CHAPTER 1

FISHING IN SOCIAL PONDS

Using Social Media as a Prospecting Tool for Online Sales

Why should you care about using social media as a sales and marketing tool? There are actually 1.48 billion reasons, and the number is growing daily.

If you are part of an organization that wants to grow sales, then reaching new customers is critical to your success. That means social media will become increasingly important to you. Consider that there are currently over one billion people active on the top social networks.¹ These networks include LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. If you are able to make contact with even one-tenth of one percent of them, then you have reached more than one million people. When was the last time you made contact with one million potential customers—without having to pay an arm and a leg for advertising during a major televised sporting event? What's more, when was the last time that you reached out to that many people and actually had some type of meaningful conversation?

Does becoming active on social networks guarantee you will capture a million leads, or even hundreds of thousands of leads? No, of course not; but fishing in social ponds holds real potential for reaching a high number of high-quality prospects.

Before going any further, consider these two statements about sales and social media:

1. The sales and marketing process has been forever changed; if you do not adapt, then your social-savvy competitors will leave you (and your sales quota) in the dust.
2. If you want to gain new customers, there is only one way to reach them today—and that's by aggressively selling through social media channels.

One of these two statements is an exaggeration. Do you know which one?

If you chose the second statement as being an overstatement, give yourself a prize—and continue reading. If you thought the first sentence was wrong, then it's a darn good thing you are reading this book!

The sales and marketing process—the way in which you identify prospects and convert them into customers—has drastically changed with the advent of social media. In fact, you have probably heard experts make some pretty bold statements about the sales process, such as: “The traditional sales funnel no longer exists.” “Solution selling is dead.” “By the time a prospect first makes contact with you, they have already narrowed down the buying decision to their top choices.” “Inbound marketing is critical to lead generation.” “Social media marketing is a necessary evil for customer acquisition.”

There is truth to all of these statements. Customers are making more educated buying decisions. They are doing their own research online. They are being influenced by peers, brands, and total strangers—and much of that influence is happening across social media channels. This really isn't a new concept, but it has taken a while for the actual sales process to evolve and catch up to what has been happening with social media.

I still remember the first time I heard about a company using social media to talk to a prospective customer. By 2010, hotels and other businesses were getting more accustomed to seeing social media used as a customer service tool, even if they didn't yet fully understand how to use that tool. Customers were talking to Twitter and other platforms to complain and businesses were struggling to find the best way to handle that public scrutiny. But some businesses were catching on and starting to see the social customer service dilemma as a social selling opportunity. I realized this when hearing the story of a customer of a fairly well-known hotel in California. In short, the hotel messed up the customer's reservation and it looked like she might not have a place to stay. Aggravated, the customer publicly tweeted her frustration on Twitter. This tweet caught the attention of a competing hotel in the area—most likely because they were either monitoring their competition on Twitter or watching for certain keywords (such as “hotel”). When this particular tweet showed up, the competing hotel was able to respond quickly and directly—and publicly—to the customer.

Did the hotel offer a free room or deep discount to switch reservations? No. It simply tweeted back that they were sorry to hear about the situation and suggested that the next time the customer was in the area, the hotel would be happy to help take care of her and make her stay relaxing and stress-free. As a result, the hotel got a lot of attention and reportedly a nice bump in reservations.

As someone who tracks online marketing trends and writes about how to use online tools for business, I was immediately captivated by the potential represented by that single tweet. Before long, I was not only doing a lot of talking about tapping into social media as a tool to reach customers, but I was using it myself as a way to generate leads for a company in the telecommunications industry. Using social media to interact with prospective customers is not really all that new. Most companies initially started using it as a way to generate brand awareness and as an extension of their customer service efforts. Only recently have companies started recognizing and regularly using social media as a sales tool—beyond simply placing ads on social networks. In particular, there has been quite a lot of buzz recently about the term “social selling.” We will discuss that shortly, but first let's get back to those two statements about social media and take a look at why one is rather misleading—and why it matters to you.

TACKLING THE EVER-CHANGING SALES PROCESS

As sentence number one indicates, the companies and salespeople (your competitors) that understand the expanding role of social media in the buying process are the ones who are winning new customers and exceeding sales quotas. In December 2012, Mike Drapeau, the cofounder and managing partner of the Sales Benchmark Index (SBI), predicted that the quota attainment rate, conventionally measured as the percentage of sales reps who make their number, a rate that has traditionally hovered around 60 percent, will go up to 75 percent, permanently.² He believes there is a single reason for this rise in quota attainment rate: It is based on gains in sales productivity from social selling.

Mike has made a career analyzing and publishing trends in the areas of sales process, lead generation, and sales productivity (to name just a few areas). As part of the SBI team, he regularly consults for companies such as HP, Adobe, Dow Jones, Eloqua, and many more, with the purpose of helping them expand revenues. Mike has an established track record for understanding what it takes to move the needle on sales quotas and real revenue growth, so given his experience, it's particularly interesting that he placed a specific condition on his most recent prediction about the sales process. He makes the point that only the companies who understand social selling will bump that quota attainment rate up to 75 percent; the rest will continue to see rates closer to 60 percent.

