Social Selling is an exciting topic. As a sales professional, it means a new way to groom and find prospects. Social selling is another tool in the sales professional’s bag of tricks. A sales professional still needs a strong foundation of traditional sales techniques.

What is Social Selling and how do you incorporate it?

In the eyes of the traditional Outside Sales Professional, Social Selling is a way to groom prospects. Help move them through the buying decision using online platforms. The Sales Professional is always going to ask, how will this help me close sales today?Starting an email list is a basic way for a Sales Professional to begin Social Selling. The goal of Social Selling being to move prospects through the sales cycle. I see the email list as a very

Starting an email list is a basic way for a Sales Professional to begin Social Selling. The goal of Social Selling being to move prospects through the sales cycle. I see the email list as a very low-cost way to move prospects through your sales cycle.

You have control over the information your potential buyer sees. You can steer your potential buyer to online resources. Also, you have more constant contact with your potential buyers.

There’s no preventing a potential buyer from looking at competitors. An email list will provide a vehicle to connect with your potential buyers.

Why an Email List

With more of the buying decision occurring online, the Sales Professional needs to find a way to have their message in front of the buyer at an early stage. An email is a very low commitment item to get, and through emails, you can provide value and an effective message.

If your Sales Professionals are anything like me, then they will question the need to adopt new techniques. Usually, it comes from a place of will this help me make quota this quarter (or month).

The beautiful thing about an email list is most sales professionals already do some form of this. It is for an end of month promotional scramble to get a few extra orders.

This is adopting a value-based email rather than a promotions email. Now you provide what Gary Vaynerchuk would call, “Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook.”

The concept is to provide immense value to your potential buyers. The result is establishing credibility. Thus, you can ask for the sale. This is the power of the email list.

What This Means To Your Sales Cycle

The email list means you are constantly grooming your prospects for a sale. The goal of doing this through email is, as your prospects are doing their online research, you get your message in front of them at a critical stage.

The direct effect of this to your sales cycle is having full sales funnel. The full sales funnel will allow you to spend time creating engagement with your prospects. So, as you begin the purchasing process, you have a deeper relationship with the customer.

Actions To Take Today

A few steps you can take today are:

Today, you can craft an elegant email to all your contacts in your CRM or customer database. This initial email is to alert your prospects, customers, and contacts you will be sending them informative information about industry trends, company updates, and any other relevant information.

Send only one email alerting them of your newsletter.

After the initial email, you will want to remove any prospects that ask to be removed. The last thing you want is to get off on the wrong foot with your prospects and customers. Also, for the purposes of this email, it’s better to have your contacts needing to opt out rather than opt in.

At the beginning, a weekly newsletter would be a great frequency, which is not too Spammy. With this in mind, forcing the opt out is not unreasonable. This will retain more emails to your list, as the likelihood of an opt-out is low.

Once you have your list determined, a great starting point is to begin a weekly email newsletter. The newsletter should consist of industry topics that interest you (so you are consistent). Also, it needs to provide value to your prospects and customers.

This requires you have a deep understanding of your target market. Understanding the struggles of your customers and leads.

Once you are ready to send an elegant newsletter, the following resources can help.

Resources

MailChimp – Great, easy to use email marketing program. Uses elegant templates. Allows you to create signup pages. And tracks the success of your email campaigns.

Salesforce – If your company is using Salesforce then you can send email newsletters from the CRM. Most other CRM programs have a similar feature, Salesforce tends to be the most used.

As more and more of the buying decision moves online, it’s essential that Sales Professionals work to get their message in front of their potential buyers early in the research stage.

The use of an email list can be the tactic to get there.

Good luck and good selling!