Social media is often thought of as an external, customer-facing sales tool. But inside the organization, social technologies are powerful tools you can use to engage your employees for real-time feedback, enabling them to collaborate on tasks and connect to the resources they need for success. Imagine your ability to harness and develop new business ideas when your employees are all connected, working together, real-time.
Sales professionals need to be able to get up to speed quickly, keeping track of the network of people and business events that are relevant to closing deals. They are looking for tools which can make them more educated not just about the prospect but also about your organization’s offerings, before, during, and after sales discussions.
What’s the biggest complaint in sales? Hands down, it’s sending too much time on non-selling activities. Sales people are constantly looking for answers and expertise to close more deals faster. In our personal lives it’s fairly easy to find people and information we need – we use search engines and social networks to find what we want. Why wouldn’t the same approach make sense at work? This is why social experiences should be an integral part of business solutions.
Ask any salesperson how they meet revenue targets and they’ll tell you it’s all about how they can stay on top of the situation. How does a sales person cut through the clutter of daily business and listen to what’s going on in the context of his specific accounts, leads, contacts, and deals? They want business tools which help them “follow” the people, organizations, and events they cares about. And of course they need access to this information no matter where they are—at their desk or on the road through a tablet or phone.
Social tools can also help accelerate the sales process. Salespeople constantly need to make decisions about the deals and people they work with. Public social networks like LinkedIn provide additional insight into customer connections, preferences, behaviors and sentiments, which can lead to more productive sales engagements. Pulling this information into daily productivity tools—such as Outlook email client or a CRM application, for instance—in a way that allows people to manage their social networks and stay up-to-date directly in that tool, is a real benefit to the sales professional and the organization as a whole.
Salespeople are results-oriented—they like to have achievements acknowledged (and shared). Social tools for business can be configured to automatically post updates when actions occur, such as closing a deal. The system can be a real support to someone in this role, offering instant acknowledgement and making sure everyone in his organization’s network—from the boss to the VP of Sales—is aware of the efforts and successes of the sales team.
