Get The Preliminaries Out Of The Way

I’m obviously a huge advocate of social technologies. But nothing can ever replace the value of a one on one, in the flesh business or personal meeting. That chance to shake hands or the power of a hug when reconnecting with a long missed friend. Not even good video conferencing can do that. In business, sometimes you just have to look them in the eye.

But what business social technologies do very well is get the preliminaries out of the way. The questions I ask as a CEO when a sales person comes calling are “Who are you? What’s your experience? What makes you who you are?” I’m sure you too ask similar questions in such situations.

The value of tools such as LinkedIn, Plaxo or FastPitch in business are that they provide “evidence” of your business and those who have used your company’s services and your personal reputation. Be honest here; if you’re looking at the LinkedIn profiles of two sales reps you’ve met and one has absolutely no recommendations from former co-workers, clients or supervisors and the other one does…well?

This is our personal “social capital” or perhaps “personality capital” that we build as we progress through our careers. Already recruiters and executive searchers are using LinkedIn and similar tools extensively to research and identify key candidates. We have reached the point where it looks odd if you aren’t engaged in some social media channel to some degree.

So it’s unlikely you’ll “close the deal” via LinkedIn or a blog, but you stand a better chance of speeding up the process a whole lot and getting closer to the deal win. And speeding up a sales process or business development initiative is worth money.

What about you? What do you think?

(Author: G. Crouch)

Using Social Media for Sales and Prospecting: 2 Keys

In training over 300 sales people on how to use Social Media for prospecting in the past two years there are two key elements that tie together “why” use Social Media channels for sales prospecting and “how” one can have a greater chance for success. So I’ll lay them out here;

1. Evidence: When you are looking to buy something from someone, one of the first things we look for is proof that a) the person you’re dealing with has experience and has hopefully delivered on their promises before which leads to…

2. Trust: Can you trust the individual to deliver on their promise? Will they be responsible with your company’s money or your money? How reputable are they as an individual and the company they work for?

Sales is all about relationships. Relationships evolve over time but are built on trust and trust in sales starts with evidence…the proof of who you are.

This is perhaps the biggest advantage of Social Media tools being used in sales. You can more quickly build trust and provide evidence. Take a service like LinkedIn. In one of our research projects we asked 150 business decision makers what they looked for first on services like LinkedIn…85% said they first check to see if the person has recommendations. If they didn’t, they were 90% less likely to “trust” that person at first. After that they looked at their connections and how they portrayed themselves. Too little information was as bad as too much or lack of any activity.

If you’re in sales then you understand that you first have to win a prospects trust before you can “close” the sale. Social Media channels are not for “hard pitching” but they are superb ways to reduce the sales cycle by building trust.

Ask yourself; if you gave a client a list of 30 people to call to check your “evidence” of you and your company when you first spoke to them…would you? Probably not. But a quick perusal of their LinkedIn, eCademy or Plaxo profile is another matter.

(Author: G. Crouch)

Selling in Social Media Channels: Some Pitfalls

There’s a lot of discussion around “how to sell using Social Media” (we found 1,400 blog articles since July of 2009) and I’ve had the distinct pleasure of working with and training over 100 salespeople over the past year. I’ve learned a lot and hopefully my clients have as well. I also do a fair bit of research into tactics used. Here’s some pitfalls I’d like share.

The Blunt Pitch: Those sales folks who put the hard pitch in right up front. These are tactics like putting in your newsfeed lines such as “if you’re looking for a home, I’m the guy from which to buy.” Says who? or “I sell life insurance so talk to me today.” Why? How’re you different? I don’t know you.

Misuse of Valuable Tools: I like taking polls in various places online. Mixx and LinkedIn offer various polls that users can create themselves. I’ve noticed a trend when it comes to sales people using these polling tools; they’ll tend to ask an all too onvious question like “what Social Media tool do you use most for marketing?” While I’ve noticed some very clever use of polling tools to ask broader questions and engage.

Then there’s setting up discussions in places like FastPitch, LinkedIn and ecademy. Here sales people will start discussions that are far too obviously attempts to discuss their product. If you check the comments, well, there are none, or it’s someone from their own company.

