When fewer events and physical meetings are held, social selling becomes an important practice for B2B sales organizations.
The pandemic has, quite naturally, caused most physical events and meetings to be postponed or cancelled. A situation that can be challenging for many B2B organizations, in part because they may have to switch sales models quickly but also because physical meetings and events have historically driven large parts of lead generation and sales. Which poses a question that is now vital to answer, namely how B2B organizations can close deals and reach success, when their previous sales model is no longer an option.
This question obviously has a lot of answers, and one of those is to start utilizing social selling. A term that a Forbes article defines as ” the process of building a network of prospective customers and developing one-on-one relationships with them through social networks …”.
The benefits of such a strategy are many, and include building stronger relations with customers and increasing sales and revenue. This has, for example, been shown in studies from LinkedIn, where “89% of top-performing salespeople noted that social sites such as LinkedIn are important in closing deals…” This, while sales representatives who are at the forefront, leading the trend of selling socially, “create 45% more sales opportunities than their peers.”
That social selling can lead to great results is thus given, and that the practice is especially important right now, in our current climate, is as obvious. Something that is made clear if we consider that most interactions now occur remotely, that a majority of customers now spend a lot of their time online.
Which is not to say that social selling is the be-all-end-all of sales practices, but that it can be a great way of meeting customers where they are – and be a good part of your larger, digital sales strategy. Where customers are engaged in different channels, and are approached differently depending on who, and where they are.
Sources:
https://www.pcma.org/covid-19-impact-events-industry-planners-survey-results/
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