I recently had the pleasure of being a guest on Don Carmichael’s and Adam Freeman’s podcast, ‘Two Presales in a Pod‘. We discussed Social Media for modern Solutions Consultants and how important it is to have an online brand. You can find the episode here.
Social Media has been around for well over a decade. Almost 70% of American adults have a Facebook account to keep in touch with friends and family. B2C businesses have been using social media for some time for marketing and brand awareness.
In the business world, however, LinkedIn is the primary business networking tool with 760 million users globally. LinkedIn now goes far beyond the common perception of primarily hosting people’s CVs. For B2B Solutions Consultants, it is an opportunity to gain credibility, build a personal professional brand and to create thought leadership content to influence stakeholders.
A study by Google and Millward Brown Digital found that 46% of decision-makers are now aged between 18 and 34 years old (up from 27% in 2012), which coincidentally, is the largest social media demographic. This solidifies, therefore, why as Solutions Consultants we should be utilising Social Media platforms to its full potential.
The Future of Social Selling
Companies are coming back round to the idea that ‘people buy from people’ with the rise of Social Selling. Social Selling is distinctly different from Social Media Marketing whereby a brand engages with many, aiming to increase overall brand awareness or promote a specific product or service. By allowing Account Executives and Solutions Consultants to build a personal brand on social media, social selling gives prospects a more personal approach with more one-to-one engagement coming from a person with credibility rather than a faceless brand.
A recent LinkedIn survey found that B2B buyers are five times more likely to engage with an Account Executive who provides new insights about their business or industry. For Solutions Consultants, it is no different. We need to build credibility to be able to perform in our role as Trusted Advisors.
Making a Good First Impression
There have been several studies over the years about how long it takes to form a first impression of someone. I have seen answers ranging from 5 minutes to 27 seconds to 7 seconds. Regardless of the figure, the consensus is that people are building their first impressions of you within a very short space of time.
With the rise of LinkedIn, we can no longer measure the length of time it takes from when a Solutions Consultant steps into a room for a demo or joins a call for a discovery. No, first impressions will start with your online presence.
As Solutions Consultants, we should be looking up our stakeholders on LinkedIn before walking into a demo to build a stakeholder map and to understand the agendas of each individual. In the same way, we can only assume that our stakeholders are doing the same for us.
With LinkedIn Premium, it is possible to see who has viewed your profile. Personally, since people have more time in many industries due to Covid, I have seen a significant increase in stakeholders viewing my profile before I have spoken to them.
Therefore, to build this credibility, we must learn to utilise LinkedIn effectively to help build credibility and form first impressions well before the first meeting with a client.
Becoming a Trusted Advisor
There is an unfortunate stigma attached to sales. Many stakeholders unsurprisingly think Account Executives are there to sell products and services. Solutions Consultants, by comparison, are the trusted party and can play the role of a trusted advisor. We have the depth of knowledge and experience which can really benefit the stakeholders and it is, therefore, important to build this credibility through social media before having that first conversation with the stakeholder.
Becoming a trusted advisor to your clients will benefit the opportunities you are involved in several ways. You will be able to ask questions that the Account Executive simply doesn’t have the credibility to ask. For example, I will always have a conversation with my clients about their roll-out plan. If this were to come from the Account Executive, it sounds like it is to get the prospect to commit to a date and to help their forecast. Instead, coming from a trusted Solutions Consultant, it can be framed from a technical feasibility standpoint or based on their experience of other roll-outs.
How to Build Your Credibility with Social Media
In this section, I have outlined some practical steps you can take to build your credibility on LinkedIn.
Title
Your title is important because it describes your job role in your organisation. Titles such as Senior Solutions Consultant or Value Architect are great because they don’t feature the word ‘Sales’. Clients don’t want to be sold to, they want a solution to their challenges so not having ‘Sales’ in your title builds instant credibility when compared to your sales counterpart.
Credentials
Your credentials or education can also play a significant part in building credibility through social media. Some Solutions Consultants will have a background in the functional area into which they are selling. In this case, highlighting any qualifications in that area will be a benefit and will build credibility.
