Sales Success = “You Engaging Others”
Posted by Bill Rice on 07/28/08 in featured, lead generation, marketing, social media
Jeff Turner, a willing and able advocate of social media’s impact on sales production and the real estate business, brings it back into focus with his capstone quote at Inman’s Bloggers Connect conference–”You Engaging Others” or YEO.
There has been a ton of excitement and hyperbole around leveraging social media to bring floods of customers. Meanwhile, the facts are (at least in the Real Estate and Mortgage business) that customer inquiries are on the decline. This means building systems for quantity and discounting quality is a guaranteed failure.
What? Bill are you closing your Twitter account, swearing off blogging, and auctioning your LinkedIn contacts? No, but perspective and objective are important metrics to revisit in social marketing.
Your social media strategy should be designed around these core perspectives:
- Start conversations
- Facilitate intelligent discussions
- Nurture long-term relationships
Furthermore, your social media efforts should acheive these principle objectives:
- Create opportunities for unique conversations
- Create opportunities for learning conversations
- Create opportunities for teaching conversations
- Create opportunities for seeking conversations
None of these perspectives or objectives brings you an immediate flood of closed deals. Engagement brings you a long-term flood of sales. That means listening, providing value, getting personal, and sitting down for a cup of coffee or a meal–not flooding the Internet with keywords.
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Ricardo Bueno | Aug 17, 2008 | Reply
There’s one philosophy that drives my business & my engagement in/with social media: “Solve. Don’t sell!”
It makes it easier for me to identify with and engage the type of customer that I want.
Tiffany Starnes | Aug 21, 2008 | Reply
I came to your site from a post on chrisbrogan.com linking to the GM post. However, this one speaks very closely to how I think marketers should work. I am currently developing a project that I have had a hard time selling in to retailers, although it provides the type of engaging content that would promote discussion and add value to consumers, in addition to promoting sales. I would love your feedback on how to successfully approach companies with branded content opportunities that would benefit them.