Sales 2.0 and Social Media
The following is a portion of my answer for the Techdirt Insight Community on how to use social media to sell.
The explosion of Web 2.0 technologies has not reached the sales department of corporate America. Though social media consultants and Web 2.0 conferences abound, and the possible successes at the corporate level are preached seemingly in every trade publication in the country, the vast number of corporate salespeople are not only not using, but are unaware of the potential of social media in the sales process.
Some of the reason for this is structural - larger companies have established methods of new business development and silos of knowledge where collaboration is discouraged. Part of the reason is inertia. Large companies don't need to be as creative, and thus lack the impetus to try new things. For whatever the reason, the true successes in social media are occurring at the small business level, as owner/entrepreneurs discover that social media yields benefits in terms of marketing, PR, branding and new business development that allows them to compete with their larger, less flexible, and more risk averse counterparts.
I'll cover several areas where these tools are useful, and attempt to give examples of how the specific tools can be used.
I. Online Profile/Branding:
II. New Business Development And Lead Generation:
III. Getting Found In An SEO World:
In 2005, 70% of recruiters admitted to using Google to search the background of a candidate before extending a job offer. What's amazing about that figure is how few of those recruiters realized that candidates were searching them before agreeing to work with that recruiter. Today's internet-savvy customers know enough to type a name into Google before dates, business deals, or letting someone babysit their kids. They're also learning to do this with salespeople.
This area is closely related to the online profile, but it's important enough to address individually. In addition to making sure your name has a strong online presence, it's important that your company (and ideally a salesperson) rank highly in organic search terms related to your business. PPC campaigns are good for selling products, and organic search rankings help direct customers to the right information about the enterprise, but the Search Engine Optimization is rapidly becoming a two-pronged strategy of architecture and social media. An SEO consultant today recognizes that social media gives him/her the best tools to create the important anchor-text heavy linking that is so vital for high rankings. Using a variety of platforms, social media serves the dual purpose of SEO and traffic building, and thus the salesperson who regularly engages in social media will find themselves showing up in Seach Engine Results pages for terms related to their industry.
A coordinated approach is best - but each Web 2.0 software seeks to improve their SEO rankings, and thus using the profiles from several dozen sites and actively engaging in them increases your SEO. The easiest example of this is the LinkedIn profile. If you have no other information online, your name often will return the LinkedIn profile as the first result. Smart salespeople can use this to their advantage.
An example is my recruiting site, http://socialmediaheadhunter.com. I purchased the site in February, launched it in April, and inside of one month, I was the number one search on Google for "social media headhunter." That's nice, but I'm also the 2nd-10th result on Google from nine other sites talking about SocialMediaHeadhunter.com. I dominate those rankings, and results 2-10 provide third party corroboration of my experience and skillset. Each individual salesperson can mimic this strategy, but early adopters with the right domains will have the best results.
ROI: Lead Conversion, Warm Leads
IV. Competitive Intelligence:
V. Market Research:
Conclusion:
Some companies are using Web 2.0 technologies effectively, and while I can't share confidential client information, the examples of I have are still outliers. Individuals are driving the change, which makes sense as social media is simply the process of people sharing information with their friends and colleagues without an editorial power. Widespread adoption is simply not the case in any company I've spoken to or read about, but this is expected to change as the workforce begins to see the personal advantages in being connected.
CRM softwares can build in applications that enhance personal profiles, contribute to SEO rankings, and provide an industry filter for the salespeople. Drag and drop technologies that make it simple to share information to and from the database and the external Web 2.0 software would help. But technology is only a small part of the answer. Training, education, and curiousity can power a salesperson's social media efforts. The technology only counts as an enabler. Ultimately, the success of the software depends on the users themselves.
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