For example, I work in Solutions Consulting for finance and accounting software. Before becoming a Solutions Consultant, I worked in Commercial Finance for a large, global company and became a chartered accountant. This helps me in my role as I can speak the language of my stakeholders, and I have actually experienced many of the challenges they are facing. As such, I highlight my status as a chartered accountant on LinkedIn to help build credibility with any stakeholders who view my profile before a meeting. It makes it clear that I am coming at a solution from the perspective of someone who has been in their shoes rather than having the ambition to sell.
Experience
Experience is equally important. If you have worked in Solutions Consulting for the same or similar products for some time, then it is certainly important to call this out. Your stakeholders will recognise that you will have worked with several similar organisations with similar challenges that you will be able to help them solve.
It is important to recognise that although job titles can sound very different, they may all have similarities. For example, the role of Solutions Consultant, Sales Engineer, Presales Consultant and Value Architect at different companies may, fundamentally, all be similar roles. If this is the case, call out the similarities between roles to show your expertise.
Knowledge and Expertise
Knowledge and expertise don’t necessarily come across immediately on your LinkedIn profile, but what you post and share certainly does.
By sharing relevant content to your industry you can quickly build credibility once you are connected with your stakeholders. As a Solutions Consultant, I believe it is easy to underestimate your expertise. But consider this:
For the solution you are selling, your stakeholders have only ever seen their specific challenges within their own organisation. As a Solutions Consultant, even with limited experience, you will have seen the same, or similar challenges across multiple organisations. This instantly puts you in a great position to share insightful thought leadership from a perspective that will be valuable to the companies you are consulting.
Content to Share
There is a multitude of different types of content you can post and share. Some may come from leaders in your industry, some might come from your own company or you might even choose to create your own content through posts and articles. Below are some ideas of what to include.
Sharing your company’s marketing materials
There are many software vendors that have their own blogs or publish their own whitepapers. These can be good sources of content to share with your network, especially as there are several companies I know of that incentivise their Solutions Consultants and Account Executives to share these types of content.
My recommendation is to vet these pieces of content yourself and only share the ones that you think will be most beneficial to your clients and prospects. By adding your own thoughts or comments along with the piece of content, you are adding value and building your own reputation.
If you simply choose to click share on any content that your company publishes, however, you risk looking like a sales rep which can damage your reputation as a knowledgeable, trusted advisor.
Sharing industry insights
Sharing industry insights can help balance out any content you share from your own company to help give a more balanced approach. In my industry, there are industry analysts who publish surveys of finance professionals as well as the big consulting firms who publish their own thought leadership.
These pieces of content can be useful to back up the positioning of your solution and have more credibility as they don’t come from within your organisation.
Sharing product demonstrations
A recent trend I have noticed on LinkedIn is Solutions Consultants (or ‘Technology Evangelists’) sharing very short demonstrations of their product. This will often be a 30-second video with some commentary or I have even seen even shorter clips. When posting a video on LinkedIn that is less than 15 seconds, it will play in a loop just like a GIF.
I have seen these most frequently utilised for a new piece of functionality on products or where there is a new UI element that can be demonstrated very quickly. I think these types of demonstrations can create excitement about a product but without giving too much away in a public forum.
Taking this approach will of course require complete sign-off from your company as I’m aware of many organisations that refrain from posting anything related to their products publicly.
Write your own articles and posts
As mentioned previously, Solutions Consultants are in the powerful position of seeing the same or similar challenges over and over again across various companies. This allows us to add a lot of value and insight to stakeholders either via short posts or long-form articles.
A Word of Caution
It is important to remember that every organisation will have its own unique policy or best practices relating to social media. It is imperative that while building a personal brand on social media, you are in line with your company and its marketing department.
However, I feel a lot of people are resistant to building an online presence as they have a fear of not being “on brand”. The companies I have worked for have always wanted employees to have a strong presence to help build the reputation of the company and create ‘buzz’ around their solutions.
Therefore, before posting anything online (at least for the first time), I recommend running it past your marketing team. For example, although this blog doesn’t ever feature anything about the company I work for, I still ran it past my marketing team before publishing anything.
Conclusion
Ultimately, in the modern age of business, social media cannot be ignored. With the rise of Social Selling and the awareness that ‘people buy from people,’ it is becoming critically important to have a strong online presence.
As Solutions Consultants strive to become trusted advisors to their clients, building credibility online is becoming fundamental to their success.