Key Issues

• How do our sales people utilize social media for prospecting
• Unconvinced that LinkedIn, Twitter, and others are effective channels for our growth
• How do we use social media to gather company and industry intelligence

If you’re in sales, social media can be quite useful for gathering intelligence, finding prospects, and relationship building which can lead to sales. 

This is the second stop on social media during this journey.  Earlier we described how we can help your marketing team optimize social media and create/enhance relationships.  This stop’s focus is social media for salespeople.

Engaging with prospects is what will grow your social graph and lead to business. 

We’ve preached marketing-sales alignment, and social media is no different.  If marketing is creating content and promoting it via social media channels, sales people need to be aware of that content, and promote it via their own profiles, especially on Twitter and LinkedIn.  Social Media can be presented two ways; via company profiles (like on Facebook or Twitter) or individual profiles.

Social Media for sales encompasses a number of tactics that we coach or manage for you, of which the most important ones follow:

• Market intelligence:  Follow target companies and industries. Gather their latest updates.

1. Google Alerts
2. Twitter Lists
3. LinkedIn Company follow
4. Third party monitoring tools that track blogs, industries, and topics

• LinkedIn Optimization:

1. Profile best practices
2. Group discussions and article sharing
3. Advanced search tools
4. CRM approach; tag prospects, organize in folders
5. Network with connections

• Twitter Optimization:

1. Profile tweaks
2. Finding prospects by keyword
3. Engagement tactics
4. List building
5. Content marketing

Social media for marketing, and for sales, are elements of digital marketing we help optimize for you as part of our lead generation management process.  You can generate leads with social media; it just takes time.

Feel free to download our ebook on social media for lead generation.

Summary of Approach

If your prospects are using social media to research business challenges, then you need to be there to engage with those prospects, discuss your solutions, and create relationships. We’ll help you utilize social media for lead generation and as a CRM

Next Stop: Sales Enablement