3 elements every Social Selling Training should include

By Sander Biehn | Mar 27, 2017

Psssst, your Sales team needs Social Selling training . I don’t care if you are just looking at training budgets trying to find a good course for your high-flying team or if you are trying to figure out how to kick-start sluggish Sales in 2017, you need to look at Social Selling training. If you’ve recently amped up your Marketing content, you need Social Selling training. Even if you’ve already given Social Selling training in the past year, you need Social Selling training.

Why am I so passionate about Social Selling training? Because your entire B2B digital strategy is going to come down to one thing in 2017: Influencer Marketing.

It’s not just a buzzword, it is “the last man standing” in your ability to reach your buyers before they’ve made a decision to buy.   Just ask your Sales team. They have been all but tuned-out by their prospects. Not even your Gatling gun of Sales Automation software with rapid fire emails and strategic call times can penetrate the veneer of the people you want to reach.

Assuming I have convinced you that you need Social Selling training, here are the 3 things you must keep in mind when designing the program for your Sales team.

1. Teach the basics and keep it simple

Give people the basics and tell them exactly what they need to do to get started in Social Selling . Lead with specifics. “Change your profile to make it look more like this.” “Share X number of posts per week on LinkedIn/Twitter.” It may sound boilerplate, but it is the best way to get anxious sale people to cross the threshold into this new way of selling.

2. Add a component of ‘why?’

After you have presented the basics, you need to provide the underlying philosophy.  It isn’t enough to have a great profile and tweet 5 times a day. Social Sellers need to know why they should keep track of prospects and interact with them on Social Media. They need an outline of what advantages all this social media activity will bring them.  They also need to know that Social Selling is not a ‘silver bullet,’ rather a method of reaching the modern buyer that incorporates everything they have learned before about selling (including when to pick up the phone and call someone).

3. Train more than once

Social Media is new territory for B2B sellers. They will try the things you train them on, but unless you are willing to place draconian rules on their daily activity, you may not activate everyone on the first go around. Social Selling is evolving along with the social platforms and marketing tools. Keep the teams refreshed on Social so they can find success in their own daily selling that will drive them to stay active on Social.  As a marketer, keeping Sales active with regular, shareable marketing content will take care of your digital distribution woes. Also, it will give you more time to write additional content and closely measure results.

Social Selling training is critical to your success in 2017. There are plenty of companies that can assist. Be sure to work with one that includes these 3 elements to make it a success.