Making Sales Social Live Episode # 1- 5 Pillars of Social Selling
| June 23, 2021
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In this episode…
In this episode, the Social Sales Link Team talked about the five pillars of social selling. They talked about the five pillars and these are value-centric profiles, social listening, engaging with insights or content, nurturing your existing connections, and prospecting.
Did you know that there are five pillars of social selling? Bob talked about one of the five pillars which is having a value-centric profile on LinkedIn. This is the foundation of all of your social selling efforts. Your LinkedIn profile needs to be resource-focused and have vendor-agnostic takeaways. Plus, your LinkedIn profile needs to lead your buyer to care about your solution, which means not writing your profile as a sales document or a pitch deck. Your profile needs to have an impact on your prospect for them to connect and have further conversations with them.
He then talked about another pillar of social selling which is nurturing your existing connections on LinkedIn. This involves taking inventory of your connections by exporting the list or doing a simple search using LinkedIn’s search filters. Once you have the list, identify your CPR – C for Clients, P for Prospects, and R for Referral partners, then send them a message providing value or insights for them to engage more with you.
As for Brynne, she discussed another pillar of social selling which is engaging with insights or content. Under this pillar, there are three smaller pillars under it which are curating content, creating content, and engaging content. The first mini pillar is curating content which is finding out what your prospects care about which is what social listening is all about. The second mini pillar is creating content which can be via a blog post or do a Zoom talk, then get snippets from the video and take quotes and share them on your profile. The third mini pillar is engaging content which is finding the people or influencers that are attracting your ideal buyers. Then checking out their posts, taking note of the influencer’s and commenter’s names, engaging and sharing insights with them.
In addition, there is another pillar of social selling which is social listening. He talked about identifying what our prospects or connections want to consume such as knowing what matters most to them, what content they’re creating, what content they’re engaging on, and what topics they care about. Once you know these things, you will know what content to curate. Aside from these, you also need to check their websites, LinkedIn profiles, and campaigns.
Finally, the last pillar of social selling which is prospecting. This involves identifying your ideal clients, checking who are connected to the people you want to know and being authentic with your prospects. Now, when you meet with your networking partner, you can ask him to go through your LinkedIn profile and you can go through his profile as well. Then create a list of prospects you want to meet and run through the list with him. Then you can then ask for an introduction and this is what is also known as warm market prospecting.
Connect with Brynne and Bob on LinkedIn or you can also visit our LinkedIn page to watch this episode again and get daily tips from the Social Sales Link team!
Things you will learn in this episode:
* You can be much more successful in social selling by having a value-centric LinkedIn profile, which is the foundation of all your social selling efforts. Endeavor to make your LinkedIn profile resource-focused, have vendor-agnostic takeaways, and lead your buyers to care about your solutions.
* To be successful in social selling, you have to nurture your existing LinkedIn connections. Take inventory of your existing connections by exporting a list or doing a simple search. Provide value or insights to members of your list and aim for further engagement with them.
* Engaging with insights or content is one of the pillars of social selling. This pillar has three mini pillars under it: curating content, creating content, and engaging content. Utilize these three mini pillars and be more successful with your social selling efforts. The key is to be of value to your audience and lead them to your solution.
* By conducting social listening on your prospects, you can be more effective in your social selling efforts. Be sure to ‘listen’ to understand the topics your prospects consume and engage with. You can find this out on their company website, marketing materials, as well as the Activity section of their LinkedIn profile.
* Warm market prospecting is another way to be an effective social seller. First, know who your ideal clients are. Then, prior to meeting with clients and/or networking partners, search their connections for your ideal clients. Finally, when you meet with them you can review the list for warm introductions!
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