Social Selling eBook

A hands-on guide to understanding social selling

with five detailed steps for getting started.
 TABLE OF CONTENTS
What is Social Selling? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Five Steps to Social Selling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Step 1: Build Your List of Targets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Step 2: Monitor Your Targets for Trigger Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Step 3: Jumping on a Trigger Event . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Step 4: Create a Strategy and Start the Engagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Step 5: Work, Informed, to Close the Deal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Maintaining Your Side of the Social Selling Conversation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
InsideView. Work, Informed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

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WHAT IS SOCIAL SELLING?
Wikipedia defines social selling as “the process of developing relationships as part of the
sales process.”
That’s true, but social selling is so much more than simply developing relationships, and it’s so
much more than sending cold LinkedIn or Twitter requests to leads you’ve never met before.
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The essence of social selling is closing more deals by
using social media and social (and professional) networks
to learn as much as you can about your leads before you
begin the process of developing a relationship.

Today, buyers usually know more about your company

and your products than you know about them. Buyers are
reading your company’s Twitter stream to find out how
you’re positioned, scouring LinkedIn to find out who is
using your (and competitors’) products, and reading blogs
to see what’s being said by customers, competitors, and
thought leaders.

In other words, today’s buyers are starting the sales

process without you. Social selling helps you regain
your edge while also taking advantage of the massive
amount of insights now available on social networks
and the internet.

Hubspot’s Definition of Social Selling

Social selling is when salespeople use social media
to interact directly with their prospects. Salespeople
will provide value by answering prospect questions
and offering thoughtful content until the prospect is
ready to buy.

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 Nearly 60 percent of a typical purchasing
decision is completed before even having
a conversation with a supplier.
– Corporate Executive Board study of more than 1,400 B2B customers

INFORMATION IS EVERYWHERE

This vast amount of available information lets buyers do purchasing decision, from research to vendor comparisons,
most of their research before they ever need or want is completed before even having a conversation with a
to engage with a salesperson. The buying process is supplier. SiriusDecisions also found that 67 percent of the
changing and salespeople are being forced to adapt. buyer’s journey is now completed digitally. Combined, that
means that the vendor—you—isn’t even involved in a sales
A Corporate Executive Board study of more than 1,400 deal until most of the decisions have already been made.
B2B customers found that nearly 60 percent of a typical

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FIVE STEPS TO SOCIAL SELLING

Social selling is easy, you just need to Let’s drill down into each of these steps to
understand how to bring it all together. There help you get started on your path to social
are scores of tools available, both free and selling success.
paid, that can help. But, building your social
selling foundation is straightforward and you
can do it in a few days.

TARGE T TRIGGER R E S E AR C H EN GAGE C LO S E

Identifying Finding the Gathering the Right person, Success built
target leads right moment best insights right message on insights

1 2 3 4 5

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STEP 1: BUILD YOUR LIST OF TARGETS
One of the key aspects of social selling is to know your territory or targeted audience, and
then be able to reasonably monitor it. A typical method for building a target list is demographic
plus geographic data. In other words, all of the companies that fit your target customer profile
and that are located in your territory. This could be all metals machining companies with over
$500,000 in revenues located in Pennsylvania, or all healthcare facilities with 200 or more
beds located west of the Mississippi River. Whatever it is, define it.

By monitoring news and social media sites, you can find out when these targets might be
in need of your solution and who might be involved. This helps you sell more by narrowing
your focus to only those leads with a need for your offering. It also saves you time, which you
probably don’t have much of anyway. With a focused target list, you’re eliminating as much
wasted time as possible before you waste it.
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Keep It Manageable Automate Everything
The next step is to monitor your target list for trigger events, so your Social networks are enormous and
target list has to be manageable. If it’s hundreds or thousands of can be extremely overwhelming.
companies, you’re targeting too widely for your first social selling
endeavor. Select a few dozen targets as a starting point. Choose Twitter has 288 million
companies that you’ve been itching to engage or those that seem active users.
to have a high potential.
LinkedIn has over 300
million global users.
Better Solutions
InsideView offers a free product that lets you access demographic and Facebook has nearly
firmographic company information to help you get even more accurate 1.2 billion users.
on your targeting.
And those are just three of the
dozens and dozens of networks
you need to monitor. That’s
why it’s important to have a
manageable list as you get
started.

