With all the hype about social selling, it's possible for inside sales reps to get the wrong impression about their social media strategy. After all, it's a misleading term; are you really going to close a sale over social media? I don't think so. However, social selling is great for top-of-the-funnel engagements to generate interest with prospects, as long as you're driving conversation, not yelling through a megaphone. According to Forrester, LinkedIn is an especially useful tool for B2B inside sales reps, as 74% of B2B decision makers use LinkedIn for business purposes, and 40% say LinkedIn is important for research and evaluation. Unfortunately, many sales reps on LinkedIn are scaring these decision-makers away by making costly social selling mistakes.
When I train inside sales reps on social selling at AG Salesworks, there are a few ground rules I establish first. If you're making any of these LinkedIn mistakes, stop yourself before you alienate your prospects!
1. You're sending LinkedIn invitations without personalizing them first.
Not personalizing your LinkedIn invitation to a prospect or thought leader is a great excuse for them to ignore you. Ever heard of the saying, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all?" The opposite also applies: "If you do have something nice to say, say it!" Use the opportunity in your LinkedIn invitation to compliment your prospect on a piece of content they've produced or introduce yourself and tell them why you're interested in connecting. Nothing is worse than logging into my LinkedIn account and noticing that I have 5 invitations from sales professionals who I've never met before and who only want to connect to sell me their product or service. Use that invite message to your advantage: personalize it! Ditching the "I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn" message could go a long way.
2. You're posting to promote your product or service.
I'm sure you've seen this. A LinkedIn user pitches a product or service in their status update: "Our ERP solution is more than efficient for B2B companies looking to update their software and management processes." Boring! And not just boring - unnecessary. LinkedIn is not the place for these pitches. In fact, these kinds of messages should not go out on any type of social media network! The service pitch should be saved for later in the sales funnel, when you know prospects are qualified and actually want to hear what you have to say. On LinkedIn, don't promote your product or service; instead, position yourself as someone who is knowledgeable by responding to industry news and business insights and starting engaging conversations.
3. You're contributing to petty arguments on LinkedIn groups.
This is a personal pet peeve of mine. LinkedIn groups are a great way to find connections and expand your professional network. However, as with any social network, there are many trolls disrupting what would have been a pleasant conversation over semantics and petty feuds. If a respondent isn't offering actual advice, is making too many obvious typos, or is just plain rude, it's a waste of time to interact with them. Exchanging different views and comparing strategies is one thing (which is usually very beneficial for everyone involved), but when someone responds by adding no value or degrading someone else's views, that's when you know to opt out. The result is unnerving, as the conversation gets derailed almost immediately. Your best bet for avoiding these types of interactions? Just ignore them. Let me know in the comments how you've dealt with Internet trolls on social media.
4. You're not sharing curated articles daily.
If I'm posting in groups and connecting to potential influencers, I must be on my way to becoming a thought leader and an awesome social seller, right? Wrong! There's another step you may be forgetting: content curation. Quick: Go to your LinkedIn profile, click the arrow next to "Edit Profile," and choose "View recent activity." This is the LinkedIn equivalent of a Facebook wall. Do you have anything posted there that isn't about you or your company? No? Then, it's time to start. Here are some great tips for inside sales content curation from Dave Howe of Sales 4 Life. If you don't have time for this, ask your marketing team, who should already have a content strategy and can send you some articles to share every day.
5. You're preaching to the choir.
Finally, make sure you're not preaching to the choir. If all your connections are business friends or thought leaders, they're most likely not your target audience. Determine what your prospects are doing on LinkedIn and what groups they belong to - not only what you're interested in - and follow the groups that they contribute to, the Pulse news that they read. You may be a great sales or marketing manager, but you probably won't find prospects for your IT solution at the Young Inside Sales Reps group (although you will probably find great advice for your team!) Pick and choose the groups and people you connect with according to the keywords that apply to your industry: IT, security, tech, whatever it may be. That way, all the efforts I've outlined above won't go to waste!
If you're a sales or marketing manager or director and you don't have time for Twitter - another productive B2B tool that would merit a blog post on its own - make sure you're at the very least staying relevant by using LinkedIn without making these costly social selling mistakes. Feel free to connect with me here and let me know what you would add to this list, too; I'm always willing to talk!