BUSS8020: Social Selling Playbook Report for IMA Ltd. Analysis

This report, prepared for IMA Ltd., a data management and solutions provider, analyzes social selling strategies to foster sales growth. The report begins with an executive summary, followed by an introduction outlining IMA Ltd.'s business and the potential of social selling. It then explores understanding ideal clients, focusing on large manufacturing companies and their needs for efficient data management and ERP systems. The report details goals and objectives, content plans, and templated messaging for social media campaigns, using the Coca-Cola Company as a case study. The core of the report details a social selling playbook, including strategies for reaching potential customers, converting them into actual customers, and retaining them for long-term growth, to achieve sustainable sales growth for the company. The report concludes with a reference list.

Running head: SOCIAL SELLING PLAYBOOK REPORT
Social Selling Playbook Report
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author’s Note:

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Executive Summary:
This report has been prepared to analyse and explain the sales potential and sales growth of
the IMA Ltd which has just celebrate their 30 years of business in the last year. The company
is mainly operating in the domain of data management and data solutions. Social selling is the
process of finding and engaging with the new customers through the use of social media and
makes the potential customers into the actual customers. Social selling can be a good
platform for the IMA Ltd to find new clients and engage with them for selling their products
and services. In this report, some such social selling tactics have been analysed and discussed
to achieve the objective of sales growth of the IMA Ltd.

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Understanding the ideal clients..................................................................................................3
Goals and objectives..................................................................................................................6
Content plan...............................................................................................................................7
Templated messaging.................................................................................................................8
Social selling playbook..............................................................................................................9
References and bibliography....................................................................................................10

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Introduction
Indirect Material Master Data known as IMA Ltd is a market leader in the domain of
data processing and in material master data solutions. The company is a Canadian company
and providing their services globally. With the aim of increasing their sales volume and a
sustainable sales growth, they have been planning and formulating various strategies. Sales
forecast and marketing strategies is one important of them. On the other hand, the social
selling can also be an important part of their marketing strategy to attract new clients and
customers and to engage them with the customers. Social selling is the process of finding new
customers through various social media platforms and connecting and communicating with
them to sell their products or services (Hughes & Reynolds 2016). As IMA Ltd is a data
processing and data solutions provider, the company can find and engage with new clients
through the social media campaign and digital marketing. In this report some of such
possibilities and strategies of social selling for the IMA Ltd has been analysed and described
in details.
Understanding the ideal clients
Executives of the IMA Ltd have recognised and acknowledged that in the year 2017
the market has been changed drastically. Hence, they have to make certain changes in their
product and service offerings with a completely new marketing strategy. They have
developed an SAAS based model tool that will provide customers to clean and maintain their
own data. The client base of the company consists of the big manufacturing companies and
mass suppliers. Some of the existing clients of the company include Honda, Pepsi and
McCain Foods and they have been the customer of the company for a very long time (Tuten
& Solomon 2017). The target customers and their service needs have been discussed in the
following paragraphs.

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The target customers of the IMA Ltd include various mass manufacturing units and
suppliers all over the globe. For example, large scale automakers, food and beverage
companies and fast moving consumer goods manufacturing companies (Tuten & Solomon
2017). As the company is operating internationally and wants to sell their products and
services all over the globe, potential clients of the company are spread all over the globe. The
managers or the executives of the target companies are the decision makers in deciding the
information need of their ERP system and data processing system (Tuten & Solomon 2017).
Hence, the sales executives of the IMA Ltd want to reach out to the executives and managers
of the target companies.
Big manufacturing units which are mainly assets based, have a problem of
maintenance of sparse and inventories to support their manufacturing units and to reduce
wastage and stoppage of production due to shortage of inventory and sparse (Kilgour, Sasser
& Larke 2015). Hence, the ERP system offered by the IMA Ltd is aimed at managing the
sparse efficiently and to manage the inventory of the company to help their production unit to
run the production process without and hamper and uneven stoppage of work.
The issues relating to the inventory and assets management may hamper the
production and may lead to complete shutdown of the manufacturing thereby leading to a
huge revenue loss and wastage for the company. It affects the job of the managers and
executives as their responsibility is to provide manage the manufacturing process and the
business seamlessly to contribute towards achieving the overall goals of the business.
If the companies do not manage their inventory and spares assets properly with an in-
time data processing solutions, then, due to shortage of spares or inventory the manufacturing
process could be hampered and the manufacturing could be shut down for a considerable
period of time. It will make an increase in non productive costs thereby earning no revenue

