Can Social Media Help You Improve Relationship Marketing?

May 15, 2011 by · Leave a Comment

Blogging Tips Blog

Patti Stafford writing on the Blogging Tips website talked about how social media can improve relationship marketing. However, she made an important observation that you have to connect personally with your audience. Sending “form” emails and broadcasting where you had lunch on Twitter is NOT relationship marketing. Social Media can provide a great platform to improve relationship marketing and interactions on a large scale if done properly. Social Media provides leverage in marketing to many vs. the traditional “call – meeting – follow-up process” which is more direct sales than marketing and touches very few prospects. Relationship Marketing through Social Media is a blend of traditional direct selling and marketing/branding/pr/awareness building – all layered on top of tools that give you the opportunity for continuous conversations from the comfort of your computer chair. with very little time investment.

Obviously, you’ve got to eventually meet in person your best prospects to close them;  however, imagine how much more successful you and your sales team could be by engaging hundreds of perfect prospects every week as compared to just a handful.

Here’s one of the key points Patti made from the blog article:

One key point to remember and the reason for relationship marketing is that people buy from people they like and trust. If you aren’t taking care of people and getting them to like you, they will never buy your product or a product you recommend. It’s that simple. You may get a few initial sales but if you don’t get up close and personal with your audience they won’t spread the word about you, sales and traffic will drop off and your business will die.

To read the full article on relationship marketing, click the link below:

What is Relationship Marketing?

  • Here’s a few questions to get the conversation started:
  • Do you have a specific strategy for executing on a plan for relationship marketing with your key prospects?
  • Where do you stand on leveraging Social Media as part of your relationship marketing plan?
  • Is your sales team still stuck in sales engagement, prospecting, and networking that is stuck in a 1970s sales model?
  • What research, tools, and consultants/coaches have you sought out to begin moving down this path of relationship marketing that leads to more effective lead generation and nurturing?

Barry Deutsch

Filed Under: social media · Tagged: , ,

B2B Marketing Leads Converted into Sales Transactions

March 28, 2011 by · Leave a Comment

HubSpot Blog

One of my favorite blogs to follow is the Hubspot Inbound Marketing Blog – I get lots of ideas on how to drive sales leads and referrals from this blog.

Katherine Derum described her experience of going into a retail store as an example of B2C marketing/sales integration that could be applied at a B2B level. She makes the following points in her blog article:

All too often I hear of marketing teams and sales teams running in different directions.  A marketing team could do an excellent job of bringing in leads, however if the sales team is not prepared or educated on how to take a lead further down the sales cycle, there is no gain.  While a retailer doesn’t necessarily drive leads, they can be a perfect example of marketing and sales working well together.

Before you jump to the conclusion that lead quality is the problem, first find out what your sales team is doing with your leads.  How are they opening the conversation?  What suggestions might you offer that would open up the discussion?   You know your potential customer as well or better than sales.  You might find augmenting what’s happening AFTER the lead is generated can increase lead quality opposed to adjusting how it was generated.
My only frustration with the article was that I wish she had thrown in a few examples of B2B sales/marketing integration that tied back to the metaphor she was painting of a retailer’s marketing/sales function working together. She does raise some excellent points about what happens with leads and how they are acted upon in many companies.
What examples could offer of how well your lead generation/sales effort works in moving leads into close transactions? This becomes an even bigger issue as more companies start to drive sales leads by marketing through social media.
Barry Deutsch
Filed Under: sales management · Tagged: , ,

Is Your Sales Team Learning and Growing?

March 2, 2011 by · 1 Comment

Do your sales managers and sales professionals continually and proactively learn and expand their knowledge/skills as sales experts?

