Is Social Selling Missing the Target?
Stu Heinecke
Bestselling author | Growth interventionist | I help sales teams get in front of ten tough-to-reach, million-dollar prospects within 21 days
The other day, I was talking with a group of people I've recently connected with on LinkedIn. We were discussing setting up a new association to further the discovery and sharing of the Contact Marketing knowledge base, and in particular, what sort of mission the group should have.
One of the members spoke up and suggested we use it to highlight the vendors in the group. I told her I didn't think this was a good direction, and reminded her that I, too, was a vendor. I not only have a book out on the subject, but I operate an agency offering Contact Marketing services.
"Oh, I didn't realize that,” was her response. Ouch.
This is someone who'd come to know me well on social media, where I've posted a lot of content on Contact Marketing. Stories from the book, response rates, ROI figures, stories from my own campaigns for my clients. I'm sharing all of that to help further the knowledge base of Contact Marketing, but one hopes these activities also draw a few new clients your way.
I mean, that is the point of Social Selling, isn't it?
But if it is, something's missing. The missing element is that there seems to be a rule that we never talk about what we do or what we have to offer. So I'm going to try something. I'm going to tell you what I do. I know it goes against the rules of Social Selling, but here goes.
I have a book out called How to Get a Meeting with Anyone. The book describes a shadow form of marketing I've dubbed "Contact Marketing," which has been helping people connect with top accounts and prospects. These campaigns have been posting metrics I have never seen from any other form of marketing, with response rates as high as 100% and ROI figures in the tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of percent. I'm also one of The Wall Street Journal cartoonists and a hall of fame-nominated marketer, and I use cartoons to break through to people I should never be able to connect with, but I connect with them constantly. I run an agency to produce Contact Marketing programs to help enterprise sales teams break through to a lot more of their top accounts and prospects, and it's greatly enhancing their results. If you want to know more, here's my site, and another site, or just ask here on LinkedIn.
Now, if everything I think I know about Social Selling is true, I should have about 50% fewer connections on LinkedIn by tomorrow. But I'm willing to risk it to find out if it's true. Because if it is, if we're just not allowed to ever speak up about what we do in all of the conversations we have on LinkedIn, then Social Selling really is missing the target.
I get that it's not about pitching. I get that it's about creating value and receiving the bounty of connections as part of giving even more value. But if the people you’re connecting with still don’t have any idea what you bring to the marketplace, about what you do for a living, then something’s seriously amiss.
So in addition to watching the status of my connections, I’ll be watching for your feedback below. It will all go into an article for SellingPower Magazine. Let me know if social selling is helping you hit your target, or if you feel something’s missing, too. And please give us your best pitch on what you do. If my hunch is correct, there are a lot of us who still need to know what you’re selling.
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2yStu, thanks for sharing!
Certified Financial Planner, Educator, and Speaker at Infinity Financial LLC
5yGreat article! Just downloaded the book. I can't wait to learn how to master social selling.
TedxSpeakerI People Nerd l Storyteller I Connector I World Explorer I Questioner I Master Networker
5yVery well written article! At some point we need to be able to articulate what it is we do because you never know who is listening or is in need of your services.😊
Your guide to bigger deals with bigger customers
5yLove your article, Stu, and predict your followers will increase, not fall off. What's rude is making a connection followed by an immediate inmail pitch or doing only pitches in your posts with no reciprocity or interests in others. I always want to know about other people's companies so I can help my clients find the best resources and bring opportunities as well as content to build my brand as well. My company The Whale Hunters helps small and midsize B2B companies grow by selling bigger deals to bigger customers.
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5yStu - Love this post and great description of what you do. I'm going to leverage that as a template to explain what I do, so here goes: I am a Contact Center expert aimed at helping people Customer Care teams create effortless experiences within a contact center environment. I start with an engagement with all the stakeholders related to Customer Service within the organization by holding a workshop over sandwiches and bottled water. During that workshop, we all work together to identify the organization’s Current State of the Cox Customer Care Center, list all the Challenges, identifying any Opportunities for Improvement before I suggest a Potential Future State. These engagements are aimed at making it easier for my clients’ customers to engage my client’s brand in an effortless manner via any channel. We also work to make it easier for my client’s customer care agents to engage customers calling, texting or chatting into the contact center. The business case and ROI figures are compelling with a return in 8 months or less. I also speak at Contact Center conferences on subjects like Artificial Intelligence, Social Media and Creating Effortless Experiences within a contact center environment. I am a former chair of PACE and recently accepted into Harvard Business School. I also leverage these skills to help vendors create direct and indirect sales strategies to approach Customer Care teams with their solution. My Perception of leveraging Social Selling for sales (including Navigator): Everyone's sending LinkedIn messages. LinkedIn is becoming a hotbed of automated messages from fake profiles and endless invites to join groups. This is creating an environment where messages are lost amongst a sea of spam, group invites, and connection requests. No matter how great your cold email via LinkedIn is, it’s almost certainly destined to fail before you press send. Communication preferences are changing. There is a movement where prospects are turning off message alerts from Linkedin. On top of that, the only time they see messages is when they choose to log in -- which may not be often for many people. Personal e-mail for business communication Research shows that around 80% of LinkedIn contacts use their personal email address. I downloaded my 5,000+ contacts and checked for myself. Just about 80% personal e-mail. It makes sense when you think about the number of people who use LinkedIn primarily as a job search tool. Therefore, you are contacting people with a business message that is going to their personal account. That is if (and it's a big if) they even get email notifications of LinkedIn messages in the first place. Options to incorporate with your social media efforts: -Find your target's business email address using an accurate tool (LOVE DiscoverOrg for this!) -Perform some research to make your message relevant as all-get-up! -Structure a value-based cold email introduction -Revise your email to remove any self-serving language -Send the email -Follow up with phone, snail-mail, door-knocking, smoke-signal or better yet, Stu's Contact Marketing Services. Set the appointment! I tend to not use LinkedIn for sales, but instead leverage social media to help others find their next roles (placed 6 individuals last year). Happy to learn more from the folks on this post that have been successful leveraging social media/social selling to hit their target. Thanks again. -Skip