As you get started with social

selling, you’ll quickly find that
trying to manage it manually is
going to limit your effectiveness.

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STEP 2: MONITOR YOUR TARGETS FOR TRIGGER EVENTS
Trigger events are recent, present, or pending actions taken by a prospect that often raise the
relevance and timeliness of your offerings. That’s a fancy way of saying, “News that you can use
to win a deal.”

Businesses purchase something when they have a need, and that need is frequently an
identifiable event. For example, opening a new office (event) requires desks and chairs
(need). This helps you sell more by focusing only on leads who have a current need for your
solution. You’re starting the conversation by offering a solution to a challenge you know that
they currently have.
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A trigger event might include mergers,
acquisitions, leadership changes, partnerships,
financing, expansions, relocations, new product
offerings, speaking engagements, good or bad
financial news, layoffs, recalls, legal troubles, or
any other news that can help you sell.

If you’re not going to be using any dedicated

tools for your initial social selling trial, you’ll need
to rely on services such as Google Alerts to track
and monitor your target companies. It’s as simple
as entering a search phrase, and then a summary
of related news is emailed to you every day.

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 C R E AT I N G C R E AT I N G C R E AT I N G
GOOGLE ALERTS TWITTER LISTS FACEBOOK INTEREST LINKS

As an example, a Google Alert can be To create a Twitter list, click on your A corporate Facebook Page is one of
created to track each company and the profile icon, click “Lists,” and then “Create the most used online sites for public
key phrases that you consider triggers, new list.” After you name the list, you can announcements. If a company is active
such as, “Acme Corp, acquisition,” “Acme add the Twitter accounts for your lists on social media, you will not find a richer
Corp, new office,” and so on. of targets. Be sure to capture all of their source of information than their Facebook
multiple Twitter accounts, so if you’re Page.
You’ll get an update as news and web targeting Maytag’s @MaytagBrand, you
content is created that is related to those might also want to add @TheMaytagMan To create a Facebook list is a bit more
keywords. It saves you from manually and @MaytagCare. You should also follow convoluted. You’ll need to search for and
having to search all of those companies key individuals at your targets, like the VP “like” the company pages for each of your
and keywords every day. It’s still a bit of a of manufacturing, if that would be your key targets, and then save them to an “interest
time investment to scour each the alerts decision maker. list.” Once you’ve liked a page, click the
each day, but that’s why you limited your “Liked” button’s dropdown icon and select
target list to a manageable size. You’re looking to save time as well as find “New list” to create your first list. Once you
triggers, since your Twitter list consolidates create a new list, on subsequent “likes,”
As time goes on, you may find that you the social feeds of your targets so that you you can add the company page directly to
want to drop some companies from your can quickly and easily scan their updates the list.
target list and add others as you get the for triggers.
hang of monitoring them. To monitor the
top social networks, you’ll want to also
create Twitter and Facebook lists.

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NOW THE MONITORING BEGINS

Once your lists have been created, it’s

monitoring time. As you receive alerts for
events like leadership changes, mergers
and acquisitions, funding, or product
launches, you’ll start to notice those that
are relevant to your business. Rather than
scouring the Internet on a daily basis
looking for news and updates, these
services make it easier to track your
targets’ activities.

Yes, it may take several hours to set these

up, and it make take an hour or more
each day to monitor all of these feeds,
but it’s time well spent. And it’s free. And
it’s much faster and more efficient to set
up these services once and occasionally
tweak them than it is to search Google all
day, every day, looking for that needle in a
haystack of information.

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Better Solutions

As mentioned, the above process may take

some time, but it’s free. It’s also very limited:
good as you dip your toes into social selling,
but not a long-term solution.

