Social Selling can be very effective in Q4.

Q4 can be a drag for some in Sales. Either you can’t reach people or they have just decided to postpone the decision until Q1. It’s frustrating. Greg Hyer and Martin Brossman share a few “To-Do’s” that can help you keep the momentum going with social selling until year end and for the beginning of next year.

To-Do’s by Year End

Touch base with clients and prospects - Think nudges. Put yourself in their shoes and imagine what they are facing at this point in the year. If they are working retail, it’s likely they are very busy and are very unlikely to make any buying decisions. If your clients and prospects are B2B chances are they are planning for Q1. No matter what type of client and prospect you sell to, you have to remember to pace them.

Social Selling fundamentals reminds us to use our social listening skills to understand what’s effecting our clients and prospects. Visit their profile pages and check on their most recent status updates. If something they have shared should be engaged with by you, then do so. This is an opportunity to stay front of mind. If you send an email use a tracking tool like Yesware or Sidekick to notify you if they have opened your email.

To-Do’s for Next Year

If things are really slow, update your social selling profiles with customer successes. Remember they your profiles should be customer facing. The successes you share should be how you have helped your clients become successful.

Get your social selling tracking and reporting spreadsheet ready for 2016. If you aren’t using a spreadsheet, make sure you’re logging you activities correctly in your CRM. It’s up to you to prove that social selling is working in your sales organization.

Establish your theme for 2016. What is the persona that you will be prospecting? Start building your lists based on similar characteristics. Personas help personify the type of prospects you want to reach. Remember that prospects respond better to people that know the issues they face and has a proven track record for success.

Define your education goals. We are big proponents to continuing education. It’s how you avoid becoming stale. The Social Selling Sales Professional is agile and smart. They stay informed to what’s happening in their prospect’s industry as well as they keep up with the changes that can directly impact their ability to sell.

Narrow your client focus. Pruning is needed. Define your MVP clients and how you will keep them happy. Let go of the ones on the bottom dragging you down. You are the front line to keeping your business open and healthy.

Visit SocialSelling.Training to start your online training. Register and we will start your training off for free with two courses; Linking Profile Fundamental for the Social Seller and Twitter Profile Fundamentals for the Social Seller. In addition, we will show you how the path to social selling was blazed in our “Introduction to Social Selling” lesson. These courses are free and will be updated as changes are rolled out to LinkedIn and Twitter. Visit SocialSelling.Training to register today.

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Thank you to our sponsor: NCSU-TTS is an in-kind sponsor of the Linking into Sales Social Selling Podcast. To discover the adult learning and professional education opportunities available please visit http://linkingsales.wpengine.com/ncsutts.

Audio Run-time: 13:31

The Linking into Sales Social Selling Podcast is a professional development podcast geared towards sales and marketing professionals that use social media tools and networks to support the sales process and help them become more proficient in social selling.

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