Social media for salespeople? Where do we start?

I’m pushing my sales team to add social media to its repertoire. We started with Twitter and tried to train the sales staff; however, they aren’t taking it seriously. They continue to use the hard-sell approach.

I don’t think they understand how to use Twitter and LinkedIn to build relationships.

Should we expect the sales team to use these tools, or should marketing maintain them and pass on leads to sales?

– Overwhelmed in Chicago

---

 Summary of Advice Received

---

Social Media: B2B’s Perfect Lead Generator

Joint journey taken by both sales and marketing

by Meryl K. Evans, Editor, B2B Social Media Digest 

Business.com has released a report, the 2009 B2B Social Media Benchmark Study that looks at a diversity of business-to-business (B2B) companies and their social media use. The most interesting fact is that B2B marketing and communications employees use social media the most, followed by senior management and sales. Multiple metrics in the study show that using social media is new for those who use it for business, with most getting into it within the past one to two years.

Another tidbit is that marketing drives social media initiatives in 76 percent of the responding B2B companies. The report shows that social media has value to B2B.

What does this mean for “Overwhelmed in Chicago?” Well, the answers to this dilemma go beyond deciding who should do what with social media. We had an overwhelming response to this question, and readers provide sound advice to make social media as effective as it can be. Work through the following activities with multiple departments getting involved to successfully incorporate social media into your business.

• Look at goals before social media.
• Go where your customers go.
• Train staff.
• Focus beyond sales.
• Split tasks between sales and marketing.
• Put the responsibility on marketing.
• Involve other employees.

Look at goals before social media 

“I think the key to executing successful and measurable campaigns is to make this area of the business (sales team) understand what the goals are for the business as well as the role they play in achieving these goals with social media,” says Sven N. Reigle, associate of online marketing with World Wildlife Fund.

Tim Nixon, partner, Identity Marketing and Public Relations, also recommends clarifying your goals. “They are asking, ‘How can Twitter help our sales force,’ when they should ask, ‘What are our goals, who is our audience, where are they online, what do they need, what do WE want to change in terms of our relationship with them?’ THEN you can apply tactics and technology against that intelligence.”

AJ Gerritson, founding partner of 451 Marketing, “thirds” that recommendation. He asks, “Is your goal to generate leads? Connect with existing customers? Retain employees? All social media activities need to be well thought out in the form of a strategy directly tied to business objectives. A strategy will help you determine who should use social media tools to send your messages.” 

Go where your customers go

Once you determine your goals, remember to know your audience. “One type of social media does not fit all situations,” says James W. Obermayer, executive director of the Sales Lead Management Association.

Sharon Mostyn reminds us to keep the pulse on what customers are doing. “Determine where your customers are, then go to them; don’t expect them to come to you. Listen first, then engage.”

“If you want to build relationships with your clients and sales team with Twitter and LinkedIn,” adds Global Brands, Inc. CEO Jerry A. Grunor, “why not identify some of your current clients who are already there? Use them as part of a training team for your sales staff.”

Train staff

If you want to engage customers and get across a specific message, Tarla Cummings, social media manager, Location3 Media, says, “You can’t force anyone to use Twitter or other social media networks.”

She says that instead, you should train your sales staff on how to use it properly and clearly explain the benefits for them personally. “It may take some cheerleading at first on your part, but once they make a real connection and get their first sale through Twitter or LinkedIn, they’ll be social media junkies for life!”

Mike Santoro, president of Walker Sands Communications, says that the staff won’t get any value by just signing up. “Show how they can use LinkedIn to connect with partners, find new leads and research prospects before initial meetings. Demonstrate how they can use Twitter to nurture relationships and help establish people as thought leaders within the industry. Clear actions will help them actually do the most valuable tasks. Tell them to join a specific group or respond to a specific question. Clear actions will make sure they actually get done. Too often marketing teams make the mistake of saying, ‘You should use Twitter,’ without giving any clear direction to how or why.”

Education goes a long way. “Rather than push the sales team,” says Linda Gordon, national sales director, Think Big Sites, “lead them. Use social media yourself and obtain leads from those sources. When they clearly see the benefit – they will change. If they do not — their sales will suffer.”

Focus beyond sales

If sales is one of your top goals, know that you will never reach that goal unless you build a relationship with customers and prospects. Elinor Stutz, CEO with Smooth Sale, LLC, says, “The era of hard-push sales is over (I used to sell an unknown brand of copier door-to-door), and trust me, I saw many antics from male salesmen. My style is to build relationships and attract clients. The key on Twitter is to offer samplings of expert advice first without links — NO selling!”

Arthur Zards, CMO, XNet, calls social media a “relationship tool.” He says, “Only expect the sales team to use social media tools as long as they are using similar non-social media tools, such as cold calling. These relationship tools are just like a phone,” he says.

We can take this concept one step farther. “I tell clients to think of Twitter and other forms of social media as a cocktail party. You don’t use a hard sell approach at a cocktail party. You talk and get to know the people while allowing them to get to know you! You give back by LISTENING!” says Angela Daffron of Daffron Marketing.

Kent Lewis, president of Anvil Media, Inc. points out that the sales team can do more than just build relationships with Twitter. He recommends that you:

• Find prospects using keyword research for relevant questions and comments.

• Monitor conversations and tracking trends.

• Identify influencers and engage them.

• Share valuable insights and information.

• Provide customer support.

Claire Celsi, owner of the Public Relations Princess, LLC, points out that you cannot force this process. “People must be patient and not pushy about making friends. As for harvesting leads and passing them on, I think that’s putting the cart before the horse. You should worry more about how the customers will perceive getting shuffled off to someone they don’t know.”

