Posts Tagged Social Media
Seven Ways Your Sales Team Can Improve Results with Social Media
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES LEADERSHIP on March 4, 2014
Are your salespeople actively engaged in social media as part of their lead generation efforts? If not, they (and your business) are missing out on great opportunities for researching potential B2B clients, building new networks and uncovering prospects by investigating their social media profiles.
Here are seven ways to encourage your sales team to embrace social media:
1. Direct your salespeople to refine their profiles. Start by making sure they have social media profiles on the appropriate channels. The marketing team can help determine where your customers and prospects those platforms. Their profile pages need to attract potential customers. While including the basics on an individual salesperson, the profile should mostly focus on your business and the solutions you offer to prospects. Also include videos, PDFs and links to your business website in these profiles.
2. Schedule time for focused social media activity. It takes discipline to use social media properly (and avoid wasting time watching cat videos!). Work with your sales team to plot out a schedule of focused activity on various social media networks, whether it’s a half-hour a day or 2-3 times a week.
3. Generate content your sales team can use. Back in the day, salespeople handed out brochures or fliers to interest prospects. Today, it’s all about customized content marketing. So it’s up to you to ensure your salespeople can refer prospects to first-rate, problem-solving content on your business website. Not only will this draw more traffic to your site, it also supports the sales team’s efforts to position your business as an industry and thought leader.
4. Promote sales blogging. It’s no longer enough to feature a blog post from your CEO or CMO. Members of your sales team should also be blogging and steadily building a rich network of followers. Encourage team members to think about new ways to focus on prospects’ needs and business challenges by answering common questions that prospects ask in their buyer journey. They should also think and blog more broadly about general industry issues, rather than shilling for your business. Again, focus on solutions your sales team can provide and that will draw more interest from prospects.
5. Keep an active LinkedIn presence. For sales of B2B products and services, LinkedIn is probably the most significant platform for your sales team’s activities. Your individual salespeople’s LinkedIn profiles are the first place a prospect will check out, so as noted above, be sure these are up-to-date and contain the right messaging.
Also, each salesperson should be gathering new LinkedIn connections as frequently as possible. Have them build their network by reaching out to past customers, colleagues in the industry, friends and family members. It’s important to have a robust network of connections as part of your LinkedIn profile.
By joining and participating in LinkedIn discussion groups, salespeople will come in contact with a wide range of potential customers — though it’s important to remember these discussion groups are about specific issues, not a venue for blatant self-promotion. Encourage your sales team to answer questions that demonstrate their problem-solving knowledge. An interested prospect will often follow up, on their own.
6. Use Twitter to make connections and follow trends. The businesses and prospects you want to connect with may be tweeting. Shouldn’t you and your sales team be listening? Twitter offers a wealth of opportunities for staying abreast of industry trends, which can in turn help your team anticipate future sales opportunities. Once your salesperson has become comfortable on the platform, he or she can reply individually to a prospect’s tweet, thus initiating a one-on-one exchange which turns a cold lead into a warm one.
7. Have a vibrant Facebook presence. Your business should already have a Facebook page. From there, encourage members of your sales team to create a Facebook group that relates to your business offerings and invite people to join. Once the group starts talking, there’s always an opportunity to send targeted messages to individuals within the group and get the sales process moving forward.
Being active in social media isn’t a substitute for picking up the phone or firing off an email to prospects, but it represents a dramatically different way of cultivating leads and enriching your sales pipeline.
Social Media: Creating an Early Warning System
Posted by Rick Pranitis in MARKETING on December 12, 2013
Social media can work like an early warning system to alert an organization to an emerging problem; it can also recycle old news and spread misinformation and rumors. In either case, it is important to be prepared with a plan to address negative themes that are being amplified in social media, which can attract broader media coverage, as well as potential damage to the company and brand.
Smart companies prepare crisis response protocols as part of their social media strategy or as part of an overall corporate crisis communications plan. A typical crisis plan covers areas such as:
Definition of roles and responsibilities: Who is responsible for monitoring social media accounts? Is there an expectation that this will be done 24×7? What channels will be monitored? When negative comments appear, what will happen?
