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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!

Yesterday one of my clients asked me what social media channel is the best channel for him to reach his target group.

My answer was that I did not know it. I first need to know who is part of his target group.

And then I would communicate with his target group on the different social media channels they are part of.

This blog will show you my strategy to engage with the target group.

Build the target group

Let’s say the target group is a group of U.S. CEO’s of DevOps tools for the Fintech industry.

With LinkedIn you can get a list of these CEO’s with just a few clicks. Especially with LinkedIn Navigator. But that’s another story.

Reach the target group

LinkedIn is a terrific personal network tool.

But I would not immediately invite the CEO’s to your network. These people get dozens invites a day.

A better strategy is to engage with them by responding to their posts, build a relationship.

It’s just like dating, it takes time to get to know each other, do not push. It’s what salespeople call social selling. Hard selling is not necessary.

After some engagement you can start introducing yourself and ask for a connection. Always do this with a personal note. Then people know you took time in this invite and it is not an invite just to score contacts. Never ever pitch in your invite, that’s rude and people won’t connect.

As I already said, first build the relationship.

When you have these names, you can search for them on other social media like Twitter, Facebook and even Instagram. Follow them here, so the CEO’s know you are interested in them.

Choose the social media channel

As I already mentioned, LinkedIn is the first social media channel you have to use to engage with your target group.

But there are other channels too, like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Always test the engagement with your target group on these channels too.

Perhaps the CEO is not really active on LinkedIn, but he tweets a lot.

Or he is very active on Facebook, Instagram or other channels.

You do not know this, you have to test it.

Don’t stick to 1 social media channel

My client’s question was: 

what social media channel is the best channel for me to reach my target group?

When you found the social media channel which is the best fit for reaching his target group, do not advise the client to only use this channel.

He should still use other channels as well, although the best fit is the primary one.

Why? Well, social media channels are built by tech companies with their own agenda.

As a user you are at the mercy of these tech companies, because, if profit will go down, the chance of the social media diappearing will increase. It’s all about the money. Even for LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is a great networking tool, but the data is still controlled by LinkedIn, not you!

So, when the prospect approves (GDPR!!) collect at least the e-mail addresses of these clients, so you can always contact them, even when the social media channels are down.

Do not let the social media channels dictate your relationship with your target group, be in control yourself.

The target group engagement strategy in short

1. Build the target group with the help of LinkedIn
2. Reach the target group by social selling
3. Choose the social media channel
4. Manage the target group contacts yourself

Try it.
And keep me updated on the results, I am very interested.

Last year, in the beginning of April I started my contentmarketing and software testing company TestingSaaS.
A 1-man army with a mission: Create content for IT companies by testing their software or IT-services.
It has been a bumpy road, with ups and downs. 
Starting a business shows a person who he or she really is. Persistence is key!
Great months with lots of revenue, but also months of losses.. it’s rough,tough.

But hey, I’m still here, still alive and kicking, lean and mean!
Still a startup, still learning.

Thank you!!

clients and prospects who helped me make the company TestingSaaS.

BPdelivery
Securify
eForensics Magazine
Watermelon
ACC ICT
Parasoft
CoVince
NovoLearning 
inMotion VR
TicTag
Eigenlijk Alles

I’m still learning, still tweaking, I’m getting there.

Let’s Create Content through Testing further in 2019.

Ever since I started my blog TestingSaaS more than 10 years ago on the Blogspot-platform, I wanted to write about IT in a practical way without the marketing slang.
This is my Unique Selling Point for years now and when the DevOps marketing company 
Fixate IO contacted me a couple of years back to contribute to their marketing engine I did not hesitate.

They even coined this kind of marketing: Practitioner marketing.
Developers are a special breed, and why not let developers write content to attract developers?
How? With technical content. 

How does a specific API work? What is a good mobile testing strategy? How can I use this monitoring tool?
All questions I answered in my years as a practitioner marketeer for Fixate IO.
With my latest content an article about getting started with Worldpay’s triPOS Cloud API.

Now with my company TestingSaaS I keep following this path and create content through testing the customer’s software:

“Create Content through Testing”

But this content can be also FAQs, customer success stories,  instruction videos or even online tutorials. See

my macOS anti-forensics course for eForensics Magazine.

For years I tested software  during the day and blogged about it during the evening and nights.

Now it’s my business, and I like it.

Do you want content about your software, website or IT-service?

Contact me here 
and let’s talk about how I can deliver you engaging content, just by testing your product.
Your clients will be impressed!