SaaS Tips: Effective Social Selling

We are all drowning from a relentless assault on our Linkedin accounts from a barrage of marketers. Many are poorly crafted, the majority offer zero context. The few that do take the time to personalise the request get noticed - the rest consigned to the bin. Ben Wright, a B2B tech consultant here in London shared the following thoughts recently. I concur with his assessment and have added some additional throughts below.

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The difference between GOOD Social Selling and BAD Social Selling is pretty simple. It's all about VALUE.

I get a lot of LinkedIn requests and InMails and this has only increased in the past few weeks. Almost NONE of these offer anything of VALUE. Instead:

  • They're trying to SELL me something

  • They're ASKING for me to give up some TIME

  • They're TELLING me about WHAT THEY DO

  • They haven't done ANY RESEARCH on me

Good Social Selling is about offering VALUE before you ask for anything.

Good Social Selling means doing RESEARCH to understand what might be of VALUE to the person you're reaching out to and customising each and every communication.

Good Social Selling means approaching people thinking 'What's in it for THEM?' rather than 'What's in it for YOU?'

Good Social Selling means adding THOUGHTFUL and INTERESTING comments to the conversation.

There's so much happening online right now because teams can't get through to prospects on the phone and because generating leads has never been so important - and often so difficult - for so many companies.

Think about the CONTENT, ARTICLES, ADVICE and INSIGHTS you can offer your prospects that would be INFORMATIVE, EDUCATIONAL or FUN?

What great Social Selling are you seeing today?

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My thoughts:

Again this is spot on. Linkedin offers direct access to millions of professionals around the world. Quality trumps quantity every time - yet Quality is harder, and takes more time. Quality means playing the long game. Being thoughtful. Offering value first. It also necessitates a time commitment by the sender, as they need to learn something about the recipient to enable them to provide value. Quantity is easy. It is spray and pray. Social selling can be effective, but for most it is not. Unless you are offering value your efforts will be meaningless. I’m pretty sure you know that by the way. How many unsolicitated link requests from strangers do you engage with?