Interview questionaire included questions about risk management and strategy for social selling. Four interviewed participants said that their company has a strategy for social selling.
One participant whose company did not have a clear strategy for social selling said that he does not know if the company has a strategy for social selling or at least he does not know about it.
Other participant said that he does not know clearly what is the strategy for social selling and he brought up that it is due to his own passivity because the company has for example social media clinics each friday where the personnel can participate and discuss about social media usage in work. This participant had got some guidelines from somebody that common sense has to be used but courageous and acitivity are the starting point for the social selling. Even though of the clinics, it seems that if all of the employees do not know the strategy, it is not well implemented. It could be seen from the participants’ social media pages and their company’s social media pages that even though there can be posts in company’s social media pages, the social selling is usually personified to a particular person of the company.
The one participant who said that his company has a social selling strategy said that it is also the reason why there is no risks because there is a clear policy for social selling. The reasons for social selling strategy were the risk management and so the company has a united and a right message regardless of whom from the company is doing social selling. In this participant’s company, the social selling strategy is implemented to the company through meetings where everything is gone through and planned that who will post what, how and when. This participant said that he is controlling and checking what has been posted but there has not been need for any correction. The other participant, who had a strategy of his own and a strategy for the company of social selling, said that his social selling strategy is 70-20-10 model which means that 70 % of the posts is affiliated to companies or sales or management in general, 20 % of the posts are bringing stronger the matter of their industry so people are linking that which is the
business of the writer and 10 % of the posts are purely advertising. When only 10 % of the posts are purely advertising, the people do not feel intimated that the person from the company only advertises his/her business. This was seen from many of the participants LinkedIn profiles that they are providing also other content addition to pure marketing of the company or its products.
It could be seen from social media that the participants actively participate in social media channels, especially in LinkedIn, where they are actively liking and commenting other people’s posts, providing posts themselves which contain news from their business or personal life, discussion about current topics, fun posts, important and helpful information for the potential customers and current ones and marketing of the company and its products. In addition, usually there was a certain personal hashtag that was used in all of the posts of a certain participant.
This highlights the importance of providing other than marketing content because when the person is posting all kind of personal and interesting materials and only a small amount of pure marketing, the marketing part merges naturally with other content and does not irritate the receiver.
One participant brought up that purpose of the overall social selling strategy of the company is to signal that the company has a good and relaxed atmosphere but the business is done professionally and in addition increase the humanity that who are the people behind of this business. Strategy is shared with the employees who are doing social selling and if there are changes in it. The changes are done quite quickly if there is something that is not working and has to be changed. One participant said that their strategy is to provide personal content in several different social media platforms because eventually the company will reach the people and get contact from the potential customers that can even be from unexpected people or situations. It could be seen from the participants’ social media pages, especially from LinkedIn that some of the participants were more careful with their social selling considering the personality of the social selling but it could be seen that those who were courageous with their social selling and their personality and humor showed clearly in their activities in social media were usually the ones who got more visibility for their posts in social media. For example, one participant said that the videos that included his dog, got significantly more attention compared to the videos where only he was. This is a good example that salesperson should create imaginative content that stands out to succeed in social selling. The review of the participants’
social media pages are not connected to a spesific company used in this study to remain goodwill and avoid personal evaluations of the participants and their social selling.
Furthermore, participants want to instead of straight selling, provide help and information to the customers. This can be seen from some of the participants’ LinkedIn profiles that they are providing helpful posts or articles of some topics that their potential ccustomers, customers or other interested people can find help and get more information of some topic for free. In addition, one participant found that companies should make sure that the contacting of the company is easy and effortless in every social media platforms and when the customer contacts the company, the answer and reaction has to be quick from the company’s side. If there is any new social media platforms, they want actively look for the opportunities for the business and sales from that platform. One participant brough up that ”do not compare if somebody gets 200 likes and you get 20 that you would be inferior but you have to understand that what is your target group because sometimes five likes can be better than 500 if they are straightly people from your target group. -- If there is five likes and they are from the wrong group then you have to change your strategy and do something differently”.
One participant said that he thinks that younger generations have an advantage in social selling because they have born with the phone in their hand so they know better what to do in social media. In addition, he found that social selling requires perseverance and there has to be strategy and systematic doing and in some point it can be seen that somebody knows that person and there will be new opportunities. Even though the clear vision for his own doing, the company where he was working does not have own strategy for social selling. He brought up that ”we should have a better documented sales processes and we have not taken it to that far that we could and I have trusted in this that doing replaces, so the systematic and hard doing replaces the same amount of systematic and hard planning so we do not have (strategy) and to be honest we have not had a need and we have not got any crisis that somebody would have put the brand down the toilet and it should have been digged up from there because many times the crises are the ones that give the wake up call that we should have some kind of guidelines to this social media”.
When asked from participants do they use push or pull strategy in their social selling most of the participants used pull strategy in social selling which means that they try to pull customers to their social media platforms and create discussion with the prospects and customers. Some of the participants also used social media platforms to inform prospects and customers about their company or products and contact them through social media which is more a push strategy.