Process and workflow: The person who monitors social media should have a process prepared in advance for responding to various types of attacks. In some cases, this individual may take the lead in providing a quick response, but often another department must get involved. The social monitoring team must maintain an up-to-date list of contacts that can be reached in the event of a problem. Typically, the most important departments are customer service, legal and communications.
Agree on the timeframe for response: In social media, it’s usually best to respond in as short a period of time as possible, especially on channels such as Twitter where a snowball effect can happen very quickly. For blogs and other forms of social media where posting is less frequent, a well-reasoned response may take longer to prepare, but it is important to respond with some urgency. In the case of an influential blogger, there may be a quick response in the form of a comment, followed by outreach from the communications team to provide information.
Training and practice: As virtually any employee may uncover a social media attack, all employees must be trained what to do. Best-in-class organizations practice crisis response in a variety of scenarios. This helps to uncover gaps in response plans, so problems can be handled more quickly when they occur.
Consider a number of factors when deciding how to respond, including the person/entity posting the comment, the topic, and how it relates to the company and your ability to effect change. While all situations are different, all responses should be respectful and sincere. Avoid any displays of emotion that can themselves become the subject of social media chatter. A prompt but measured response shows that the company is listening and cares what people think, but does not suggest a panicky over-reaction. Handled correctly, a social media response can become a moment of truth that turns a vocal detractor into an advocate!
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This article was originally posted to the SIriusDecisions Blog by Julie Ogilvie on December 2, 2013.
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Five Ways B2B Companies Can Generate Leads on Twitter
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES BEST PRACTICES on December 9, 2013
Many B2B businesses have a Twitter account these days, but simply being on Twitter is not enough. If you or your employees are going to spend time using social media networks, there have to be objectives and it has to work for your business.
It’s fine if you want to use Twitter as a news publication feed – but there’s so much more you can do with it as a B2B communication tool. Why not use Twitter as part of your new business strategy? If it’s not going to help your business grow and develop, then you’re really wasting time. Get your new business development team involved with planning your Twitter profile. You can also find out their tactics and make sure social media is integrated and woven in to really work together.
Twitter works best when there’s some level of personalization and chat. As well as a news feed, Twitter acts as an introduction service essentially, as it is so easy to connect with people. There’s an old adage that says products don’t sell, people sell. So use Twitter for the communication tool that it is.
Here’s five tips on how to be more effective on Twitter and in turn increase the number (and temperature) of leads.
1. Give your organization a face: Let people know who they’re talking to instead of a faceless organization. Having a corporate account is important, but it’s very hard to hold a conversation with someone if you don’t know who you’re talking to. Add the personal Twitter handles of those who are talking into your bio, so people know who you are, and can also follow your personal accounts.
2. Share content to drive people to your website: A varied content schedule should incorporate a mix of updates, interesting articles as well as company news. However, make sure you create and post content which gives people the opportunity to visit your website or specific landing pages.
This can be via blog and news posts, new sections or products which have launched or anything else of interest to your customers.
3. Mention people you have met: People like being mentioned on Twitter – it starts conversations and you get to know people and they get to know you. If you’ve been to a networking event, conference or meeting, give the event and anyone you’ve met a shout out and cement the contacts you’ve made.
This reminds people who you are, gives them your contact details and can often lead to further communication and a meeting.
4. Use Twitter to create warm leads: Your new business development manager could sit down and plow through a lot of cold calls with relevant businesses but this is really a shot in the dark. However, if you start connecting with other businesses and other business people through Twitter, this is a friendly way to introduce your company and start to form a relationship.
Start to follow any people or businesses you think have new business potential. You could mention a blog post they’ve written or comment on some of their business news – anything that opens a conversation. They key is to start that conversation, not start a sale.
5. Assess your progress regularly: It sounds simple, but this is something many companies forget to do. You need to decide on some objectives and metrics to measure these objectives. These might be to increase relevant followers by so many every quarter, to set up a certain number of business meetings and achieve a certain number of click-through hits to your website.
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.This article was originally posted to the Social Media B2B Blog by Carolyn Huges on September 23, 2013.
