Apurva Chamaria shares the changing dynamics of social selling

Apurva Chamaria, Vice President & Head, Corporate Marketing, HCL Tech shared valuable insights on social selling.

Chamaria explained that in traditional selling, the decision was taken by three or four people. However, this model has completely changed.

“As per latest studies by some analysts firms, for any deal above Rs 30-35 crores, there are more than eight to nine people involved. It has now become a committee based decision making. The change has come in because social selling has become very prevalent. All your prospects are there on social media, tweeting and talking about what they are looking for. Here lies a significant opportunity for all service providers,” he added.

Elaborating further, Apurva Chamaria explained that the key changes in the area of digital selling are that the decision makers have become cross-functional. Most people earlier thought that social media is used for brand building and running campaigns. What has really changed is now social can generate leads.

According to a report released by LinkedIn, buyers and sellers, who practice social selling, see more than 16% Y-0-Y jump in revenues. In addition to this, social sellers also have more than 2x chance of getting promoted.

Sharing tips on how to incorporate social selling into ones business strategy, Chamaria said, “Your whole profile has to be very customer centric, rather than being just a blabbering board.

In order to create your social persona, you need to have a clear defined personality on social media. Secondly, publish content and if you can’t write, then curate it. While curating, always remember to attribute to the writers, who have originally written it. Third step is finding buyers on social media. Fourth involves, listening to your prospects and start connecting with them. Final step is where you need to start approaching your prospects. You should always engage in a classy manner, without sounding creepy and desperate.”

According to him, earlier the three steps of social selling were ABC - ‘Always be Closing’, now it has become ‘Always Be Connecting’. Nimble, 360 social, Hootsuite, Octopost, LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Followerwonk are some of the top tools for social selling which he shared.

Apurva Chamaria, Vice President & Head, Corporate Marketing, HCL Tech, shared his thoughts at #SMLive organised by Social Samosa.