Social Seller Journey: Engaging Today’s Digital B-to-B Buyer

Posted by Brandon Mills on Mon, Apr 11, 2016

This is the seventh post in a series based on a ZS social selling survey of 125 sales leaders.

As has been well documented through recent research, social media is changing the way that B-to-B customers buy: 75% of B-to-B buyers are influenced by social media, according to Frost & Sullivan; 74% of B-to-B buyers conduct more than half of their research online before buying, Forrester Research has reported; and 57% of the purchase decision-making process is completed before a customer engages a sales rep, according to CEB.

Social KPIs: Tracking Progress and Proving Impact

Posted by Alec Goldfield on Thu, Apr 07, 2016

This is the sixth post in a series based on a ZS social selling survey of 125 sales leaders.

While the four aspects of social selling that we’ve covered in our “Six Building Blocks of Social Selling” series all sound like good ideas in theory, it will be difficult to gain traction and prove their worth without a way to track the impact on your business and your team’s progress. This is where social key performance indicators come into play. By tracking measurable performance metrics, sales teams are able to drive and reward desired social selling behaviors. Social KPIs can be related to social selling training (the number of unique logins to a training site, or time spent on educational content), social selling adoption (the number of new connections, or LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index score), and, especially, social selling impact (the number of qualified leads generated, or the number of content shares by customers).

Social Collaboration: Impact Through Teamwork

Posted by Alec Goldfield on Wed, Mar 23, 2016

This is the fifth post in a series based on a ZS social selling survey of 125 sales leaders.

Social collaboration refers to boosting internal best-practice sharing, deal collaboration and the dissemination of content through digital channels. It’s an integral part of working as a team in today’s workplace and can be used to augment other social selling practices, which my colleagues and I have written about in our series, “Six Building Blocks of Social Selling.”

Social Organization: Using Social Networks to Build a More Effective Sales Team

Posted by Brandon Mills on Tue, Mar 08, 2016

This is the fourth post in a series based on a ZS social selling survey of 125 sales leaders.

My colleagues and I have recently shared some insights on social branding and social listening—two of our “Six Building Blocks of Social Selling”—based on our recent survey of 125 sales leaders across various industries. Unlike those previous building blocks, which typically are the first that we think of in connection with social selling, social organization isn’t at the center of the social selling conversation. This third building block refers to a set of internal practices that make use of social networks to help build more effective sales teams.

Social Listening: Investing in Insights That Empower Social Selling

Posted by Alec Goldfield on Mon, Feb 29, 2016

This is the third post in a series based on a ZS social selling survey of 125 sales leaders.

Previously, my colleague Brandon Mills wrote about social branding, detailing how social media can be used to establish and advocate a sales rep’s professional brand in the market. While social branding has a relatively low barrier to entry for sales reps, social listening, the second in the series of ZS’s “Six Building Blocks of Social Selling,” requires more commitment and investment to realize its true value.