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5 Ways to Motivate Your Team for Social Selling
Social Selling is the act of networking on social channels to develop leads and sales. It’s not always easy for sales managers and business owners to incorporate Social Selling in their operation, however there are specific proven ways to motivate your team for success.
There’s a large contingency of salespeople out there right now who are completely satisfied with the status quo. They seem to eek out a month of barely sufficient income to tide them over to the next month, where it all begins again. They prefer the current state of affairs and hang onto it like their childhood blankie.
There’s a smaller, more proficient group of winners who challenge the status quo. These are the salespeople who consistently look for better ways to sell. They’re interested in using technology to become influencers in their market and leverage it to improve their sales.
Which type of salesperson would you want on your team?
As a sales manager or business owner, it’s your job to identify who on your team is a winner and who needs more motivation to become a winner. For those salespeople who need encouragement, here are….
5 Ways to Motivate Your Team for Social Selling
1. Leverage your Influencers
Do the salespeople on your team simply go through the motions or are they proactive about developing relationships online? As the manager, it’s your job (and in your best interest) to identify who on your team is embedding their unique personality into the consumer’s shopping process.
Salespeople must see themselves as teachers. The salesperson who knows how to deliver relevant information during each stage of the buying cycle remains influential when it’s time to buy.
2. Reward Networking Wins
Whether online or offline, networking is the new sales. Savvy sales managers hire social salespeople who bring a network with them. The art of networking means wherever you go, you have a trusted referral network to fall back on and managers should reward those on their team who excel.
Demonstrating expertise is a great way to network. It’s one thing to connect with a prospect or current customer on social media. It’s another to keep them connected. The key is solid evidence that you’re a trusted resource. Sales managers should offer a monthly reward for the best post-sale testimonial video or best visual evidence of great customer experience. Publishing this type of content on social networks strengthens credibility and optimizes referrals.
3. Recognize Online Influence
I recently had a friend purchase a vehicle based on the online reputation of his salesperson. More specifically, the salesperson had great reviews on Yelp and Google and that was the deciding factor for my friend.
In order to recognize your team’s influence, you must first have each salesperson do an online search on themselves to see what’s being said about them. Positive or negative, you need to see what’s out there that consumers are seeing. If nothing’s being said, well then that’s another opportunity for improvement.
I’ve found that the most common way that salespeople are found online is through social channels and online reviews. If you haven’t already, create and implement an internal process to capture your happy, loyal customers’ opinions. Salespeople must understand how these reviews can influence others’ buying choices and that a mention could make the difference in the sale.
With all employee initiatives, there’s a WIIFM (What’s in it for me) component that should be addressed before you launch. As the sales manager, it’s your job to instill why online reviews and social profiles are important. Of course, you can force them to do it but I’ve found that to be futile.
Instead, recognize each team member when they’re mentioned positively in a review or social context. You can also recognize those that are mentioned negatively as a learning tool in your training process.
If someone on your team has a blog, give extra credit for blog posts that get shared or reach page one of search.
4. Set Goals, Track metrics & Leads from Social Networks
The further you drill down into the metrics of performance, the better equipped you are to educate your team and increase sales. Chances are you track each salesperson’s performance – their follow up, productivity, closing ratios, etc. Why not track their prospects and leads in social?
Set your Social marketing/advertising goals as a company, such as:
- Growth of network
- Engagement
- Reach
- Leads
- Sales
Now, drill down further with each salesperson:
- Networking wins
- Events attended (online and offline)
- Prospects in the pipeline
- Referrals (Leads)
- Sales
5. Check in at Sales Meetings
In every sales meeting, you cover where you are and where you need to go with your team. Your talent as a sales manager depends greatly on your ability to motivate the team to meet their goals. Follow up with each salesperson on the results of their Social Selling.
Consumers do business with the salesperson (and company) who’s provided solid evidence that people like them and trust them. Use these 5 ways to motivate your team for Social Selling so that once in the pipeline, your prospects know they’ve made the right choice.
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