By Meryl K. Evans on March 01st, 2010
Scaring off sales
Scaring off Sales
My company hired me as its first marketing executive. I have a designer and a copywriter that have been there for years. We work together well.
My sales counterpart and I also got along GREAT at first, until I suggested interviewing the sales team to better understand how their customers might react to a social media initiative. Since then, she has found excuse after excuse for me not to speak with them, and our relationship is a bit strained. Is there a way to fix this relationship or should I try another approach to reach sales?
– Flailing in sales
Teri – while involving newer ‘social media’ techniques the issue seems to be the same old challenge of keeping sales and marketing in lock step. What I have found is that help illustrate the potential value to the sale force as a way for them to extend conversations, credibility and number of unique touches into their accounts.
Not to mention the opportunity to provide a significantly higher level of customer/client focus.
Lastly – why not find look for one of their competitors that has a very valuable and credible social media footprint. Show them the SEO this competitive sales reps gains from investing in a public brand. Might help make the case.
Regards,
Joel Capperella
Teri
I’m sure you are aware that most sales reps (especially in retail) see their jobs disappearing down the gurgler as direct sales on the web grow rapidly and small businesses disappear in favor of big box stores. So your Sales Executive counterpart is not likely to want you terrifying the reps still further by suggesting that Twitter and other social media will be a growing part of your company’s sales initiative – Unless!! and this could be hard to do – you can convince her/him that such initiatives will, in fact, contribute to the reps’ success.
At least let him/her know that is your objective so you might at least get to talk about it in a more cooperative manner.
Teri,
I am just embarking on a social media campaign for my company, and I hit a lot of resistance from upper management at first. I started picking up on any free webinars I could related to social media, and was able to build my argument through examples. I chose competitor and client sites and showed management how they were involved in social media; Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn mostly. And my most successful point was that old saying – people do business with people, not companies. These days it goes one step further. People do business with people THEY KNOW. The best way for your sales reps to get to know their potential customers is through social media.
All, thanks for the great feedback. We will incorporate them in the article.