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ATD Blog

Leveraging Social Media to Improve Your Sales

Tuesday, April 1, 2014
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No longer are the days when customers relied on company sales materials and other customers’ testimonials to get the information they needed to make a purchasing decision. Today, Internet search results serve up an avalanche of information to explore, and social media tools can provide objective, third-party reviews about the quality of products or services. 

As a sales manager, you have the opportunity to leverage key social media platforms, tools, and industry-niched social communities to improve your sales process and bottom-line results.

Effective selling in today’s environment includes a large amount of attraction marketing: engaging in social media communities where your sales team can establish themselves as the go-to person to solve a problem or provide useful information to a customer prospect. By positioning your team as credible subject matter experts within social media networking communities, you’re creating effective brand ambassadors who are in the right place at the right time to answer the right question for a customer prospect in a time of need.

There are four phases involved in establishing a social media selling strategy:

  • Phase 1: Align Social Media Strategy with Key Business Objectives
  • Phase 2: Establish a Social Media Foundation
  • Phase 3: Understand Customer Needs
  • Phase 4: Engage Customers Based on Valued Relevance 

Align social media strategy with key business objectives
The sales conversion path within this more complex funnel begins with a strategic planning approach that recognizes that social media marketing tactics must be executed in the right sequence.  The strategy and messaging must also be aligned with key business and brand communications objectives that are already part of the annual planning of your company. 

This diagram illustrates how the social selling strategy flows from key business objectives.

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Establish a social media foundation

There are three key initiatives you can execute to quickly establish a foundation for your social selling efforts:

1)      Leverage existing branded content and sales materials that can be accessed on social media.

2)      Build out more robust social media profiles for your individual sales team members.

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3)      Position your sales team members as the go-to subject matter experts in social media communities.

Social media networking platforms provide functions to distribute your sales material and content through the individual profiles of your sales team members. By leveraging existing materials, you ensure that your social selling activities are aligned with the social media brand marketing efforts driven by your marketing colleagues.

Another key benefit is the increased exposure of your sales message across the social networks of each team member. For example, if your sales team of 10 members has 500 people in their respective LinkedIn network, your sales information can potentially reach more than 5,000 people. This is a highly efficient and cost effective way to build awareness.

Understand customer needs

One of the key benefits that social media brings to any strategic sales strategy is the ability to leverage real-time prospect insight through social listening. Simply stated, social listening is the ability to monitor social conversations that are happening across the social media platforms and web news sites.

There are free social listening tools that you and your sales team can leverage to gain insight on target customer needs, and to identify when a prospect is looking for a solution. You can learn what people are saying about your brand, category, and company at large. You can gain the same insight about your competitors.

Engage customer prospects based on valued relevance

Customer prospects will measure the value you and your sales team bring to the social media community by what you contribute to the community, your usefulness, and your ability to offer relevant solutions to their business problems. Make sure the time you invest on social media is focused on engaging the right audience who are not only potential customers, but are also potential referrals.

The dynamics of social media bring into play the power of peer-to-peer influence and the purchasing decision chain. Keep in mind that social media selling and marketing starts with building and earning trust relationships. It’s not about connecting with companies; it’s about connecting with people who work at those companies on your target customer prospect list.

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Summing it up

Leveraging social media as part of your overarching sales strategy can pay dividends if planned and executed correctly. To be successful, you’ll need solid profiles of your sales team that convey trust, credibility, and expertise. You’ll also need to develop a content strategy that first offers value to the social media community which ultimately places your products and services in a value context.

Finally, you will need to build a social network anchored in human relationships in which the presence and sincere contributions of you and your sales team can reflect well on your brand—and, ultimately, help achieve your target quotas and make a positive impact to bottom line. 

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This post is based on content explored in the new ASTD Press release, The Art of Modern Sales Management, which covers everything you need to know to be a top sales manager! 

Sales management has changed dramatically in the past decade. With increasing globalization and many companies adding more virtual workers, the task of managing these diverse sales teams has become increasingly complicated. In a connected and evolving world it is hard to offer a definitive guide, but this book strives to sketch out a blueprint for managing performance in a changing sales landscape. 

Each chapter is written by a sales professional and thought leader, many with experience as both a salesperson and as a sales manager. Learn from their experience and utilize the action plans at the end of each chapter to grow into a better leader for your team, whether they are down the hall or across the world.

About the Author

Glenn Raines is the “revealer of value” at his consulting company, Social Media Moves, where he helps individuals and companies leverage emerging digital and social media strategies, tactics, and tools to achieve strategic organizational and personal career development goals. Glenn is nationally known for his thought leadership in developing LinkedIn and Google Profiles, and he authored the e-book, Your Google Profile: Elevate Your Brand and Findability on the Web. Glenn has recently developed social media thought leadership strategies for clients including the Royal Bank of Scotland and Bank of New York Mellon. Glenn also serves as a corporate trainer in digital and social media strategy where he helps companies and employees accelerate learning in the fast changing digital space. Recent training clients include global ad agencies Publicis Group and Omnicom Group. Currently Glenn is working with JPMorgan Chase on developing their next generation corporate HR and organizational benefits global intranet.

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