The collaborative elements of social selling with Wiebke Kraus  

"And the best success is if a colleague who wasn't sure about how to use social media, what can I post, I don't know if people are going to like it, the best success for us is if this person is really getting active." This quote is from Wiebke Kraus, digital marketing manager for SPS, a leading outsourcing provider of business process solutions and innovative services in document management, servicing customers in over 20 countries. In an interview, we sat down with her and discussed the factors for starting and supporting an excellent social selling program. Read our key takeaways below. 
 

What is the role of social selling in today's digital marketplace?  

Social selling is an integral part of the digital marketplace. However, over the last few years, it has gotten more emphasis in the field. This is because networking and relationship building has moved online due to COVID-19, so sales departments adapted by reaching out to potential customers on social media to make a connection.  

While salespeople are on the frontlines interacting with prospects and clients, a marketing team creates an effective content strategy, supplies high-quality content, and delivers the necessary tools and guidelines. Marketing also allows itself to be the main point of contact if an individual needs questions answered or added support. When explaining the support that marketing adds, Kraus states, "we can be the best support for the sales team to get active in social selling. I also believe that marketing and sales are growing closer together. We know how technology works. We can be the helping hand for sales."  

What is the difference between social media marketing and social selling?  

While they might initially seem synonymous, there is a stark difference between social media marketing and social selling. That difference shows in intent. Social media marketing is about reaching as many people as possible to generate leads, not focusing on one specific customer. Social selling, however, is all about focusing on one-on-one connections. Kraus explains that social selling "[is] about building and maintaining customer relationships in order to understand and meet their specific needs."   

Often, social media marketing and social selling work in tandem. A marketing department prepares the content, and the general content is posted on corporate social media pages or paid ads and campaigns. Meanwhile, salespeople will take that same content, add personalized messages, and post it on their social media accounts. Because the media is shared on their own pages, it allows the content to reach a more personalized audience, often reaching out to the said audience to interact with the posts and start a conversation.  

While this helps create a one-on-one connection between salespeople and customers, it also helps create a good relationship between sales and marketing. Sales benefit by getting the content to use for their social media from marketing. Still, marketing also benefits by gaining insight from sales about their audience, which helps create better content that fits their audience.  

In essence, social selling differs from social media marketing because it focuses on personalized, one-on-one connections rather than addressing the broader audience. These personalized connections help generate feedback which can help with social marketing and create a closer relationship between a salesperson and their customers.  

How do you see the collaboration between marketing and sales teams portrayed in your day-to-day business life?  

Kraus answers, "In our company, marketing was responsible for the implementation of social selling. That's why we offered some training for our sales department and account management. Our colleagues are using different tools. They are asking for support from marketing." This collaboration has helped achieve efficiency by publishing posts and stories on their corporate page and training salespeople to be active on their personal accounts. 

But why do salespeople need training in social media? Social media can be scary when starting out. As Krause explains, "It makes the salespeople sometimes forget that they already know everything they need to do to be active on social media. But the feeling of everything I do on social media is very public [makes them wonder] how to manage these interactions. It's like a different tool." Training alleviates these concerns, makes them used to the new medium, and, ultimately, more comfortable.  

Another concern is that social media is very time-consuming. This problem is solved by splitting the work between the marketing and sales teams. The marketing team routinely creates content that puts forth the role of the professional, and the sales team adds their personality to it and posts it. It is crucial that the content is not just generic, as authenticity builds trust, and trust is an essential part of social selling. Trust builds lasting relationships, which is the main goal of social selling. However, social selling also needs good content, which salespeople can be too busy to generate routinely.  

While social media is a powerful asset, it is also an intimidating and time-consuming platform. The collaboration of a marketing team and a sales team splits the work of a social selling strategy, creating meaningful content at a consistent pace. While this alone boosts a social selling strategy, adding tools can help bring you to perfection.  

How do you see the role of tools in digital sales enablement and social selling?  

As said, social media is time-consuming, and tools can help ease some difficulties of maintaining a social media presence. Social selling tools help facilitate content distribution, making creating and sharing content much easier. These tools allow you to build a straightforward way for your employees to access pre-approved content. From there, they can edit these posts to make them more personal to them, and they can even schedule when posts get posted. "So, it helps, on the one hand, to save time for the salespeople. Because they have the content right there, they don't have to copy and paste it. They can just share it to their social network," explains Kraus. 

Having the content approved for the sales team helps add a level of trust to the marketing team. "As a salesperson, of course, you don't want to do anything wrong by sharing something about your company that hasn't been approved by your marketing team. So, I think it also gives them the confidence that whatever they share has been seen by somebody in marketing, and it's okay to share," Kraus states. This layer of oversight helps reassure a salesperson that their content is approved, giving them another layer of confidence in the social media sphere.   

Social media is a very intimidating place, especially when a person is just starting out. However, applying communication and collaboration can help forge personal connections with potential customers and clients and with your colleagues and companions. A marketing team can support a sales team's social selling strategy by providing tools, content, and training, as well as provide individual support to a sales team, which is integral when starting a new social selling program.  

Photo by: Magda Ehlers on pexels

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