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Why today’s Social Selling is more like Anti-Social Selling

David Salmon

June 05, 2019

There is a smarter way to do social selling that stops you being anti-social and starts you engaging your customers the right way

We’ve all been in social situations where we have got stuck with the classic ‘bore’ – you know, the individual who loves the sound of their own voice and loves talking about themselves.  Their idea of a good conversation is to make sure you know as much about them as is possible in the shortest time possible! The result? “I’m not getting stuck with that person again”! Then there is the person in the corner on their own, not joining in, looking like they don’t want to be there, saying nothing and not bringing anything to the party at all! The same thing is happening on social media.

Which brings me neatly to the rapidly growing phenomenon of social selling. While there can be little doubt that, done correctly, social selling is incredibly powerful (and there are plenty of stats to back it up) the truth is, in many instances, it is being done badly and in a way that actually is damaging to the possibility of a sale.  Why? Because many people engaged in Social Selling programs have slipped into bad habits that make what they’re doing Anti Social Selling! By this I mean that they are sharing content that is little more than ‘brochure ware’. It’s not very ‘social’ – customers don’t want to be sold to and at the end of the day your employees don’t want to be advertising channels. Which explains why many become disillusioned with the whole social selling thing and simply don’t do it.  Which is a massive missed opportunity! 

At this year’s B2B Ignite event I’m going to show how there is a smarter way to do social selling that stops you being anti-social and starts you engaging your customers the right way. If you’re attending make sure you come along to my session on ‘Why social selling isn’t working for ABM and what to do about it!’ and visit us at Stand E3 to discover how we are bringing smart content together with cutting edge technology to scale best practices for your key account teams. If you can’t make the show, come back here in a week or so for a blog which covers the content I’ll be presenting!

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