The Business Case for Social Selling in 2015: Why Salespeople Can‘t Afford to Wait

It‘s 2015. Do you know where your buyers are? Chances are, they‘re on social media.

The past few years have seen a dramatic shift in B2B buyer behavior. Today‘s decision makers are more independent and self-directed than ever before. According to SiriusDecisions, 67% of the buyer‘s journey now takes place digitally. Before a prospect even thinks about contacting your company, they‘re scouring the web and their social networks for information, insights, and peer recommendations to guide their purchase decisions.

In this new reality, salespeople can no longer afford to sit on the social media sidelines. Establishing a professional brand, sharing relevant content, and building authentic relationships on platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter is quickly becoming table stakes for the modern seller. Social selling – the practice of using social channels to find, connect with, and engage prospects – has evolved from a niche tactic to a core competency.

If you‘re a salesperson who hasn‘t started incorporating social media into your process, now‘s the time. The business case for social selling has never been stronger – and those late to the party risk being left behind.

The Evolution of Social Selling

Social selling is by no means a new concept. Savvy salespeople have long understood the importance of meeting their buyers where they are and building personal connections. In the old days, that may have meant swapping business cards at industry conferences or bonding with prospects on the golf course.

But the rise of social media has fundamentally transformed the ways in which buyers and sellers interact. Platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook have made it possible to find and engage decision makers at scale, without ever leaving your desk. Early social selling pioneers recognized this potential and began experimenting with new tactics like engaging in LinkedIn Groups, building Twitter follower bases, and publishing content to establish thought leadership.

In 2012, social selling started to solidify as a formal discipline and strategy. LinkedIn launched its Sales Navigator platform to help sales teams target prospects and accounts on the network. Social selling thought leaders like Koka Sexton and Jill Rowley evangelized a new approach to selling powered by social engagement. KPIs like LinkedIn‘s Social Selling Index (SSI) emerged to help salespeople measure the effectiveness of their efforts.

Fast forward to 2015, and social selling has gone mainstream. According to a study by PeopleLinx, 60.2% of salespeople report that social media is now a key part of their sales strategy. LinkedIn‘s SSI has been widely adopted, with reps checking their score as obsessively as their Klout. Many organizations have established training programs and best practices to help their sales teams embrace social.

In just a few short years, we‘ve reaching a tipping point where social selling has shifted from a "nice to have" to an essential part of the modern sales toolkit. And the data suggests that shift is only accelerating.

The Data Behind Social Selling

When it comes to the business impact of social selling, the numbers speak for themselves. Consider these eye-opening statistics from 2015:

• 78% of salespeople using social media outsell their peers. (Source)
• 54% of salespeople can track closed deals back to social media engagement. (Source)
• Using social selling tools can increase win rates and deal size by 5% and 35%, respectively. (Source)
• 90% of top salespeople are using social selling tools, compared to 71% of overall sales professionals. (Source)
• Half of revenue is influence by social selling in 14 common industries, including computer software, healthcare, and marketing and advertising. (Source)

The data paints a clear picture: salespeople and teams that embrace social selling outperform their peers on every key metric, from quota attainment to conversion rates to deal size. In an increasingly social world, social selling skills are becoming synonymous with sales success.

But the benefits of social selling extend beyond hard numbers. By engaging prospects earlier in their journey and establishing authentic relationships, social sellers are able to fundamentally transform client interactions. And buyers have taken notice:

• 84% of C-Level executives use social media to make purchasing decisions (Source)
• 75% of B2B buyers are influenced by information found on social channels (Source)
• 87% of buyers say they have a favorable impression of salespeople introduced through someone in their professional network (Source)
• 92% of buyers say they are willing to engage with salespeople known as industry thought leaders (Source)

Today‘s decision makers are digitally driven, socially connected, and mobile attached. They‘re less receptive than ever to cold calls and spam emails. But they will engage with salespeople who take the time to understand their needs, personalize their approach, and offer credible insights and expertise. Social selling enables reps to do exactly that.

Getting Started with Social Selling

Convinced it‘s time to start social selling but not sure where to begin? Here are some easy ways for any rep to start integrating social into their sales process:

1. Optimize your LinkedIn profile. Think of your LinkedIn as a living, digital resume. Make sure it showcases your professional experience, key achievements, and unique value proposition. Get a professional headshot, write a buyer-centric summary, collect endorsements for your top skills. Your profile is often a prospect‘s first impression of you – make it count.

2. Start sharing content. One of the easiest ways to begin building your professional brand on social is simply to share relevant, valuable content with your network. This could be a mix of your company‘s content, curated third-party articles, and your own insights or expertise. Get in the habit of posting on a regular basis – daily is ideal, but at least a few times a week.

3. Join relevant Groups. LinkedIn and Facebook Groups, Twitter chats, and other social forums are great places to connect with like-minded professionals, participate in discussions, and begin establishing yourself as a subject matter expert. Focus on Groups where your prospects and customers are likely to be active. Contribute to conversations by asking and answering questions, but avoid being overly promotional.

4. Research prospects and accounts. Before reaching out to a new lead, always check out their social media profiles for valuable intel. Where did they go to school? What Groups do they belong to? What types of content do they tend to share or engage with? These insights will help you customize your outreach and identify mutual connections that can facilitate a warm introduction.

5. Build connections. Focus on growing your social networks with people that matter to your career and pipeline. Connect with current and past colleagues, clients, partners. Follow influential voices in your industry. And don‘t be afraid to reach out to prospects with a personalized connection request highlighting a common interest or explaining why you‘d like to connect. Building social capital now will pay dividends later.

