12 Social Selling Plays the Pros Use

Social nurturing is the process of performing public relations, marketing and sales tasks through social media. The key to success with these powerful platforms is using a playbook.

Here are the top 12 high-scoring plays to implement for highly effective social selling:

1. Job change alert

LinkedIn will change the world of prospecting for your business. By tracking and following job changes, you can see who replaced whom and what opportunities exist for your business to fill a need.

2. Companies that just raised money

Companies that have just raised money are often hot prospects. They have money to spend. Your company needs to prove that you can provide a product or service that will coincide and align with their company’s vision.

3. Companies that just moved

Companies that have moved present opportunities. They are likely in need of new desks, headsets, computers, Internet and all kinds of products and services. Keep a keen eye for how your company could facilitate these needs based on their circumstances.

4. Reach out on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is one of the most powerful resources ever invented when applied to the selling sphere.  This strategy is as simple as connecting and reaching out to a relevant person. Make sure you’re providing value to your LinkedIn connections.

5. Executive Rolodex dive

Ask executives working within your company to tap into all of their contacts for possible leads. If you need to contact a VP of sales, find your VP of sales and ask him for 15 referrals. They likely will know and trust these contacts, so you can be assured that you can trust them, too.

6. Executive events

Reach out to the well-connected people in your industry and employ their help to grow your community. Hold a nice dinner or seminar featuring influencers. These are some of the best people on the planet. If they pull an event together, people will show up.

7. The Aaron Ross (author, ‘Predictable Revenue’)

This strategy harnesses your reps’ understanding of how to navigate to a decision maker. By emailing or calling a CEO and asking them who is in charge of purchasing decisions when prospecting, it makes the call more time efficient and provides a more successful path for the next call.

8. The modified Aaron Ross

Begin in the opposite direction of #7 when prospecting, starting with a rep and working up through the chain of command of a company. This approach works because it helps lay the framework for a relationship between your rep and the customer.

9. Giveaways/educate

Divert a river; don’t dig a well. The key is educating awareness into interest and interest to need. Seek out change, traffic and people who need what you have.

10. LinkedIn tools

LinkedIn provides easy-to-use visual information about mutual connections and group memberships. You can see how and where you’re connected to influential members of your industry, streamlining communication efforts.

11. The smoking gun

Implement a strategy that shows companies why they need you. The average company only talks to 27 percent of their leads. XANT has shown with seven different best practices techniques and technologies you can actually talk to 92 percent of leads if you pursue them. That will equate to 3.4 times more results from the same marketing spend — a smoking gun campaign.

12. The 7-tier benchmark

This play serves as a survey that identifies where organizations can improve. It allows your business to go into an organization and ask a set of questions and give a score from 0 to 7. The score reflects the average among all the factors that make up a successful inside sales team.

For more social selling tips, download the ebook below.

Image credit: jeff_golden