3 Ways Salespeople Can Put Social Media To Work

By Staff

As published in: SalesForceXP - March-April 2010

No matter what you think about social media personally, your customers are moving online and into the social Web in droves, so you and your organization have little choice but to figure out how to benefit from this evolution.

Most people refer to this social media thing as social media marketing - implying that the use of these new tools and tactics is primarily the domain of the marketing department.

"It's funny," blogs marketing coach John Jantsch, "but I've always said that while marketing owns the message, sales owns the relationship, so using social media to build deeper relationships on a customer-by-customer basis just seems like a pretty natural thing for the sales team."

Monitoring discussions within your industry, among your customers, and about your company are no brainers. Jantsch offers three less commonly used ideas how your salespeople can incorporate social media into their sales approach:

1. Build social CRM. Top sales performers agree that the more information they have about a customer, the easier it is to make a connection. Adding social media activity of your hottest customers and prospects is a no brainer, but not many salespeople have embraced this. Using RSS or social media modules currently being added to most popular CRM software a salesperson can gain a tremendous amount of additional information about a prospect or customer by simply glancing at Twitter and Facebook status updates added automatically to a contact's record.

Sales folks need to get in the habit of connecting on LinkedIn or Facebook with that prospect they met at last night's Chamber event, to more easily and naturally facilitate connecting in person again.

Education and nurturing are the two vital selling functions that social media tools make much easier.

2. Mine for leads. Every minute of every day prospects are expressing the dissatisfaction with or need for the products and services offered by sales folks around the world. Actually, they've always done this, but now it's just a lot easier to hear.

Salespeople have the ability to drill down, using a tool like the Twitter advanced search combined with TweetDeck or RSS, and listen in when prospects are expressing, in real-time, a buying signal for their specific products and services.

3. Share what you know. What if your sales team added teaching customers about social media use to one of their lead nurturing and customer service activities? In the end, the true job of a salesperson is always helping customers achieve their business objectives. The salesperson that looks beyond the specific products and services and focuses on doing that will always win. Even if you feel more comfortable bringing in outside experts, you will score major points in the "helping meet objectives" category.

Hold Twitter webinars for customers, bring a group of strategic partners together to create a community blog, how Facebook Fan Page training at your office.

John Jantsch, author of Duct Tape Marketing, blogs at DuctTapeMarketing.com.