Mike Drapeau is not the only one who recognizes the potential that social selling has within today's sales organizations. A 2012 study on social selling from the research firm Aberdeen Group indicated that sales reps who have leveraged social selling in their sales process are 79 percent more likely to attain their quota than ones who don't.³ This research supports the contention in sentence number one that those organizations and sales professionals that adapt to the social selling process will see positive revenue and sales quota results, while those that don't find a way to fully embrace the social selling process are likely to be left behind.

You may be wondering why, if social media is so critical to the new sales process, there is anything wrong with the second statement. This was tricky. Sentence number two actually has two flaws. The first flaw? It makes the assumption that social media is the only way to attain new customers. But social selling is not meant to replace all other sales and marketing processes. While there is no denying that some of the traditional methods have changed, they haven't disappeared—nor should they. Mastering social selling simply means adding another tool to your sales and marketing toolkit.

The second flaw is found in the phrase “sell aggressively through social channels.” It's very important to realize that potential customers who are active on social media are sensitive to the use of social platforms as delivery vehicles for blatant sales pitches. That's why aggressive selling techniques are likely to be ignored on social media.

So now you know what not to do. Let's take a look at how to do it right.

THE SOCIAL SELLING MANTRA

There has been a noticeable shift in how customers engage with companies and what, or who, influences the decision to buy. This is true whether you are selling to consumers (B2C) or to businesses (B2B), whether you are selling breath mints or accounting software. Your ability to successfully engage with customers early in the lead-generation process sets the tone for the entire life cycle with that customer. It not only comes down to how you interact but when and where you interact with customers. In this case, both the value of the information you provide to the prospect and the quality of the relationship you build are critical to getting and keeping customers. Equally imperative is that you start online conversations with prospects early. To do that, you have to know where your prospective customers are hanging out (on social media)—because this is where customer relationships start, today.

Because the process of social selling is still developing, you may hear it explained in various ways. In its simplest form, it's tempting to say that social selling is a matter of selling products and services over a social network, such as Facebook or Twitter. That's somewhat of an oversimplification of the term “social network,” and is also misleading because it suggests a medium that is a one-way form of communication not much different from using advertising to sell via the television or other traditional media outlets. The process of social selling is much more robust and utilizes a two-way form of communications, where both the sender and receiver of the message are interacting and responding to each other. That's why I prefer to define the concept in this way:

Social selling: the identification, targeting, and reaching out to prospective and existing customers through social media channels and social communities in an effort to engage them in conversations that result in a potentially mutually beneficial relationship.

It may also be useful to identify what social selling is not. Social selling is not like buying a list of leads and cold calling everyone on the list. It is not a disruptive process, where you merely spit out a series of marketing messages, lead-generation offers, or coupons and discounts.

Nor is social selling the equivalent of lead scraping. This is a big one. For some reason, when I'm working with salespeople who are trying to sell through social media for the first time, they are sometimes under the impression that you scan conversations on social networks and then pluck out the people who even vaguely reference a potential need for your product. Once you get a name, you run it through a data cleanup process to get a phone number and bam, just like that, you've scraped a lead from Twitter and dropped it into your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) program of choice. It doesn't quite work that way. You may get lucky, but it's not best practices as social selling goes. I discuss this in detail in Chapter 4, along with the art of un-selling in social media.

“Un-selling” is something you will hear a lot about when talking about prospecting via social media. In other words, using a sales pitch and basing a good bit of that pitch on your product or service will not work anymore. Instead, social selling requires being more social (listening and conversing about the customer's needs) and much less about outright selling. It's a very soft sell, or perhaps a consultative sell. Refer back to the example of the two hotels and the unhappy customer. The competing hotel's response to the customer is a great example of un-selling.

At the heart of social selling is relationship building, which is based on establishing trust and offering value. For most salespeople, this should come as good news. After all, the traditional sales process is about just that—relationships. For many marketers, this should also be welcome information because social selling is based on building brand trust. In other words, these are sales and marketing concepts you should be comfortable with by now. It's only a matter of extending those concepts to a new platform—social media.

WHERE TO GO FISH

When it comes to social selling, I like using the analogy of fishing. Fishing in social ponds is very similar to the real-world art of fishing. It's relatively enjoyable, even relaxing for some, and can be a nice hobby to pass the time. But while it seems like a pretty straightforward process, professional fishers will tell you it actually takes thought, planning, and the right tools to make a lucrative haul. The same can be said for social selling. You can dabble in it and may even get lucky and get a bite after only limited effort. If you want to be good at it, and successful enough to sustain yourself in terms of sales and revenue quotas, then you need to get serious about the process. Like fishing, you need to know what kind of fish you want to catch, where and when those fish are typically biting, and what type of bait (or tackle) the fish prefer. So, where are those social ponds?