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Salespeople Need To Improve Their Social Media Skills
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES BEST PRACTICES on November 26, 2013
As business-to-business companies rely more on social collaboration tools, some of the biggest gainers are going to be salespeople – and not just because they can fan, friend, or follow prospects.
Salespeople can use online social platforms to increase productivity. This includes understanding and influencing customer relationships, creating new channels for research, improving collaboration within sales teams, and increasing responsiveness to customers. We’re already seeing it start to happen.
More business-to-business customers attend to information they receive through social media, often long before these customers even enter a traditional sales cycle. About 60 percent of customers’ research happens before contacting sales, according to a Corporate Executive Board report. Some 37 percent of customers’ evaluations of products and services stem from conversations on social media. The first step is to create a deep social “listening” capability to monitor the discussions around your own offerings, and those of competitors. Better yet, come up with a strategy to intervene and engage in brand or product social conversations, and then respond quickly to recommendations, misinformation or criticisms.
Social targeting
Business-to-business salespeople must target decision makers and influencers, learning, as efficiently as possible, who in a customer company has the authority to make decisions, who can influence those decisions, and what those people are thinking and doing. Social media provides great data for identifying those people. By analyzing the connections and data revealed through social media, or even from emails received from customer addresses, it’s possible to map the relationships in a customer organization. This map helps to reveal the chain of decision-makers in the corporate hierarchy, as well as key influencers (some of whom might even be outside the company). After generating or discovering a sales opportunity, the sales team can deploy quickly to contact all of the individuals who can influence a potential sale.
One tech company, for example, tracked the appearance of certain key words on social platforms. When it noticed a decision maker from a prospect company asking a question online, it matched the question and the prospect’s location with a specific salesperson and sent along the lead, converting on these leads almost 80 percent of the time.
Social responsiveness
Social platforms can also enhance internal collaboration within sales teams. Used within enterprises, social tools can make conversations amongst sales and other colleagues in other functions (e.g., marketing, customer service) visible and searchable. This lets everyone related to a particular customer share valuable information. Skilled users of advanced knowledge management processes can then track and tag these interactions to build a company’s institutional knowledge base. In addition, new account-team members can ramp up much more quickly by having this information accessible.
In terms of customer responsiveness, internal social platforms can cut down the time it takes for a sales team to get an answer on price, specs, customization, and other issues. Social platforms can take the place of e-mail, allowing the first qualified person who sees a customer request to start responding. In some cases, we’ve seen answer time drop from two days to two hours. That’s huge – it saves both the salesperson and the customer a lot of frustration. Furthermore, using social media to communicate with customers creates visibility for the entire account team about what is being said to customers. This is far more efficient than entering information into a traditional CRM system.
Social platform use is shifting behaviors and expectations of customers and employees alike. In response, corporations are increasingly adopting social platforms. More than three-quarters of the respondents in a McKinsey survey of over 3,500 companies worldwide report that they are using at least one social technology.
Sales organizations in business-to-business companies, however, have only scratched the surface. While salespeople have long been known for their social skills, those who can hone their social media skills will thrive in the digital age.
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This article originally appeared in the CMO Network blog on April 16, 2013.
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Three Biggest Networking Mistakes Salespeople Make
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES BEST PRACTICES on August 26, 2013
Sales people often are natural networkers – after all, we tend to be “people persons” who love to meet new people, build relationships, and create conversations, both in “real life” and on social media. But many sales people, without realizing it, are making some big mistakes with their business networking.
Business networking is one of the sales person’s oldest tools. We use our network of relationships and contacts to get in touch with decision makers, get advice, and get connected with new opportunities. But if you’re making some of these networking mistakes, you might not be reaching your full potential as a sales professional.
Here are a few of the most common networking mistakes – and how to avoid them:
Mistake #1: Networking without a strategy. Building relationships is a long-term activity. You can’t just expect to run out and immediately find the contacts or opportunities you’re looking for without investing some time and effort. Just as you would develop a marketing plan or a sales strategy to land a big client, spend some time mapping out some short-term and long-term goals for your sales networking.
