Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

One of the most important tools in any salesperson’s tool kit consist of success stories that demonstrate capabilities, build credibility, and move the prospect closer to signing on the bottom line. Here’s a template used to describe the three parts of the commonly told success story:

In a previous article, I shared the 5 Core Steps to Consultative Selling. The steps were:

• building rapport,
• conducting a needs analysis,
• crafting a solution,
• proposing / selling the solution,
• and then servicing the account.

Today, let's look at each of those steps from a social selling perspective.

According to Forrester research, 74% of your sales process happens before a buyer calls you. These invisible sales stages, in which buyers initiate the selling process without calling on sales, gives them tremendous freedom to browse, learn, and compare without your influence. This customer-controlled, pre-selling environment has given rise to "social selling."

So how do we apply social selling to each of the 5 core steps?...