Bill Rice Internet Marketing > Social Media

The Customer AND The Community

May 5, 2010 By
A photo of a cup of coffee.

Image via Wikipedia

I’m still unpacking tons of ideas from SOBCon 2010, but one of my favorites revealed itself completely by accident in a conversation with Jon Swanson (@jnswanson), at the coffee pot no less. I’m sure it didn’t even register with Jon, but it reminded me how important simple idle chat is to creativity.

So, my chat was typical conference (2.0) introductory chatter.

“Hi, I’m Bill. I follow you on Twitter and read your blog. It’s wonderful to meet you.”

Then of course Jon does his part with the, “Oh yeah, I recognize your Twitter icon…What do you do?”

This is when the good stuff happened.

I told him how we have a couple of software products for sales people, but recently I have been doing a lot of strategy, speaking, and coaching on how sales people can use social media along side their sales process. Typical psycho-babble about yourself.

Then it popped out, “I think we are helping make sales people better social media community members.”

Moments later, after our conversation was over, I scribbled this concept in my notebook.

How powerful would it be if, in designing products and services, we considered not only giving value to the customer, but also improving the community in which these customers operate?

Can you think of examples? How could this concept help your sales process (hint: the Go Green theme is making a mint off this idea)?

Filed Under: Conference, Social Media Tagged With: community, Social Media, Social Selling

Social Media for Sales

April 23, 2010 By

Nick testing EavesdropperHave you ever noticed that everything about social media is focused on marketing?

I’m in sales.

We need to do social media differently. We need to do it in a good and productive way.

Do you want to talk more about this?

Filed Under: Social Media, Social Selling Tagged With: Social Media, Social Selling

10 Reasons You Need Competitive Intelligence Now

April 13, 2010 By

ci-collage.jpgCompetitive intelligence seems to be undergoing a resurgence. Is it because of the increasingly open and social Web? The vast proliferation of social networks? Or, the the dawn of social media monitoring. Regardless of the source of the surge, it is important to your business and it is easier than ever.

Why do you need to tune-up your competitive intelligence capabilities?

1. Social media makes it easy - It has never been easier to plug into the market. Social media makes listening and engaging with customers, partners, and even competitors easier than ever. If you are not participating, or at least monitoring social media, you are creating a big missed opportunity in your marketing plan. Your customer expect you to be here. And there is tons of good strategic and tactical information flying around to give you the competitive advantage.

2. The Web is social, markets are conversations - There is little doubt about the Web becoming more social. Everyone is connecting. These connections create communities and market niches online. This means your markets are literally conversations online. Are you tapped into the online market?

3. Why wouldn’t you want to listen to customers? - If you asked any marketer if she would like to be a fly on the wall, watching customers experience her product first hand, you would get an enthusiastic, “Yes!” Yet, daily we miss this opportunity by turning a deaf ear to social media.

4. Why wouldn’t you want to listen to your competitors customers? - Even better, how about watching potential customers experiencing the competitors’ product or service. That is the opportunity of competitive intelligence using social media monitoring.

5. Your competitors are listening to your customers - Guess what? If your competitors are really good and really want to beat you–they are already listening to your customers. That means they have a competitive advantage, right now!

6. Your competitors are listening to you - Whether you want to admit it or not, you are leaking strategic and tactical insight into your next business move. It’s hard to prevent that. Maybe you don’t even want to. But, you can assume your competitor is listening…so should you.

7. Your customers are looking for opportunities to steal your customers - Yes, this is an increasingly hostile business environment. It seems as though buying customers are finite. That means competitors are on the hunt. They are looking to identify and then steal your customers. Social media is an efficient way to do both. Shouldn’t you be doing this better than your competitor?

8. Your competitors customers may be frustrated - There are few things better than a customer frustrated with the competitor. They are not only ripe for the plucking, but if you help them they are likely to be loyal and passionate fans. Competitive intelligence and monitoring social networks will help you pinpoint these opportunities.

9. Your competitors customers may be willing to try something else - Like the frustrated customer, curiosity is nearly as good. If someone is shopping around for alternatives you need to make sure you are in the mix. A good competitive intelligence strategy will help you identify not only one off occurrences, but patterns to find large groups of them.

10. Your competitors may not be using social media monitoring at all - Perhaps the most interesting and compelling reason to start using competitive intelligence and social media monitoring now is that your competitor might not be. What a powerful competitive advantage if you can get the jump on them.

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: Competitive Intelligence, monitoring, Social Media, social Web

Increasing Conversations with Social Media

April 5, 2010 By

Detroit Area Social Media GurusA new B2B survey just popped into my email this week. The punch line was: sales pipelines are healthier, but 60% reported their sales cycles were getting longer.

Being kind of a "solutions" guy, my first reaction was to think about ways to shorten a sales cycle. Fortunately, I didn’t just sit down and start writing the typical 10 Ways to Shorten Your Sales Cycle article. I think that would have yielded some bad advice.

Instead I stepped back and thought about the real goal of sales–revenue. Think about it. Does your sales manager really care about how long sales cycles are if you’re consistently hitting revenue targets? No.

So, let’s talk about things that help you hit revenue more often.

Shorter Sales Cycles Don’t Get You More Sales

Sales cycles have little or nothing to do with sales revenues. Many traditional measurements sales managers track have little to do with revenue. Things like sales cycles, fall-out rates, call volumes, and all the other little measurements are used to diagnose problems. They help managers identify people that need their help.

For you, as a sales person, these measurements are of little value. They may even be counterproductive–causing you stress, sapping your confidence, and certainly focusing you on the wrong sales activities.

