How to Measure the ROI on Social Selling

Maybe you’re having trouble proving the return on your investment of time and energy in social selling. Let’s see how social stacks up.

Your ROI on Activities

What is your return on investment for sending a thank you card to a prospect that took your call or connected you with the right person? (old school social)

What is your return on the time and energy you invest in reading business journals or newspapers, copying an article that might be important to your prospective client, and mailing it to them with a handwritten note? (old school social)

What is your return on attending networking events and engaging in conversations with your dream clients around the value that they need and that you deliver? (old school social, IRL)

How do you calculate the return on promoting your customer’s work to the people in your community who might benefit from it? What’s your return on helping them gain new clients, referring them new business? (old school social)

“I get it,” you say. But there’s more.

What is your return on investment for all of the calls that you made that weren’t answered and all of the unreturned voice mails? (Maybe you shouldn’t expect your prospects to beat a path to your door because you tweet well)

What is your return on the four-color, glossy direct mail brochure you mailed and your prospective client filed–unopened–in their round, plastic-lined filing cabinet? (Maybe you shouldn’t expect your dream clients to beg for your time because you have a nice blog).

The Straw That Broke the Camel’s Back

What is that opens relationships and allows you to create opportunities?

Is it the thank you card? Is it the continued calls? Is it the white paper with the personal note? Is it your engagement on LinkedIn? Is it your answer to a challenging question in a blog post you shared?

Prospecting isn’t an event. Prospecting isn’t a tool kit (it’s neither the phone, the mail, the social tools, the marketing, or the events). Prospecting is a campaign. It’s everything. Combined.

Social isn’t an event; it’s a toolkit. Social is one channel that allows the accumulation of touches, the opening of relationships, and the building of trust and mind share over some period of time. It isn’t the only tool kit. And it’s more powerful when used with the old school tool kits.

It’s the building of relationships over time that allows you to create opportunities.

Social selling isn’t anything new. We’ve been “social” for a long time. Only the tool kit has changed. Calculate the ROI the same way you calculate all of the other activities that make up prospecting.