Social media platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook have transformed how modern buyers research and discover new products and services. Consequently, successful salespeople must increasingly integrate social media into lead generation and sales strategies. However, mastering these new skills proves challenging without guidance. This is where retaining a knowledgeable social selling coach brings huge advantages. But what exactly does a social selling coach do? Read on for a complete overview.
Defining Social Selling Coaches A social selling coach works one-to-one with salespeople or entire company sales teams teaching them how to effectively leverage major social networks. This includes devising social content that attracts prospects and converting online interactions into sales pipeline opportunities. A social selling coach identifies knowledge gaps around modern buyer behaviour and equips personnel with tactics matching customer preferences.
Rather than cold calling interrupting people at inappropriate times, social selling focuses engagement around valuable content shared publicly. By commenting, liking or sharing such content, prospects voluntarily interact with sellers establishing familiarity and trust on platforms they regularly use. Social selling coaches demonstrate how building such relationships leads prospects to willingly accept sales meeting invites. It provides a proven structure for online lead generation far easier than traditional interruptive methods.
Why Appoint a Social Selling Coach? With over 4 billion social media users worldwide, no sales department today can afford ignoring this sales channel and expect continued success. Yet relatively few salespeople intuitively understand social engagement dynamics that draw in prospects without coming across overly promotional. This makes input from a social selling coach so vital for capitalising on the immense opportunities social platforms offer.
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Rather than wasting time testing uninformed trial-and-error approaches themselves, guidance from social selling coaches fast-tracks competency. Their outside perspective identifies quick wins for your brand on specific networks based on previous successes with other clients. Social selling coaches also objectively highlight current strategy weaknesses that may deter prospects then provide customised practical solutions to address them.
Ongoing one-to-one mentoring ensures sales personnel receive regular motivation to keep honing techniques until social selling activities become second nature. Seasoned coaches have seen myriad social selling attempts across sectors and can readily determine why some strategies fail where others triumph. Listening to their expert counsel prevents repeating mistakes others made before you.
Core Coaching Activities & Responsibilities Typically, a social selling coach begins collaborations conducting extensive audits reviewing current sales and marketing operations. They ascertain levels of existing social media activity alongside lead generation and conversion ratios plus sales cycle lengths. This benchmarks performance before coaching interventions. It also highlights areas where social selling integration could improve figures if tackled appropriately.
Next, coaches run discovery sessions with all customer-facing employees earmarked for social selling training including sales staff, account managers and customer success roles. Coaches interview them to evaluate current social media proficiency and confidence engaging online from a sales perspective. That allows coaching programmes to focus on addressing specific developmental needs across individuals rather than taking one-size-fits-all approaches.
With needs analysis complete, social selling coaches then shift to teaching phases. Structured training plans teach best-practice techniques your company salespeople need for social media prospecting applicable to their product sector. Typical skills covered include optimising LinkedIn profiles for discoverability, crafting engaging content posts, targeting outreach messaging, tracking engagement analytics and responding to prospect comments or queries.
Depending on programmes purchased, social selling coaches provide training through workshops, written guides, video tutorials and face-to-face ride-alongs. These interactive sessions allow salespeople to practice leveraging platforms under the coach’s watchful feedback highlighting refinements needed or barriers holding back performance.
Later-stage activities revolve around reinforcing previous teachings through continual learner support until social proficiency reaches desired levels. Coaches set activities between monthly coaching meetings then review outcomes in follow-up appointments. Sales staff showcase generated leads, conversion metrics and pipeline growth to demonstrate social selling ROI. For added motivation, coaches often run team leaderboards celebrating top social performers!
Selecting the Best Social Selling Coach Before appointing any external social selling coach, conduct due diligence assessing their industry track record and sales philosophy fit. Do online credentials and testimonials from past clients suggest adequate competence boosting sales through social media specifically? Check what training materials and tools coaches use as part of standard programmes too. Be wary of anyone lacking concrete resources relying purely on abstract theory.
During initial discussions, articulate your expected outcomes so coaches can validate if and how their offering might satisfy them. Ask for demonstrative examples of how they have achieved similar for other brands previously. Compare communication styles as well to determine if effective collaborative relationships seem likely. An impactful coach-client partnership underpins successful long-term development.
Finally, examine what ongoing support levels different social selling coaches provide post-training. Optimal lifelong improvement requires continued guidance not just an initial burst of activity. Seek coaches offering lasting dedicated mentoring until sales teams reach self-sufficient social selling productivity. Many tie fees to lead generation growth which incentivises their continued involvement.
In summary, appointing a talented social selling coach offers enterprises struggling to channel social media traction into sales growth an expert guiding hand built on proven methodologies. Just be selective choosing partners demonstrating evidence supporting stated expertise. Then prepare for customer interactions online and offline to transform!