Are you investing in social selling?

LinkedIn is becoming the go-to channel for salespeople to find new prospects and reach their sales targets. 90% of top-performing salespeople now use LinkedIn as part of their sales strategy. And for sales reps that invest in social media, 64% of them hit their team quota compared to only 49% of reps hitting their team quota that don't use social media.

In the meantime, buyers now take longer to make a purchase decision.

Did you know that the length of the average B2B sales cycle has increased by 22% in the last five years? One reason for that is more people involved in the process. Another, the wealth of information available buyers can use to base their decisions.

This, combined with the shift in the selling process, forces organizations to try and connect with customers and start nurturing them as early in the process as possible.

If decision-makers use social networks during their buying process, then reps need to use social media to fill up your sales pipeline.

So, how can you use LinkedIn as part of your sales strategy?

Do you remember when you were doing 1000 cold calling to have 10 meetings?

Before social media, this meant searching for prospects in local phone directories. Now, you can target businesses on LinkedIn, except that LinkedIn has a lot more data than a phone book! A simple way to begin is to create a list of companies that you want to connect with. You can target companies that are similar to your existing customer base or target companies that you feel would be a good fit for your product or service.

To find similar companies, search for your customers on LinkedIn, and when you see their company page, on the right side, you can find "similar companies." 

Click on and connect with these similar companies. Once connected, you need to find the key decision-maker at these companies. If you're selling a product for technical teams, this might be the R&D director. The main problem I've seen many times are people diving in with their sales pitch right away!

Why do you think are you entitle to do this? We all know that people purchase from who they know, like, and trust.

It would be best if you establish a "relation" with your prospects first, engaging with them when they are active, sharing their content with your network, providing advice when they ask or by reaching out to them and asking for their input on any questions you may have.

Of course, this approach takes time, and it won't lead to a sale overnight, but remember, social selling is a marathon and not a sprint. As soon as the buyer is ready to talk to you, you can pick up the phone and call them.

With a user base of nearly 600 million members, many of your customers will already have an account on LinkedIn. Therefore, the best place to start is by connecting with your customers. But not just with any customer. Here, you want to connect with your favorite customers the customers that you have helped in growing their business. Once you connect with them, browse through their connections, and find people you believe would be a good fit for your product or service. You can then ask your favorite customer for an introduction. This is why it's essential to connect with customers that have seen success by using your product or service.

Sales is a numbers game, but the more active you are on social media, the more successful you will be. Studies show that sales reps with high social network activity achieve 45% more sales opportunities, and are 51% more likely to hit their sales quotas.