it has been an established reality for quite some time, while in Italy few people are still familiar with its exact meaning.In reality, there is nothing overly revolutionary to understand about the mechanism of social selling.
It is a modern take on the classic sales process that necessarily involves research and subsequent customer engagement. So far the theory. Because then in practice everything gets complicated.
Through Social Selling you use social to increase your contacts and find new potential customers: no longer the classic sales tools, but social networks as a catchment area from which to draw. In the U.S. as mentioned, Social Selling is an established reality to the point that 61 percent of salespeople use social media for their business, specifically especially for the process of acquiring contacts. Yes because with Social Selling you go to use classic social such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest etc… to make yourself known and create a strong brand, the so-called brand building. This it must be said, is only the first step of the path because once you have created a strong and reliable brand you then need to sell; but we will see this step later. Going back to the initial phase of Social Selling, that is, the one based on using social to find and engage the potential customer, this is, as mentioned, a 2.0 reinterpretation of what has always been the case with sales. The ‘social’ dimension was present even before the advent of Facebook &co.; it used to happen directly, through interaction, perhaps by asking advice from those who had already tested a product. That was also a way of getting information and growing a brand. Today it has all moved to social, and for some, now, years companies have been taking their customer research and engagement process to social networks, increasingly implemented throughout the sales process.
Acquire customer information through social networks
The focus of the whole talk is simple: acquire as much information about customers as possible. Through social media, of course. Get to know potential customers, understand what they are looking for or what they would like. And it’s a mechanism that works not only from a B2C perspective, but also from a B2B perspective. Still looking at the U.S. world, about 80 percent of B2B companies are active on LinkedIn, the social network of choice for business: what for years was done through business meetings, industry-specific conferences, etc., has moved to social; this has allowed a significant increase in relationship networks. As much between companies as between companies and customers. Having finished this step, then begins the more complicated one: the actual sale. Which has points of criticality related to the social essence. Because selling on a social media is always in danger of being perceived as spam or otherwise frowned upon. That is why it is important to understand when it is time to invite the customer to purchase and how to do it: always in a ‘soft‘ way and without giving the impression of excessive intrusiveness. This also depends, as can be easily guessed, on the starting element; that is, on the strength we have managed to give to our brand. The stronger the brand, the more we can push ourselves in asking the customer to make the purchase.
The use of social networks is therefore increasingly at the basis of an effective online sales process: with all the pros and cons of the case, as on the other hand for every novelty introduced by the network.