Bill Rice Internet Marketing > Social Media

Using Social Media to Prep Your Next Sales Call

January 16, 2012 By 1 Comment

Getting your prospect to listen to your first sales call can be a matter of 1-3 seconds.

Success in this first 1-3 seconds is often the result of making some sort of personal connection–you voice, location, common interest–something that makes you seem human and interested in the person you called.

Unfortunately, you are typically calling a complete stranger and that makes it hard to personally connect that fast. Unless you use the power of social media to warm up that relationship.

Here are a few of my suggestions…

What do you think? Do you have proven ways to warm up your sales calls? Leave a comment, we’ll talk about it.

Filed Under: Quick Sales Tips Tagged With: bill rice, Social Media, Social Selling

5 Tips to Get More Sales from Linkedin

January 20, 2011 By
LinkedIn Sales

LinkedIn Can Be Your Best Friend

LinkedIn is a powerful tool that you can use in order to improve the sales of your business. It is a social network for salespeople and business owners. Some people use it to find employees, but it can also be used in order to streamline your sales method. The first part of taking advantage of this process is making sure that you understand who your customers are and what type of mindset they have. With that in mind, here are 5 sales tips that you can use in order to take advantage of LinkedIn.

1. Create a Clear Profile

It is surprising how common it is to find profiles that don’t really explain what a company even does. More than boasting about the benefits of any particular company, a LinkedIn profile should make it clear what service it provides to its clients or customers. It should go on to explain what results you can provide for your clients, and how things will improve for them if they work with you rather than somebody else or nobody at all.

2. Do Your Research

With LinkedIn, you have access to all of the information that you need in order to find the right person to get in touch with. It makes it possible for you to know everything that you need to in order to have a good business relationship before you even begin speaking with them. All of this makes it much simpler for your first sales call to go much more smoothly than it otherwise would.

3. Build Lasting Relationships

This is one of the sales tips that often goes ignored, but it is perhaps the most important. In order for a company like LinkedIn to be useful for you, you absolutely must use it on a regular basis. It is a good idea to use the system for about twenty minutes every day, keeping in touch with your business contacts. This ensures that your clients and business contacts don’t forget about you, so that you will be one of the first people that they get in touch with if something comes up that you have the skills to help them with.

4. Write Recommendations

If you work with somebody and you feel that they were legitimately helpful, be sure to recommend them. If you already have a working relationship with somebody who has an account, offer to write them a recommendation as well. In many cases, you will get a recommendation in return.

5. Recommendations

It is also a good idea to request recommendations from clients. Don’t get pushy about it, just realize that most people don’t think to do it without some prompting.

Filed Under: Social Networking, Social Selling Tagged With: Customer relationship management, Internet marketing, linkedin, linkedin marketing, Social Media, Social network

Survey Your Existing Customers’ for Social Media Adoption

November 2, 2010 By
Survey Your Customers for Social Media Adoption

Survey Your Customers for Social Media Adoption

Most of my clients are B2B sales organizations and field reps. They like to network, generate referrals,  press the flesh, get belly to belly, pound the phones, and carry the bag.

Ironically, these are all sales clichés that intimate social selling. However, if you mention online social sales processes you get a snort and a scoff. What’s the difference?

Belief. Comfort. Command.

Sales folks have…

  • Belief in these methods.
  • Comfort that they will yield results.
  • Command of the skills to use them.

Social media and networking online lacks all three of these elements.

Today, I’ll start with Belief.

Go to the social network you are the most comfortable with (i.e., Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter) and use their “Find Friends” tool.

Let the service search your email address book, or wherever you keep your existing customer contacts. You will be amazed at how many customers you find.

This should trigger two thoughts in your mind:

  1. Wow! Look at all the relationship building opportunity I’m foregoing; and
  2. I wonder how many prospects I’m not meeting because I’m afraid of social media?

Try it. I just did it with Facebook.

(Confession: I lack belief, comfort, and command of Facebook for business)

Egads! It inspired this post.

Did you try it? Belief? What’s your next move?

