Prepare yourself. What you are about to read will give you real takeaways and give your sales team the boost it needs to start social selling. First things first. How many followers does your LinkedIn Company Page have? Follower count is one of the first metrics I look at when building a social media strategy. Typically when I evaluate this, the numbers don't look so great. Ultimately, I explain that there's a simple solution to a big problem. And the big problem is, your company is not getting the proper exposure or engagement it should be. This could also trickle down to your sales not being as high as they could be. As we talked about in one of our most recent blogs, social selling is a must. Especially right now.
The short answer is yes. The long answer is: if you want your current customers and potential customers to see your offerings, company announcements or what matters to your business then yes you should be promoting on social media, and the larger the audience, the better. Unfortunately, if you're posting all of this great content, but have a small following then you aren't getting the brand exposure you should be. We're going to talk about how to increase that exposure and put that great content to good use.
Once I see that the follower count is low, I go for an even bigger question: Is your sales team on LinkedIn? Hmmm. They typically ponder this or have a very confused look on their face. Probably thinking: why should that matter and why should I care if my sales team is on a social media platform? If you don't know the answer to this question and haven't made LinkedIn a priority yet for your sales team, today is the day to start. It does matter. Being on LinkedIn will help them stand out from the competition and cultivate relationships outside of the traditional selling process.
If your sales team is on LinkedIn, and they are liking and sharing your company pages posts, then you are exposing your brand to potentially thousands more people organically (for FREE). I just scrolled through my newsfeed and the first 3/10 posts were of my connections liking another post (Bob Smith liked this). Think about it. Your company page only has 500 followers, but your sales manager Bob is connected to 1,500 people. If Bob likes one of your company pages posts, then that is getting shared with a good majority of his connections. Once you implement this tactic with your entire sales team, depending on the size, you are exposing your company to infinitely more opportunities. Bottom line is, you don't have to share every single post that comes out of your company page, but it would be beneficial to like it, interact with it, and tag someone who might benefit from it in the comment section.
Getting this process started takes time and a lot of expertise. Trust me, it's worth it. Bring in a social selling expert that can train your sales team. Depending on the demographics of your team, some may not even be on social media or know where to begin. You need someone who can simplify this process. For example, during our social selling workshop, we train sales teams on building and completing their LinkedIn profile, how to optimize it and then most importantly the different ways to interact with your company's content. These components are vital to the process. Once you complete the onboarding phase, you can start to set goals for your company page and track it to see the success.
I hope this gave you the push you needed to get your sales team on LinkedIn. They will thank you for bringing in more prospects and you will thank them for closing more sales.
Tell us a little about yourself and your business.
