Marketing Yourself Online = €$£

Joe Kenny

In sales it’s important to be able to market yourself effectively to both potential employers and potential buyers. The way to do this is constantly evolving. In the past a good salesperson was only expected to generate revenue through traditional sales, this was typically over the phone or face to face. Social selling is becoming progressively more significant. We can now use social networks to leverage our contacts, this allowing us to build successful effective relationships, prospect leads and achieve sales targets through channels that weren’t previously possible.

This all sounds great but how can you apply this fresh approach to sales for yourself? First thing you need to do is build your own professional brand. You need to choose a platform based on your target audience. It might be LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram; wherever you will find your buyers. Next you need to grab their attention. Engage with your network, share useful and insightful information and show how you can add value to potential customers. This will create organic conversations about your product/service meaning you can easily build lasting, worthwhile and mutually beneficial relationships.

So how can we measure the benefits and advantages of this approach to selling? We use the social selling index. There are four pillars: Brand, People, Insights and Relationships. This is scored from 1-100. This allows you to uncover new opportunities and to compare yourself to competitors and peers.

Can this help you secure your dream sales job? Absolutely, the more people see you market yourself and share useful and insightful information, the more relevant you become in your industry. As people like, share and comment your brand and network grows. By doing this, you become better known in your industry. For example, a sales manager or director picks up your CV and reads through it, you have similar experience to a lot of other applicants but your name is familiar and they recognise you (your brand). It gives you a great advantage over others.

Has sales really changed? Well there is an old saying “people buy from people”.  This is most definitely still true, what has changed is the way we can now engage with people through social networking.