Listen Up! And Listen Good Before You Engage

How often in sales training do the experts tell sales people “listen to what your prospect is saying. Repeat back what you heard to confirm you understood the question.” It is a fundamental principle in good selling – understand the prospect to be able to provide the solution. This practice applies well to Social Media engagement for business.

An excellent blog post from Washington DC communications firm Livingston talks about this. We have the step of “listening” as our very first element in working with clients. The difference in Social Media is that you don’t begin by vocally asking your “prospect”, in this case your market, what they want/need. You listen to them talking in various Social Media channels.

We work with clients to frame the questions for which they need answers. Then we do a lot of listening using our own set of proprietary tools. There are many On-Demand services that can do this listening from radian6 through to Buzzmetrics. Regardless of what tool is used (they all have good and bad elements) the act of listening is a critical first step towards engagement with Social Media on a business level.

While a company blog may be useful, it’s not where to start, for that is “telling” as opposed to “listening”. Through listening first, a business can understand the shape, tone, style and nature of the conversations taking place, or not taking place, in the Social Mediasphere. The insights from this “listening” will help form a better strategy for how a business deals with Social Media. You will be able to better determine budgets, resource requirements, technologies to use and more.

If you want to close the sale, you need to listen and understand the prospect, provide the right solution…and then ask for the sale.

(Author: Giles Crouch, Managing Partner)