Why Your Social Selling Has Become a Joke

Somebody told me the story today that a company had insisted that all it’s staff hand over their social media accounts. The company is now pumping out corporate content through those accounts. And it’s all pumped out at the same time.The person telling me this story said that everybody looked upon it “as a joke”. It is.I was told it was “a joke” for the following reasons:-

  • Nobody reads corporate content anymore. It all sounds the same and is just like a brochure. So you are the number one widget creator in the world. Sorry, but nobody cares. Apart from you of course.
  • By pumping out content all at the same time you can be taking good content and turning it into corporate spam. If everybody posts the same content it just becomes noise.
  • In the modern world today, we have become excellent at filtering out noise. Adverts, corporate messages, spam emails, cold calls etc. I was told that people were actively unfriending and unfollowing as this content tsunami was irritating.
  • This is something we come across often. In addition, today a friend of mine told me that they have invested in an Employee Advocacy tool “so the sales people will share more on social”. A comment that intrigued me.

    The History of Marketing

    When I started in sales, we wrote letters and we sent as many of they out as we can. When email came along we switched to email (it saved the cost of the stamp). Again, you can even buy software products that will literally machine gun people with emails.At the Fair Ground they used to shout “the louder you scream, the faster we go”. It’s like that with Marketing Automation, the louder I screen the more you fire emails at me.But the world has changed. We are all social now and GDPR limits us in terms of the emails we can send. Which is why “employee advocacy” has now become the answer. Employee advocacy which is a loose term for loading up the employees social profiles and firing out as much corporate content as we can. Why do Marketers always break things?Now, I don’t know about you, but I’ve never got up in the morning and said “I look forward to my Linkedin news stream being full with corporate spam!”. Social Selling is Not Sharing Corporate ContentI’m really sorry and don’t want to be the bearer of bad news but sharing corporate content is not social selling. In fact a tool is not the answer to your social selling question. After all “A Fool with a Tool, is still a tool”.

    How to use Content to Sell

    There are two elements to selling; 1. Prospecting, so using social to reach out to people and 2. Nurturing people. If we go back to the legacy cold calling days, there are the people you reach out to and prospect and those that say call back in three to six months. You want to inspire both, one now and one to nurture over time.The first thing you need to do is have a personal brand, every seller needs one. This isn’t some sort of unachievable look on social, your LinkedIn profile does mean you need to look like the answer to your client problems. We always say that unless you get inbound, then you are not social selling. You need a personal brand for both methods.
  • Prospecting – With a strong personal brand as you reach out to people you will look like the solution to your clients problem. Let me give you an example. At a company we trained with our 12 week social selling program, one sales guy had cold called and emailed a contact at Microsoft. As they were C-Level, they had got nowhere. Only 3 weeks into our social selling program, after crafting their personal brand, they reached out and the C-Level person came back and said “you are the solution to my problem, please come and see me”. He subsequently closed $1 Million deal. Prospects want to deal with experts, I’m not saying that want to deal with consultants or pre-sales people, they are still happy to deal with a sales person, buy a sales person they can trust.
  • You can nurture and even accelerate your pipeline by using content.By sharing relevant, insightful and educational content. Something that excite and motivate your prospects. If you offer content with enough desire, why wouldn’t they get excited about brining your project forward. I doubt that the sales people for the competing projects and budget are sharing insightful content, so you should go up to the top. Accelerating your pipeline.
  • You won’t achieve either of the above by sharing corporate content. Your sales people won’t achieve the above by sharing corporate content either.Related: Social Selling Killed the Old Boys NetworkRelated: Social Enables You to Conquer The World

    Who’s Doing This?

    We are. Digital Leadership Associates (DLA) do not outbound. We don’t advertise, we don’t do cold calling, we deleted our email list due to GDPR. We use content to drive our demand generation. There are only 12 of us, but we put out a unique piece of content everyday. A blog like this. Not salesey, offering advice and guidance about what works and what does not today in social selling.I’m sure, 95% of people who read this will never buy from us, but that isn’t the point, we want to make sure people are successful and that is why we share our best practice.But that 1 piece of content everyday, creates us 3 piece of inbound everyday and provides us with over 50% share of voice. You to, could ramp up with your sales and marketing, you too can shout out your competition. Let’s not forget that such a strategy takes care of your Influencer marketing, your SEO, your advertising, your PPC, your Google Adwords. All of this can be saved or switched into more social. Think of the return?If you are one of the 5% who are brave enough to want to make an impact, then please contact us.