Thought Horizon Resource Center

Can You Be Successful Without Social

Getting Meetings with Social Selling

How Has Social Selling Changed

What is Social Selling

Why Does Social Media Matter in 2021

Social Engagements Make Consultancy ’ s Newsletter More Popular than Ever

Sometimes sharing on social media can do more than just keep your team ‘top of mind’ with your clients. Our consultancy client made 50% of their new revenue each year from referrals and upsell business. Keeping this pipeline full was critical to year over year success especially post-pandemic. The firm’s main way to stay in touch with clients was an old-fashioned monthly email newsletter. In it they would curate the best industry news and keep the contacts ‘warm’ in order to keep the phone ringing. During COVID the newsletter flagged around open rates. With less opens, referral business also slowed. What to do? We implemented our Ready For Social platform and let our writers and editors begin finding content each week that would keep the consultants active on social media. The results were as expected: Client drove 400K in reach monthly in social Engagement per share (EPS) was on the high side for clients of a similar size/ scope: 9 EPS But the best results the program drove weren’t even in social media. Open rates on the Newsletters began to soar. At the same time, the funnel began to fill up again for referral business. The consultants were being praised by clients for the fabulous content they shared in LinkedIn and elsewhere. About this time, we began offering our Newsletter feature in Ready For social.

We figured that our content was too good to just live a life inside social media. Why not also allow users or companies to harness the content and created preformatted HTML newsletters? We married this idea with our analytics. By looking at the best performing posts online in terms of engagements, likes and clicks, we can suggest the content that an email recipient might find the most interesting as well. Creating a newsletter with our platform takes less than 3 minutes. When our consulting client caught wind of how effortless our platform made newsletters they were quick to adopt our platform for their monthly newsletter. They even allowed consultants to create their own newsletter that went to their network. Not surprisingly, the funnel is bigger than ever with referral and upsell business.

Quantifying the Value of Social Selling in the Enterprise

This global tech firm wanted to go big with social selling but had to prove that the program could not only succeed but also accurately measure the affect social selling had on sales and new revenue. We deployed our Ready For Social
platform to just 4o sellers and marketers as a pilot. After 6 months we looked at the cumulative results.

These sellers achieved social success for sure.

• 2mm in social reach
• An average of 25 engagements on each social share

When measured against paid social posts and advertising in this highly technical industry the program already paid for itself. In some cases, social platforms wanted $10-$20 per relevant keyword ‘click.’ But that is just the beginning of this
story.

The real question was still unanswered. How were all these social touches converting to new prospects, leads and, ultimately, deals? With a little help from our user survey function and correlations with the client’s sales ops team, we
scored as follows:

• 1,000 new contacts cumulatively in LinkedIn driven by social posting
• 60+ new leads
• 80+ new deals

Even when considering just a 10% attribution to the deals brought into the funnel, the ROI on Gross Margin was phenomenal.

So, just how did we achieve this? We applied our time and expertise in creating the right content for these users. We focused on content centered around vertical markets and created categories for the sellers to choose from. The team could find content relative to the vertical markets they were assigned to. Using this method they became online ‘thought leaders’ in those verticals. We also found the best industry news and focused that content based on geography and market segment. Our platform gave users a chance to quickly understand the content and personalize it before it was scheduled to share at an appropriate time in the sellers’ target time zone.

What’s next? Our client is moving to SalesForce and an Account Based Selling model. We have been tapped to understand better which clients are interacting with what content shared by whom. We will score and log this data before combining it with SalesForce data to truly understand the day-to-day value of social sharing for B2B sales.

Applied Social Selling: How much business you can get in 6 months

01 – 8.5 M+ REACH (how many people were addressed on social)

Sustained social media presence combining thought leadership and CTA posts assures share of mind

02 – 110K+ ENGAGEMENT (likes, shares, clicks & comments on shared content)

Engagements with the content are important step in the customer journey and checkpoint for the messaging relevancy

03 – 4+k NEW SALES CONTACTS (newly gained connections/followers on social media)

Expanding the social network helps to set up present and new sales opportunities

04-  270+ NEW LEADS (sales leads, pure and simple)

New leads coming from existing clients and from new prospects thanks to reaching the buyer in the right time

05 – 200+ NEW DEALS (sales leads, pure and simple)

Despite long sales cycle client sees new deals impacted by social selling

Short ReadyForSocial product walkthru

New Product Quickly Gets Traction: Case Study #1

Penetrating a New Market: Case Study #3

Sales “Stuck in IT”: Case Study #4

Social Selling Training and Implementation Strategy

Social Selling increase revenues

TH Module 1 Why Social Video

BluePrint to Integrating Social Media

Social Selling and Marketing in 2016

Case Study – Organic Reach Through Social Selling