Filed Under: Social Selling Tagged With: customers, Social Media, social selling, survey

How to Win Over and Over Again

August 10, 2010 By

Too often we get trapped in the illusion that selling is an art form. This can be a dangerous notion if you let it become the fundamental premise of your sales philosophy.

This has become even more dangerous with the advent of social media and networking. These new and potentially fertile grounds for sales leads can literally become distracting siren songs that can keep you trapped and bouncing around from one attractive, but futile suspected opportunity to the next.

In this presentation, I’m going to try to focus your attention on process, efficiency, and developing sales routines that will lead you into more “natural closes.”

How to Win Over and Over Again – Social Selling from Bill Rice on Vimeo.

Get it on Slideshare: http://bit.ly/winsales

What do you think?

Are you doing anything like this in your sales process? Please share your social selling tips.

Filed Under: Social Media, Social Selling Tagged With: business, Salesmanship, Social Media, social selling

How to Use Social Media to Boost Your Sales

July 26, 2010 By

Social Media & Sales Fuel

Really social media isn’t so different from the skills you use daily to sell. The anxiety comes with learning to use those skills in a new environment. For many of us in sales, technology beyond our cell phones and email is a bit intimidating. However, if you straight arm social media you are giving up opportunity in your sale pipeline.

Social Media 101 for Sales

The name itself makes social media sound like a marketing thing, but rest assured its more like a telephone–definitely a sales thing. The difference? Marketing is good at blasting and broadcasting. Sales is good at connecting and having conversations.

Social media is about good conversations.

So, lets start with the mind-set that social media is for sales. And we are going to use it like any other sales tool. We’re going to learn it, exploit it, and generate as many good conversations as possible.

Here are the basic social media tools sales people should learn:

Linkedin - More than a resume, this social network is full of information on prospects and competitive intelligence. Plugging in and connecting your existing database of contacts will certainly reveal previously unknown connections and relationship, ready to be leveraged.

Facebook - Don’t underestimate this as simply a venue for neighborhood busy-bodies and teenagers. Facebook is increasingly becoming the primary destination of a large percentage of the Internet community. Although it is not a big player on the business front it will be–get acquainted now.

Twitter - Often described as micro-blogging or instant messaging on steroid, Twitter is a powerful tool for collecting competitive intelligence, sniffing out opportunities, and breaking through corporate firewalls (i.e., voice mail, email, and other gatekeepers).

Blogs - They’ve been around for years now, but they are still great ways to get closer to influencers in your market. Everyone reads them, your customers trust them, you’re smart to meet these important online publishers–they can help you land deals.

How Social Media Works

Think of social media as a blend between a contact database and a CRM system. If used correctly it will feed you a steady stream of news and updates that are important to your prospects.

Most social media tools immediately ask you to load in your contacts (i.e., from Outlook, GMail, or other email address book). This gives you a head start on find who in your sales database or prospect list is already actively participating in social media.

I guarantee you will be surprised.

Once you have your contacts loaded a few minutes a day reviewing Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter will give you more than enough inspiration and opportunity for calling on these folks. Taking it to an advanced level you can use the tool itself to engage and interact with these folks–commenting and promoting their own agendas and credibility in the social media channel.

Very possibly you will see opportunities to help these sales prospects advance their own objectives. Can you introduce them to people they want to meet? Can you help them with advice or expertise before you even discuss a sale? Can you help increase their standing or credibility in their industry or peer group?

Searching Social Media Content

Finding sales opportunities in the sea of disconnected social media tools and networks used to be complex. Not so anymore. A little time spent practicing with Google Advanced Search can bring you all the sales leads you can possibly work. However, you do need to practice and refine your social media search techniques.

Start by thinking like a customer, not a sales person. Stop using your language and use theirs to develop your searches. Think through the characteristics of your ideal sales lead.

Here are some ideas to fuel your quest for opportunity, search for:

  • Competitor’s names, products, and sales people
  • Common problems your product solves
  • Frequently asked questions you get on sales calls
  • The names of influencers in your industry or market

Creating these simple searches and then toggling between Google’s News, Blogs, Updates, and Discussions searches will bring you a 360 degree view of your sales opportunities and angles.

Give social media a try in your sales process.

What do you think are the good and bad aspects of using social media as a sales professional?

