I’m sure everyone has heard over and over again … “You have to be on social media”, “You have to have an online social presence” and the statement “Your business will fail if you are not on social sites”…
While some of these comments / statements you hear can be a bit extreme, there is a large amount of date to support the claims to being online and utilizing social media sites for your business and personal brand. Even more important is having your staff, especially your sales team, having their own online social presence. Why?
What is MY Social Selling Score (Index)?
Let’s start off with finding out what your Social Selling Index (SSI) or Social Selling Score is! Linkedin has made this task very easy! Click here to learn your SSI: LinkedIn Social Selling Index (score)
Some of you will be surprised by your scores, some of you are going to be disappointed. The good news is that LinkedIn has provided a number of ways that can help you gain a better presence with your LinkedIn profile and they of course have a great program that you can invest in to help you/your sales team. The program is called Sales Navigator. (I’m not an affiliate with this program)
What is Social Selling? (vs. Social Marketing)
Social selling is developing relationships for the sales process. It’s a form (in my opinion) of real life networking … but social selling can be the term best described as that “networking” on a social platform. How is social selling different than social marketing? Basically – it’s the difference of selling one on one vs. selling to multiple individuals. (as marketers would do) For a complete wrap up of social selling and it’s definition, head over to this link here: Social Selling Vs. Social Marketing Explanation
Why hire sales personnel with social media experience?
Along with having social media experience LinkedIn has provided some interesting stats! Did you know that 51% of social selling leaders meet their monthly quotas? Yep … and of those same social selling leaders – 78% of them outsell their peers without utilizing social media. That’s pretty impressive and as an employer – good stats to have!
So when you are your own personal brand, your own business owner or have a sales team … social selling is going to become a bigger consideration in your sales / marketing objectives.
What was your SSI? Were you surprised? Disappointed?
Source: LinkedIn Social Selling
