Selling is a social act. Which is why it makes sense that social selling is on the rise, and social media is helping teams close deals more rapidly than ever before.

But how exactly does social selling begin and end with a deal signed, sealed, & delivered?

Today we’re taking a look at what exactly social media has to do with increasing conversions – and how you can use modern sales enablement technology to drive your social selling strategy.

Content Management

An effective content management system does more than just organize a salesperson’s newsfeed: It learns behavioral patterns via machine learning which can automate content syndication, prioritization, and personalization. And once a sales team has implemented this type of modern sales tool, they’ll be at a greater advantage to instinctively share the content that their customer wants, when they want it.

At its core, content can be used to create richer connections with prospects. Pitching personalized content at an optimal time can do more than simply close deals: It can fulfill customer relationships, create deeper engagements, and lead to stronger sales in the future.

Customer Engagement

This is the crux of effective sales enablement: Creating a strategic, ongoing process that equips teams to have effective engagements with customers throughout the buyer’s journey. What better supplement to a modern sales enablement tool than social media, which can establish, build, and maintain customer relationships?

In fact, Forbes published a study indicating that 78% of salespeople use social media to outsell their peers Over 40% of the folks who participated in this study noted that they were able to close at least two to five deals as a result of social media, and overall, most respondents said that social media greatly influenced their selling strategy.

These are impressive statistics. When combined with the fact that social selling simply wouldn’t have the same impact without a content management backbone and an analytical improvement tool in place to help move deals forward, the case for modern sales enablement grows only stronger.

Social Selling Analytics

As we’ve established, making the connection between inside sales and external audiences is key to building any sales program. But in order to enhance that program, and create the most effective sales strategy possible, it’s important to track content performance across multiple channels with the best sales enablement tool for your team.

Measuring a customer’s engagement with a piece of content is vitally important to understanding what content is and isn’t working. It can make the difference between aiming in the dark versus using a clear strategy to drive results. It’s the missing puzzle piece that will provide your team with the insights into what type of content will deliver you bottom line results.

The more under-targeted and unmeasured content you share, the more time, energy, and resources your team is wasting. Smarten up with a sales enablement technology built for the way you work.

Conclusion

We can see clearly now that social media intersects sales enablement at multiple touch points throughout the selling process. Above all else, our job as sellers is to be constantly adapting to the buyer’s need throughout the sales process – and this means knowing everything from their content interests to engagement insights. What better way to do this than through deeper connections established by social media?

The next time you hear the suggestion “let’s take this offline,” take that as a cue to go online, and connect with your prospect via LinkedIn, Twitter, Google Plus, or wherever your social selling strategy takes you.