Social Media channels and networks are places to engage, and it doesn’t mean results overnight. It takes time. Blunt selling does say what you do and let’s be sure, honesty and transparency goes a long way in Social Media as it does in real life. But straight hard pitches is not engaging and uncovering the broader needs of the person, and so much of sales is how we relate to people. Blunt tactics immediately throw up a wall, one that may not come down like the Berlin Wall.

What do you think?

Keep The Sales Manager Away From Social Media

Sales is, for the most part, is a “near-term results” effort. On a daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly basis a CEO is always looking at the sales numbers. Because the purpose of a business is to make a profit and sales helps drive profitability. Otherwise you’re a charitable organization. I’ve seen a lot of expectation that because Social Media seems to be so “instant” with services like Twitter or Plurk and Facebook, it should be able to bring instant sales results. But it isn’t.

Social Media is a managed investment – like marketing and communications. It’s been argued and I agree, that through Social Media there is a true model for Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC). Properly researched, planned and implemented, marketing has an ROI. Marketing essentially paves the path for the sales team to close the deals…to ensure they have deals to close in the future.

Social Media enables marketing (and sometimes sales) to foster deeper relationships in the marketplace in order to aid the organization across all aspects of the company. Product feedback for the product management team, company feedback from shareholders, indicators for increased market uptake and feedback to human resources for hiring issues.

Simply looking to engage in Social Media for immediate sales opportunities will only lead to disappointment. Engaging in Social Media means you must be prepared to make an investment with resources; your company’s most precious resources – people. A senior manager wouldn’t execute a marketing campaign without research and planning just as a sales manager wouldn’t let a sales team loose without a good plan – ideally sales and marketing work together.

So it is with Social Media; you need research, then a plan, then you execute. Over the longer term. Look for metrics to measure progress as you would in marketing. Expecting instant results is setting up for failure. We’re not saying don’t let the sales manager near your Social Media efforts, but they shouldn’t expect to instantly expand the sales funnel or salivate over huge sales gains in the next sales period. Social Media takes time to garner results – that means months.

And if you’re calling your agency to create a video that will go “viral” to get those instant results – hang up now. Certainly you can make a cool video – but it’s the public, not your marketing team, that decides if anything will go viral as Shai Agassi so truly stated among others.

Social Media Selling Will Not Close the Deal

We provide a fair bit of training around using Social Media for selling. Most often we are asked “how do I turn friends into clients?” and we’ve seen this question posted on other blogs, by some prominent bloggers. This question has been posed by many. Given the many workshops and private consultations we’ve run, we’ve developed the Horizontal Hourglass Theory and believe that actually closing the deal within Social Media tools and services is the exception, not the rule.

Why then? It’s all about human behaviour and Video Conferencing is the prime indicator. If video phones were so desired and the market really wanted them, we’d all have them on our walls at home or office desks by now. If we really, as consumers, wanted them. We would have quickly adopted those clunky early versions and the demand would’ve driven technical innovation. But it hasn’t. Perhaps Cisco’s Telepresence has the potential. Perhaps. Today, the costs remain prohibitive even to 97% of businesses.

While Social Media is changing our society and enabling greater communication than ever before, we still crave physical contact. To clearly see facial expressions and full body language; all vital parts of building rapport and trust. This becomes obvious when even the Social Media space is filled with all kinds of events that bring people physically together in the same space. Even that Microblogging wonder Twitter has a word for Face-2-Face meetings – Tweetups. Then there’s Podcamps to record podcasts as groups, and SobCon and Unconferences along with the other Social Media events, conferences, gatherings and dinners.

So it is with the sales function. Social Media tools enable you to prospect in new ways, then connect initially, using Social Media tools to provide “evidence” of who you are and progress a deal to the point where it’s time to meet. And meeting is and will likely always be, vital. After the deal is closed and the delivery commences, Social Media comes back into play in helping work through the delivery and after delivery to stay connected with your clients increasing client loyalty. Thus the Horizontal Hourglass Theory (which is a bit cheeky, but we like it anyway.) So while Social Networking and Social Media may not actually “close” the deal, it can certainly help you find more prospects, get closer to the deal point for less cost (reducing your COGS on the balance sheet) and improve loyalty. That’s still bottom line positive impact.

(Author: Giles Crouch, Managing Partner)