Good Conversation Get You More Sales

Think about this: When was the last time a sale dropped into your lap? I mean truly fell out of the sky–you never called them, emailed them, met them, engaged them with social media, or were referred by a client or friend.

In the real world, pennies from heaven rarely fall.

That means at some point you had to have had a good conversation, with someone. This is why I argue that increasing your sales has everything to do with increasing your good conversations.

Using Social Media to Increase Targeted Conversations

Notice I keep using the phrase: good conversation. I think there is an important distinction to be emphasized here.

I can sit in the coffee shop all day and have conversations. However, I doubt that’s going to help my sales (unless I run a coffee shop).

This is where social media can be a real force multiplier for your sales. I can get pretty precise in targeting my conversations at prospects.

Here are some places and ways I like to generate good conversation with social media:

  • Search Twitter for keywords and trigger phrases
  • Join relevant Linkedin Groups
  • Participate in Linkedin Answers
  • Comment on relevant (industry) blogs

Each of these venues gives you quick and relevant ways to start good conversations.

How and where do you start good sales conversations?

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Filed Under: Social Media, Social Selling Tagged With: conversation, linkedin, Social Media, Social Selling, twitter

Social Media Engagement Starts with Monitoring

March 23, 2010 By

tweetdeck.pngThere is lots of talk in marketing and PR circles about how important social media engagement is. The experts are telling us to get involved with our customers. Interact with customers. Engage customers for ideas and feedback. Participate with them as they experience your products and services.

That sounds good, but you are probably asking: How do I find them? Then how do I connect with them? And finally how do I speak their language?

All simple, logical, and often ignored questions. Interestingly enough they all have the same answer–social media monitoring. Do you have a plan to find and monitor your target?

Find Your Community

It is hard to have a conversation anywhere, online or offline, without having someone to talk to. Social media and social networks are full of people. But, randomly talking to people isn’t very interesting or rewarding. You need to find people like yourself or interested in your expertise.

Finding your community starts with monitoring various social networks (i.e., Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.) and finding out where your people hang-out.

Start Monitoring Social Networks

Tapping into and monitoring these networks can be accomplished in a variety of ways. Here are a few of the most popular:

1. Join the social network. Most social media website require you to join to listen in. And social media works best if you are participating, not just lurking, anyway.

2. Find a way to aggregate your social networks. Google (RSS) Reader, Browser bookmarks, Delicious, and FriendFeed are some of the popular ways I use to aggregate some of my favorite social websites and conversations. The king of social Web aggregation though is RSS. You should learn more if you want to really monitor social media well.

3. Use a professional social media monitoring tool. This is the most efficient way to pull in all the available social media venues and layers in good noise filtering and keyword monitoring.

Listening Makes Engaging Simple

Really the end-game in all of this monitoring is to make your engagement more effective. Regardless of whether you are selling something, learning something, or buying something listening first will make your engagement more effective.

Ultimately, your time online and in social media has some goal or objective. If you begin your strategy with a good monitoring plan you are going to be better prepared–smarter about your audience and the opportunity. Getting you to your objective faster and more efficiently.

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: facebook, linkedin, monitoring, Social Media, twitter, youtube

Same, Same, but Different

March 23, 2010 By
"Same Same but Different"

Image by samemovie09 via Flickr

My wife recently returned from a mission trip to Cambodia to support the Rapha House. In recounting her experiences one of the lighter moments was her description of the marketplaces. 

Haggling over price is expected in their shopping experience. There are also an abundance of knock-off products. From this springs the colorful and frequent phrase, "Same, Same, but Different." The most common use is in response to, "Is that really a Versace, Rolex, [other popular brand]?"

"Same, Same, but Different."

Flash forward…last week I was talking to a client about a new B2B social media sales training program we are building out. This client (in the business of selling big ticket enterprise software) had already noted a few natural trends in their sales organization, as it applied to using social media. There were three distinct groups:

  1. Sales people not using social media and showing flat or declining sales
  2. Sales people using social media and showing declining sales
  3. Sales people using social media and showing increasing sales

I was asked to explain these observations and recommend a solution. 

My mind immediately jumped to my wife’s description of the Cambodia marketplace anthem–"Same, Same, but Different." The answer was simple, the results typical. The key to success in selling into today’s B2B marketplace is realizing that sales is, "same, same, but different."

Social media is not a sales silver bullet. It will not (or very rarely) yield that one Tweet close. And if you sit around staring at your Twitter stream all day you will fall into group 2.

Here was my explanation: Sales principles are the same, building relationships and trust with buyers is the same, some of the tools and much of the buyers behavior is different. 

Here was my simplified answer (specific to enterprise software sales): 

Selling quarter to half-million dollar software is still a complex sale. You have to really understand the customer, their pain and their decision makers. You have to lower their risk to saying, "yes." You have to demonstrate (typically an evaluation) how you are going to achieve the promise result.

What has changed? They don’t start with the vendor for education (the old RFI process). They start by querying their social network–Linkedin, Twitter, etc. They broadcast their evaluations and consideration on Linkedin, Twitter, or blog posts. They ask lots of questions, seek out communities of current users, and look for thought leaders. Multiple people significant to the buying decision are doing their own independent social media "research," being influenced, and reporting back internally.

Social media, if used efficiently, can give you a front-row seat to this whole process. If you don’t learn and use social media, you are always too late to call and confused why you never had a shot at the client. 

Solution: Group 3 figured it out. We just need to teach the other two groups how their job is the, "same, same, but different."

What would you have told my client?

Filed Under: Sales Training, Social Media Tagged With: Sales Training, Social Media
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