|
Social Media, B2B’s new best friend for sales
Repost: Original article by: mailinglistsworldwide
For decades in most all legal practices, accounting firms and surveying companies the sales team and the marketing team had little to no interaction. Sales professionals were busy constantly following up on leads and handling current clients. The marketing team was brainstorming and executing plans to draw in new prospects. Then comes along this new way of life, AKA Social Media. With this amazing tool we now see many companies able to easily and cohesively combine the efforts of their sales and marketing teams.
In 2010, Econsultantcy studied this very idea. The results of their research are below.
Six of the main strategic lessons Econsultancy learned:
Understand the sales and relationship development processes used by
the organization, teams and individuals before you attempt to see how
social media might support them.
Develop standard policies and procedures to ensure you protect against
inadvertent problems with client confidentiality, brand and reputation
management, disclosure of valuable know-how and the ownership of
critical contacts and network.
Assess which vertical markets externally and which professionals
internally are most enthusiastic about social media, and work with
your champions in a pilot project.
This allows you to bring the early adopters (and potential mavericks)
under the umbrella of the organization’s criteria for effective use.
Particularly cautious firms might explore social media by using an
internal tool such as Yammer for internal communications campaigns.
Look at existing marketing, sales and account plans and try to develop
some measures by which social media activity, when incorporated into
other traditional activities, can be assessed.
Provide introductory training on appropriate social media tools, which
may involve working alongside the professionals as they perform their
day job and delivering new layers of complexity in bite-sized pieces.
Monitor activity and results carefully, be patient, provide regular
support and encouragement, promote successes (however small or
anecdotal) and allow social media use to develop in line with
experience and update the best practice guidelines and systems
regularly.
Six of Econsultancy’s top operational tool tips were:
Using social media as a method to learn more about markets,
organizations and individuals. A targeted form of market listening in
order to gain insight into trends, needs and opportunities and map
client-side relationships.
Using location based social media—particularly those providing
information on different aspects of individual’s preferences, habits
and places frequented—to learn about and connect with different
members of the decision making unit.
Consider how to integrate social media contacts and connections with
traditional “centralized” databases, sales automation and CRM systems.
Ensure that corporate and personal brands (business and self profiles)
are aligned and that consistent key messages about specific strengths
and expertise are promoted through all channels.
Using the traditional networking advice of “Giver’s Gain” and using
social media to add value to every interaction with existing and
potential clients through a careful shared content strategy.
Use status updates, particularly on professional and business networks
such as LinkedIn, on a regular basis to ensure that you remain “on the
radar” of a large number of contacts with ease—and provide hooks to
prompt interaction.
» Read the Original and Complete Article
|
Leave a Reply