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for that period of time. Hence, in the worst case, it may lead to a down growth of the
company and affect their competitiveness in the market (Kilgour, Sasser & Larke 2015).
Most of the manufacturing companies have their own and customised data
maintenance and data processing systems, and the store keepers are responsible for the
inventories and the assets managers are responsible for the management of spares assets.
They think that these much of strategies could help them in managing their inventories and
spares assets to support their production process, but is a huge manufacturing units these
much of strategies and facilities could not help the company to actively manage their spares
assets and inventories to support their manufacturing process to achieve their overall business
objectives.
They describe as the management of inventories with the traditional inventory
management system and register would be solution to their inventory management system.
They also believed that the traditional assts register may help them in managing their spares
and to overcome the problem of assets management (Tuten & Solomon 2017). From the past
experiences of various big manufacturing companies and instances it can be observed that,
the traditional assets register and inventory management system could not be helpful for a
large scale manufacturer to manage their inventory and spares to help in seamless
manufacturing process.
The SAAS based tool introduced by the IMA Ltd in material data management could
be a saviour for the executives and managers of a large scale manufacturer in managing
inventory and spares by providing in-time data and information for the availability, and
requirement of inventory and spares to help in seamless manufacturing process of the
company (Kilgour, Sasser & Larke 2015). It will save a significant productive time of the
managers and the work of them in managing the inventory and spares assets would be hassle

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free and much easier. Hence, implementation of the SAAS based tool which is offered by the
IMA Ltd could reduce the work pressure of the executives and managers of the large scale
manufacturing company and make their work life balance much more comfortable (Kilgour,
Sasser & Larke 2015). It will ultimately add up to the contribution toward the overall
objective of the business.
Once they have the solution to the problems of inventory and assets management,
they could analyse the data as produced by the ERP system and make strategic decisions
based on that information to improve their production process and assets management.
Financial aspect is one more important part associated with the assets management. If a huge
amount of unnecessary inventory is held and unnecessary huge stocks of spares are held then
it would result into a huge capital blockage, and a loss of interest.
Therefore, in such a scenario, a perfect solution would be an effective ERP and
information system which will be helping the executives and managers track the level of
inventory and spares assets as and when needed and will generate various information and
reports in managing the spares assets and inventories effectively.
Goals and objectives
Social selling is the process of reaching out to the potential customers through the
digital marketing or social media platforms. Hence, the social selling objective of the IMA
Ltd is to reach out to the target audiences or the target customers through the social media
platforms. Social media is a platform where all the people gather around from all the
segments of an economy to share knowledge, views and information. As it is a good platform
for sharing information, and people from all the segments come across, therefore, it can be
used to communicate with the business executives and managers of large scale manufacturing
companies to reach out to them with the product and service offerings. Hence, the first

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objective is the reach out to the potential clients and customers to engage with them to sell
their products and services.
The second most important objective of the social selling is to convert the potential
customers into the actual customers by engaging with them ad to retain the customers for a
long term. These two objectives can help the team of the social selling for the IMA Ltd to
achieve their overall objectives of sustainable sales growth.
The goal and objectives of the social selling for the IMA Ltd can be measured by the
number of customers and clients reached out through the social media platform. The number
of customers reached out by the social selling executives can easily be traced and that count
can help the team in measuring the achievement of the team to fulfil their social selling
objectives (Minsky & Quesenberry 2016). Another important measure is the number of
potential customers converted into actual customers. It would help them to measure the
achievement of the second goals and objective of their social selling goals.
Content plan
Contents are the information that is being circulated through the social media platform
in social selling process. It includes various questions and pictures promoting the product or
services offered by the company. It must be attractive, so that it can gain interest of the
potential customers at a sight.
Including various questions in the content of the social selling is an easy and effective
strategy to make the social selling effective and successful. Some of such questions which
can be included in the social selling content of the IMA Ltd have been listed as follows.
1. Are you feeling problem in managing your assets and inventory?