Filed Under: Social Media, Social Selling Tagged With: facebook, linkedin, marketing, Social Media, Social network, Social Selling

7 Reasons Social Media is for Sales Too

July 21, 2010 By

Social Media Sales

So, you’ve finally heard enough about social media. You’re to the point you actually think you might be missing something. You might even be hearing whisperings around the sales floor that this might be some of the top producers’ secret weapon to grab a few extra wins every month.

I’m glad you took the initiative to be here. We’re going to do a little equalizing.

You’re going to learn some of the basics of social medias. However, much more importantly we’re going to show you how to get value from it immediately–long before you’re a guru.

Why Try Social Media?

Okay, not quite convinced this is going to be worth your time to figure out? Let take a little walk down memory lane and talk about sales history.

Back in the day it all started with carrying a bag and walking door to door, getting a foot in the door, showcasing the product, and selling belly-to-belly at the kitchen table. (Notice all of our cliches come from old school sales).

Then things changed a bit. We started to send sales letters, picked up the telephone for a little cold calling, and blasted a few emails to stay top of mind. That’s right took a few marketing tricks to help us cover our prospects and sales pipeline a little more thoroughly and efficiently.

Social media is the next trick for personal lead generation. Think of it as the new telephone and the email of the future. Believe it or not surveys show that youngsters under 20 never use email–it’s Facebook or text message if you want to pull their chain.

7 Reasons Sales Should Be Using Social Media

Enough coaxing, you either want to learn this or you don’t. Here are 7 specific ways social media is going to immediately improve your sales process:

1. People hang out on social media - The fact of the matter is that millions of people are now congregating on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and hundreds of other social networking sites to stay connected and share ideas. If you’re in sales, why would you hang out on the Internet alone? (It’s kinda like eating alone).

2. Social media is stitch the fabric of referral networks – In the real (physical) world it is really hard to refer business. When someone hears a friends ask, “Do you know a good…” You have to recall the name of the great person you used, search around for a crumpled business card or a scribbled down number, and then you need to get it back to the person who asked the question. Most often these referrals don’t happen–in social media these friend just search the profiles of their Facebook friends and connect to the expert.

3. Trust is already inherent in social networking - Normally when we find people on the Internet or and advertisement for a service we start skeptical. Will they treat me right? Do they care about my business? Will they screw me over? There’s none of that in social media. If you’re in my social network and my friends vouch for you–that’s good enough to get started.

4. You can spot opportunities without cold calling – Cold calling is hard work. You have to break through the firewall and then start peppering the prospect with questions to see if there is a fit. Incorporating social media into your sales process lets you do most of the pre-qualification of a lead long before any call is made or email sent. Just read their profile and content. Is there a reason to do business, or not?

5. If you’re connected referring you is much easier – Outside of social networks you rarely refer someone you’ve never used. It’s too much of a risk and you probably don’t even know about these people and their services, unless it pops up in a random conversation with friends. However in social media you can search for great people to refer by seeing who your friends are endorsing, referring, and raving about. So, there are many times with social media you may get a referrals and endorsement from people you’re never even met.

6. Social media makes finding the right angle a snap – Starting a conversation is the hardest part of sales. What will trip their trigger? What is their burning objective right now? How can I make them a hero in their own company? These are the questions we love to know the answer to–they makes getting an executive’s ear easier. Interestingly enough managers and executives talk about these things all the time in their social networks, using them like advisory networks. And it’s all there for you to read and plan the perfect angle of attack.

7. You are going to find ins you never thought you had - Here’s my favorite. One of the first step in signing up with a social media or networking website is to automatically load in your address book. You will be floored by how many of your friends, colleagues, and prospects are already in the social media channel–instant ins and referral networks.

As you can see social media is not necessarily about engaging and Twittering all day. It’s about observing, listening, and searching for folks that need your products and services.

Then you can use all the user-generated chatter to guide you in the right approach to doing some of your traditional sales stuff–like cold calling, emailing, or even belly-to-belly selling.

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Filed Under: Featured, Social Media, Social Selling Tagged With: facebook, linkedin, marketing, Social Media, Social network, twitter
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