The past years social selling has become a hype among sales and marketing professionals.
Is it suitable for selling SaaS?
And what social media platform is suitable for social selling of SaaS?
That will be explained in this blog.
Why social selling?
Internet has given us a new channel for selling services or goods. By using online marketplaces like Amazon, eBay or the Chinese Taobao clients can find their desired goods or services. There is only one disadvantage. The selling company can’t really control the customer journey and clients can get lost without sales knowing it, which is a shame.
Why? Because salespeople know the product they sell and can help the client.
Trading is still done by people and buyers still want some engagement with the sales.
How can sales drive this engagement?
By social selling.
How is this possible? By combining the sales and marketing forces.
What is social selling?
With social selling the salesman wants to online earn the trust of the customer. This way the client, while surfing the internet chooses him and not another online competitor.
How? By engaging with the clients on their favorite social media channels and sharing knowledge and giving advise.
And this all in a personal manner, not the brand, but the salesman (or woman) is the starting point. It’s all about contact between humans, not brand and human.
With social selling the salesman wants to online earn the trust of the customer.
Hard selling is really not done anymore. Everybody knows the cheesy salestalk and if clients notice this online, they will bounce.
Salespeople have to know how they brand themselves online in an enthusiastic, but authentic way. Always be yourself.
Social selling and SaaS
When a client is interested in a SaaS application he is interested in buying a (monthly) subscription and preferably wants to work with the application right away without too much hassle.
He wants online documentation in a screen-readable format in plain English.
And the client wants a trial period.
This means Sales is not finished when the client purchases the subscription. There is still the trial period.
For sales knowing the customer is key here.
For this they need marketing, who has studied the different clients and created buyer persona’s.
Because the first contact of the client with the SaaS company is usually sales, sales has to know the stage the client is in during the trial period.
By working with marketing sales can find out this stage.
Now you see why it is important sales and marketing has to combine forces, especially with SaaS.
Why is LinkedIn the social selling channel for SaaS?
LinkedIn is all about social selling.
People share their work experience online and companies share their services or goods. Both forms of online branding.
But it is all about online interpersonal contact. Not about brand-person contact.
And wasn’t interpersonal contact necessary for social selling?
That’s why LinkedIn is the social selling channel for SaaS. By engaging online between representatives from the SaaS companies and their prospects business can thrive.
How to use LinkedIn for social selling?
Again, it’s all about sales and marketing joining forces.
Marketing researches the targetgroup and knows who are the prospects and can target them with suitable content.
Sales can engage with the prospects on LinkedIn and give them advise about using the SaaS product.
In one of my future blogs I will give you a more detailed social selling strategy for this.
But remember, always have a social selling strategy, also on LinkedIn
Start testing!
But that does not mean you can’t start with social selling on LinkedIn.
Test a few cases and measure the results.
Planning is necessary, but without execution a plan is useless.
Have a great time engaging with your prospects and clients on LinkedIn!