5 Ways Social Media Changed The Sales Game (#2)
Here is part two of my blog series focused on sales and social media. This deals with the way we go about finding new business and amount of energy we spend on herding leads in.
#2 FINDING PEOPLE WHO ARE INTERESTED IN YOUR PRODUCT/SERVICE
While developing a sales team for a certain company, I remember an exec (who had NO sales exp.) asking me, “How, with sales down, can we not try to win every sale? We should be doing everything we can, everywhere!” I don’t think the exec ever really understood the philosophy of focused energy – or, to use an old sales metaphor, the idea of “fishing where the fish are.”
Now, with social media, inbound marketing can crossover from web marketing to the sales staff as an everyday tool.
- Hacks waste time whoring themselves out to everyone and end up getting ignored, desperate and broke.
- Pro’s rely heavily on established client base for referrals and the marketing/web department to drive leads.
- Sales Pro w/ Social Media can build searches that feed RSS results on any question your product/service can answer and add to their RSS Readers, and add region, date, and phrasing to get either precise or broader results. It’s truly amazing!
Set your searches, build your groups and then go on with handling business. Like you check email, come back, check the nets you’ve cast and see if there are some fish to focus on. Think Deadliest Catch.
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ScottW
Aug 24, 2009
7:07 pm
Finding people who are interested in my service would be great John. However, with the economy being what it is these days, finding new prospects is difficult as most folks are trying to hoard their budgets or hold out for the cheapest service they can find. This isn’t necessarily the best way to go with the marketing budget IMHO. But, I’m all ears!
Mike
Aug 24, 2009
7:18 pm
This blog makes a whole lot of sense.
At Homepath Products we’re finding that, while we use a fair number of traditional marketing and selling approaches, social media provides a very efficient new set of tools. In fact, as we compare productivity of various methods, social media provides advantages in immediacy of response, interaction, and course correction where traditional techniques prove unwieldy.
There are drawbacks…but we believe the positive attributes outweigh the negative and we’re able to quickly study and learn how to manage the new tools and opportunities that arise as a result of their use. It’s a pretty wild new world for business and we eagerly look forward to integrating new and exciting social media elements into our mix.
John Garrett
(Author)
Aug 26, 2009
1:24 pm
First, thank you to both of you for contributing, really.
Scott – I don’t think there is a “budget” needed for the ideas shared above, in fact, that is the beauty of using social media to engage conversations that are happening in your realm of service. This is done passively, collecting questions and concerns that you can meet through Twitter – store in a RSS Reader.
Social media isn’t “magic” – so please don’t hear that. There is a basic sales metaphor being shared in the three types of approaches and the point is to be wise with our energy and stay where the client base is talking. Then engage. I’ll get into how social media changed networking in a blog post or two.
Mike – agree heavily with the idea of carrying a mix of approaches. Good thoughts…