Social Selling is all about building relationships. The use of social selling tools varies widely at JMP and across teams. That's why Alexander Beck (@alexbeck) came up with the idea of a social selling contest for EMEA:
Encouraging our sales colleagues to make better use of social selling will help them to build relationships with potential customers and increase visibility for the company and our products. Social selling allows salespeople to engage with prospects to build trust and establish themselves as experts in their field. This will lead to increased sales and improved customer retention. Additionally, social selling can help to generate leads and identify new sales opportunities, which will help to improve the overall performance of the sales team.
17 European AEs and IS participated in the EMEA Social Selling Contest. The contest ran over six weeks and the goal was to boost the social selling skills of the team, build relationships with potential customers and learn how to better leverage the tools that LinkedIn Sales Navigator can offer. For the initial kick-off presentation, we invited David Fisher (Global Social Selling Lead from SAS) and Sean Murray from LinkedIn to share their insights and vision. (you can watch the recording here).
@alexbeck , @Michael-Schmidt and @nina_chan led the contest and set up a weekly set of tasks and a weekly Q&A session where the participants could ask questions and share best practices. The measurement was LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index – which measures your activity and engagement on the platform. Most participants saw a nice increase in their score (up to 29%, 8% on average).
We have 3 winners
Category 1: Highest percentage increase in the Social Selling Index.
Angelina Fischer with an increase of 29%
Category 2: Highest Social Selling Index of 78
Congratulations! The winners will receive a surprise gift.
Key Takeaways:
- Social Selling stands for building relationships. Rather than cold calling, it is getting more and more important to build trust with customers beforehand.
- Engaging, liking, and commenting with the help of Sales Navigator insights are key
Tips on how to build relationships:
- A like or a positive, affirming comment on a relevant post goes a long way and establishes a foundation for future prospecting.
- Tag your SE in the comment on more technical posts.
- If you find a particular relevant person, try direct messaging them, referring to a specific recent post. Include a relevant question to turn it into a conversation.
Here are some highlights of our weekly challenges and important resources:
What comes next? We will continue sharing best practices and add a Q&A session to our monthly social selling calls.
