Paradigm Shift: Social Media became Social Business. Social Business is driven bei Social Selling. Social Selling has the biggest impact on all of us in the history of mankind. Because Communication and Transaction get almost unified. “ —Andreas Weber, Founder and CEO of Value Communication AG
Social Business enables Social Selling in Innovative and Transformative Senses
By Şükran Ceren Salalı, Value Communication Fellow
Welcome to The Age of the Paradigm Shift: We are already arrived in the age of innovation and transformation in many sectors. Accordingly, several agents and companies are making different researches and trying to develop solutions in order to let companies and businesses to adapt themselves into changing market system.
McKinsey made a recent research regarding the relationship between B2B service providers and Brand Owners and their relationship between their customers by examining publicly available documents of Fortune 500 and DAX 30 companies for information and data. Based on the research, there is a huge gap between the brand messages and what the customers really want to know.
While B2B service companies focusing themes such as social responsibility, sustainability, and global research, customers give more importance on effective supply chain management and specialist market knowledge. Surprisingly, these two themes were least mentioned ones by B2B suppliers.
It is apparent that those B2B service companies require important innovation and transformation in order to satisfy the expectations of their potential customers. Therefore, the importance of „ValueCheck! Audits“ are apparent as a solution to check the weaknesses of businesses in Social Selling and Social Businesses. „ValueCheck!“ questions include many related topics so as to strengthen the strategies of companies.
Beyond McKinsey: We need a new Social Selling Approach
Greg Hyer, the author of the text Social Selling is About Opening, Not Closing, refers to the method of Social Selling as an effective provider for contacts between the company and the customer. In this respect, opening and creating relationships built on trust and value rather than being close is very important. Social Selling is also about opening new relationships by offering various principles to guide sales people so as to keep buyers well informed about services and products.
There are some steps to follow in order to open up a relationship such as initializing contact and greeting, asking discovery questions, recommending solutions, and closing the sale.
Using social media networks and tools is very effective in the process of Social Selling. In fact, it doesn’t mean that you will suddenly close a deal on LinkedIn, however; you will be able to contact with the right person to open up a relationship to initiate the process.
Not only Social Selling, but also building the social enterprise is crucial in the process of transformation and innovation. Based on an article published by McKinsey, using social technologies are effective in order to build the social enterprise. Moreover, four principles are counted as a guidance of the implementation of social technologies such as
- adding value but not complexity,
- experimenting and learning,
- tracking impact and
- evolving metrics.
Our Take:
Adapting these principles will help a lot to create the new type of social enterprises as a deep understanding of social media and social communication is crucial in the market system and business relations.
We arrived already in The Age of the Customer. Digital transformation became reality. Which means every entrepreneur and business person should be able to understand the importance of Human-to-Human (H2H) aspects. Social Media Networks and Social Selling are not a „nice to have“ but crucial for the sake of opening new relationships and building new social businesses. At least the challenge is to be able to connect innovation to profit!
Please read more if you want to learn how to Connect Innovation to Profit via „ValueCheck! Audits“.
+++++++++++++++++++++++
You want to get in touch for further insights? — Just send us an email!
a.weber(at)value-communication.com
@ValueCommAG