There is a huge paradigm shift happening across all industries regarding selling. It is the use of “social media” to prospect, engage, and help close business; regardless of what you are selling. Whether you provide a product, solution, service and somewhere in between, what was once a trendy idea has now become mainstream. It is not just for large corporations and is especially attractive for the small business because it practically costs nothing to use and yields great results.
Let’s examine the numbers why you need to take this seriously and start using it now:
- 57% of the buying journey is done BEFORE a Rep is calledCEB(Corporate Executive Board).
- 4 people are now involved in the average B2B buying decision. CEB.
- 12%—that’s how much of your customer’s total mindshare you as a supplier have across the entire B2B purchase path.
- 75% of B2B buyers now use social media to research vendors.
- 90% of decision makers say they never respond to cold outreach. Harvard Business Review.
- 74% of buyers choose the sales rep that was the FIRST to add value and insight. Corporate Visions, 2015.
Especially for the Small Business, the use of Social media is a high reward initiative that is easily deployed and used. Many of SDM’s customers start off with a simple formula, which is very easy to use. It is made up of many parts but we suggest using the main ones in the beginning to get the most results (free “gifts of Knowledge”)in the shortest amount of time:
- Have the Owner and anyone who is client facing to tune up their LinkedIn profile to look like an expert in whatever industry you sell to (this is a separate track provided by SDM).
- Have all the above contribute to LinkedIn groups. This can be as simple as a “like” of a post or a couple of sentences of what you want to share.
- Use Twitter to research people you want to prospect too.
- Have Reps quickly look at Facebook on people and especially the companies they are pitching to.
- Have Marketing and Reps look up articles, and points of view on Slide share (owned by LinkedIn). They can effortless post your own company’s sales decks and papers, etc.
We hope this helps get you on your journey and am always there to share ideas and best practices.
What do you do next? Send us an email and we’ll arrange for you to speak with Ed to chat about how these learnings can help build more sales just for your business.