6. Engage in conversations. Social selling isn‘t a megaphone – it‘s a two-way dialogue. In addition to posting your own content, make a point to react and respond to what others are sharing. Like, comment on, and re-share your prospects‘ posts. Mention them in your own relevant content. Answer their questions and ask for their opinions. Every interaction is a chance to build familiarity and rapport.

7. Set up social listening. Use tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Hootsuite, or Google Alerts to monitor key accounts, prospects, and competitors on social media. What trigger events or pain points should you be aware of? How are people reacting to company news and industry trends? Social listening will help you keep a pulse on your market and identify opportunities to engage.

The key to successful social selling is to be authentic, consistent, and focused on delivering value to your buyers. Resist the urge to pitch or promote yourself at every opportunity. Instead, play the long game of building relationships and establishing real credibility and trust. Commit to investing just 15-30 minutes a day in social selling activities and it will quickly become a natural part of your routine.

Avoiding Social Selling Pitfalls

Of course, as with any new skill, social selling does come with some common mistakes and pitfalls to watch out for:

• Not having a strategy. Random acts of social are unlikely to move the needle. Like any other sales activity, social selling should be guided by a clear plan outlining your goals, target audience, tactics, and success metrics. Align your social selling strategy to your broader sales and marketing objectives.
• Leading with a pitch. If someone accepts your LinkedIn request, that‘s not an invitation to immediately bombard them with a demo offer or discount code. Nothing will turn off buyers faster and damage your credibility more than jumping straight into salesperson mode on social. Focus on nurturing relationships before you pivot to the hard sell.
• Oversharing irrelevant content. It can be tempting to blast your entire network with every single piece of content your marketing team produces. But less is often more when it comes to social posting. Be selective and make sure everything you share will be interesting and relevant to your specific audience. Quality trumps quantity.
• Automating your interactions. There‘s a wide array of tools out there designed to automate social selling activities, from auto-connecting to robo-commenting to bulk direct messaging. But social selling is all about authenticity. Automating your interactions completely defeats the purpose and can quickly make you look like a spammer. Personalization at scale is the name of the game.
• Talking instead of listening. Yes, establishing thought leadership and sharing insights is important. But social selling is just as much about paying attention to what your buyers are saying and engaging them in meaningful conversation. Make sure you‘re striking a balance between speaking and listening.
• Ignoring social cues. Not every prospect wants to engage on social media, and that‘s okay. If someone doesn‘t accept your connection request or never responds to your comments, take the hint and find other ways to reach out. Being overly aggressive or persistent on social will only hurt your chances of making a real connection.

The most successful social sellers are the ones who remain genuine and customer-centric in their approach, while continually testing and optimizing their tactics. Watch what other top sellers are doing, measure what works for you and what doesn‘t, and refine your strategy over time.

Making Social Selling Stick

Even with the business case being clearer than ever, many sales organizations still struggle to fully embrace social selling. Reps cling to what they know, question the ROI of social media activities, or simply feel they don‘t have the time to dedicate to tweeting and posting.

Driving organization-wide adoption of social selling often requires a fundamental mindset shift and commitment to change management. As a sales leader, it‘s critical to paint a vision for how social media can become an integrated part of your team‘s workflow and client engagement model – not just another thing on their plate.

That starts with leading by example. Get active on social yourself as a leader, sharing content and engaging with your network. Show that social selling is a priority, not an afterthought.

Next, provide the right training, tools, and playbooks to set your team up for success. Formalize social selling best practices and processes so they become ingrained into your sales culture. Certify your reps in LinkedIn Sales Navigator and other relevant social tools, so they feel confident leveraging them in their daily activities.

Finally, inspect what you expect. Establish KPIs around social selling activities (SSI, content shares, connections) and recognize reps who are excelling. Showcase wins and success stories where social engagement led to new opportunities or closed deals. Create friendly competitions and incentives to gamify adoption.

Organizations that approach social selling as a collective shift, not an individual seller nice-to-have, are the ones that see the greatest long-term ROI. Case in point: after IBM trained their entire North American salesforce on social selling, 73% of reps reported increased sales opportunities and 57% said it directly contributed to closing more deals (Source).

As buyers increasingly turn to social media to guide their purchase decisions, laggard sales organizations risk losing relevance and relationships to more digitally savvy competitors. Forward-thinking sales leaders will prioritize social selling as a critical investment area in 2015 and beyond.

The Future of Social Selling

So what does the future hold for social selling? While the concept may no longer be "new", we‘re only scratching the surface of its potential impact for salespeople, buyers, and organizations at large.

As younger, hyper-connected millennials grow into key decision making roles, the bar will only rise for sales teams to engage them on their terms. 84% of senior executives already use social media in their purchasing process (Source) – that percentage will be near 100% in the years to come.

The technology and tools to enable social selling at scale will also continue to mature. Predictive analytics will suggest the exact right content to share with prospects based on their profile and past behavior. Deeper integration of social data into CRM systems will give reps a 360-degree view of their buyers. Intelligent chatbots and virtual assistants will handle rote social interactions, freeing up sellers to focus on higher-value engagement.

Most importantly, the lines between social selling and just plain selling will continue to blur. As the modern buyer journey plays out increasingly online and self-directed, the most successful salespeople will be the ones who can effectively navigate that digital ecosystem. Social selling skills will move from a specialized capability to a core sales competency.

The death of the salesman has been greatly exaggerated in the social media era. The truth is, salespeople have never been more important – their role has simply evolved. Today‘s buyers don‘t need reps to give them basic product information or confirm what they already know. They need credible, trustworthy advisors who can challenge their thinking, provide new insights, and uniquely solve their problems.

Social selling is ultimately about empowering salespeople to create more human, helpful, personalized buying experiences. To succeed in 2015 and beyond, it‘s no longer a question of if your sales team should embrace social selling, but how quickly and effectively.

The buyers are waiting – will you be there to engage them?