Everyone is on social media. It’s the source where people get updates about their interests from other people, and it’s preferred channel for online networking, especially for those who are busy in most of their time.
Executives and decision-makers prefer LinkedIn as social media, where they can virtually meet with other like-minded people worldwide.
Social media is the best place to position yourself as an authority in your area of expertise and catch-up with other people like you or those interested in your products and services.
Social selling is a type of social media presence where you educate and talk with your audience about what you offer and how to help them in their life and business.
Social selling is essential to increase your sales because you can connect with more people with less effort in less time, compatible with getting in touch with them in person.
Here’s an example:
Gary’s company sells IT services to the Financial Industry, and Gary’s main target is decision-makers from financial companies who want to outsource IT, which can help them to reduce costs and save time by focusing on things that matter.
The traditional ways Gary can contact with them is through phone, email, or in person. The problem is that most decision-makers are very hard to reach and often are busy with urgent and essential tasks for their company. Here’s why they’re hiring people to filter what’s important right now and what’s not. These people are called gatekeepers. The problem with gatekeepers is that they don’t fully understand the business. They’re not the person with whom Gary wants to be connected. They do their work and can’t get the role of decision-maker, and the worst is that they can kill a great opportunity for the financial company.
Now Gary’s target is to reach out to the person he’s looking for – the decision-maker.
The other way Gary can connect with decision-makers in person is through LinkedIn. He starts with optimizing his profile to look credible and a solution-maker in the eyes of people who visit it.
When he finished with optimizing the profile, he’s starting to connect with people who are the perfect match, and he’s doing that by sending them connection requests with a personal note to each one because people love personalization.
To find the perfect match, he is searching on LinkedIn with keywords that his ideal prospect uses. He also does it through Sales Navigator, where he chooses the exact criteria, so LinkedIn helps him find the right ones.
After he finishes with that, Gary starts to connect with those people, and firstly, the main target is to get them to accept the connection request. After that, it’s essential to respond to a message to engage more deeply with them and understand if they need the solution that Gary can provide.
The best way to utilize a connection is to qualify the person and if they match the ideal profile, to get them into a meeting and to get things further.