How to avoid: Spend some time asking (and answering) some “big questions” that can guide your networking activity. For example, who are you trying to meet? Which types of companies would you love to get connected with? Who do you already know who works at these companies or knows some of these higher-level people, and how can you strengthen your relationships with your existing circle of influence?
Mistake #2: Networking only to “get,” never to “give.” Too many sales people only look at networking as a way to get what they want. Too many sales people only network in order to get closer to a decision maker, or get their foot in the door at a company where they’re trying to make a sale, or to get in front of someone who might offer them a new job. This is the biggest networking mistake of all. If people feel that you are in it only for yourself, they will be reluctant to trust you or help you. Networking is a two-way street – and some of the most successful sales people are also the most generous with their time and with their contacts.
How to avoid: When networking, always look for opportunities to “give” more than you “get.” Examples of “giving” might be as simple as sharing a timely article about a prospect’s business or industry, or connecting a contact with an opportunity that is valuable to them (even if it is unrelated to your business). Your generosity might not always be rewarded immediately, but in the long run you will build a reputation as someone who can be trusted, and someone who is willing to help others and connect others with opportunities.
Mistake #3: Networking only with the “usual suspects.” Especially if you sell a complex B2B solution, it can be understandably tempting to spend most of your time focused on networking with people in your niche market. But if you spend all of your time connecting only with a small circle of people, you might miss out on opportunities that could come from connecting with people from other facets of your life.
How to avoid: Remember that everyone you know, and everyone they know, can potentially be a valuable contact for you. Take a look at all of your social circles – work, family, community activities, social organizations – and see how you can become more of a connector. Someone you know from church or from your kids’ school might have a friend or relative who works in a business that needs your help.
Networking is the constant, never-ending work of the sales professional. Sometimes networking feels like trying to navigate a maze – lots of blind corners and uncertainty and wrong turns. But at its best, networking is not a maze, it’s a safety net. One of the comforting truths about networking is that we are all supported by our own “safety nets” of contacts and all of their combined expertise, experience and relationships. If sales people can learn to network with planning and purpose (instead of just impulsively grasping around with no sense of direction), if sales people can learn to broaden their networks and connect other people within their networks (instead of only talking to the “usual suspects”), and if sales people can use networking as a way to deepen their relationships and build trust (rather than only trying to get what they need), networking will become a more purposeful and helpful tool – and a better way to operate as a sales professional.
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Five Keys to Building an Effective Social Media Strategy
Posted by Rick Pranitis in MARKETING on July 1, 2013
The social media world seems like a whirlwind, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants territory. After all, with the demanding work of posting content multiple times a day—every day—who has time to actually think about creating a strategy and goals? Having a purposeful plan for your company, though, is invaluable to making your work translate into results.
Before diving into the social media storm, develop a strategy. Building one out can result in benefits like demonstrating your company’s expertise in the industry, improving SEO traffic to your website, and developing leads and prospects. Here are some important key steps that will put you on the road to developing an effective social media strategy:
1. Pick a relevant theme.
Find a theme that will resonate with your target customers—and your company. For example, “increasing collaboration and efficiency in the workplace” may be a good focus for an HR solutions company. You don’t necessarily have to share this theme with your followers. It’s more for yourself so you can guide your content development. The key is to find something that you can talk about knowledgeably, find articles and posts on, and provide value to your prospects.
2. Find the top influencers in your industry.
If you want your voice to be heard, find the people who “matter” in your part of the social media world. Follow them on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn. Share their content (making sure it’s relevant to your theme and strategy), and ask them to share yours. Ask them to guest-blog for you, and offer to guest-blog for them. Tools like Little Bird, Klout, and Traackr can help you find your industry’s influencers.
3. Set up a social dashboard.
This may seem like an obvious step. But are you using the one that works best for your goals? There are a vast number of options available—the trick is finding one or several that work for you. Hootsuite is a great way to monitor and post to all your accounts. Buffer is great for queuing up lots of content and seeing immediate post results. A measuring tool like RivalIQ or SproutSocial can show your social growth over time. Explore, try out different tools, and see what works best for your goals.
