As the awareness of social networking’s power grows, questions inevitably arise about how to use social media to increase sales.

It is a great question that I am asked often. The decision about which technology to use will vary from company to company. After all, each business will have their own specific set of objectives that they want to accomplish. But it seems to me that the question people really want answered is “can you” make money using social media? My answer is yes. And, it doesn’t happen overnight.

From experience I know that the blending of social networking tools like LinkedIn into a well thought out sales strategy has huge benefits for increasing revenue. Using the telephone and email doesn’t go away, but when you use social networking tools effectively, you can speed up the sales cycle.

Getting Started

Before embarking down the social media path, it first starts with getting clear about three things:

• Purpose
• Platform
• Plan

You need to clarify these three things or your results will be lackluster at best. This is also an ideal time to assess what’s really working in your sales organization and what’s not. Technology is merely an enabler. The use of social media will not “fix” a sales process that is broken. It won’t do you much good if your people are not right for the role, or they lack the proper training to do their job.

Right now, people are curious to learn more about social media and they should. At the same time, I see many people taking a short-term, shot gun approach, because they are too focused on the “point and click” aspects of tools like LinkedIn and Twitter. In large part, they are not making time to ask the questions I’ve suggested. If you want to succeed with your online efforts – make the time!

An Opportunity for Driving Sales

Social networking tools like LinkedIn can and do play a huge role in the first few critical phases of the sales process: investigate and early qualify.

A rep’s ability to quickly identify, qualify and focus on the “right” opportunities remains a big challenge in most sales organizations for lots of reasons that can be discussed in another post. Why focus attention on the problem? In a word – dollars! It is very expensive. Many sales managers often don’t know what an “hour of selling” actually costs them. They know that money and time is wasted with their people chasing down phantom opportunities, but they don’t know exactly how much.

Rick McPartlin, President of The Revenue Game gave an example of the size of the problem at a recent conference I attended. Let’s say that you have a sales person with a $1,000,000 quota. After salary, commission, benefits, etc., the cost for your rep is $150,000 annually. Assuming 2400 hrs of annual sales time, your cost per sales hour is $62.50. That probably doesn’t sound so bad does it? It wouldn’t be if your rep was actually selling all 50 hrs each week.

How much time do you think your people actually spend doing their job? Consider the real hours spent “selling”, which for an average company with a decent strategy and pretty good business alignment; you may be getting 5 actual sales hours out of your people each week. At 5 hours a week, your $150,000 sales rep costs you $625 per hour, which means you need to generate slightly more than $4,100 of revenue per hour if you hope to reach your annual target.

So…

What would it be worth to you if social networking used correctly could significantly shrink wasted money and time on the front end of the sales process?

By the way…

You should probably evaluate very carefully how much time is actually spent on the act of selling. Anything else means time is being spent on non-revenue producing activities and you should strip away anything getting in the way of sales people selling. And that’s a discussion for another day.

Funny the commentary I’ve seen recently in various places ridiculing Twitter, because there is no obvious revenue model, or people think it’s silly that anyone would care what “we’re doing right now”. Whatever.

Twitter isn’t necessarily a “flash in the pan” that will fade into obscurity. Will it be here next year used in the same way it is used today? I don’t know, but I also know that’s true of any technology. Technology will continue to evolve and change. What existed 5 years ago is not what we use today. I think people like to use the rationale that Twitter doesn’t make money; hence the “they won’t be around much longer” comments, because the truth is that they do not understand the true potential of Twitter yet.

As with any business tool – that includes social media – you must have a clearly defined purpose and plan for achieving your objectives. Though I first scratched my head and said “why would I care where someone is grabbing their next cup of coffee”, I now realize just how powerful the appropriate use of Twitter can be.

I use Twitter for 3 reasons:

1) Build my business knowledge.

I follow some very top notch people who I learn from, because they are willing to share relevant, interesting and valuable business information. Using TweetDeck, I can organize the information into groups, which lets me easily track the information that is most important to me. It’s less overwhelming, and I can find things more quickly.

2) Watch for trends in my particular field.

Let’s say that I want to check out a new product idea that I’m thinking about creating. I’ve learned through the years that just because I think it’s a great idea doesn’t necessarily mean that others will think so too. How do I know if people think it’s a great idea? They buy. Using search.twitter.com I can easily search out conversations and information based on keywords applicable to the product or service I’m thinking about creating. The results give me a snapshot of what topics are trending and who’s saying and doing what. That includes the competition.

3) Demonstrate my business capabilities.

To build my brand and credibility with potential buyers, I freely share information that I believe will be valuable to others. Not selling though. It is about using Twitter as a way to extend my business brand, create relationships with others and build a reputation for helping people solve their business problems.

