Jill Rowley On Social Selling — The What, Why, And How For Marketers
Highlights & Video From Jill Rowley’s TrackMaven Summit Presentation
Social selling helps sales teams connect with today’s digitally-driven consumer by engaging them in a collaborative fashion on social media. But what many people don’t know is that content marketing is actually key to social selling.
At the 2014 TrackMaven Marketing Summit, we learned from the social selling expert herself: Jill Rowley. As the Founder and Chief Evangelist of her consulting firm, Rowley advises enterprises on how to leverage social selling to market and sell to the modern buyer.
In her presentation at the Summit, Rowley outlined the not-so-obvious fundamentals for marketers to enable sales teams to be successful with social selling.
Those Who Serve More Sell More.
For marketers and salespeople alike, there is a new skill set required to network via the social web. According to Rowley, those who use these skills to help, inform, and communicate with their audience have a better chance at hitting their revenue targets.
“What’s happening is that buyers are going and self educating, and they’re nearly 57-70% through the buying process before they engage with a sale,” said Rowley. “They’re having learning parties without us.”
By becoming more proactively involved in buyers’ “learning parties,” organizations that practice social selling can have a significant impact on their company’s bottom line. Rowley noted that 78% of sales professionals using social media outperform their peers.
“The data’s in: social selling helps you make your revenue number,” said Rowley. “Social selling is using social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter to do research on your buyer, the buying committee, and their sphere of influence so that you can be relevant and build a relationship that ultimately drives not only revenue, but customer lifetime value and advocacy.”
The Power Of Peer-To-Peer Influence Has Never Been Greater.
“Sales people are being replaced by search engines and social networks,” said Rowley, noting that 92% of day-to-day buyers start their search on the Web.
“The modern buyer is empowered with unlimited access to information — and not only about your company and your products. The buyer goes out and finds peers to validate what platform he should purchase.”
To harness the power of peer influence, Rowley suggests removing the word prospects from the sales lexicon, and replacing it with future advocates. “Does anyone want to be prospected? Do you want to be on someone’s prospect list? No. But don’t you want to be brought along a journey to success?”
Content Is The Currency Of Both The Modern Marketer And The Modern Sales Professional.
Marketers have long understood the value of content, but Rowley argues that a key part of the modern marketers’ job is to effectively arm your sales team with content as well.
“You, as marketers, need to help sales professionals understand that we’re living in the age of the customer,” said Rowley. “We’ve got to teach sales professionals how to be visible and relevant to the buyer at every stage of the buyer’s journey.”
According to Rowley, marketers who look to their colleagues to distribute content in more personalized, peer-to-peer interactions will see greater impact. “People don’t trust content from brand Twitter profiles as much as they trust content from people they know, like, and trust. You want to empower your sales professionals and all of your employees to leverage content as their currency.”
To hear more from Jill Rowley on the benefits of social selling, watch her complete presentation from the 2014 TrackMaven Marketing Summit here:
For more #TMSummit recaps, check out 10 TAKEAWAYS FROM THE 2014 TRACKMAVEN MARKETING SUMMIT and You Are Marketing To Hummingbirds. So What Are You Going To Do About It?.
Kara Burney is the Content Marketing Maven at TrackMaven, the Competitive Intelligence platform for Digital Marketers. Have content marketing questions or topics you'd like covered on the TrackMaven blog? Tweet her your ideas! See more of Kara's posts