I’m sorting through the thousands of blogs I follow on a weekly basis and I come across this blog posting in the sales arena for the top 50 sales blogs based on Hubspot’s Grading Tool. Sean Black at the SalesCrunch Blog pulled this list together and here’s a short summary:

Here at SalesCrunch we follow well over 200 of the best sales blogs each day! This is obviously far too many for any normal human to filter and process. So when we saw Hubspot post their Top 100 Marketing Blogs using the new groups feature in Blog Grader last week we were super excited. We immediately decided to feed our list of 200+ blogs into the tool to generate  the SalesCrunch Top 50 Sales Blogs. The list is generated according to the “Grade” in Blog Grader and is updated daily so the list is always accurate and up to date.

It started me thinking about your sales leadership and sales staff.

What is your sales team reading, researching, and studying to become more adept at selling, sales management, negotiation, prospecting, leveraging social media to generate leads and referrals? If your sales management and sales team is a lot like the thousands of sales professionals I’ve interviewed over the years, then they are probably doing NOTHING on their own unless you force-feed it to them.

One of the differences between average/mediocre sales management-sales professionals and top talent is that top talent never stops learning. They are like sponges. They cannot get enough new information to become better at their craft. The best part is that they don’t wait for you to teach them or provide learning opportunities. They seek it out on their own.

Do you agree with this statement – top talent never stops learning?

What type of people do you have in your sales organization – average/mediocre staff waiting for you to give them learning opportunities OR are they top talent sales professionals reaching and grabbing for every ounce of information they can find that will help them become more effective?

In our Sales Recruiting Division of our Executive Search Practice, we’ve started to require our recruiters to ask questions about continuous learning to separate out the top talent.

Some of these questions might include:

  • What are 3-5 books you’ve read recently on a sales related topic?
  • What are your favorite sales learning/education blogs that you follow regularly?
  • What sales learning/education forums-groups do you belong to on LinkedIn or other platforms?
  • Where have you found recently a great idea or tip on sales that has improved your capability or skill?
  • Walk me through the learning you’ve proactively sought out over the last year or two to become better in sales – learning that your company didn’t provide or give to you.

These are just a few of the questions we probe to try and validate is this sales candidate a top talent individual and are they a continuous life-long learner. Are they growing and expanding their capability at a rapid pace?

Is it time to look at your sales team and score them along a learning/personal growth matrix? How about changing your sales interviews?

I’d love to hear your feedback from your next sales interview when you pose these questions to a potential candidate. Would you be comfortable asking these questions? Do you believe they start to get at important traits of success for top talent sales professionals and sales managers?

To read the full blog post by Sean Black, click the link below:

SalesCrunch Top 50 Sales Blogs 2011

 

Barry Deutsch

P.S. We have launched our new 30-day e-course for personal service providers and sales professionals on how to leverage social media to attract customers and clients. You can read more about this exciting e-course offering in the blog sidebar or by clicking the menu item at the top of the blog.

Filed Under: sales management · Tagged: , , , , ,

Can Social Media Improve Your Sales Lead Generation?

February 21, 2011 by · 2 Comments

Social Media B2B Blog

Umberto Milletti, in his post on the Social Media B2B Blog, describes the value that using social media tools in the sales process can bring to improving or enhancing lead generation activities for your sales team. He describes some of the key benefits as:

  • If they are not the decision maker, identify decision makers within the prospect’s company
  • Leverage your social connections to identify a common SENIOR connection between you and the decision makers
  • Tap into social intelligence to listen to what the decision makers care about or talk about
  • Learn enough about your prospect’s current business challenges and needs to convince the common senior connection to agree to an introduction
  • Discover which other executives might be involved in the decision making process

I wrote a comment back to Umberto’s post and below is a summary of my response to how he indicates/perceives that social media can improve the sales lead generation process. I have a few major concerns – especially among entrepreneurial-to-middle market companies:

It seems that many senior executive decision makers are NOT using social media. They are not on Faceback or Twitter. They are not actively using LinkedIn. Forget for a moment senior executive decision makers. Most senior sales professionals are not using social media tools in their own sales efforts. We’re still very much in the early adopter phase for most social media practical B2B uses – outside of very young professionals and those in the tech sector.

