Boost Your Outbound Conversion Rates Using Social Selling

Introduction

Most Sales Reps have social selling backwards and then complain about low response rates. What are they doing wrong?

Instead of building meaningful relationships they sequence prospects BUT make sure to include social touches. These include sending connection requests to prospects, InMailing them if emails aren’t getting responses, and occasionally resharing company blog posts.

But how’s that working out?

I hear InMails are rubbish. They make no sense. People aren’t accepting my connection requests. OR they’re accepting my connection request but then don’t respond when I DM them.

What’s up with that?

You gotta remember that people buy from people they trust, and people trust people like them. That’s where social selling comes into play.

Where in these steps has the rep proven they can be trusted or that the prospect is better off with the seller than without them?

Exactly.

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Hi, I’m Viktor, a full-cycle Account Executive turned Sales Manager with 10 years of B2B Sales experience and on this channel I cover topics from prospecting to closing and everything in between.

And by the end of this specific post you’ll know when and how to use social selling to increase your outbound conversion rates. Let’s do this!

The goal of social selling

The goal of social selling is to boost your conversion rates, whether that’s open rates, response rates, or contacted to meeting booked, and you do that by building Trust, Familiarity, and meaningful Relationships. And these are the chapters we’re covering in this video.

The very first thing we need to do is position ourselves as trustworthy. That means somehow showing that we can be trusted to have the customer’s best interests in mind AND have them trust in our ability to deliver on our promises.

This starts by building a customer-focused LinkedIn profile. What do I mean by that? Well, let’s look at typical sales person profiles! They’re either boring and only show what tasks they were responsible for OR the good ones boast about their streak of hitting quota and feature skills like negotiation. As they should if they’re looking for a job or their target group is sales reps. But for any other prospect it screams “I will find you, and I will pitch you”. So what do you do? Show off the impact you helped customers get through working with you and your company. I’ll release a youtube video soon breaking down how to do that step by step. If that’s interesting subscribe to this channel so you don’t miss out!

That was the first part. The second part is showing that you can deliver on your promise and you do that by positioning yourself as a thought leader. You don’t need to know everything. You just have to know more about the problem area you solve than your prospects and customers do and post about it frequently.

As a Sales Rep your goal is to build pipeline from outbound. That means most of your content should be about creating awareness around the problem and solution so you attract the kinds of prospects you want in your funnel. The problem some creators face especially in the beginning is running out of ideas to write about. And that’s not doing you any favours is it?

I’ll leave you with some quick tips on what to post about for now but stay tuned because in the next 4 weeks I’ll release a mini-series on how to build a content marketing strategy that takes 1 hour a day and you’ll never run out of ideas.

In the meantime some things you can post about include:

• Sharing what impact you and your product had on existing customers. But don’t just share a customer success story. Lead with pain, highlight the impact you made and how your product played a role in that. Another idea is to:
• Follow relevant hashtags and read what others in the industry are talking about, then share your own take on the topic. And one more:
• With each new feature you release instead of sharing “oh look, we have this feature now!” Start by educating your target group on the problems others like them are facing and agitate them by emphasising how difficult it is to overcome them with traditional methods. Now share that that’s where your new feature comes into play.

Have fun!

Take matters into your own hands

Okay but we have no control over the algorithm and who the platform shows our posts to. And obviously we can’t build pipeline if our message never lands - so what do we do about it?

We build prospecting lists and connect with potential buyers. At least that’s what most reps do and many have low connect rates. What’s the solution?

Well, people are more likely to accept your connection request and open your emails if they are familiar with you. So we want to build that familiarity. I’m team “nurture THEN connect”. Once you’ve built your prospecting list you start engaging with your prospects’ posts. Just leave a like and meaningful comments.

But Viktor, what if they don’t post?

Glad you asked! As long as these prospects are active on the platform engage with the people and groups they follow. The point is for them to get familiar with your name, your profile pic, and see that you have valuable insights in the area you work.

THEN you reach out - and needless to say you should write a personal message to go along with it. The best time is always when they viewed your profile or liked a comment or post of yours, but you can’t always control that, can you? And that’s why having a customer-focused profile matters to boost your chances when you’re reaching out cold.

Increase conversions with warm outreach

But why would you want to do cold outreach when you can ask for referrals?

Yes, that’s the benefit of social selling. You want to build meaningful relationships by creating value for them up front. Even if these people never buy you’ll build trust and credibility that you can use to ask for a referral down the line and get introduced to 2nd degree connections. Now you’re using warm outreach where success is much higher.

Is social selling going to get you quick returns? You already know it won’t. But it’s still important that you get started and do it consistently because it will make you more successful down the line.

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