Social selling and how to measure success

The increasing use of social media encourages business owners to carry out marketing strategies through social media. Social media is one of the "tools" used by business people to get revenue conversions from social media.

Maybe you already realize the importance of social selling from using social media, but are not sure about how to use it. If so, you can pay attention to the following information to be able to take advantage of social selling strategies.

What is Social Selling?

Social selling is the process of researching, connecting, and interacting with potential consumers through social media networks. Usually, the sales team builds organic relationships with buyers who respond to brand posts on social media.

Instead of carrying out relatively difficult sales closing tactics, social selling tends to take the form of lead nurturing. Social selling is not a way for sales representatives to get the best solution or a quick win, but rather an effort to build credibility by interacting with their target consumers.

How to Measure Effective Social Selling

Measurement can be called the most challenging part of social selling because its impact is not linear. There is no formula that can map the correlation between content performance and the number of transactions completed.

Social selling involves a more personal mode of selling by building relationships on social media. Social media can be viewed from a qualitative and quantitative perspective so measuring effectiveness must involve both in the following way.

1. Brand's online presence/awareness

Salespeople usually show a willingness to discuss the value offered by the brand. Audience enthusiasm that appears repeatedly is an indicator to stay connected with potential customers better.

Audience reception of content posted online via social media can be an indicator for assessing sales effectiveness. Qualitatively, you can also analyze consumer responses when differentiating your product from competitors.

The metrics used to measure brand awareness can also be measured based on website traffic, social media engagement, share of voice, blog traffic and shares, and online media coverage.

2. Networking strategy

There are various tools that can be used to identify prospects from social media. When contacting customer prospects, the sales team can do it manually or create a list using certain tools. It's best if they also have a schedule for contacting potential customers.

The sales team needs to personalize to connect with potential customers. Connection can be made by searching for the main channel or selecting an alternative. This can be considered a cold call so that potential customers don't just disappear.

Sales effectiveness can also be assessed based on the strategies used by the sales team in forming strong networking and pipelines.

3. Insight knowledge

The sales team must have strong skills to know the customer domain. In social sales, insight into what customers are looking for is seen through the way they convey information to stay connected with potential customers.

The fastest way to build this network is to identify the problem point correctly. After that, you need to take the time and effort to provide information to solve it.

Another way to measure effectiveness is to measure the open rate of InMail sent by the sales team. After that, you can use LinkedIn tools that measure the level of success in a non-forced manner.

4. Customer relations with Key Account Management

Social selling is not about the number of connections you have through your profile, but rather the right connections. You can track this by measuring requests received compared to requests sent.

Another way to measure the quality of your networking is to find out the number of key connections your sales team has. CRM contacts need to be built with contacts on social media to make a difference in customer relations and Key Account Management. Not only can it measure sales effectiveness, this method can fill in the missing link in measurement tools that can only be obtained from social media.

Measuring social selling can complement traditional ways of measuring sales effectiveness. Managers who want to measure the effectiveness of social selling should systematize their practices and train representatives on social impact before measuring the impact of new routines and comparing the results in the future.