SOCIAL SALES ENABLEMENT: FAQ
Social selling is the process of attracting, engaging, qualifying and closing new customers via social media. Just like the traditional sales funnel, the social sales funnel involves a lot of activities at different stages of the customer journey, from educating buyers about your products and services to convincing buyers that your solution is better than competing alternatives and giving them a convenient way to make a purchase. The big difference is that all of these activities take place across various social networks before the customer completes the sale. That means that social selling requires different tools and skills than traditional sales, even though many of the core principals of sales and marketing remain the same.
Social sales enablement is the coordination of tools, content and workflows required to support sales and marketing activities over social media, including social networks like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, forums, and any other social site where customers gather. Typically this requires a platform that aggregates the content necessary to effectively communicate with prospects and customers, and makes it easy for sales and marketing teams to share content and promotions, track responses and gain new insights to improve results.
Unlike automation, which focuses on eliminating human processes, enablement focuses on making human processes smarter, faster and more effective. Both automation and enablement reduce the amount of human capital needed to drive sales, but enablement recognizes that social activity is fundamentally human, and that social selling is most effective when customers ultimately connect with a human being that can help them make smarter purchase decisions.
SocialRep is a best-in-class social selling solution, combining many features and services sold separately by other providers into a single solution. SocialRep combines advanced Social Listening, Content Curation, Employee Advocacy, Social Syndication, Social Media Management and Social Lead Generation into one platform that can be used as a standalone SaaS application, or as an integrated part of an existing marketing and sales ecosystem.
Unlike other sales portals, SocialRep uses patented AI and NLP algorithms to program content curation, eliminating 90% of the work needed to provide sales and marketing teams with timely and relevant content. SocialRep is currently used in more than 120 countries, and in 10 languages, with localized content curation and syndication to support sales and marketing anywhere in the world.
SocialRep includes on-demand training and the most advanced gamification programs in the field, proven to activate, motivate and accelerate sales adoption and long-term execution. SocialRep is the only social sales enablement solution that includes native functionality to support global channel resellers and dealer networks, based on SocialRep’s pioneering development of Inbound Channel Marketing.
Unlike speculative social media startups, SocialRep has been a pioneer in social marketing and sales enablement since 2008, with more than 40 enterprise case studies featuring global brands in technology, financial services, healthcare, pharma, automotive and consumer packaged goods.
SocialRep will help you identify, enable and accelerate marketing and sales reps can generate high quality leads with social marketing. We focus on activating the most capable partners in your community by giving them what they need to succeed. They need a continuous stream of intelligently targeted content, guided by proven inbound marketing workflows, to create an authentic voice that attracts prospects and customers to the solutions you and your partners provide.
SocialRep allows you to see which partners are adding value by adding a strong voice to your market dialog, and which partners are producing results by generating reshares, click-throughs and qualified leads. With SocialRep, you can invest your resources more wisely in partners who can prove their ability to perform, and you can measure ROI in Marketing Qualified Leads.
By helping your best partners develop their own brand voice, informed by content relevant to your shared market objectives, SocialRep helps you engage committed partners who want to succeed. If you want partners that will turn off their brain and turn their social media accounts on auto-spam, SocialRep is not the right solution for you.
SocialRep is a SaaS platform with powerful APIs that provide a flexible foundation for onboarding and integration. SocialRep can be used as a standalone hosted portal, or as an integrated component of an existing marketing, sales or channel ecosystem. All data inputs and outputs can be integrated with other systems via API, allowing single sign-on for users already authenticated through other applications, and allowing data integration with CRM, PRM and other sales support systems. For channel marketing, SocialRep can also be utilized as a campaign platform without an enterprise license, making your promotional campaigns available to thousands of resellers already using the SocialRep system.
SocialRep automates much of the work usually required to deploy and maintain sales enablement platforms, and provides services and support to take the load of your sales and marketing teams. SocialRep eliminates 90% of the work required to curate timely and relevant content to fuel social sharing, using AI algorithms and smart crawlers to populate most of the portal—you only need to provide initial input on solution topics, and periodic up-voting and down-voting of content to keep the pipeline tuned.
SocialRep analysts across the globe are available to localize content collection and maintain topic pages, as well as manage sales and promotional content, gamification and training. In most cases once the system is up and running, you’ll need one manager working less than an hour a day to manage a sales topic, with an additional program manager to coordinate internal resources and teams when managing multiple topics distributed across a global team. The average active SocialRep user spends about 20 minutes a session, three times a week, and begins seeing results in four weeks. Depending on the complexity of the sales topics, deployment typically takes four weeks to get your topic up and running, with longer lead times for multi-language and multi-topic deployments.
SocialRep is priced for enterprise and SME businesses sustaining large, or high-growth direct sales or channel networks. We offer all-inclusive programs including software seat licenses, team and partner training, defined campaigns and partner engagement programs, and start at under $10,000 per month. Most companies initially deploy SocialRep as a campaign “Proof of Value” program, allocating budgets for a targeted group of users to validate before commitment to an enterprise license.
SocialRep has returned over 20x ROI in Marketing Qualified Leads in initial deployment, without considering other benefits. Those numbers increase the more sales reps, partners and affiliates are added, with no substantial increase in costs. SocialRep also dramatically reduces resources required to source and produce content, providing substantial savings for marketing and channel teams. Finally, SocialRep provides unmatched visibility into the sales process across direct and partner sales networks, offering entirely new ways to track and optimize marketing and sales programs, such as identifying sales trends, tracking emerging SEO keyphrases, monitoring media influence, and identifying productive reps on direct and channel sales teams.
A brief description of the SocialRep system, including integrated services and training is described on The System page. A brief description of the SocialRep platform and technology is described on The Platform page.
If you’re an enterprise or SME customer, the best place to start is to schedule a demo. If you’re a current reseller for a technology OEM, you can request access to the Social Media Center.