Ask the Expert: Mario Martinez Jr., on Social Engagement and the Modern Buyer

Mario Martinez Jr. takes social selling to a whole other level. We talked to Mario about how sales reps can use social selling to boost their sales. He also gave us tremendous insight into how modern buyers behave and how sales reps should shape their content toward the modern buyer’s mobile-attached behaviors. Spoiler alert: video, video, video. 

LI: In your experience, what is the greatest indirect benefit of social selling? Other than more sales, what other unexpected advantages have come your way?

MM: I think a key indirect benefit of social engagement is displaying your talents for future job opportunities. If you want to be found internally for a promotion opportunity, or externally for any other role that you may want, then what you need to do is continue on with social engagement and demonstrate a commitment to it. For me personally, it launched my company M3Jr Growth Strategies into a whole new category. I personally was found for two Board Advisory positions, featured in Forbes, Inc., Business Innovators, and many others.  My personal brand was so notably visible that I was referred for a recent keynote speaking event. 

Social engagement will help to identify your expertise, your position in the marketplace and your perspective, which will allow you to build up a following and/or a liking by people who may want to buy from you or hire you down the line.

A lot of people will tell you to use social selling to become a thought leader. I don’t subscribe to that. I think sales leaders should strive to become influencers of their network, whether that is a macro network or their micro network. So what’s an influencer? Influencers educate, enrich, & enhance our experiences. They help us discover new things and inform our decisions! That’s it – and that by definition is the job of a sales person today when working with their buyers.

LI: What prospect outreach tips do you have for sales reps who are having a tough time standing out from the crowd?

MM: I’m a big, and maybe the only, social advocate who has incorporated into our social selling training the use of social video. Every sales rep wants to stand out from the competition and to be remembered by their prospective buyers.

Here’s four things we know about today’s buyers, they are:

• Digital enabled
• Social engaged
• Mobile attached
• Video hungry

Sales reps should consider the content they stop on personally while scrolling up and down their news feeds on any social platform. More times than not that answer will be photos and video. So why don’t we employ photos and video into sales engagement?

We know, seventy-eight percent of people watch videos online every week. Fifty-five percent of people watch video online every day. The stats do not lie. And experts say that number will keep climbing.

So ask yourself this question: How many videos are you sending to your buyers? It doesn’t matter if you use your iPhone to record and send a video or tools like OneMob.com.  The key is your buyers are video hungry and we’d be foolish not to respond by giving them what they want.

LI: A lot of sales pros are still learning how to maximize productivity while on social media. How do you personally stay so active on your social channels, and still remain focused on the deeper sales work that needs to get done?

MM: As a salesperson the most important thing that we can do is ensure that we’re planning our plan. Every day when you walk into your office you should make a list of the opportunities that you have open, and ask “What do I need to do today to move the deals along by HELPING my buyer?”  Then do it and don’t leave without doing it. 

Doing this will govern how you spend your day. When you’re on social media make sure that it is contributing towards a greater goal of targeted engagement.  Your sole focus in life as a sales person (unless you want to become a true thought leader) is to turn each engagement into value for your buyers and hopefully that drives a conversation.  Engagement could be 1:1 through messaging or email or in public.

For example: if your goal is to penetrate 50 accounts, the night before you should plan to check out 10-15 executives to learn what types of content you can engage with, and what types of content you can engage them with. Then the next day, engage!

LI:  What advice do you have for sales reps who aren’t sure what types of content to share on social media?

MM: I always suggest that reps need to have a minimum of two social personas, and a maximum of five. If all you do is publish content related to your company, you’ll wear out your buyer. With two, that means that 50% of your content is business related and the other 50% is personalized to what’s important to you.

For me, you’ll see me posting about content clearly about social selling. You’ll see me posting content about general, sales-related content. As a former VP of sales, you’ll see me posting content about leadership. I also am a big proponent and champion of motivation—thinking positive—so you’ll see me posting content related to motivation. My fifth is what I call the wildcard, which is anything that is top of mind that can help impact my brand or revenue. Anything past five personas is an unmanageable amount of content.

Across your personas, make sure that your content is influencing your network.  You want to drive them to do something—contact you, call you, ask you questions.

At the end of the day if you still don’t know what types of content to post to your social channels you should march into your CMO’s office and ask what content you can share which maps to your buyers persona. If they don’t have an answer for you, ask them, “What are you going to do about it?”

Another strategy is to observe what other influencers are posting. A great tool you can use is Feedly to get an idea of what people are posting and reading about.

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To learn more great tips from Mario Martinez Jr., check out his website where he regularly posts content and hosts a podcast. To learn more about social selling, check out our free eBook on How Personalized Selling Unlocks Competitive Advantage.