Many management teams are struggling to align around the significance and impact social selling has on complex products or services. Most agree that some products like consumables, and other “quick purchases”, benefit from a social media strategy.  But what’s the difference between social media and social selling? While differences are many, think of social media as the channel of communication and social selling as the user of that channel.  Social sellers, otherwise referred to as today’s modern sales people, leverage multiple forms of social media to achieve their goals.  Social sellers are communicators, sharers, educators, networkers and connectors. The size nor the complexity of what they’re selling matters… they are socially connected.

If your company provides a highly complex and/or expensive solution and you’re still wondering about the value social selling can have on your sales efforts consider these points:

1. 92% of all B2B purchases begin online
2. 300 billion emails are sent each day
3. 40 – 70% of the purchase decision is made before the buyer meets with a sales person
4. Less than 40% of sales teams reach their quotas
5. Average sales force turnover hovers at 50% each year
6. Google alone reports more than 1 trillion searches each year
7. The global average of time spent on Facebook each day is 20 minutes, in the United States it’s 40 minutes per day
8. 500 million tweets each day
9. 4 billion videos viewed daily, totally 6 billion hours of time watching videos daily
10. More than 50 marketing automation platforms on the market designed to “push and pull” content into the public domain

It’s hard to imagine any product or service being immune to the impact of hundreds of social tactics available to buyers. If a buyer isn’t looking at your company you can rest assured that he or she is looking at you, your sales people, your management, and even other customers using your service.  The fact is, you’re open for business 24/7/365 thanks to the internet and the tools that have been introduced to buyers over the past few years.  The company’s brand, your brand, and that of your employees is on display for all to see, evaluate, judge, avoid, or select… the controls rests with your buyer.  Are you ready? Social has arrived. There’s no turning back. It’s up to you as to how you want to be seen, when you want to be seen, and where you want to be seen.  One things for sure… if you’re not visible… by definition… you’re invisible… and it’s quite difficult to sell something when the buyer can’t find you.