February 3, 2010

Most people refer to this social media thing as social media marketing - implying that the use of these new tools and tactics is primarily the domain of the marketing department.

It’s funny, but I’ve always said that while marketing owns the message, sales owns the relationship, so using social media to build deeper relationships on a customer by customer basis just seems like a pretty natural thing for the sales team.

No matter what you think about social media personally, your customers are moving online and into the social web in droves, so you and your organization have little choice but to figure out how to benefit from this evolution.

Embracing this concept might actually be one way to get your sales and marketing folks on the same page, but the bigger question is – what will happen when your competitor starts doing this and you aren’t?

Below are five ways the marketing and sales can work together to use social media in the sales department.

1) Create listening stations

Social media and reputation monitoring have become vital marketing department functions. I wonder how many organizations share and filter content about products, needs, trends, competitors and customers that is picked up through effective monitoring?

Setting up a filtered stream of information and making that available to the sales team would be a very good use of this data. Even using Yammer, an enterprise Twitter client or setting up special hashtags to bookmark and filter relevant industry content sent via email or RSS alert would be a killer competitive tool.

2) Build social CRM

To me, adding social media activity of your hottest customers and prospects is a no brainer, but not very many sales and marketing folks have embraced this yet. Using RSS or social media modules currently being added to most popular CRM software a salesperson can gain a tremendous amount of additional information about a prospect or customer by simply glancing at Twitter and Facebook status updates added automatically to a contact’s record.

Any salesperson will tell you that the more information they have about a customer, both personal and professional, the easier it is to make a connection. Let’s face it, people prefer to buy from people they connect with period.

Sales folks need to get in the habit of connecting on LinkedIn or Facebook with that prospect they met at last night’s Chamber event, to more easily and naturally facilitate connecting in person again.

Education and nurturing are the two vital selling functions that social media tools make much easier.

3) Mine for leads

Every minute of every day prospects are expressing the dissatisfaction with or need for the products and services offered by sales folks around the world. Actually they’ve always done this, but now it’s just a lot easier to hear.

Sales people now have the ability to drill down, using a tool like the Twitter advanced search combined with TweetDeck or RSS, and listen in when prospects are expressing, in real-time, a buying signal for their specific products and services.

Smart sales and marketing folks are figuring out how to filter, aggregate and respond to this new form of lead generation found by mining social media conversations.

4) Create community

I’ve always been an advocate of bringing customers together to allow them to network and discuss with their peers the challenges they face. Bringing four or five customers together for a lunch once in a while is a tremendous way for a salesperson to add value and build loyalty.

Social media tools make community building even easier. Sales folks need to reach out to their customers and prospects and help connect them in Facebook, LinkedIn or even Flickr groups to make it easier for them to network online and consequently build deeper relationships for mutual benefit.

5) Teach and amplify

If your company is primarily a B2B sales organization and you’ve started to master some of the things in this post then you have a tremendous opportunity.

Every business, including those your hold as customers and prospects, must get good at mastering social media and other online marketing tools.

What if your sales team added teaching customers about social media use to one of their lead nurturing and customer service activities? In the end, the true job of a salesperson is always helping customers achieve their business objectives. The salesperson that looks beyond the specific products and services and focuses on doing that will always win.

Hold Twitter webinars for customers, bring a group of strategic partners together to create a community blog, how Facebook Fan Page training at your office. Even if you feel more comfortable bringing in outside experts, you will score major points in the “helping meet objectives” category.

Once you get help your customers get more actively involved with social media, add them to your social CRM, form a Twitter list, bookmark their Facebook pages. Then either through the use of a tool like TweetDeck or with the help of Google Alerts and RSS – Retweet their content, comment on their blog posts, Digg their content, and find other ways to help amplify what your customers are up to.

Image credit: Rick Harris

John Jantsch is a marketing and digital technology coach, award winning social media publisher and author of Duct Tape Marketing and The Referral Engine (May 2010).

