at the moment. If you’re in sales, then you can’t avoid it. Given the
proven benefits that social selling can bring about for business
revenue, many companies are now implementing it into their sales
strategy. So can your Social Selling Index help you do this more
effectively?
Research from LinkedIn reveals that 90% of decision makers won’t
answer a cold call, (plus it takes 8 attempts to get a cold sales
conversation going) making the process an increasingly ineffective use
of sales resources. The flipside is that 75% of today’s B2B buyers use
social media in their decision making process – making it a prime
platform for interacting with potential customers.
What Is A Social Selling Index?
The social selling index (SSI) is a LinkedIn feature for sales teams
which takes account of your company’s LinkedIn activity based around the
four pillars of social selling, and quantifies it on a 1 – 100 scale
index. It measures how effective your efforts have been at 1)
establishing your professional brand, 2) finding the right people, 3)
engaging with insights and 4) building relationships. The more your
LinkedIn activities have related to these four pillars, the higher your
social selling score will be. Basically, the SSI is a way of promoting
exactly how organizations, especially sales people, should connect and
interact with prospects on social media.
Since ‘social selling’ is the new secret weapon for sales people in the 21st
century, it is a good thing that LinkedIn has created this diagnostic,
as it raises awareness of social selling and gives people a benchmark.
The SSI score is designed to help you monitor your team’s activity,
objectively adjust your online efforts, help sales reps discover new
opportunities, and allows you to benchmark your score against peers and
competitors.
How To Boost Your SSI
Each pillar of social selling is worth 25 points on the SSI. So to
improve your score, each pillar needs sufficient attention. Here’s some
tips on how to improve your activity, and raise your score.
Pillar 1) Establish Your Professional Brand
Having a strong brand presence across social networking sites
solidifies your business credibility and builds trust. If you present
yourself well to online viewers, it helps establish yourself as a
thought leader. And according to survey data from LinkedIn, 92% of B2B
buyers will engage with sales professionals if they are known industry
thought leaders. This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, but here’s
exactly how you can achieve this professional reputation through
LinkedIn:
- Make sure your LinkedIn profile is 100% complete, including headshot, background image and personal summary.
- In your ‘Summary’, speak the language of your target customer.
- Use rich media in your ‘Experience’ and ‘Summary’, including YouTube videos Slideshare.
- Add key skills and request recommendations from your seniors and key customers.
LinkedIn Founder – Reid Hoffman, says “your network is the people who
want to help you, and you want to help them, and that’s really
powerful.” That’s why it’s important to connect with the right people.
As the SSI monitors how well you engage on LinkedIn, and analyses the
value of connections and relationships, it’s worth getting right – for
your score and for your sales. So waste no time and zero in on decision
makers, research potential prospects and use friendly introductions to
grow your network.
- To identify the right prospects, there are different options. One
way is by making use of LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator. This tool allows you
to use filter criteria such as seniority, skills or role to find
potential prospect profiles (who are out of your network). Or if you
want to eliminate the research process altogether, automated lead
generation services will consistently provide you with quality, verified
leads based on your prospect criteria, so you can focus your efforts
nurturing the most relevant leads online. - Make a shortlist of companies to follow.
- Try to find 10 influential people in your target companies.
- Find out who has viewed your profile. Engage with them.
- Check out who shares, Likes and Comments on your posts.
It’s simple – if you’re not engaging with potential customers at
every opportunity, you won’t get far. Engagement creates visibility and
visibility creates opportunities!
It helps to look out for and share conversation-worthy content to
attract and build relationships. Over 60% of B2B buyers said that they
appreciate hearing from a salesperson who provides insight about their
business, and LinkedIn groups are the prime spot for you to do this.
Consistently engage with valuable insights and you’ll do more than
raise your SSI; you’ll intrigue leads and build long-term credibility
with social audiences as a whole.
- Join as many relevant groups as you can.
- Consistently post content that projects you as a trusted source of industry insight.
- Make sure you post a mixture industry content and ‘how to’ content.
- Like, Share and Comment on your connection’s posts.
Remember this quote from author and entrepreneur, Seth Godin –
“Tribes don’t have to be very big to be effective. If you have 1,000
true fans, 1,000 people who will drive across the country to see you
perform, 1,000 people who will tell their friends, that is enough to
make an impact.”
For social selling to be done effectively, you must remember that
it’s about assisting prospects first, and selling product second. Sales
should be a by-product of the assistance you give your target audience.
Solve business problems they have and build genuine trusted
relationships. You are sure to see sales success this way.
- Connect with your network and your prospects leveraging your 2nd degree connections.
- Always send out personalized invitations including why.
- Connect with colleagues so you can ask for referrals
- Keep in Touch: If it’s a connection’s birthday, wish them well. If they get a promotion or new job, congratulate them.
- Listen out for prospects who express a problem and help them.
But Avoid These Common Pitfalls
Although LinkedIn’s social selling index is an all-round useful tool
for monitoring your effectiveness online and encouraging the strategy of
social selling, it’s not perfect. It does have some shortcomings. Below
are two common problems to be aware of when using the social selling
index.
The first problem is that the SSI does not measure quality.
As a sales person, you could literally spend all day sharing cat memes
with your prospects and still raise your “Engage with Insights” score.
You could post low quality, irrelevant content every day and it’ll still
look good to your sales manager based on the SSI. But this won’t do you
any favors. Remember – at the end of the day, revenue is the only true
indicator of your activity’s effectiveness. The SSI is just a helpful
tool for teaching sales people how to improve their selling technique
online. If your SSI score is be-all, end-all of determining your social
selling success, you’re not guaranteed to see the money flowing in.
So make sure to share valuable content, content that
intrigues and solves your prospects problems. Ultimately, this is the
type of content that will help sales reps build trust and move potential
buyers along their journey.
The second problem is that LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index is limited
to, well, LinkedIn. No surprise there. But even though LinkedIn is the
prime place for professional networking, it should not be your only
social selling platform. A good social selling strategy will span
several networks. Twitter, for example, makes an excellent social
selling network.
It’s easier to connect with your potential buyers on Twitter. It’s
also easier for potential buyers to find you. As well as that, Twitter
users typically present a more well-rounded picture of themselves, which
is helpful when it comes time to build rapport with them.
So that’s what you need to know about LinkedIn’s Social Selling
Index. Even though it has its shortcomings, the SSI can still be a
wonderful tool to help sales people fine-tune their social selling
technique so they can reap the benefits that this new-age selling
strategy can offer.
What is a Social Selling Index?
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