How to measure your social selling Results

Do you know what your results really are? 

So we get asked this question by every client we work with. "How do we measure what we get from the social activity we are being trained on?
Well it starts with a plan that might just look like this:

SOCIAL SELLING PLAN

How to create a social selling plan

 Measuring your results starts with a plan!
Content
What kinds of content are there? ;
Original - content we create ourselves
Shared - content we find and re-purpose by sharing with our comments
Best ratio is 1:4 or one original for every four shared.
How much content do you need? A good target is 1 / day

Engaging prospects, how to do this?
Develop target customer lists and identify all the key people you can find (Account Based Marketing)
Develop hashtag lists that suit the content and customers you are targeting 
Connect with key people across all of your networks and social channels consistently
how many? 10-15 new / week is a good start

Direct marketing - social channels 
Finding the right channels to engage and reach out to your customers, fishing where the fish are. Just remember that it's not just where they are but also the behavior of the channel that counts. Some channels are great for engagement while others are better for creating website traffic if set up properly
How many direct marketing / channel? (targeted content), at least 1 per week / channel

Warm calling prospects 
Once engagement has developed, the next step is a real conversation, but now a warm one with someone who wants your call. Most B2B sales (unless very transactional) do not get made on social, they get identified and developed
What's a good number? No less than 5 / week

Prospect call in's or website leads
Self explanatory really, keeping in mind that social activity likely led to these calls or leads and need to be confirmed with the customer once engaged. This would also include any direct messages that came in from corporate social pages...
The volume for this is dependent on how effectively you are driving social leads back to your website with content based SEO.
Content based SEO should be driving at least "5" leads back through website, if not, let us know and we can help

Calling the unreachable
Not all contacts we need to engage are directly reachable so we have "2" options, I recommend you do both! First by targeting all the people around them with your content and social engagement, the odds are good that you are reaching them. Second, if you know that in fact the account is actively consuming your content, there is zero harm in using the your phone in a novel new way...by dialing it! Does not work often but when it does you've just connected all the dots. Because this is low level activity it's not something you will do much of but when necessary it can still be a fruitful activity that only takes a few moments.
The volume of this is entirely dependent on your social sales plan and your activity level, count on 5-10 / week. 

Referrals 
This is the lifeblood of any business and social is absolutely the best way to generate high quality and high volume referrals. There are a number of very effective ways to leverage online referral development, ask us more! 
1-2 / week is a good start!

Industry events 
This is not about trade shows which are no longer about lead generation but rather are about product and brand promotion. This is about actual events for your industry where you can still use good 'old fashioned networking skills but in a targeted and surgical way. One / month is good with an additional goal of at least "5" new industry contacts gained online thereafter.

Sales channel referrals
Do you have suppliers and vendors you rely on? Then you have potential sales channels. Of course if you use actual re-sellers even better, but this is not always the case. Finding those companies who offer parallel services or products to yours can also be great for lead generation. Lastly, connecting with them via a social platform and partnering can yield amazing results for both! 
Once you have a few of these in place planning on "1" / month is a good start!

Webinar / Online needs review 
Don't let the word "webinar" fool you, this is a one on one online process where you can qualify and confirm that you can provide value to your customer. This can be set up directly via social selling process or from your channels and often leads to a quote or proposal as a next step depending on your products or services. 
Given how effective these are they should be built in to your strategy aggressively starting at 2 / week and moving quickly up from there...once someone is actively engaging it's no more than a few additional clicks to get into an online session. If not sure about how to do this, let me know.

No plan, no results, it's just that simple. Social Selling is the single most productive way to develop customers today, however, it's not easy! 
Lastly, we also get asked..."Where will I find all the time for social selling??"
That's easy, stop doing all the traditional sales & marketing activities that are costing you time and money with poor results!
Now you have lot's of time!