Join the conversation ( 12 )

• Kelly Marsh 1 year 7 months and 24 days ago

  

  Recently re-read the post and really like the line " marketing owns the message, sales owns the relationship"
  
  http://kellymarsh.org

• Mark Van Laeke 1 year 11 months and 2 days ago

  

  Thanks John, you're right on target. I'd like to point out another great way that salespeople can use social media tools like Linkedin. While you've got a prospect or client on the phone, look up their past employers on Linkedin and any recommendations they may have. Then ask them for a referral to a contact at one of their past employers who may need your product or service. You can even ask directly, "Do you think Jim Smith, VP of Marketing, at ABC Corp where you last worked would be interested in our services?" This has been very effective for us.
  
  http://www.ciradar.com
  

• Rick Backus 1 year 12 months and 20 days ago

  

  This is a good stuff John. It's hard to figure out the right social media mix for a sales person since the decision makers rarely manage their own social media portfolios.
  
  However I think your suggestions (especially about monitoring) hit the nail on the head.

• Johan Dahlpil 1 year 13 months and 0 days ago

  

  Great article, I am in the progress of educating the company that I work for in using Social Media. I did a quick translation to Swedish of the article for them, since they are not fluent in English. http://wp.me/pCQxR-j

• Travis Gardiner 2 years 0 months and 2 days ago

  

  Great article. I am very interested in this area. There is amazing potential for sales if social media can be leveraged correctly.

• Barbra Gago 2 years 0 months and 3 days ago

  

  John,
  
  This is a really a great post. I totally agree that it's really sales that needs to start engaging with their prospects. But, it's still the marketer's job to get sales in touch with those ideal prospects. However, marketers behavior is (must) shifting, at least the marketers that really "get" social media, to be more of relationship / community builders rather than simply driving a message. They are beginning to understand the value you of engaging in those conversations (happening around their brands) before handing those leads over.
  
  Also, as you've mentioned, social media can be critical to your lead nurturing strategy, but even more ideal would be an infrastructure like marketing automation that would allow for Marketing to funnel more, better qualified prospects to Sales that they've engaged with and tracked via social media interactions, as well as more traditional.

• John Jantsch 2 years 0 months and 4 days ago

  

  @Steve, I see you're a Regional Sales Manager - have you been able to bring this topic into action in any way?

• Kelly Marsh 2 years 0 months and 4 days ago

  

  Couldn't agree more with you John! I handle our company's marketing and also book our CEO for keynote events and get through to the event planners and CEO's much faster by using Social Media.
  
  P.S. looking into your duct tape marketing coaching program
  
  www.kellybmarsh.com

• Steven Morris 2 years 0 months and 4 days ago

  

  Really good article. I have been thinking along these lines a lot lately and its great to know that I'm definitely not the only one.

• Jill Konrath 2 years 0 months and 5 days ago

  

  Great insights, John. There are so many ways that marketing/sales can leverage social media to gather intelligence, connect, create community and educate. But as of yet, it's pretty much an untapped opportunity.
  
  Salespeople are under intense pressure to deliver immediate results. They've been slow to embrace Sales 2.0 tools; many still fail to do pre-call research, preferring to "wing it" instead.
  
  I think it's going to be a while before sales organizations figure out how to leverage social media to their advantage.
  
  

• John Jantsch 2 years 0 months and 5 days ago

  

  @Nigel - I love that "social calling" - I really do think these tools can make it so much easier for the saleperson that stops and takes the long view.

• Nigel Edelshain 2 years 0 months and 5 days ago

  

  John,
  
  Absolutely agree. Several of us in the "Sales 2.0 movement" have been pushing sales teams to realize that social media is for them NOT just for the marketing department.
  
  I have actually developed a methodology called "Social Calling" that helps sales people prospect much more effectively than volume cold calling - about 8 times more effectively. This approach uses several of the techniques you refer to in this post.
  
  Thanks for shining a light on the need for sales teams to take a close look at social media.
  
  Nigel