There are tens of thousands of online news

sources, publications, and job boards you
can use to alert yourself and your team to
key sales opportunities. To capture and
distill that massive amount of information,
paid services are available and affordable
to work on a sales rep’s behalf to minimize
manual research yet still ensure that you
never miss a sales opportunity.

InsideView offers a free product that lets you

track up to ten companies and contacts in
an automated Watchlist, which proactively
keeps you informed of key trigger events
as they happen.

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STEP 3: JUMPING ON A TRIGGER EVENT
Once you notice a trigger, you should start engaging socially, but lightly. You’re still
researching and planning your engagement, but don’t waste time. On the other hand, don’t
pick up the phone and say, “Hey guess what? I know what you’re doing right now!” Instead,
share the information on Twitter or LinkedIn and mention the company or contact. Become a
blip on their radar. This is the beginning of your engagement and it’s all based on the context
of the trigger event.

Your job now is to find accurate, up to date, relevant information on the company, their market,
and the key contacts. There are business information services available that can give you
company news and information, but that’s just scratching the surface. This helps you sell more
because you’re digging into the social and professional networks of companies and contacts,
and then finding out what’s important and what isn’t going to waste the buyer’s time.
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A single attempt at engagement is not going to amount As you continue to engage and build relationships, you’ll
to anything 99 percent of the time. The trick is to be start to gain an incredible amount of knowledge about
constantly engaged and build a relationship. If you their company, industry, structure, and culture. You also
receive a response from a congratulatory tweet or begin to gain trust and rapport with the company and
connection on LinkedIn, continue to foster the your prospects. The relationships and knowledge you
relationship instead of jumping right to your sales pitch. gain will become extremely valuable when setting up
initial meetings.

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IDENTIFY THE DECISION MAKERS AND ENGAGEMENT POINTS

Whatever your trigger event, you’ll need to start honing LinkedIn and Facebook profiles, and google them to see
in on the key players. Sure, the vice president of if they’ve written articles or blog posts. Try to stay focused,
manufacturing might be the one mentioned in the news, but cast your net wide enough to capture any individuals
but a better engagement point might be one of her direct who might influence the buying decision.
reports, or maybe you might have a warm connection with When practicing social selling and identifying contacts, it
another executive. You’re in scanning mode now, looking is best to narrow down your search results to those that
for your entry points. have social network accounts. When you eventually start
to engage, you’ll want to have channels outside of phone
Once you find the potential decision makers, your efforts and email.
don’t end there. Social selling allows you to identify the
right prospect role. Not every executive is a decision Why look at so many potential contacts? According to
maker, and not every decision maker controls the budget. a research study presented by the authors of Selling to
Until you understand the organizational factors that drive the C-Suite, a recommendation from someone inside an
your prospect’s purchase decision, you can spend a lot of organization will “usually-to-always” secure a meeting,
time just finding the right ear. while even a credible referral from outside the company
only works 42 percent of the time. An internal referral is
Pay attention to what employees of the target are saying twice as effective!
on social media. Follow them on Twitter, look at their
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Better Solutions
This process is mostly manual and may take some time, but it’s
free. Paid services are available, from InsideView and others, so
look around. You’re starting to focus on a specific opportunity at
this point, however, so taking your time and being thorough is
in your best interest. It’s also worth considering spending a few
dollars per day on a solution that can help you close a deal that
might net you thousands of dollars.

EVERY SECOND SPENT RESEARCHING

IS COSTING YOU MONEY
A 2014 CSO Insights Sales Performance Optimization Study
showed that sales reps spend nearly a quarter of their time on
research. If the selling time for reps was increased by just 8%,
on average, 7% more of reps would hit or exceed quota.

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STEP 4: CREATE A STRATEGY AND START THE ENGAGEMENT
Now it’s time to start engaging. Put yourself on their radar via the context they’ve created.
Imagine how easy a phone call or email will be if the recipient is able to put a name and a
face together. Engaging with a prospect on Twitter is a great way to build a relationship and
warm up those cold calls.