Split tasks between sales and marketing

Some people think that companies should split the responsibility for social media between sales and marketing, depending on your goals. “The key is to understand the motivations behind sales vs. marketing,” says Sam Liu, vice president of marketing, Partnerpedia. “If for general communications to customers, then marketing will need to take ownership of the content and process. If it’s something more directly tied to driving sales, then sales would have the motivation to take on the effort.

“In general, you’ll not find many sales folks who want to spend time in social media for business reasons. The ones who do (for business) are likely to focus their effort on developing a network of opportunities or contacts for sales potential.”

Others believe that this works better as a team effort. “Both sales and marketing staff should definitely use Twitter and LinkedIn. Sales reps can use Twitter and LinkedIn to share knowledge about the product or service they are selling,” says Sajeel Qureshi, vice president of operations for Computan.

Steven Tylock, The LinkedIn Personal Trainer, adds, “Let’s make it easy on your sales team — instead of using LinkedIn as a marketing tool, every single one of them should use LinkedIn to identify prospects, research those prospects (and any others that come into the pipeline from another source) and find warm introductions from their existing contacts.”

Another way to think of social media is as a customer relationships management (CRM) tool. “LinkedIn is a mini CRM system and a way to stay up to date with people that like to share what they’re doing, what’s important to them and to answer questions or raise discussions,” says Carol Hagen.

Consider thinking big. “If your sales and marketing team do an effective job of using social media, you can expect to reduce your overall marketing budget by approximately 40 percent of your current spend. If your company can make this transition, there should be no reason why the sales team cannot receive a slightly higher commission/bonus for using these tools to save the company money. So you may also want to change your incentive plan, based on the channels the staff uses to generate and close sales,” says Tim Pacileo, The BoardRoomAdvisors, LLC.

When sales and marketing are working together toward the same goals, they can learn the best “social media techniques” from each other. “Each platform has its own unique set of traits that a savvy salesperson can leverage,” says Jon Mandell, social media strategist, MarketingSmartt. “For example, Linkedin allows you to search by job title or function, which can be extremely helpful for identifying decision-makers and potential leads. On Twitter, the ‘Lists’ feature can help you find individuals grouped by industry. Each platform also has a slightly different etiquette. Have your sales team spend some time exploring each platform to get a sense of how people interact, and train them properly on the less obvious functions so that they know what goes on behind the scenes.” Ditto for the marketing staff.

Another option is to define marketing and sales roles and processes where social media is concerned. “With social media tools like TweetDeck and HootSuite, businesses can set up an internal workflow to deal with social media. This means marketing can run the main account and route requests to the sales team or customer service,” Robert Gourley, creative director at Mojave.

Mike Schlossberg, assistant vice president, technical and community management at Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce, says, “My feeling is that Twitter, LinkedIn and other Social Media aren’t just for sales or just for marketing; instead, you need to integrate the two strategies, and that is what makes social media so unique (and so challenging to many sales and marketing professionals). Social media must be used for a variety of objectives to truly be successful — sales, marketing, customer feedback, relationship building, market research, etc.”

Put the responsibility on marketing

A few people think that marketing should lead the effort. “Relationship building is certainly more in line with the job description of the marketing team, so let them manage the account, but plan for them to bring up the Twitter strategy regularly with the sales team so you can be sure to incorporate product news or specials in your company’s tweets,” says Natalie Nicole Gilbert, On Time Talent Productions.

Mandy Minor, principal and marketing strategist, J Allan Studios, says this: “Twitter is 100 percent marketing’s domain, and if you have sales manage it, you’ll likely do way more harm than good. Relationship building is the only way to make sales now, and Twitter is all about building relationships. I also caution that you need to get your sales team into training to find other ways than the hard sell; people don’t like it, it’s last century, and you cannot bully people into becoming your customers.”

Involve other employees 

The problem could be that people are telling the sales team to use social media without any explanation. “Since much of social media does not involve ‘hard sales,’ it becomes very tough for a sales team to switch gears. Further, social media requires a significant investment of time, making this an activity that should probably be outside of the core sales team. Having said that, train each salesperson with social media basics to identify opportunities,” says Jesse Torres, president and CEO of Pan American Bank.

Brad Squires, creative director with Bold Type Design, recommends spreading the responsibility among departments. “A good approach is to allow members of various departments to tweet, so long as they are tweeting worthwhile posts that communicate the company’s personality and values. For example, in a software company, a programmer could tweet about an IT issue the company just resolved, while a designer could mention a hot new design.”

Maryanne Conlin, founder of the MCMilker Group, suggests assigning the job to some employees. “I recommend developing a social media position. Back in the day, we had marketing departments and sales departments. Now companies often have a ‘trade marketing’ group that straddles the two. Social media, as a function also straddles several departments, which is why, to do it right, dedicating (at least part-time) staff is the best approach.”

If you don’t have a champion for your social media efforts, they may slowly fizzle out. “For the company I would find an advocate — could be in sales, marketing or even somewhere else who is using social media and loving it,” says Jacqueline Wolven, owner, Moxie Marketing. “Let them be the ‘voice’ of your company for a while (of course observed by you) and then talk about that experience at a sales meeting. You never know, you might have a social media advocate right within your flock who can lead your troops to this new relationship marketing tool. If all else fails, bring in a consultant to work with your sales people to help them understand the value.”

Part of educating staff about social media is involving them in the process. “Social media input should be a company-wide program. Everyone needs to be ‘on the same page’ about the product and what they can and can’t post. It’s about engagement. The more voices that actually talk beyond the product but engage Twitter and Facebook people will make a bigger impression about the depth of the social media program and how seriously the company takes it. It’s not a departmental issue — it’s a company issue,” says Stevie Wilson, CMO, KBP Inc.