What Social Selling Is NOT!

ORIGINAL SOURCE 

One of the biggest buzz words/phrases to hit professional sales in years is social selling. While many believe they know what it means, I find many to be a bit confused.Instead of defining what social selling is, why don’t we take a moment and see what is is not:

Social selling is not autopilot: It is not designed for you to put all your sales efforts on auto and move along with your marketing efforts. Inbound marketing, social selling—all of those things still require you to interact with, understand and solve a need or want for your customer.

Social selling is not a salesperson: I had a sales manager many years ago call it b2b: belly-to-belly. While you may not meet every customer face-to-face, social selling will not replace the interaction of a professional salesperson.

Social selling is not the answer for a bad product: Nothing can overcome a bad product or service. If you don’t have what your customers need or want, no amount of social selling, email marketing or anything else will solve the problem. You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.

Social selling is not for everyone: It seems as if many people want to flip a switch and let the “computer” do all the work. I’m sorry to break the news to you, but that’s not how it’s done. Social selling isn’t a be all, end all for everyone. It may not have an application for everyone—including you.

Social selling is not the Holy Grail: it won’t replace salespeople, it won’t keep you from having to prospect, have a great product, fill a customer’s need or anything else you’re doing in the natural sales process. Social selling is simply a way for you to introduce yourself to people, answer questions and advance the sales process virtually. Nothing more nothing less.

You may not have to know what it is, as much as you should know what it is not.