You’re taking steps to build a relationship before you start pitching to them. This helps you sell
more because you’re connecting with relevance and opening with a solution to their specific
problem. You’re immediately drilling down into the details of their challenge and asking the
questions that they never thought of or the questions that help you close the deal.
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A good practice is to ignore all of the direct (and usual) lines of contact
(phone, email, snail mail), and try engaging with some of the contacts
via social media. Did you know that 92 percent of executives don’t
respond to generic email blasts and cold calls? That’s nearly all of
them. Use social selling to be the salesperson who gets a response
most of the time.

Start tweeting, commenting on their blog posts or articles, congratulating

them for recent successes, or asking questions. This is how social
selling works. It involves time, effort, and most of all, a great deal of
practice. Here are some other ways you might want to engage with a
contact over social media:

• Do you admire their company? People love praise!

• Are you connected on Facebook or LinkedIn, or do you follow

the same people on Twitter?

• Congratulate them on recent corporate successes.

• Ask an industry question. People love to feel smart!

• Are they speaking at or attending an upcoming event?

Ask them about it.

• Did you go to the same college?

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Better Solutions
For this initial social selling toe dip, manually searching
might be fine. But if you want to build this into your daily life,
you should probably start considering a comprehensive
social selling solution, or cobble together your own set of
social selling tools.

How can a packaged solution help? Imagine a control

room performing all of the work for you. Rather than
scouring the web everyday looking for news and
information about your accounts, these tools scan
tens of thousands of sources for relevant insights
about your target contacts, and then send you alerts
in real-time when a trigger occurs. All you need to do
then is close the deal.

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STEP 5: WORK, INFORMED, TO CLOSE THE DEAL
Now that you’ve engaged, it’s time to turn to selling. So far, however, you’re just someone on
a social network. You need to build credibility and align your sales pitch to their needs.

Social selling lets you start a deal, days or weeks, ahead of where you’re starting today. It
also empowers you with previously untapped information, news, and backgrounds on the
companies and contacts whom you’re engaging with, and that helps you find ways to up-sell,
cross-sell, or expand deals.

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Creating credibility means doing your research and intelligence
gathering on the targets and contacts, and then demonstrating
you’ve done your homework when you meet with them.
Relevance is crucial. A past survey by International Data Group
found that the chance of closing a sale was reduced by 45
percent when the pitch wasn’t relevant to the buyer.

You already have access to the triggers and feeds, and you’ve
already started engaging with the contacts, so use what you’ve
learned to build an informed pitch. Further build your knowledge
by asking questions through LinkedIn Groups. There are over
one million LinkedIn Groups so it shouldn’t be difficult to find a
couple of groups within your target’s industry niche.

FIND A PATH TO A WARM INTRODUCTION

Look for relationships to your key contacts through your
colleagues, previous employers, and your existing customers.
Look at the complete social, professional, and personal profiles
for each contact so you can learn about their work history,
professional affiliations, preferences, and what they’re saying
on their social channels.

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 Here Are a Few More Tips
• Use Twitter to get a glimpse
into an individual’s day-to-day
activities, preferences, interests,
and whereabouts.
• Use LinkedIn to peer into the
individual’s professional brand,
see their past successes,
maybe find patents they’ve
filed or books they’ve read
(or written) that can give you
an opening.
• Use Facebook to get a more
personal glimpse into the life of
the contacts. You can see which
restaurants they might like or
DRILL DOWN TO DEVELOP YOUR MESSAGE where they went on their
last vacation.
When preparing a message or offer to a prospect, many people will • Don’t limit yourself to these
advise you to look at the lead’s website and learn about the product or three social networks. Get a
service. The problem is, many fail to realize how static and potentially more granular look at your
stale the website may be, and how crucial it is to also look at the contacts with other social
company’s and contact’s social media accounts. profiles, like Google+, Pandora,
Yelp, Flickr, and more.
Social media is an extension of their voice. For a company, their social
marketers work hard to make sure they are interacting with their own
customers and prospects, announcing product releases and driving
thought leadership through their social media feeds. Many sales
professionals miss the enormous amount of fresh information on blogs,
Facebook Pages, Twitter accounts, and other sites.
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 OPEN ACCOUNTS BUILD YOUR PROFILES
For each network, it takes about 10 minutes to register, add a As you open accounts add a few status updates. There are
profile and a photograph, and enter a few updates. It’s important differing opinions on how much personal vs. professional
to have a few passable photographs of yourself on these sites, information should be included, but that’s up to you. A good rule
especially LinkedIn. Why? Because that’s a great way for people of thumb is that LinkedIn is for professional content only, while
to know what you look like before a meeting. It also helps Twitter and Facebook are a mixture but are more personal.
them remember who you are when you send out a connection
request after an initial meeting.

