Selling in Social Media Channels: Some Pitfalls

Best Practices•on November 9th, 2009•1 Comment

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?

How To Engage in Social Media? Know The Channel

Best Practices•on August 13th, 2008•No Comments

You know your organization needs to move into Social Media; but where? There are over 300 blogging services, over 200 news feed services and mutiple Social Networking services like Bebo and Facebook. Should you be everywhere? While it might be ideal, trying to be everywhere could cause more harm than damage over the long term.

Microblogging is just one example (the main channels are Twitter, Plurk and Identi.ca) where you can only place 144 characters. As Jeremiah Owyang points out, many brands fail on services like Twitter. In part because the concept of Microblogging doesn’t suit the brand and because of the ability to understand how Microblogs work and sustain a presence there. Microblogs come down to a “who” not a “concept” like a brand and thus require an “individual” to represent the brand. For a company, a Microblog might be more useful for crisis responses and good quick stories.

Success in Social Media comes from selecting the right channel and building, then sustaining, the right message(s) over time. Building a presence in Social Media also means investing some time and understanding the ROI is not immediate like banner ads and Landing Pages. Social Media is a Sustainable Marketing activity that is like marketing itself – a managed investment. Properly managed, an investment in Social Media will result in increased customer loyalty, lead generation, brand strengthening and product innovations.

So when looking at engaging in Social Media it’s all about finding the right channel and the right target market. You may not need to engage with Microblogging and perhaps just a blog is a good start and then develop your strategy from there. Segmenting in Social Media channels is as important a segmenting in Web marketing and marketing planning as a whole.