Kiterocket will be hosting a roundtable series at SEMICON West and Intersolar North America to provide an in-depth look at several key marketing services for the technology and solar industries: branding, social selling and PR/marketing in Asia. Kseniya Wegbrait, Kiterocket’s digital marketing manager, is conducting the roundtable on social selling both on Wednesday, July 11, 2018 at 9 a.m., and on Thursday, July 12, 2018 at 8:30 a.m. In this Q&A, she shares a few of her thoughts on why social selling is such a critical tool for today’s technology marketers.
Click here to request a seat at the table today. Spots are limited.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfiXVXWbmuw
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
What is social selling?
Social selling is the process of using social media to build relationships with your prospects, which is valuable both for salespeople and marketers. But almost anyone at a company can benefit from understanding the basics of social selling, because the process is similar to that of becoming a brand ambassador: teaching you how to effectively engage your network to raise awareness for a brand or company.
Social selling incorporates the best practices of networking on social media, using the proper etiquette on different social platforms. It provides you with the tools needed to ensure there is a sales outcome.
Kiterocket has a great understanding of the semiconductor industry and solar market, and the nuances between social selling in these sectors versus others that may be less technical.
How does social selling offer more benefits than other, more traditional sales methods?
Unlike the traditional sales process, social selling is not disruptive. Done well, it’s all about building relationships and finding the right prospects for you and your company—and then engaging with them without being pushy. You are, in essence, “selling” your services or product by showcasing your expertise versus asking directly for the sale.
It’s more about providing the value, and helping a prospect better understand the product or industry. Professionals using social selling are less focused on driving an agenda and more focused about building a relationship centered around value to the customer.
The value of social selling also lies in the ability to focus on a specific, relevant audience. Thanks to Sales Navigator on LinkedIn, you can really understand who your target audience is and how to connect with them. It allows you to filter all of your prospects by industry and/or seniority level, as well as by years of experience. It also helps identify if you have something in common with any of your prospects that might pave the way to that introductory conversation.
For example, a common university, or shared hobby or favorite sports team, are all good starting points for a connection with someone rather than relying on cold calls.
Social selling also allows you to measure success. In fact, LinkedIn has a Social Selling Index that allows you to see how successful you are with your social selling efforts.
There’s a lot of opportunity to build trust in social selling. People trust experts over brands. Social selling shows there’s a real person behind the brand to help build personal relationships rather than trying to build a relationship with a brand.
Customers start their online journey with research. Most times, an interaction with a salesperson occurs much later in the purchase cycle. The content and engagement in social selling should reflect this fact by bringing value by answering questions and creating articles, podcasts and videos to help people in their research.
According to the latest statistics, salespeople who implement social selling at different levels in the purchasing funnel are about 20% more successful than salespeople who don’t integrate social selling into their sales routine. Additionally, it builds long-term relationships and grows your network—all while being incrementally more cost effective than more traditional sales methods such as advertising.
Social selling is something that can be easily incorporated into each person’s daily routine. It comes down to regularly commenting and engaging with a targeted network—mostly on LinkedIn, because it’s great for B2B and it makes it easy to engage with a target audience, but social selling can also be done on Facebook, Twitter or even with a blog.
What should attendees keep in mind leading up to the social selling roundtable?
- Be open minded about social selling
- Identify your top 10 targets, and let’s discuss how to get you in front of them via social selling
- Sign up for Sales Navigator and bring your questions or challenges to the table
