15 Questions to Ask When Evaluating Social Selling Platforms
Choosing the right social selling solution can be tricky. There are plenty of options on the market, and each option has its strengths and weaknesses.
To help you navigate through the decision-making process, we’ve provided you with 15 basic questions that you should ask yourself when evaluating social selling solutions.
Publishing
1. To which social networks can I publish using this solution?
Where do you want your sales team to be active? LinkedIn? Facebook? Twitter? Make sure that your solution allows your team to publish to those networks – from the platform, without copying and pasting.
2. Does this tool allow me to schedule posts ahead of time?
Our brains aren’t made to toggle between tasks. According to the Harvard Business Review, our productivity decreases by 40% when we try to multi-task.
If your salespeople have to manually update their Twitter feeds every hour, they will lose precious time. However, if your sales team can sit down for 15 minutes and schedule a few posts for the day, they will have more time for other tasks.
3. Does this tool allow for batch posting (i.e. posting to multiple accounts at one time)?
If you have several social media accounts, you don’t want to lose time by writing and rewriting posts. You want to be able to push content to several accounts all at once.
Content
In order for social selling to work, salespeople need to be active on social media. An easy way to maintain an active presence is by sharing content related to their company and their industry.
4. Can my sales team easily share my company’s content (e.g. blog posts, videos, infographics, etc.)?
When your salespeople share your company’s content, they amplify the reach of your company’s marketing efforts. More people sharing content means that more people are likely to see your company’s blog posts, videos, and infographics. What will your team have to do in order to share your company’s content? Is there a lot of copying and pasting involved?
5. Out of the box, does this tool provide a library of third-party content?
Study after study shows that buyers trust third-party content more than branded content. If you want your sales team to be seen as a trusted source of information, you may want to consider having them share third-party content. Can your sales team share others’ content from the application – without having to copy and paste and without having to spend hours building their own library of sources?
6. Does the solution have content personalization capabilities?
There’s a lot of content out there. Machine learning and artificial intelligence can save you time. A good tool can help you sift through all that content – by learning what you like and what you don’t like.
Prospecting Intelligence
7. Does this software enable me to keep tabs on my prospects and/or their companies?
Social sellers are always looking for trigger events – those moments when they can reach out to their prospects and sell their solutions. Does the platform provide you with a way for you to look for opportunities to engage with the prospects?
Analytics
8. What types of reports does the solution include?
Standard social media reports include metrics like reach, clicks, and retweets. Are those metrics provided?
9. Will I be able to measure success based on these reports?
As Jay Baer has said, insight takes effort. It’s unlikely that a solution will provide you with every report that you would want to run. But does the solution give you enough data to find insights?
Pricing, Support, and Training
10. Has the vendor provided me with full transparency of pricing?
You know what’s the worst? When you’re about to close a deal and you notice a bunch of extra charges… Please don’t let this happen to you.
11. How does the vendor handle technical support?
Does the vendor have priority case routing? Does the vendor provide phone support or e-mail support? When is the support team available? It’s technology; plan on running into snags.
12. What is a typical timeline for implementation?
Does this timeline fit what you had in mind? In general, the quicker the timeline, the quicker you can start using the tool and finding customers.
13. What is the vendor’s training program like?
What is the onboarding process like? Does training cost extra? How many training hours are included in the monthly fee?
General Conclusions
14. Will my team be able to use this tool quickly and easily?
Is the interface intuitive? You don’t want to spend your time creating complex workflow videos to help your team understand how to use the tool, nor do you want to spend your time answering multiple questions about the tool.
15. Does this solution give me the full functionality I need now – with room to grow?
You don’t want to buy a tool today and then outgrow the product in 6 months. You would have to go through the long process of evaluating software – all over again. You would have to go through the process of training your team – all over again. Bah-humbug.
Good Luck!
We hope that you find the right solution for you! If you’d like to evaluate Trapit, request a 15-minute demo!
More Social Selling Resources
Image via Mufidah Kassalias