Social media opens the sales door

Liz Wendling //June 10, 2014//

Social media opens the sales door

Liz Wendling //June 10, 2014//

Smart and savvy business owners are using social media strategically to build deeper relationships with prospects and referral partners and to find new prospects earlier in their buying process. When implemented correctly it can be one of the best tools to use to connect with and qualify new leads. 

Unfortunately, many people struggle with converting interested leads or website visitors into paying customers. They believe that becoming a social media expert is going to turn them into a sales closing rock star.

All the social media in the world will not yield bottom line results if you lack the skills that generate sales. Great social media sales skills turn website visitors into paying customers. When the critical skill of selling is left out of the social media equation, businesses fail miserably. 

Tip #1: For every minute you’re spending learning the tools of social media, spend a corresponding minute learning how to effectively sell to today’s smart, savvy and internet empowered consumer. What used to work, no longer does.

Don’t believe that increasing your presence in social media is enough to close a sale. Don’t think that casting a wide social media will be the magic bullet to grow a business and increase revenue.  Social media is just one part of a comprehensive sales strategy. Social media will enhance a great sales strategy, but if your sales approach is stale and ineffective it will be dollars wasted.

Sure it’s easy to connect with people on LinkedIn, post advertisements on Facebook, and Tweet out the “special of the day” or Instagram a photo of a new product; the hard part (and the part people resist the most) is updating their sales approach and process to successfully convert browsers to buyers.

With today’s social media explosion consumers are performing a higher percentage of research than ever before. With the abundance of resources available online, buyers start the sales process without you and go much further down the path to purchase before they choose to engage you.  Research says as much as 60-70 percent of consumer decision making is done without contacting you or your company.

Tip #2: Don’t wait around for customers to complete the last 30 percent of the sales cycle with a competitor.  Jump in and start contributing to social media and using the most up-to-date sales approach available to maximize your sales efforts.

Many business owners are now acknowledging the gaping hole in their social media efforts. Website traffic is up, phone is ringing and people are raising their hand to buy. But sales are not increasing. Social media combined with updated social media sales skills work together, not independently.

The good news is that their social media efforts are reaching potential consumers. The bad news is their old ways of selling to those customers are no longer working and yielding dreadful results.

Ask yourself this? If technology has changed and the customer has changed and how they buy, shop and do business has changed, doesn’t it make sense to change the way you engage and sell to them?

It’s not uncommon for business owners to invest or waste a lot of money on social media and not one penny on what the bottom line needs. Sales skills!  They put the cart before the horse. They fool themselves into believing that they don’t need to know how to improve their selling approach.

Social Selling is not a passing trend. We teach you how to combine the engine of social media and the power of updated sales skills to transform your bottom line.

You can no longer sell the “old” way to today’s “new” internet empowered consumer. It’s time to move beyond the outdated and tired sales techniques and successfully adopt a social selling solution that increases customer retention, referrals and revenues.