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2. Are you frustrated with uneven stoppage of work due to shortage of inventory and
spares?
3. Are you finding a perfect ERP solution for your business?
These questions can easily attract the interest of the potential customers of the IMA
Ltd and if they reply to these questions then the social selling executives can engage with
them and proceed further with the sales promotion strategies.
Sources of contents could be the reports based on the manufacturing process of
existing companies which depicts the problems faced by the managers and executives in
managing the inventory and assets of the company. Another most important source of the
content could be published research reports on the assets management and inventory
management (Minsky & Quesenberry 2016). Lastly, interactions and interviews with the
executives and managers can help in finding suitable questions for social selling campaign.
Templated messaging
In this part a target company has been selected and the decision maker in regard to the
ERP system and information need of that company has been selected. Based on the nature of
the company, manufacturing process and information need and template of questions have
been selected for the social selling (Ashley & Tuten 2015).
Target Company: Cocoa Cola Company
Decision Maker: James Quincey
Template Message: Hi, James Quincey. Let us congratulate you for being one of the
successful executive officer and leading a global beverage company Coca Cola. We are from
IMA Ltd serving large scale manufacturing organisations with material data processing and
materials data management. Are you worried about production stoppage due to shortage of

9SOCIAL SELLING PLAYBOOK REPORT
inventory and spares? Do you want to improve the ERP and information system of your
organisation in order to better the assets and inventory management system? We are here to
help you.
Social selling playbook
Week Activities
Week 1
Target customers and clients: Select target audiences in the social media
platform.
Week 2
Find the needs of the customers: Research about the information need
of the target company.
Week 3 Select question: Select template questions for the target customer.
Week 4
Template message: Prepare the template message and communicate
with the decision maker of the target company.

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References and bibliography
Ashley, C., & Tuten, T. (2015). Creative strategies in social media marketing: An exploratory
study of branded social content and consumer engagement. Psychology &
Marketing, 32(1), 15-27.
Constantinides, E. (2014). Foundations of social media marketing. Procedia-Social and
behavioral sciences, 148, 40-57.
Dwivedi, Y. K., Kapoor, K. K., & Chen, H. (2015). Social media marketing and
advertising. The Marketing Review, 15(3), 289-309.
Felix, R., Rauschnabel, P. A., & Hinsch, C. (2017). Elements of strategic social media
marketing: A holistic framework. Journal of Business Research, 70, 118-126.
Hughes, T., & Reynolds, M. (2016). Social selling: Techniques to influence buyers and
changemakers. Kogan Page Publishers.
Inversini, A., & Masiero, L. (2014). Selling rooms online: the use of social media and online
travel agents. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management.
Kilgour, M., Sasser, S. L., & Larke, R. (2015). The social media transformation process:
curating content into strategy. Corporate Communications: An International
Journal, 20(3), 326-343.
Kim, Y., & Talbott, J. S. (2018). Marketing social selling jobs: a re-labelling
strategy. Marketing Intelligence & Planning.
Macarthy, A. (2018). 500 Social Media Marketing Tips: Essential Advice, Hints and Strategy
for Business Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn,
and More!. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.

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Minsky, L., & Quesenberry, K. A. (2016). How B2B sales can benefit from social
selling. Harvard Business Review, 8.
Murie, A. (2016). The Right to Buy?: selling off public and social housing. Policy Press.
Öztamur, D., & Karakadılar, İ. S. (2014). Exploring the role of social media for SMEs: as a
new marketing strategy tool for the firm performance perspective. Procedia-Social
and behavioral sciences, 150, 511-520.
Reed, C. J. (2018). Social Selling Mastery for Entrepreneurs: Everything You Ever Wanted
To Know About Social Selling. Evolve Global Publishing.
Revilla, N. (2018). Social Selling. El arte de vender en entornos sociales. Bubok.
Shanks, J. (2016). Social selling mastery: scaling up your sales and marketing machine for
the digital buyer. John Wiley & Sons.
Tuten, T. L., & Solomon, M. R. (2017). Social media marketing. Sage.