BE ACTIVE DON’T BE CREEPY

A few status updates are great to get you started, but be sure to Here’s another important social selling tip: social selling is best
keep it current. There are many automated services out there, used to build a relationship rather than as sneaky way to get a
free and paid, that can help you ease this part of social selling. prospect’s attention. The key is to be genuine, not to be creepy
For example, you can connect your Twitter and Facebook or to imply that you’re stalking your leads. This is business and
accounts so that every tweet is automatically reposted to your you are a professional, so keep that in mind if you want to be
Facebook stream. successful at social selling.

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HERE ARE A FEW MORE TIPS
• Read their blog. The company blog is the voice of the corporation. Most
likely, they are writing on the basis of thought-leadership in their industry or
information about their company (press releases, product announcements,
events, etc.).

• Scan their Twitter feed. Twitter is the direct, nearly real-time line between
a company and their customers, prospects, and industry. This is a critical
resource when it comes to pre-call research or tailoring your message.
Are they tweeting about upcoming events? Do they mention news updates
that can’t be found elsewhere? Did they just tweet something today that
you can use?

• Dig into their Facebook page. Facebook lets companies get a bit deeper
with their content. Make sure you take the time to study the content and
culture of the company. Marketers work hard to create an intriguing and
somewhat transparent window into the life of the company, giving you a
glimpse “under the hood” to see how their culture operates.

• Don’t forget other social networks. While Google+ might not be top
of mind, you never know who’s using it and what they’re saying. Same
with LinkedIn posts and even sites like Pinterest, Tumblr, and Instagram.
Depending on the social scope of the company and contact you’re
targeting, putting in a few minutes to cover all of these sites could help you
find the insight you need to make a deeper connection.

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MAINTAINING YOUR SIDE OF
THE SOCIAL SELLING CONVERSATION

Social selling requires that you’re actually on these social networks. These
days, you really have no excuse for not having at least LinkedIn and Facebook
accounts. If you don’t, well then how have you been keeping up with your
friends from high school?

Seriously though, in order to do nearly all of your research, you’ll need to have
accounts on the networks that you want to use to find insights. Facebook, Twitter,
and LinkedIn are the base requirements. Without at least those three, you’re
never going to realize much benefit from social selling.

Even more, your targets are going to be researching you once you engage with
them. You’ll want to be sure you have a presence and are at least somewhat
active on the top networks.

What you’re doing is preparing for your final exam. You’re scouring everything you
can find for every nugget of information. It takes time, but it’s worth it. This is where
all of your social selling research and time comes together to help you create
a perfectly aligned pitch that hits your contact with relevance and timeliness.
You’re not making a cold call or a cold presentation. At this point, you’re solving a
problem for someone you know quite a bit about.

NOW THAT YOU’RE COMPLETELY INFORMED. IT’S

UP TO YOU TO CLOSE THE DEAL.
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InsideView provides market intelligence about your leads and customers. We
aggregate, curate and deliver inside information and present it to you when and
where you need it.

Being relevant and connected is the best way for you to increase your
chances of connecting with today’s more informed, better networked, and
less responsive targets. InsideView delivers the most complete, accurate, and
relevant market intelligence to put your finger on the pulse, guide you to the
opportunities and arm you to win.

Even more, your targets are going to be researching you once you engage with
them. You’ll want to be sure you have a presence and are at least somewhat
active on the top networks.

G E T I N F O R M E D T O D AY AT I N S I D E V I E W . C O M

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