“The Social Sales Revolution: 7 Steps to Get Ahead,” a free new white paper* from SalesForce.com, offers some excellent pointers on how to use social media to identify prospects and sell more.
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I’d urge you to spend some time with this report. Here’s a quick summary of some of the strategies it recommends:
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Use prospects’ Facebook pages and other social media activities to identify and understand their needs. You’ll learn about new products, company issues, current customers, and lots more on their websites.
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Get to know the social “watering holes” where the customers you are targeting spend their time online. For example, the marketing coordinator of Rackspace, an IT hosting company, connected with more than a million other IT managers at an IT social site called Spiceworks. By taking part in the community, he was able to identify prospects, offer suggestions to them, and finally sell.
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Find potential customers by getting people to “Like” you. With social media, you don’t have to go looking for all your new customers. You can let them come to you and build your relationship with them by offering coupons, special sales, and information.
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Hold online events. Caterpillar hosted a three-day online event where customers could discuss their needs, product features, and other equipment-related subjects. The event was attended by 2,000 current and potential customers.
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Connect with “social intelligence.” If your salespeople can connect one-on-one with other people on sites such as LinkedIn, they can communicate about their contact’s current challenges and needs. Addressing those needs offers a powerful platform for selling.
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Get your salespeople tweeting. The SalesForce.com white paper profiles a saleswoman who started tweeting ideas to a growing list of followers. Within two years, she was consistently exceeding her sales quotas by 200%.
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