SellingSocial HOW TO CONNECT AND ENGAGE WITH THE MODERN BUYER

THE SOCIAL-SELLING LANDSCAPE

FINDING CUSTOMERS AND SUCCESSFULLY ENGAGING WITH THEM has always been a fundamental challenge for sales organizations. With an estimated

152 million blogs, 25 billion messages sent via Twitter, and 2 billion Internet

users worldwide, social networks represent valuable prospecting and customer-

relationship opportunities for sales teams around the globe.

However, the customer’s

ability to independently

discover and broadcast

information across

a variety of social

networking platforms

has in turn diminished a

longstanding corporate

ability to influence and

control the way products,

solutions, and services are

perceived in the market.

The twenty-first-century

prospect now has greater

access to company and

product data – including

peer reviews and referrals

– than at any time in

history. As a result, the sales professional is no longer the keeper and disseminator of

information; that role has been usurped by the ever-widening social Web.

“Buyers today can get through about 60 to 70 percent of the buying cycle before they

even pick up the phone and call the rep,” says Greg Brush, vice president of sales and

customer success at InsideView.

Accordingly, the sales organization that can leverage the tools of the information age

and train its sales force to actively engage in social selling will be more likely to see

immediate revenue gains and strengthen its capacity for sustained overall growth.

In a recent survey performed by Jive Software, more than 80 percent of respondents across a multitude of industries (including financial services, telecommunications, healthcare, insurance, and software) reported quantifiable benefits of adopting social business initiatives. (See figure 1)

DEFINING KEY TERMS

WEB 2.0 – the interactive, information sharing, user-centered design and collaboration enabled by the World Wide Web. Examples include blogs, social media sites, Wikipedia and other wikis, and more. A subset of Web 2.0 is the “social Web,” which refers specifically to social-networking and content-sharing sites.

SALES 2.0 – the use of technology, people, and process to sell more effectively. Sales 2.0 methodologies and tools result in a standardized, collaborative, and customer-enabled process that runs through an entire organization, leading to improved productivity, predictable ROI, and superior performance.

CUSTOMER 2.0 – a smarter, more collaborative customer who uses Web 2.0 and Sales 2.0 technologies to research products and services to make informed buying decisions. Customer 2.0 engages with social media and listens to friends and colleagues over analysts and reviewers when making purchase decisions.

SOCIAL CRM – the act of leveraging social data from sources such as blogs, forums, and other social-media sites to engage the customer in collaborative conversation.

SALES INTELLIGENCE – dynamic, granular, and insightful information gathered from Web 2.0 sources, such as social-media sites. Sales intelligence moves beyond “sales data,” which is static, editorial-based, and aggregate.

SOCIAL MEDIA – one of the foundations of Web 2.0, used for social interaction. Social media includes all Websites that enable people to connect via the Internet, such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and blogs.

SOCIAL SELLING – the intelligent use of social media, social CRM, and other Web 2.0 tools and applications to listen to, connect and engage with, and effectively meet the needs of Customer 2.0.

MEASURABLE RESULTS AND ROI

SPECIFICALLY, COMPANIES THAT ENGAGE IN SOCIAL SELLING GAIN THE FOLLOWING ACTIONABLE BENEFITS:

An OgilvyOne study also indicates that the B2B space is seeing major gains from social selling: Among 1,000 sales professionals in the US, UK, Brazil, and China, 49 percent believed social media was important to their success, and more than two-thirds of the most successful reps said that social media was “integral to their sales success.” A strategic approach to social media can help sales executives reach the twin goals of increasing revenue and streamlining team efficiency.

• MULTIPLE WAYS TO REACH CUSTOMERS IN THE RIGHT PLACE, AT THE RIGHT TIME.

• A PUBLIC FORUM TO SHOW ITS WILLINGNESS AND ABILITY TO SOLVE PROBLEMS FOR CUSTOMERS WHO EXPRESS DISSATISFACTION WITH PRODUCTS OR SERVICES.

