Circa: 2000: A business headline: “Seven out of ten executives believe that technology will replace human interaction with customers in the next decade.”

Circa 2019: A business headline: “78% of social sellers outsell peers who don’t use social media.”

Sales is a dynamic domain and in the VUCA world, it has become more vibrant as an art and a science. This dynamism is attributed to the ever-changing relevance or importance of the various “cogs in the sales wheel”, customarily known as the sales process, over a veritable time-lapse of the last 20 years.

Hence, a component of the sales process which was appropriate at a particular point of time in the past may not be relevant today or in the future. The most significant contributing factor to this dynamism is the advent of technology and the infiltration of the social network in our lives.

What is Social Network Selling?

Social network selling is the art of leveraging and capitalizing on your social networks to find the right prospects, build trusted relationships with existing customers, and ultimately, help you achieve your sales goals by engaging with both prospects and customers at a personal level.

The concept is very akin to that of inbound marketing with the goal being: overall improvement of sales and marketing efficiency by building more deeper relationships with target audiences. The social selling process is characterized via engagement through the use of social media tools like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

The cogs in the Social Network Selling wheel

Observations and studies show this is how social network selling works

• Instead of spending time on cold, outbound prospecting, the sales team members focus on generating conversations and engagement throughout the sales process.
• The sales team members participate in social media, share a mix of interesting branded and non-branded content so that they are perceived as expert curators, and build relationships organically over a period of time.
• Over time, the visibility that the sales team members bring via the content that they have been collectively sharing starts trickling back to the organization as a whole, thereby strengthening the value of the brand and influencing the customer’s purchase decision positively.

Is Social Network Selling, Digital Marketing?

An answer to the above pertinent question is that by definition, social selling isn’t conventional selling. It sits at the intersection of sales and marketing of the online and offline worlds. While, unlike social marketing, social network selling is aimed at cultivating one-on-one relationships versus a broadcast to many, it draws similarity from the fact that sales have the relationships and the expertise in “selling” but marketing is often on the frontlines of the brand value proposition and the story that is needed to optimize those “selling” interactions.

With the help of industry-validated content, GrowthSqapes’ social network selling solution brings to you the expertise to up-skill your sales team members to develop and sustain the art of leveraging social media for sales outcomes.

This blog has been written by Baalmiki Bhattacharyya, Partner & COO at GrowthSqapes.