Has this been your experience? How much are you using social media in your sales function? Are all your sales professionals trained in the latest techniques of using Umberto’s ideas to improve lead generation?

To read the full article on improving B2B lead generation, please click the link below.

Can Social Media Be Used to Improve Lead Qualification

Barry Deutsch

P.S. Is it time to take our Social Media in Sales Self-Assessment to determine if your sales team is leveraging social media and networking to the fullest potential in your company?

Filed Under: sales management, social media · Tagged: , , , ,

Do You Have Powerpoint Presentations on Your LinkedIn Profile?

February 19, 2011 by · 1 Comment

I am Linkedin - Now What?

Jason Alba of “I’m on LinkedIn – Now What” fame wrote a blog post raising the question of whether you should have one choice, two choices, or many choices for the readers of your LinkedIn Profile to view your SlideShare Presentations (Powerpoints).

His recommendation is to guide your readers to one presentation – or direct them down a specific path. He gives examples of well-know internet luminaries using two presentations and forcing their viewers to “choose” one or the other.

Like Jason, up until now I’ve always felt more is better. My slideshare account is “linked” to my LinkedIn profile.

Should you have a separate slideshare account for your LinkedIn Profile in which there are only one or two presentations. You can always have a separate account with all your presentations.

Here’s how Jason summed it up on his blog post:

I think providing fewer choices to the viewer to go to where you want them to go to is better than showing a portfolio. You can easily send them to your slideshare account to see all of them if you want to… but from your LinkedIn Profile, point people to where you really want them to go to without adding too many choices, confusion or noise.

To read the full article on Jason Alba’s Blog regarding How many Slideshare presentations should you display on your LinkedIn Profile, please click the following link:

Optimizing Slideshare on Your LinkedIn Profile

Barry Deutsch

We’re about to launch our two brand new separate courses on Advanced Leveraging of LinkedIn. For Speakers, Consultants, Coaches, and Trusted Advisers the focus is on personal branding, networking, and nurturing your network for leads and opportunities. For CEOs, the focus is on using LinkedIn personally and through-out your company for recruiting, business development, sales, marketing, branding, and customer engagement. If you’re interested in joining our next e-Course class, please send a note to us through the contact form off the top menu.

Filed Under: social media · Tagged: , ,

Can Twitter Help Your Business?

January 21, 2011 by · Leave a Comment

Savvy B2B Marketing Blog

Here’s an interesting blog posting on the Savvy B2B Marketing Blog about the power and leverage social media can bring to a business, especially Twitter. The author presents a number of different scenarios in how Twitter might be used within your business.

Unless you’re living under a rock, you probably noticed everyone jumping on the social media bandwagon over the past year or two –  Twitter in particular. Along with the enthusiasm (hype?), there has been a debate over which social media platforms are appropriate for which businesses and how they would be used to their best effect.

Many executives, consultants, coaches, and speakers say to me”:

Barry – what’s this Twitter thing about? Why are people so excited to be sending messages that they’re standing at the dry cleaners or supermarket? I don’t get it and I don’t see the value of it.

To read more about leveraging Twitter for B2B marketing, sales, and lead generation, check out the post by clicking on the link below:

Savvy Speaks: Best B2B Twitter Tips – Savvy B2B Marketing

Barry Deutsch

Filed Under: social media · Tagged: ,

Candidates Just Can’t Get Any Respect

October 13, 2010 by · Leave a Comment

About Com Human Resources Blog

I came across this great post on the About.com Human Resources site. The primary point that Susan Heathfield makes is that candidate’s deserve a response, they deserve the right to know where they stand in your hiring process.

She claims and I agree 100% that the candidate you reject deserves the same courtesy of notification as the candidate to whom you are offering the job. Communication should be respectful and responsive.