As I have already mentioned, there are some well-known social networks where lots of productive sales conversations get started. But when talking about social selling, it's important to broaden the idea of what constitutes a social gathering place. The following is an overview of the types of places you need to be social in order to start selling:

• Social media networks: Traditional social media networks include sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn. These are established outlets where lots of conversations are flowing and where the number of active users continues to rise. It's easy to start or jump into conversations on these networks, as well as to find and respond to questions or comments relating to your product or service.
• Visual social networks: These are what I consider second-tier social media networks that evolved somewhat later and are based more on imagery and graphics, but that have proven to be huge, active social networks. This type of network includes YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, and SlideShare. These networks provide a way for you to literally show what your company can offer customers, and they provide the ideal opportunity for a prospective customer to comment on and share your message with others via a visual presentation, infographic, photo, or video.
• Blogs: These started as online personal diaries, and have become part news and information resource and part community. Bloggers have also become sought-after influencers because they often have many loyal followers who turn to blog posts as a source for trends, product reviews, and referrals. The beauty of a blog is that it often has a narrow focus (again, it makes it easy to identify your target customer), and it's easy for you to become an active commenter on blog articles and a contributing member of that blog community. And becoming a contributing member of the community is the best way of developing brand recognition for your company—or developing yourself as a brand in your own right.
• Communities: Similar to traditional social networks, online communities are places where people with similar interests or skills gather to discuss and exchange ideas, or participate in events based on their joint interest. A community can be based on a particular professional skill (such as a specific programming language) or a casual interest (such as gardening—or fishing!). Spiceworks™, for example, is a tech community geared to IT professionals and GreensKeeper is an online community for golf enthusiasts. Communities are great places to find and target potential customers because you immediately know they have an interest or skill that relates to your product or service.
• Answer hubs and groups: These are typically sections found within social networks or communities, but a few are standalone. Regardless, I think it's important to treat them as a separate entity because they take time and effort to participate in, and the conversations are slightly different from the type of conversation you may participate in elsewhere. For instance, on LinkedIn there are many groups that are based on professional skills or interests, like online marketing professionals. Within each group specific topics and conversations that may not show up on your regular LinkedIn profile feed are taking place—and if you want to participate, you may have to actively work to find them. Similarly, there are sites, like Quora, where visitors can ask specific questions and elicit responses from other members. Answer hubs are great places to look for and answer questions that may pertain to your company's product or service.
• Online media/news sites: While these websites may seem the furthest thing away from a source for social selling, they are actually lucrative places to connect with prospective customers. Like blogs, most traditional and online news sources encourage readers to register, set up a public profile, and become an active, contributing commenter on the site. News sites can attract a large audience, and may even be segmented by interests (entertainment outlets, technology or business, beauty, shopping, etc.). Again, these sites provide the opportunity for you to identify conversations that are important to your prospects, participate in those conversations, and provide a presence for your company or brand in a place where your customers are gathered.

As you can see, when talking about social networks, there are actually lots of different places and ways to get involved and start the social selling process. Although I have referenced some of the ways you may engage on these different sites, more specific details are provided in later chapters in this book. In addition to the methodologies for social selling specific to each type of site, you can also expect to learn more about the types of tools you should use to get and track results from your efforts. I also review what you should expect in terms of budgeting time and resources for an extended social selling campaign and provide tips for persuading decision makers and other team members that social selling is a worthwhile endeavor for your company.

SOCIAL SELLING IS A TEAM SPORT

There's one other detail about social selling that might be helpful for you to understand from the beginning. As an individual salesperson or marketer, whatever your position within the company, you can rack up some impressive wins when it comes to finding and selling to social customers. That said, in order to make substantial headway on social networks, you need a team to support your efforts. As already mentioned, there are lots of places where social selling works well. There are almost too many places! Trust me when I say it takes a lot of time to consistently interact on social networks, especially if you do it the right way. Don't panic. In Chapter 10, you will learn how to create and execute a plan to accomplish your selling goals. You will see how important it is to have other team members who can share in the responsibility of making your social selling plan a reality on a daily basis.

There's one other reason you need a team to help you. In this case, I'm specifically referring to a cross-functional team of members coming from sales, marketing, and customer support. This is beneficial because your customers are using social media to meet their needs, too, whether it's a place to research companies, elicit peer reviews of products or services, look for discounts and other buying incentives, get tech support on a product, or air grievances and make their frustration with a company known (just like that woman at the hotel in California). In order for you to use those same networks for selling, you need to make sure your team is working together to help clear the path for selling to occur and create a positive view of your brand—otherwise, you may end up spending your social selling time fielding tech support and customer service questions.

So, how do you organize your teams to boost social selling? Keep reading. In Chapter 2, we dive right into mastering the social triangle of online sales success.