Keeping “Social Selling” From Liquidating Your Pipeline

One of the biggest challenges sales reps have is staying focused and putting their time and energy into the activities that will yield them the highest ROI. And with the allure (distractions) of Twitter / LinkedIn / YouTube etc it’s easier then ever to have a whole day pass you by without being very “productive”. Busy yes, productive, no.

Non-productive activities quickly lead to having a dry pipeline. Not a fun place to be.

Social selling can be a great way to get on a prospects radar.  However, part of social selling is developing your “brand” online by offering your opinions / advice on subjects that are of importance to your targeted audience. There’s a reason why top companies pay to do full page ads in magazines over a 12-month period or will sponsor a season long reality series… Branding, takes time. Inside sales reps can’t expect social selling to replace their outbound call efforts and still make quota. However, totally ignoring social selling isn’t wise either.

So here’s my suggestion based on my own experiences in social selling:

Limit your “Social Selling” activities to 15-minutes in the morning and 15-minutes in the afternoon.
Disciplining yourself to limit (as well as commit) 15-minutes in the morning and 15-minutes in the afternoon will help you ease in to the new world of prospecting via social media without jeopardizing your next commission check.

Here’s a list of things one can accomplish in 15-minutes:

1.  Write a blog post.

2.  Tweet about an upcoming webinar, new blog post or LinkedIn discussion.

3.  Start a discussion on LinkedIn.

4.  Answer a question (or two or three) on LinkedIn groups.   Include members of your targeted audience.

These are just a few real-world social selling activities that can be used immediately while making sure you don’t lose focus of what’s important.

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