by Heidi Schwende, Featured Contributor
PUCKER UP, ’cause it’s finally time to kiss cold-calling goodbye. From here on out, you’ll know exactly how to conduct warm-calling exclusively!
This article is intended to help you innovate, network and outperform your competitors by capturing the attention of your buyer persona. While the phone may once have been your sales ammunition of choice, it’s simply not going to cut it in today’s client environment. And it’s certainly not going to capture the attention of your “can’t-help-but-check-my-handheld-every 10-minutes’ type of clients. As every savvy sales pro knows: wherever your prospects are, you should follow. And these days, they’re online.
LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, the blogosphere; you name it, clients and prospects use the social space every single day. My strongest recommendation is to hang up the phone, give your cold-call script a rest and boost your social clout and your personal brand. Social selling is without a doubt the new paradigm in selling tactics.
If you don’t believe it yet, here are a few interesting facts that all sales professionals need to process and accept; sooner rather than later:
- 93% of B2B buyers begin their buying journey online
- 65%-70% of the buying journey is conducted entirely free from sales reps
- 74% of B2B buyers will abandon a search if the company doesn’t have a) a strong social presence and b) is not mobile ready
- 70% of those executives state not being willing to refer businesses they find that don’t have a mobile ready and socially stron online presence
Some of the things you’ll need to do to get ready for social selling are:
- Learn how to optimize your social media profiles to ensure maximum visibility and credibility with buyers
- Develop a roadmap of your ideal buyer persona
- Find out how to publish, share and syndicate valuable content ~ keyword: valuable
- Leverage social listening skills that enable you to monitor social channels for trigger events that signal your buyer is in the buying cycle
- Create your social lead generation program
- Influence Marketing to provide you with powerful internal assets to amplify your lead conversion
- Use your social savvy to gather competitive intelligence
- Figure out how to harmonize your team’s lead generation efforts
If you figure out how to do these things really well, you absolutely will be able to increase your lead funnel by 20%. I know because I have clients on my roster today who have done it.
