If you’ve seen folks try to prospect on social media, you’ve seen sales done poorly. Meaningless polls (do you like peanut butter or jelly?), spammy messages (book some time on my calendar) and pitches with no context.
Yet there are salespeople leveraging social media successfully every day – what are they doing differently? That’s what we sat down with social media sales expert Phil Gerbyshak to discuss. He’s served in multiple sales enablement positions and understands what it takes to source, pursue and close top-tier clients using social media.
Because we’re trimming hope from our sales strategy, we’ll use the acronym TRIM to guide us through creating a system with a trigger, ensuring it’s repeatable, building in ways to improve it and of course, ensuring it’s measurable and getting us results.
T – Trigger: Phil advises the trigger for this sales system needs to start not with your prospect, but with your calendar. He says to book the time on your calendar to do solid research on LinkedIn Sales Navigator or other systems to find those target prospects who are active on LinkedIn.
Although some executives may not be actually posting on their own profiles, many are. Phil says to then look at what they’re posting and commenting to get an idea of what they’re focused on and which topics they’re engaging with.
R – Repeatable: To make this system repeatable, keep in mind this isn’t about closing the deal right away. Instead, it’s about being omnipresent and adding value.
That means having something valuable to share. Phil says that this might be insights you’re gaining from conversations with other prospects, white papers or case studies you’ve developed, or personal experience in executing what you know that prospect is going to be planning for their own team in the coming months.
When you identify a target prospect, connect with them on social media, send a message, make a phone call, and send an email. If you get no traction that way, try to find someone in your network who knows the target prospect and ask if they’re open to making a referral.
Another key to being omnipresent is to reach out in unconventional ways, like leveraging LinkedIn voice messages and personalized videos.
I – Improvable: To improve this system, Phil recommends paying attention to what we hear from prospects we do engage with. What questions do they have that we would benefit in finding answers to – and showing up with them in future conversations?
In those instances when we can’t drive a conversation, it’s a worthwhile effort to reach out to the prospect and ask, ‘How could I have been more relevant? What issue are you dealing with right now that you would meet with someone like me to solve?’ The answer to that question, if we have the courage to ask, will make a massive difference in connecting with future top-tier prospects.
M – Measurable: Phil says to keep a constant eye on where in your campaign people are responding to, and at what points your outreach is stalling. By examining those areas, we’ll know more about where folks convert and if there’s any specific topic or form of outreach is more valuable than another.
If you find a powerful conversion point, Phil advises to share that information with the marketing team and asking if they can develop additional resources around that topic to help drive future conversations sooner.