Bettercloser.com - Social Selling Works
Social selling seems like a silly label to put on any sales concept. Any sales person’s natural reaction would be, “no kidding.” Many of your “fluff” meters just sounded the alarm. And my battle hardened sales folks reading this are about ready to move onto the next thing on their task list.
I ask you to stay with me two more minutes. I’ll be brief.
Social selling is a label I am increasingly fond of using. It’s growing on me. Here’s why…
Reminds Us What Really Lands Deals
I’m not sure where I heard it first (I think it was Jeffrey Gitomer), but it is so important to remember: “People don’t buy from companies they buy from people” and ultimately they buy from people they like.
Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t have too many friends on my Christmas card list that started our relationship with a cold call. However, I do have several friends on my list that I have bought things from.
The big point here is that most deals happen because there was some social aspect in the deal.
You’re coach Bob’s daughter in soccer, why wouldn’t he buy insurance from you. You met Sue at a conference and you are both passionate about the same charity, why wouldn’t she come to you for a new design on her blog. You sold David a network security software solution from your previous company (It protected them from a huge denial of service attack), why wouldn’t he come to you for network performance monitoring solution (even though you’re at a new company).
Is this making sense? Isn’t this how the best deals happen?
Makes Getting Started So Much Easier
Now granted, these kinds of scenarios aren’t enough to meet your monthly sales quota. They may not scale. But, maybe we can get close.
Today’s Web makes most people’s life more open. We’re sharing, collaborating, and asking questions all in a very free and trusting way. Sort of the same way that we do at a baseball game, a conference, a Rotary meeting, or when we have already been a customer.
This makes it a lot easier to get started on a sale. You can easily observe people you want to sell to: Learn what they like to do for fun, who they hang out with, how they like to communicate, what makes them upset, what makes them enthusiastic, and what you might be able to help them with now or in the future.
Do you see how you might be able to do this with most of your target accounts? Much more scale to this kind of online social selling, right? Don’t you think this will make the first contact much easier?
Dramatically Increases Our Referrals
Here’s the big deal. Some people on your target account list are just not going to be ready to buy, but they all have friends. If you do social selling right, not only will you be getting referrals from past and current clients–you will be getting referrals from prospects that fall out.
Try it. It’s amazing.
Here is a presentation I just gave on this topic. See if anything clicks.
Do you have any social selling success stories?
About Bill Rice
