Sales and Social Networking: thinking it through

Submitted by Sharon Drew Morgen on Monday, 29 November 2010

My brilliant colleague Vanessa DiMauro (a leader in social networking marketing, decision making, and leadership) and I are currently writing an article on Sales and Social Networking. While we are both filled with ideas, I decided to go to the source and have you (my readers) help out. I suspect this is a big topic, so I’d like us to think this through together and begin a dialogue. Yes, this time I want the ideas to come from you!

Here are some questions to start the conversation. Please note: I don’t have answers completely formulated yet, so your input will be vital.

How are you using social networking to help you sell? Please discuss the goods, bads, and uglies.

Do you use it as a vehicle to be introduced to prospects you wish to pursue, via LinkedIn or Facebook? If so, what are you doing and how? What is working and what isn’t? What would you need to have at your fingertips to have more success that isn’t currently available?

Is it a vehicle to get information? To help you close a deal? To develop a relationship? How are you accomplishing this? What sort of success/failure are you experiencing?

What sort of information do you get through social networking/media that is different from just using the web to gather data? How does this information help you sell in a way that directly leads to a closed sale? and is this giving you a much higher close ratio (i.e. not just a one-off big deal, or a few great relationships)? Are you able to help the person develop their buy-in team this way?

If you are using social media to develop relationships, how is this working for you? Is there an appreciable difference in how long it takes you to close with/without a social networking component? How does the ‘trust’ factor bias the new relationship (for good or bad) or is there no/little discernible difference in trust?

Is there an obvious increase in your closed sales, or just an easier way to find those prospects ready to buy, or just a lot more activity? Or is there a diminished number of closed sales as you spend time chasing leads that aren’t buying?

Is there something you could be doing in a new way? Do there need to be different/new technology that would offer more success – i.e. what seems to be missing around capability that would help you have more success?

I believe we’re at the beginning of this field, and we don’t have all of the capability we will eventually have. Do we need templates that will tell us who to speak with, the sorts of conversations we should be having, steps to take? That’s one of my thoughts. Please share yours.

Let’s chat and get a handle on what’s happening, possible, and still needed. And then we can all figure out next steps.

sd

To find out how to best help others decide to connect with you, take a look at my Learning Accelerators to see if any of them can offer you an additional tool kit.

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Tags: questions, social media

Devorah Winegarten

I’m loving this discussion already! I use social media in a variety of ways, and I only use Facebook. I don’t twitter or tweet, and I’m always astonished at people who think my life is interesting enough to want to follow it, moment-by-moment.

I use Facebook a couple of different ways, both personally and professionally. I use the Events page for inviting folks to book signing events I’ve set up for clients. I also set up several “Fans of…” pages for the women whose biographies I’m writing, and encouraged my friends to become fans. Then, when the books come out, I’ll have a page already in place from which to launch book signings, invite guests who are already interested in that particular person.

I also “run” a do-gooders page on Facebook called “Mitzvah Minyanairres,” where each day I post a different good deed, tie it into a Torah or Talmudic text, and encourage the participants to both do the deed and then report back on what happened (or didn’t happen). What started out as a good idea at Torah study one Friday morning has blossomed into a diligent group of 257 participants, some more vocal than others.

I also took out an ad on Facebook to promote the MM site, so that I could learn at what price points I need to advertise to reach people and have them sign up. So far, I’ve invested $19.12 in ads over a one month period. It looks like I picked up 3 additional participants, so that’s a little over $6 a person. By far the best advertisement for the site has been the participants themselves. Several invited all their friends to join and the personal invitations have brought in the most participants.

Some folks joined the site because they saw the posts on their friends’ walls, and were curious, checked it out, and were called to join. For this type of initiative, it makes sense to me that like-minded people have friends with similar values, and the participants themselves would be the best “spokespeople” to invite others.

I have done an analysis of the members of the group, and interestingly enough, I know only about 30% of the people. Which means there are 160 people who are reading my posts daily whom I have never met and don’t know me. I think this is a terrific way to build and gain credibility with a group of people who represent people from coast-to-coast. I’ve even got folks in Greece, Russia and Nigeria on the list, and the ages range from 13 to 85.

I can hardly wait to hear the rest of this discussion, that’s my two cents.
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