The Rise of Social Selling ( + Announcement!)
A few weeks ago I saved an interesting headline from my Instagram feed…it was from the Washington Post titled “Unexpected phone calls: A modern horror story” and as a millennial, this sounds about right. I decline dozens of spam calls a day and have muted many contacts so their text alerts don’t interrupt me. The day before, I had an interesting conversation with the gentleman from DLA Ignite about how not only is cold-calling an unreliable and inefficient business practice, I’d also wager that cold email outreach and the spam issues with text messages are creating road blocks for sales professionals who rely on relationship building. For many, there is only one last avenue to scale business outreach: social media.
Obviously I am hooked on this topic. (If you’re new here I founded The Social Question in March 2023 to collaborate with Influencers and the Marketing Research industry.) While I’m a passionate advocate for social media usage in business practices, not all social media skills are created equally across platforms. What works on TikTok will perform differently on Instagram and LinkedIn. For the generation that grew up with the Internet we are no longer threatened with “what you post on the Internet lives forever” because…does it really? And many of us have become more savvy with our digital presence. Key word: many; a lot of us have some work to do. (See a real screenshot taken just a few weeks ago from a LinkedIn DM I received…)
I redacted this person’s name for privacy, we all make mistakes and I myself am not perfect. Peep their byline though…🧐
How do we fix this? It may sound silly, however if you want to learn a new skill you have to practice. And probably invest in some training and adopt new behaviors. If it was easy everyone would do it, and while many people ‘do’ social media, you’ll probably notice not everyone does it well. Influencers as an industry have completely reimagined the sales funnel for most consumer packaged goods and services, yet there’s a lot that us B2B professionals have to learn to adopt these strategies to our own businesses. And the reality is influencing isn’t new. If you’re a business professional, you likely learned that ‘word of mouth’ has been one of the long-standing, strongest sales methods - reaffirmed regularly, like this post shared a few days ago by Referral Rock:
“83% of Americans say that word-of-mouth recommendations from people they know make them more likely to purchase a given product or service. (Source: Talk Triggers)
According to Nielsen, consumers are 4 times more likely to buy when referred by a friend.”
The ideas supporting digital influencing and social media Influencers are the modern day equivalent to WOM methods, just done at scale. And with a slight strategy twist.
12 weeks ago I took my own advice and wanted to explore growing my own B2B sales outreach skills since social media and digital communication are my main forms of networking (that and actual in person events which staged a massive comeback in 2022…check out my event videos highlighted here). Priscilla McKinney, CEO of Little Bird Marketing, teaches a short yet impactful course on how to become a business influencer (my words not hers 😉) - her most repeated reminder, “You don’t sell to your network, you sell through your network.”
The reality is that despite what anyone tells you, we want to be influenced. (And, sure, some more than others.) We like looking at reviews and recommendations from our friends and strangers. There is not an exception when it comes to business deals. We will often ask colleagues for their advice, or seek out someone’s reputation, or do our own quick sleuthing before an introduction call. We often hear about this a lot when it comes to job hunting and interviews, though it’s also true when establishing new sales relationships and the internet has made us feel like master investigators.
Today we had our last meeting for the course which included a small cohort of fellow marketing research professionals…and I’ve been holding back a not-so-small secret from my wider network. Priscilla and I have teamed up for 2023 and I’ll be teaching my own set of courses with Little Bird Marketing (in collaboration with DLA Ignite) starting this January. Registrations are officially open for both January and March start dates, and we’ll be adding more throughout the year. Cohorts are limited in size and ideal for small teams to maximize the education together and in real time. I am eager to share our collective expertise in the social media and business sales spaces and will be documenting even more in the coming weeks.
This cartoon was included in the Module 6 class this morning all about blogging (the irony is not lost on me that I am making a blog announcement today!), as a sneak peak I’m copying it below. The cartoon is from Guy Kopsombut, more of his work linked here.
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