Built-In Social: Essential Social Marketing Practices for Every Small Business

Chapter 9

Relationship Selling in the Trust Economy

The sales process is more than a series of steps. It is a guidance system that makes everyone aware of what should be happening and how to get on track if it isn’t.

The process of social marketing should ultimately convert attention and engagement into profitable outcomes. That means there has to be a way to translate interaction into sales—and hopefully relationships that lead to repeat business and referrals.

This book assumes that your business derives the majority of its revenue—if not all of it—from the sale of tangible products or services. You don’t necessarily accomplish this conversion digitally; rather, the process involves salespeople working with your customers or clients. To be clear, the one thing that stands between your social media engagement and cashing checks is the integration of basic selling principles into your social marketing process.

Despite what you may have heard about being a born salesperson, selling is a skill that can be developed with experience. It’s easy enough to do when you apply the principles you have learned in this book—earning your audience’s attention, engaging them, and then—once you have earned their trust—taking them to a better place with your products and services. As you know, you can accomplish this by making emotional connections with potential buyers, completing what legendary sales trainer Zig Ziglar describes as a “transference of feeling.”

THE SALES PROCESS

The selling profession ...