The Most Common Mistakes and Their Cost

The first mistake is thinking that social selling is about quantity. It’s sending fifty invitations a day, liking a hundred competitors’ posts, and sending two dozen messages in Telegram chats. There is activity, but no results. Platform algorithms flag this as spam, limiting the distribution of your content and causing people to block you.

The second mistake is disrupting the balance between business and personal content. You only post cases and numbers: “Helped Company X increase revenue by 40 percent.” This is boring and lacks credibility. The client sees you as a sales machine. However, if you share too much personal content, such as vacation photos, work memes, or philosophical reflections, you lose authority. There is a fine line that must be carefully maintained.

The third mistake is forgetting to address objections. A client reads your post and agrees with the idea but doesn’t rush to message you. In this case, you need to reach out to them by asking a question in the comments, sharing an interesting article related to their topic, offering an insight about their company, or lightly provoking them. Silence in response to silence does not work. Instead, many simply wait and become disappointed.

The fourth mistake is failing to track changes. You build a contact list, but a few months later, half of the people have been promoted, transferred, or left the company. A contact is only valid in the present moment. Without constant updates, there is a high risk of contacting someone who is no longer relevant. Time is wasted.

The fifth and most costly mistake is failing to believe in metrics. “Our reach has increased, but we’re not getting any leads.” The conclusion is: “Social media doesn’t work.” In reality, reach is only the first signal. If everything is done correctly, you will receive a message from someone who has been reading your content in a couple of months, or maybe six months. Without patience and analytics, you will never understand how social media works.

Each of these mistakes costs more than it seems. The question is not if you will waste time. You will waste time either way. The real question is how much it will cost you.

For example, when Petr uses LinkedIn incorrectly for three months, it seems harmless. “Well, he spent some time; we’ll retrain him.” In reality, it costs real money. One salesperson spending five hours per week on social media for three months equals sixty hours that could have been spent working with existing leads or generating new ones. If the company’s average deal size is 500,000 rubles, then one or two lost leads equals 500,000 to 1,000,000 rubles in lost revenue. Add part of his salary for those three months. In total, more than one million rubles are spent on trial-and-error learning.

But that is only one person. If a team of five salespeople works incorrectly, the cost grows exponentially. Five people multiplied by sixty hours multiplied by the wrong approach equals a loss of five to eight potential leads per month. Multiply that by an average deal size of 500,000 rubles, and you get 2.5 million rubles in missed deals per month alone. Over a quarter, that is 7.5 million rubles.

What if the company hires a junior social selling specialist for 100,000 rubles per month instead of retraining salespeople? One hundred thousand rubles per month for six months equals 600,000 rubles. If the specialist is unfamiliar with the niche and makes mistakes, the result is the same: months of work wasted.

This is why executives shut down social selling after their first unsuccessful experience.

What Is Actually Required for Success?

Let’s start with the basics. Rather than trying to be everywhere, choose a channel for the market. The main rule is simple: Be where your audience is. Spreading yourself across all platforms is equivalent to doing superficial work everywhere. Depth is more important than breadth.

Second, conduct high-quality research on your target audience. Don’t just say “IT directors in general”; be more specific, such as “IT directors in manufacturing companies in a specific region with more than 500 employees and annual revenue above 500 million rubles.” A narrow focus allows you to create precise content that resonates. At the same time, pain points should come from real conversations and publications in niche chat groups and professional communities, not assumptions.

Third, create a content plan for at least three months ahead. Don’t write day by day. Understand the trajectory: Which topics are published when? Who in your target audience comments on them? What do they respond to? The first three to four months will be difficult, but afterward, you will understand how and when content works. Spontaneity destroys the system. Content should be built around the problems of your clients that you solve, not your product.

Fourth is team training. This includes not only salespeople, but also marketers, business developers, and anyone else involved in social selling. It’s not just one lecture on LinkedIn in 2020; it’s a real system. Topics include how to write a personalized message, how to read a customer’s post and find a point of entry in it, and how not to scare off a potential contact. There will be scenarios, examples, and case studies. Employees need to understand the logic and not just follow the steps.

