Social selling closes the doors to the old sales model, based on the typical cold calls, and is proposed as a new trend in the business world. Today the goal is to take advantage of the potential of social networks. How? There are two ways: direct search for companies or contacts through social networks or content generation to attract potential customers. 

The digital transformation has had a great impact on the way business is generated around B2B and social selling has become one of the greatest assets to build and nurture the network of collaborations and business relationships in social networks. According to some Hootsuite studies' ,there are more than 37 million users of social networks in Spain, which is equivalent to 80% of the population. This means that digital interaction and the search for new collaborators and partners through Facebook, Youtube, Twitter or Linkedin, nowadays triples the possibilities of rapprochement in contrast with traditional sales interactions. A Mckinsey report claims that having a sales team focused on social selling leads to a 20-25% increase in sales.

so, how we define a social selling strategy?

Social selling uses social networks as an asset to "Inform, Educate and Convince", which automatically leads the user to "get hooked" to its content and consequently to become interested in our product or our company. In short terms, the goal is reaching the mind of the interested parties indirectly, so that the sale or collaboration arrives by itself, without effort and often without contact (although we are closer than ever!).

For all this to happen, it is essential to implement branding, communication and content marketing strategies that bring us closer to potential customers through quality and relevant content, and that not only leads them to conclude their purchase process but also builds loyalty, thanks to a friendly shopping experience and customer journey (design, accessibility of platforms, good copy and attractive and friendly messages are part of the digital path).

Within the B2B world, LinkedIn is positioned as one of the main Social Selling tools, besides being the most important professional network in the world. The following factors must be taken into account:

• Your current and potential customers use this platform
• Linkedin is the network that gives the most visibility, authority and notoriety to your brand.
• Through Linkedin business account, companies declare themselves "receptive" to receive messages oriented to their object of interest.
• Around your page you can create a community through your employees and collaborators, who can help you to give visibility to your brand by sharing content and interacting with your publications.
• Also, in order to address your Linkedin activity towards social selling, it's important to keep in mind that certain elements are necessary:
  - Maintain an active presence on the network (publications, interactions, connections, likes, comments, suggestions).
  - Define the target audience to organize the content strategy.
  - Share and produce valuable content that at the same time ensures the conversion of a lead into a customer (it is important to use photos, infographics, publications, videos and your own blogs).

In addition, we leave you some valuable tips to implement your social selling equation in a sales strategy:

1. Align your marketing and sales teams (remember that the strategy is circular).
2. Define the social network that most identifies you (depending on whether you have a B2B or B2C business, you can rely on social networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter or also on new digital sales giants such as Tiktok or Instagram).
3. Listen and follow your audience (it is important to observe how our followers and connections act, their interests and interactions, to further segment our strategy.
4. Analyze your posts based on interactions and constantly change your strategy, targeting more and more the interests of your followers.

How do we measure performance?

Although there is still no methodology that proves the measurement of the success of social selling in relation to a company's sales, there are tools such as LinkedIn's Social Selling Index, which, depending on how you establish your professional brand, search for your buyer personas, interact with aligned information and create relationships, is able to measure your sales capacity within the social network. Also, through the insights of our social networks it is always possible to have a complete view of our actions (audience segmentation, where they come from, gender, the publications that have worked best or have had more interaction, as well as the days of greater interaction of our audience).

To conclude on a larger company scale, it is also very important to use CRM software to measure and track the origin and journey of a customer prior to social selling. Its integration with measurement tools gives the sales team a better opportunity to invest their time, pursue interested contacts and strengthen ties with prospects.

If you want to redesign your content strategy and address social selling, don't hesitate to contact us! For more information, write to hola@hayas.es!