If you have embraced social selling, then you know everything is different. The foundational laws of 
strategic business selling physics have changed and there will be three types of sales professionals in the world of 2017 and beyond; those who will cling to the “old ways”, those who have no clue what to do, and those who embrace all of the tools available to achieve dramatic success.
The first and most overwhelming new reality of the social selling age is the notion of the “infinite top of funnel.” The traditional sales funnel has been a function of limited outbound marketing and the efforts of sales professionals making calls, sending emails, and setting up meetings. All of these efforts led to a finite top of funnel. Social selling breaks that paradigm; your web site, digital marketing strategy, SEO, publishing of blogs, and establishing connections with customers and prospects creates an environment where leads and opportunities should be pouring into the top of your funnel 24/7. The best part of the infinite top of funnel is that it is customer driven; customers and potential customers are going to leverage social media to gather information, form perceptions, and reach out to you whenever they want.
The infinite top of funnel, then creates challenges and opportunities that today’s sales professionals may not be prepared for. Here are a few tips and perspectives on what to do to manage this phenomenon:
Stay Focused
The temptation of this new world of social selling is to cast an even wider net and hope to drag in many more prospects and then qualify them for business. The problem with that approach is it’s harder to tell the difference between the suspects and the prospects and you could spend 95% of your time researching and qualifying and almost no time really selling. My suggestion is to keep your social selling efforts focused and reasonable. Stay within industry groups, connect with potential prospects that are directly or one level removed from the economic decision maker, and target only those prospects for continuous connectivity that are close to a business opportunity. In other words, just doing social stuff without a plan will yield chaos.
Make Your Connection Efforts Meaningful
I think we are getting close to the saturation point of viewing the same old retreaded posts, pictures, and articles. Simply reposting stuff is not effective. Directing something meaningful to a potential prospect is just the beginning. You need to find or create original material and you need to make every action and effort to connect meaningful to the other person. If you become a chronic re-poster, that is the perception your potential customers and prospects will have of you and I think you can do more harm than good.
Use Social Selling to Develop a Deeper Understanding of Your Customers and Prospects
All of the tools to look inside the heads of your customers and prospects are at your fingertips. What are they saying? What are their interests and passions? What are they sharing about themselves and their companies? There has never before in the history of strategic business selling been this insight so take advantage of it! Follow what they are doing, track it, and then formulate a plan for getting involved in their world by adding some value to that world. For example, if a potential customer posts a picture of their team launching a new product at a tradeshow and is sharing how proud she is of the team and the product, that is a goldmine of information for you! At the very least, you should build a list of questions to engage in about their strategy, goals, objectives, challenges, and opportunities. But you need to be proactive and not reactive with all of that great information!
