Customer Experience and Social Selling

“More and more sales people are using social  media to help them prospect and develop new business. It’s certainly an  avenue that I use for my client development. Used wisely and effectively it’s a  great tool to enhance your business development efforts.”

“Allow me to propose this: Are sales people who utilize social media more  successful than others, OR is it that consistently successful sales people  almost always use the smartest techniques and are ahead of the curve?”

“Social media should be used to create awareness, build thought leadership and inform your prospect but it shouldn’t be applied when actually selling to your  prospects.  I would actually argue that sales people don’t outsell their  peers using social media, but, on a level playing field, they out-prospect them,  they out-perform them on their pre-call intelligence.” by Monika D’Agostino

Read more: http://www.business2community.com/social-media/sales-social-media-you-0511867

streetsmartprof‘s insight:

I like how Monika builds on the Forbes article and uses practical experience to drill into the why and how around social selling. Aligning the need to use consultative sales skills with social selling and to use the right tools, skills and capabilities at the right time.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/markfidelman/2013/05/19/study-78-of-salespeople-using-social-media-outsell-their-peers/

In Monica’s words, social selling is more about business development, not about the sale. As buyers, we are always looking for competent people when we have questions. And definitely not those who simply want to take over the conversation. How we act on social sites needs to present our consultative skills, not a “know it all” attitude.

Social media is also a great place to pick up on your industry to listen in on the general needs of today. Various tools are available, such as www.socialmention.com, which allow you to setup saved searches specific to your keywords, sources, and industry needs. Crossing all of the main social sites and allowing you to configure which ones you want to monitor.

It is apparent few companies are actually training their sales people how to use social media to help improve the customer experience. Leaving them up to their own to learn how to use the new social tools being deployed. The good news, many of the tools are easy to learn and are low cost or free to use.

See on www.business2community.com