• THE ABILITY TO IDENTIFY CUSTOMER NEEDS AND WANTS AND SOLICIT FEEDBACK ON PROPOSED INITIATIVES AND

CHANGES TO PRODUCTS AND SERVICES.

From the customer’s perspective, social networks not only offer an easy and viral way to spread the word about brand-related experiences, they also serve as easy entry points for researching or reaching out to a company.

It stands to reason, then, that B2B companies and sales executives who lack an established of companies that have taken a proactive approach to social selling and seen significant ROI.

27% 28%34%

31%

42%

Idea Exchangewith Customers

Customer-SupportCall Volume

BrandAwareness

CustomerRetention

Communicationand Ideas

FOLLOWING QUANTIFIABLE BENEFITS OF ADOPTING SOCIAL BUSINESS INITIATIVES:

Figure 1: Survey Response from Jive Software

5 TIPS FOR LAUNCHING A SOCIAL SELLING INITIATIVE:

1. EVALUATE WHAT YOU’RE DOING. Many people on your team probably already use LinkedIn, Twitter, blogs, etc. Take stock of how you’re currently connecting with and listening to customers, and see what seems to be working. Where are you successfully engaging and building relationships with prospects and customers?

2. START BY LISTENING. Just as you wouldn’t run into a cocktail party and start shoving your business card under everyone’s nose, don’t jump on Twitter and start jabbering about your business. Instead, listen to what your target market is saying. Get a sense for who your customers’ mouthpieces are and their communication and interaction styles.

3. SHARE INFORMATION. Create a way for your team members to share information internally. There are a variety of CRM-compatible tools to facilitate the tracking and sharing of information companywide. So if at a trade show your marketing manager meets a prospect who loves to ride horses, that information can be entered into a collaborative database and used to strengthen ties during follow-up calls.

4. COMMIT TO THE PROCESS. Building relationships online is not something you can do all at once. Realize you may not see the payoff right away, and commit to three to six months before you evaluate your efforts.

5. COMMIT TO EVOLUTION. Your team’s social-selling skills will need to evolve with the Web. Prepare to invest time and effort in updating your social-selling strategy, learning about new tools, and keeping skills sharp.

FUTURE SUCCESS

Thanks in part to the leveraging of social networks like blogs and Twitter to empower employees to deliver a superior customer-service experience, online retailer Zappos was able to scale its business from zero to more than $1 billion in gross merchandise sales in less than 10 years.

Cisco executed one of its top five product launches in the company’s history solely through the use of social media. By targeting platforms that its customers were already using (including Facebook, Second Life, video-conference services, and blogs), Cisco drew 9,000 people to its product-launch event (90 times more attendees than in the past).

Sparked by its “Will It Blend?” viral video campaign (which has so far received more than 134 million views on YouTube alone), Blendtec was able to increase brand awareness and lower cold-call resistance for its sales force. Since the campaign’s launch in 2006, sales have increased 700 percent.

As of June 2009, Dell had attributed $3 million in revenue to the launch of its @DellOutlet Twitter account and successful engagement with its followers (currently more than 1.5 million). The company estimates that its global reach on Twitter (via targeted accounts such as @DellHomeSalesCA and @DellnoBrasil) has brought in more than $6.5 million in revenue.

The change in buying behavior that has been ignited by the social Web will

continue to evolve, and the need to master social selling will continue to grow.

But the measure of social-selling success is not in how quickly one can leave the

old behind; it is in how well one can use existing sales principles to adapt to a new

arena that offers a very powerful and efficient way to engage customers, shorten

sales cycles, and increase revenue. In the end, the right mind-set is just as important

as methodology. Sales executives who embrace social selling will win more

opportunities to maximize the growth potential of their sales team and company.

Social selling is constantly evolving as more and more companies recognize the

importance of social media on sales team success. To learn more about how social

selling can revolutionize your sales department and significantly increase win rates,

visit InsideView’s Social Selling University at http://www.socialsellingu.com