In thousands of conversations with candidates, we discovered a general level of dismay, anger, and frustration with most human resource departments and hiring managers. She states”:

Among job searching candidates currently, their biggest complaint is the disrespect with which they are treated by HR offices. Unfortunately, no communication appears to be the norm.

Do you have a process, procedure, or policy to ensure that candidates are treated with respect in your hiring process – even those whom you reject?

To read the entire article regarding, click the following link:

Candidates Deserve Respectful Communication

Barry Deutsch

P.S. See the expanded version of this article on our primary HIRE and RETAIN TOP TALENT Blog

Filed Under: hiring top talent · Tagged: , , ,

Is It Time to Put the Social into Customer Service?

June 3, 2010 by · Leave a Comment

Another excellent article was recently posted on Mashable by Lauren Vargas, Community Manager at Radian6, about implementing social media within the customer service function. All in the name of improving customer interactions, relationships, and communication. The title of the article was “5 Steps to Taking Customer Service Social.”

Success stories can be found everywhere in almost every business sector imaginable where companies are beginning to leverage the power of social media first in their customer service/customer engagement functions.

Implementing social media tools, activities, tasks, and processes within customer service can serve a three-fold role: It allows you to put your toe in the water around using social media, provides a great “testing” platform for trying different things, and it might have the greatest short term impact on your business – both from a revenue and bottom line impact – not to mention the competitive advantage it could give your firm.

Do you have a plan to research how social media might play a role in your customer service function? Who will be responsible for the research and recommendations?

If you don’t have the internal resources, have you considered hiring an “expert” to help guide you through implementing social media in your company.

What’s holding you back from examining, researching, testing, and piloting social media within your company – especially in the customer service area?

We’re well beyond early-adopter, geeky, flaky type applications. Social media is now a mainstay of interaction for most people, whether it be through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogging, or a specific industry forum – whether you’re a travel nut, foodie, or B2C supplier.

It would be a shame if your competitors got a year head start over you in leveraging social media to build stronger relationships with your customers.

Barry

Filed Under: social media · Tagged: , ,

Are You Adapting to the New Frontier of Social Media

June 2, 2010 by · Leave a Comment
Image representing Mashable as depicted in Cru...
Image via CrunchBase

One of my favorite social media “news” blogs to follow is Mashable. If you want to stay current on all the latest tool, tips, examples, illustrations of how to use social media – particularly in an entrepreneurial to small business company – you should subscribe to the RSS feed for Mashable.

I was reading an interesting article today that was was posted on Mashable titled 5 Small Business Success Stories. It talked about how 5 different small businesses  -4 retailers and 1 service company – were changing their entire business model as a result of social media.

My business model has changed dramatically with the coming of age of social media. My cost structure for recruiting talent has declined dramatically, my leads for new executive search projects, consulting projects, and hiring manager training have increased significantly through our web presence – especially blogging. We’ve even created an entire web-based business model that includes e-commerce and on-line training.

How are you leveraging – incorporating – adapting – social media into your business?

  • Are you engaging with potential customers at a different level?
  • Is social media enabling you to differentiate yourself more effectively?
  • Is the quality of your customer service increasing beyond your peers?
  • Can social media give you a competitive advantage?
  • Is it opening up a new world of networking for candidates, benchmarking, and information?

How have you started to adapt social media to your business model?

Barry

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Employee Engagement – A Few Resources

June 1, 2010 by · Leave a Comment

Let’s continue down this path of Employee Engagement. Here are a few additional articles you might want to read regarding employee engagement:

We talk extensively about Employee Engagement in our Vistage Group Presentation “You’re the Person I Want To Keep”. Our experience over the last decade is that very few companies actively implement programs, activities, and process to embed employee engagement into the fabric of their organizations.

If you don’t start doing it NOW – what’s the risk as the economy starts to improve and more employees start to look to see if the “grass is greener” somewhere else?

Barry

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Filed Under: culture, employee satisfaction · Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,
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