4. Post value-add content.
Whether you’re curating or posting original content, providing value-add content is vital. Don’t constantly post about why your company is awesome and what products are for sale. Instead, at least 80 percent of the time, post valuable content that will present your company as an industry expert and influencer. Share posts that your prospects will want to read and learn from. Over time, your prospects will see your expertise and keep you in mind when they’re ready to buy.
5. Use SEO keywords.
To help drive SEO traffic, use the SEO keywords from your site in your social media work. Revamp your company’s “About” section on each social media profile, especially for LinkedIn and Google+, so it contains the core keywords from your site. Use relevant keywords in your Google+ and blog posts so they’re more likely to show up in natural search results. Also, make sure you use important keywords in some of your daily tweets.
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This article was originally posted to the Heinz Marketing blog by Meghan Bradwell on June 27, 2013.
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Leveraging Social Media for Your Offline Business
Posted by Rick Pranitis in GENERAL DISCUSSION on September 2, 2012
Social media is important for all businesses, whether they are bricks and mortar businesses or online Internet-based businesses. There are many offline businesses that can effectively leverage social media to strengthen and grow their businesses in creative and effective ways.
Many of the popular social media websites, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google +, and Foursquare are capable of engaging local customers, increasing the popularity of your business and boosting your sales. There are many ways that an offline business can use social media to its advantage:
- Exciting and high-quality online presence: Once you have created profiles on the various social media websites, you need to update them on a regular basis. You should pay close attention to comments from your customers so that you can respond to them, publish new and interesting content, and continue to form new relationships and maintain existing ones. The more you update the status of your different social media, the stronger your business’s reputation will be.
- Get the whole company involved: If you have a staff, allow them a certain amount of time during their workday to post updates on your business’s social media websites. This is an excellent morale booster and your staff’s involvement will strengthen your marketing effort and increase your business’s online exposure.
- Social integration: Ask people to “like” your offline business on Facebook and follow your offline business on Twitter. You can then promote the social integration on your business receipts, signs and invoices so that your existing customers will want to jump on the social media train as well. You can also ask your customers to check in to Foursquare or one of the other geo-location applications once they arrive in the general proximity of your store offering them special promotions enticing them come in.
- Scope out the competition: Depending on what sort of business you have, you may or may not be heavily involved with social media. Always remember to stay on top of what your competition is doing by reading everything that they post. Remember that you and the other businesses are always fighting to stay on top.
- Strengthen the sense of community: the relationship that you should have with your customers, whether the relationship is online or offline is one that makes them feel like they are family (or, at the very least, very close friends). The way to achieve this is by having live events at your store as well as events online. You can promote your community and your business at the same time and people will begin to feel as though they belong at your store and that you want them to be there.
- Don’t do too much and become overwhelmed: If you don’t have any help in managing your social media platforms and you try to do it all by yourself, you may find that you aren’t doing it well. Be selective in your choice of social media channels and make sure that you go for quality over quantity.
- Guard your business’s reputation: Are you aware of what your existing customers and potential customers are saying about your business, products and services and brand? Pay special attention to the comments that people are posting online. It is also a good idea to set up Google alerts and to immediately handle issues as they occur. This is your chance to show people how much you care about them. Help them to solve their problems and address whatever concerns they have.
- Exercise patience: Remember that it takes time to see significant results with social media when it comes to the success of your business. Always remember that your hard work will definitely pay off and the more relationships you build and the more you interact with others, the more interested other people will be in connecting with you again and again.
- Reciprocate: When you post content online and you receive comments, not only is it important to respond to the comments but it is also a great idea to share other people’s posts if they hold value for your connections. After all, the idea is to enhance the experience of your online connections.
- Giveaways: You can use social media to give away free products from your store. There is a guarantee that that will attract attention and people will want to interact with you and will want to be the first to know when you introduce new products and services.
Conclusion
If you use the tips that are discussed here, your offline business will become more and more successful and more and more people will want to connect with you and will want to buy what you are selling.
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This article was originally posted by Michael Cohn in the CompuKol Connection Blog on November 25, 2010
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