Top five tips for personalised social selling

People are switched off to content that overtly sells a product or service and personalisation such as using a person’s name in an email subject line is becoming generic.

Social selling, if done properly, enables a sales rep to align themselves with connections’ interests and engage with content they share to build a relationship over time.

There’s debate over whether personalisation can become ‘creepy’, but research from HubSpot found on LinkedIn, 65% of people wouldn’t find it creepy if a salesperson sent them a message and they had common connections, and 64% actually classify it as creepy when a salesperson requested to connect using a generic message.

For me, personalisation is crucial in social selling and it’s all about striking a balance and providing the right information, to the right person, at the right time.

To help you achieve better personalisation in your social selling efforts, I’ve outlined my tried-and-tested tips below.

Connect with relevant people

Send relevant people an invitation to connect but, whatever you do, don’t send them LinkedIn’s default, impersonal template.

Use their first name and if they have viewed your profile first, thank them. If they are in the same LinkedIn groups as you, use it as a conversation starter to show them you have things in common from the outset.

Create relationships, not sales

Today’s consumers are firmly in control and nobody likes the idea of being 'sold' to. After making connections, a salesperson must begin nurturing relationships with prospects before making a sale.

This will differentiate you from the stereotypical salesperson and develop trust to make the eventual sale more likely.

Create content tailored to your personas

Crafting content for your buyer personas should focus on their preferred formats and topics.

Look at your personas’ engagement behaviours to see which formats they interact with most. In my experience, video is eclipsing all other formats at the moment.

In fact, I’ve written a blog about creating native LinkedIn video for social selling, click here [LINK] to find out more.

Engage with connections’ content

Demonstrate that you’re interested in what they have to say and pay attention to personal posts e.g. if they’ve won an award or been promoted, draw on this in your touchpoints.

And, if you feel a post applies to a particular connection, why not tag them? This means they will definitely see your post and also incite the feeling that you’re thinking of them.

Get offline

Leveraging social media channels to find prospects is great but the key is to convert your digital connections into real life.

Once you’ve established rapport with a connection, it paves the way for a phone call or meeting face-to-face where you’ll get a proper feel for their pain points and challenges.

Sud Kumar

Marketing Director

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