Step Up Your Social Selling in 2019 With These 4 Linkedin Outreach Tactics

Registration is now open for SalesMentour’s next sales accelerator event on Tuesday, January 15, 2019 from 4:30 PM to 9:00 PM at T-Rex, sponsored by Outreach.io and presented in association with EQ.

Social selling is a tactic that’s being widely adopted by the upcoming generation of B2B sales folks and yet seems to be a polarizing topic when discussed with old-school sales leaders. Isn’t there anything else you can do rather than pick up the phone, right?

So what’s this whole social selling thing about?

It’s about breaking through what marketing folks would call the awareness stage:

  • It’s about Being Seen: getting noticed and being regarded as a thought leader on the subject you’re promoting.
  • It’s about Opening Doors: exposing your brand, as well as your personal brand, to your network then hopefully to your 2nd and 3rd level connections.
  • It’s also about Doing Research: creating triggers and being relevant in your messaging.

Most importantly, Social selling isn’t about just posting and publishing content. While that’s an important piece; even more important than publishing is engaging. Namely, those digital interactions you can have with people on social media, that otherwise, you wouldn’t have been able to reach.

If you’re looking to up your game, here are a few tactics you can use to be relevant, get a response and build a strong relationship from the start that will lead to wins.

1. Ask a question in your connection request. Social Selling Level β…–*

If you’re using Linkedin β€˜touches’ as part of your prospecting cadence, take a few extra moments to personalize your invite and ask a question. Here’s why:

  • First off, personalized requests are more likely to be accepted.
  • Secondly, if you ask a question, you might actually get a response and have a chance to engage your prospect in a conversation.

2. Reference a post in your email outreach. Social Selling Level β…—*
Here’s how to get someone’s attention, prove you’re not a robot and also get a positive response. Just as you would personalize your Linkedin connection request, try this technique out in your outreach emails or direct messages: share a thought provoking post with your prospect and ask them a question.

3. Use research to ask questions, engage your buyer and put them in a position to be an expert. Social Selling Level β…˜*
Found an interesting article that could help you in an ROI case? Post that ASAP on Linkedin with your take; ask a few of your hottest prospects to engage and watch their responses role in.

4. Use video to show passion, rack up views and get your brand out there. Social Selling Level 5/5*

This is a little riskier but the payoff can be huge. As you can see in the screenshot of stats below, using video on Linkedin can rack you up thousands of views – as well as lots of comments and likes.

Use your video to mention other people, ask for their opinions and engage decision makers inside of your ICP.

A simple video like this will also tee you up for your direct messages (DMs) to be answered at a higher rate. If you see someone engaging with your content, go ahead and reach out to them to say thanks for the β€˜like’ or to continue the discussion via DM instead of in the comments section of the post.

What social selling techniques do you use that I didn’t mention here? I’d love to hear what’s working for you. Come and share them with us our next sales training event in St. Louis on Jan 15th, 2019!

Registration is now open for SalesMentour’s next sales accelerator event on Tuesday, January 15, 2019 from 4:30 PM to 9:00 PM at T-Rex, sponsored by Outreach.io and presented in association with EQ.

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