6 B2B Sales Problems Solved by Social Selling

Lack of trust, bad timing, late reactions, limited contact, ineffective tools and a pandemic that invalidates most plans and forecasts ... Do you know these challenges?

These are six problems facing modern sales. In the following article, I explain these problems in more detail as well as show you how actions on LinkedIn (when used consciously) supports your sales work (i.e., solves the problems).

PROBLEM # 1: Limited (or lack of) Confidence in Salespeople

Let’s be honest .… One of the main reasons people don't want to talk to new salespeople is because they do not trust them. In most cases, salespeople are perceived by customers as people that are not there to help them, but only to sell them something. And even if you are not this type of salesperson, you are still perceived this way because many of your colleagues have been working in this mode for years.

 How can Social Selling help?

Building trust is not a simple step that can be done “just like that”. It is actually a rather long process that requires commitment, patience and the right strategy from salespeople.

LinkedIn equips salespeople with an effective tool for building a brand as an advisor. Through regular, consistent publishing of content, the salesperson shapes their position as an expert in their industry and not just another “seller”.

PROBLEM # 2: Not Ready to Buy

Three percent! According to research by The Ultimate Sales Machine, only three percent of customers are ready to make a purchase "right now". Everyone else does not want to buy at a given moment and thus, trying to sell them something "here and now" affects the reputation and perception of the salesperson.

 LinkedIn as a customers’ base.

LinkedIn gives you the opportunity to build relationships with a group of customers who are at different stages of the purchasing process. Salespeople can invite people who are willing to buy at a given moment to their network, as well as focus on communication that will lead to purchase readiness in the future. Hence, they can work on a larger scale of customers and activities at the level of expert branding can be targeted to a larger group.

PROBLEM # 3: Increasingly Late Stage Involvement of the Salesperson in the Purchasing Process

The development of the Internet in addition to the change in many people's behaviour have affected shopping habits (I have written more about this in the article “How does Social Selling play a part in a company's strategy?”) — the consequence being that salespeople join the purchasing process at a much later stage. This in turn leads to an inability to build value and consequently, salespeople fight back by lowering the price and giving up part of their margin.

 Social Selling is an element of building value.

Social Selling creates conditions in which salespeople appear in the purchasing process much earlier — sometimes long before it begins. By taking care of the network of contacts that consists of the target group as well as regular publications and interactions with customers, salespeople can increase their value and offer in the early stages of the purchasing process. This becomes one of the elements of margin defence and maximises the probability of being chosen as a supplier.

PROBLEM # 4: Lack of Contact with all Decision Makers

One of the key problems of many salespeople is reaching and maintaining constant contact with all the people who influence purchasing decisions. Many clients delegate representatives (contacts) for this task, but many of these people are not responsible for making the final decision. There are more and more people sitting at the decision table, so the challenge is to positively influence the entire purchasing committee.

 LinkedIn as an open access to purchasing committees.

Social Selling gives you the opportunity to influence and build relationships with virtually the entire purchasing group — from purchasing specialists to managers to directors (including those from C-Level positions that are responsible for making final decisions). Of course, people must have a personal account on LinkedIn.

PROBLEM #5: Declining Effectiveness of other Activities (e.g., cold calling)

Old methods that were once triumphant are less and less effective in today’s "pandemic age“. A perfect example of this is the classic cold call.

 How does being on LinkedIn help here?

I am not a firm believer in removing the cold call or other older strategies — especially not in the first phase of implementing a Social Selling strategy. Activity on LinkedIn provides significant support for other channels used in sales (especially phones and e-mails). Not only does it allow a "warm up" to the relationships built through the above-mentioned methods, but also allows you to reach people whose e-mail addresses or phone numbers are practically impossible to get. Salespeople in classic prospecting can combine standard channels with modern ones and thus increase the effectiveness of traditional methods of reaching customers. The important thing to remember is to take care of your “expert brand”. It is not enough to just turn the phone call into a private message because doing so does not solve the trust problem.

ISSUE #6: Limited Direct Contact and Impact on the Customer (due to Covid-19)

The last of these challenges relates to a relatively new problem that has affected practically the entire globe and has resulted in the already modest arsenal of trading tools to be further depleted — namely, the Covid pandemic.

Limited face-to-face meetings and their transfer to the virtual world mean that salespeople have even less influence over the customer.

 What actions on LinkedIn can help build customer impact?

Thanks to having a presence as well as regularly publishing on LinkedIn, salespeople can "display" themselves to their clients — they can build relationships with them by joining the discussions arranged by clients. Such activities contribute to having a positive impact on potential and current customers.

 Summary

We have now come to the end of our discussion of six sales problems along with six Social Selling solutions to those problems. It is for the above-mentioned reasons that more and more sales departments treat LinkedIn as one of the tools that is necessary for better cooperation with clients.

If you see similar challenges and you are the head of sales, I invite you to read an article in which I describe why Social Selling is no longer “just having fun on social media”.

And if you are a salesperson and want to start on the Social Selling path, begin with a well-built profile on LinkedIn. Here is a checklist to download (including the eight most important profile elements that support salespeople).