Hvad er social selling, og hvordan gør man?

Sales & growth

What is social selling and how do you do it?

You've probably heard the word before, but maybe you're not 100 % sure what it means. Is it just another social media marketing or advertising buzzword?

Sales & growth

Social selling is when we use social networks to locate, understand and nurture sales potential. Social selling is when our salespeople and employees use social media to strengthen our brand, create engagement, relationships and warm leads.

(See our tool about digital warm leads here)

Social selling is about finding more potential customers, obtaining better recommendations and securing greater profits. And there is plenty of reason to invest time in it. It's not just a buzzword.

Remember that people already use "Social Buying". We research the web and platforms for information and impressions every day. It is an important part of both the buying and selling process, so social selling is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid. But how do you do that?

How do you optimize your social selling?

If you or your company is already on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or something else entirely, then in a way you are actually already doing social selling. Maybe you just don't realize it. Maybe you don't take advantage of it enough.

The most obvious platform for social selling is LinkedIn, which for companies has long since become as much a marketing channel as a recruitment platform. The medium is a constantly active event where we can network, create dialogue and interest in our brand. And with Social Selling, our entire organization can in principle be ambassadors and generate leads on social media.

(See our tips for your company's LinkedIn culture here)

LinkedIn has something called the Social Selling Index score (SSI). It is a measure of how good you are at establishing your professional brand, finding the right people, engaging and creating relationships. An effective measurement tool to assess your social selling efforts. An effort that you can construct based on three basic guidelines:

1. Create a professional brand that enriches

According to the CEO of the consulting company Digital Works, Nicolai Hæggelin, your brand is basically about how you can enrich the people you reach out to. Your contact with people should not be through long sales pitches or advertising. Remember that every time you contact someone, you are demanding their time. Make sure it's well spent! Enrichment creates credibility, which creates relationships, and relationships are necessary for sales.

2. Locate the right connections

Good selling is about going after specific people instead of the first and the best. Warm leads, in other words. LinkedIn's "Advanced People Search" is a goldmine of information that allows you to locate relevant potential clients through a multitude of categories, tailoring the pool of results to your exact needs.

A strong network is key to sales, so make sure you engage with the right groups, take advantage of the common interests and common connections you have to draw on.

And then you should always think quality over quantity. This also applies to the amount of connections on your LinkedIn profile. Do you have many or do you have the right ones? Find and establish strong connections.

3. The enrichment generates opportunities for social selling

Starting a dialogue on LinkedIn is easy. Both with current and potential customers. The contact options are everywhere. You can see who has seen your profile, liked or shared your post, sent you a message, etc.

Therefore, always make sure that the various profiles and company pages on social media are up-to-date and that they get enough attention – not just from others, but especially from yourself. Feel free to view your profiles through the eyes of your potential customers.

Have personality, be authentic, engaged and interested in your relationships. Add value to people by getting to know them – their challenges and needs – and use this to create a long-term, targeted opening for sales

You should always try to generate this sale through personal contact rather than your status updates. In this way, you signal to your warm lead that your inquiry and your service are precisely targeted at him or her. You have put yourself in their situation and understand their needs. Social selling assumes that only by creating value for your leads, you can create sales for your company.

Social Selling's value in dry numbers:

Social selling requires systematic and strategic work. It only works if you do it wholeheartedly, but then you also get something for your efforts. Hubspot have presented dry figures that highlight social selling's value-creating potential for your company:

Decision makers are 4 times so likely to make a purchase based on referrals from friends and networks.
84 % of B2B decision makers make purchases based on referrals.
65 % of new business arises on the basis of referrals.
Referred customers spend on average 13 % more than ordinary customers.
90 % of an employee's social contacts are new to the brand.
40 % of sellers have closed between 2 and 5 trades per year on the basis of social selling.
73 % of salespeople using social selling as part of their sales process outmaneuver their sales competitors and quotas 23 %
12 % increase in brand ambassadorship generates 2 times such a large increase in revenue growth.
93 % of sellers receive no training or guidance in social selling.
53 % want help with their social selling efforts.
Committed employees are 2 times so productive and are responsible for up to 80 % of customer satisfaction.
Companies that are engaged on social media have 58 % greater chance of attracting top-qualified labour.

Also watch our videos with Ole Bach Andersen from Newsperience, where he explains LinkedIn as an effective tool for social selling, indirect and outreach sales.

Selling with LinkedIn (1/3) – Outreach selling with LinkedIn