When one considers the fundamental activities that drive an effective social media strategy – having a list of prospects, researching contact information, collecting and distributing information to prospective clients, to name a few – it becomes evident that there is nothing new here. These activities have always been the fundamental building blocks of acquiring new business. The methods that were used in the past are different, but the basics remain the same.
Technology enabled
The incredible power of the Internet, and specifically the technological power of social media, has completely transformed what was a labour-intensive set of tasks into a very manageable and minimally time-intrusive process that can be managed by just one person – you. Once implemented, it takes very little time to execute, and needn’t interfere with your normal selling activities. There are a number of social media marketing advantages, all driven by technology, that make this possible. The more significant ones would almost certainly include:
1. Working outside of your normal selling schedule
If you are like most sales people, you must integrate your day-to-day selling activities, such as telephone work and face-to-face sales calls, into normal business hours. Social media marketing, on the other hand, has no such limitations. It is an activity with a 24/7 opportunity window. With no time constraints, social media marketing can be managed outside of normal selling time.
2. Minimal time needed to input, maintain and store prospect data
Forget about maintaining a database of prospects – with social media marketing, this process is already done for you. To cite one example, your LinkedIn account, as you have seen, is basically an online, real-time database operating as a social media community.
By updating their own profiles, the members of your LinkedIn community do the database maintenance work for you, and as a bonus, the system constantly suggests new prospects to you to add to your list. By linking some sites such as LinkedIn with your databases such as Salesforce.com and Outlook, all your contact information will be automatically updated in real time as your connections change jobs, etc. How cool is that?
3. Reduced research time
Practically no time is needed to locate information for distribution to your sphere of influence. Traditional marketing methods would require hours of tedious, ongoing research to do this. Selecting a handful of high-quality resources, and following them via an RSS feed, eliminates the need for you to search for valuable content; it is served to you, fresh, daily.
4. Information distribution made easy
Virtually no effort is required to distribute information to your followers. In the past, this would have involved making copies of an article, creating a cover letter, printing labels, stuffing envelopes, buying postage and hauling a box full of mail to the post office. Now, the same result is accomplished with a click.
One of the most revolutionary aspects about the social media selling revolution is its impact on the time required to develop new contacts and new business. Want to research an account for key contacts? Sign in to LinkedIn and type in the company’s name; their system will serve you with everything you need to know in seconds – and tell you, for each contact, who you have in common. Want to send out a new article or item of interest to your prospects? Log into your gmail account; there will be a list of high-quality content, courtesy of the sites you follow, waiting in your inbox for you to review. See something there that you want to distribute? Click on the groups within your social media network that you wish to receive the information, and hit ‘send’.
The benefits of using social media in sales prospecting
Once you have joined the social media selling revolution, you will be able to scale back your current traditional marketing activities, channel that time into your social media marketing efforts, and accomplish the following:
- Cut your marketing time commitment to a fraction of its current requirement
- Get exponentially more accomplished
- Reach exponentially more people
- Replace interruption-based marketing with value generation
- Build a personal brand
- Eliminate cold calling
- Have new customers chasing you
Are you ready to get started?