Fifth is the integration of tools into daily workflows. This includes a CRM where social media contacts are recorded and a synchronized calendar with reminders for follow-up messages. Everything must function as a unified system. Although the first few months will be uncomfortable, you will later save significant time on routine tasks.

Sixth, get into the habit of analyzing. Do a weekly review of which profiles are active and which are not responding. Look at which content has generated engagement and which messages are working. These are not just numbers; they are feedback showing you what to change. Without this information, you are sailing blind.

Finally, the most important element is patience. Social selling is an investment in long-term results. The first six months require intensive work and system building. However, if everything is done correctly, a stable flow of inbound requests will result.

Three approaches

Option 1: Do it internally and retrain the sales team. Costs: During the first six months, costs include the training consultant, process restructuring, LinkedIn Sales Navigator licenses for the team, and CRM integration or separate tools that automate some of the work but are not connected to the CRM. You must also account for lost sales productivity, typically ranging from 5 to 15 percent, as well as time spent on errors. If everything goes according to plan, you may receive two to three leads per month starting in the seventh month.

Option 2: Hire a junior specialist in-house. Costs: The specialist’s monthly salary plus online tools for process automation. The number of leads per month received from the seventh month on depends on the person’s experience: it may be three to five leads, or it may be zero.

Option 3: Work with an agency or an experienced specialist. Costs: Monthly agency fees, which typically include tools but exclude CRM integration. Results from the seventh month are usually faster, with four to six leads per month. Advantages include lower hiring risk, structured reporting, and the ability to adjust the approach. The disadvantage is higher costs during the initial months.

Option 1 is the least expensive but also the riskiest and longest. Option 3 is the most expensive but the fastest and most reliable. Your choice depends on whether you are willing to endure a quarter of discomfort to save money or if you are willing to invest more to see results in the fourth or fifth month.

Patience and Timeframes

Nothing will happen in three months. Although profiles have been redesigned and salespeople regularly comment on directors’ LinkedIn posts, like their VK stories, and participate in Telegram chats with the right audience, there are still no inbound messages or visible results. This is the most difficult stage because it is “invisible work.” You see activity on social media, but you don’t see leads. You start to doubt: Is this simply a waste of time?

In reality, the most important process is happening during these three months: the client is getting to know you. They see an expert comment on a post about a logistics issue and remember that your company exists. They notice that your employee regularly shares insights about their industry. They read case studies in your Telegram channel about the success of similar companies. Your salesperson becomes a “familiar face” in their feed.

By the fourth month, the first results begin to appear. This is not because you started selling, but because the client decided to speak with you. They might say, “I saw your post about automation and thought you might have some advice,” or “I often see you in the comments. Let’s discuss.” By the sixth month, you may have two or three contacts per month. These conversations are not cold because the person is already immersed in the topic through your content.

The turning point comes between the seventh and twelfth months. After six months, people who have seen your salesperson as a thoughtful professional rather than a spammer will begin to become clients. Calls, meetings, and deals ensue. You will have a stable inbound flow of five to seven serious contacts per month, two or three of whom have a high probability of becoming clients. These are no longer “random leads.” They are people who have chosen your company.

However, this is the critical point. If salespeople only posted price lists and sent generic messages like “Let’s connect” during the first three months, nothing will happen in the fourth month. The system was broken from the beginning.

Even if salespeople did everything correctly, if they were guided by someone who does not understand your industry, results will also be weak. The content will not resonate, and contact will not occur.

This is why most companies lose patience in the third month. They invest effort, see no results, and shut the project down. If executed properly, the same three months are an investment that pays off. Social selling works, but only if you are ready for the long haul and capable of doing it right.

Oksana Pilshchikova, an account director at SellPromo, wrote this article for T-Business Secrets.