The inevitable question is – am I securing clients and making money?

There is no doubt that we need to be thinking about the time ROI using social tools like Twitter. Tweeting aimlessly with no plan gets you nowhere. At the same time, it is still difficult to accurately asses exactly where the sales revenue comes from as a result of my social media usage. I’m reminded of Albert Einstein, who said, “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”

For me, using tools like Twitter are as much a part of my sales and marketing plan, as attending local networking events. Do you really know exactly what networking activity will lead to that next sale? Of course not. You never know if the people you meet in person will actually buy from you, or if they will pass along your name to others. That’s not to say I don’t measure my efforts as much as I can. I absolutely do!

People buy from people that they know, like and trust. Using social media is a way to build relationships with people, engage in conversations with them that over time lead to sales. I know that invitations to speak at events, calls from journalists for interviews about social media, having others recommend me to their clients, all comes from my ability to use social media to support my business goals. How do I know? I constantly ask people how they found me, and I capture the answers to those questions.

Continued success with your sales efforts is always about having a repeatable process that when used consistently, gets you consistent results. I blend the use of technology with tried and true sales success strategies to achieve my sales goals.Twitter definitely has value, so I say that you don’t dismiss it just because you might not understand it yet:)

Funny the commentary I’ve seen recently in various places ridiculing Twitter, because there is no obvious revenue model, or people think it’s silly that anyone would care what “we’re doing right now”. Whatever.

Twitter isn’t necessarily a “flash in the pan” that will fade into obscurity. Will it be here next year used in the same way it is used today? I don’t know, but I also know that’s true of any technology. Technology will continue to evolve and change. What existed 5 years ago is not what we use today. I think people like to use the rationale that Twitter doesn’t make money; hence the “they won’t be around much longer” comments, because the truth is that they do not understand the true potential of Twitter yet.

As with any business tool – that includes social media – you must have a clearly defined purpose and plan for achieving your objectives. Though I first scratched my head and said “why would I care where someone is grabbing their next cup of coffee”, I now realize just how powerful the appropriate use of Twitter can be.

I use Twitter for 3 reasons:

1) Build my business knowledge.

I follow some very top notch people who I learn from, because they are willing to share relevant, interesting and valuable business information. Using TweetDeck, I can organize the information into groups, which lets me easily track the information that is most important to me. It’s less overwhelming, and I can find things more quickly.

2) Watch for trends in my particular field.

Let’s say that I want to check out a new product idea that I’m thinking about creating. I’ve learned through the years that just because I think it’s a great idea doesn’t necessarily mean that others will think so too. How do I know if people think it’s a great idea? They buy. Using search.twitter.com I can easily search out conversations and information based on keywords applicable to the product or service I’m thinking about creating. The results give me a snapshot of what topics are trending and who’s saying and doing what. That includes the competition.

3) Demonstrate my business capabilities.

To build my brand and credibility with potential buyers, I freely share information that I believe will be valuable to others. Not selling though. It is about using Twitter as a way to extend my business brand, create relationships with others and build a reputation for helping people solve their business problems.

The inevitable question is – am I securing clients and making money?

There is no doubt that we need to be thinking about the time ROI using social tools like Twitter. Tweeting aimlessly with no plan gets you nowhere. At the same time, it is still difficult to accurately asses exactly where the sales revenue comes from as a result of my social media usage. I’m reminded of Albert Einstein, who said, “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”

For me, using tools like Twitter are as much a part of my sales and marketing plan, as attending local networking events. Do you really know exactly what networking activity will lead to that next sale? Of course not. You never know if the people you meet in person will actually buy from you, or if they will pass along your name to others. That’s not to say I don’t measure my efforts as much as I can. I absolutely do!

People buy from people that they know, like and trust. Using social media is a way to build relationships with people, engage in conversations with them that over time lead to sales. I know that invitations to speak at events, calls from journalists for interviews about social media, having others recommend me to their clients, all comes from my ability to use social media to support my business goals. How do I know? I constantly ask people how they found me, and I capture the answers to those questions.

Continued success with your sales efforts is always about having a repeatable process that when used consistently, gets you consistent results. I blend the use of technology with tried and true sales success strategies to achieve my sales goals.Twitter definitely has value, so I say that you don’t dismiss it just because you might not understand it yet:)

In the past, I’ve written about the lack of attention far too many companies place on delivering a customer experience that wows. Being the optimist that I am, I keep hoping with fingers tightly crossed that companies will eventually get it. And you’d think that with times being what they are, the emphasis on delighting customers would be a big priority. Oh, if only that were true!

The dismal customer service that I have received these past few months from a company that has had my business for almost 5 years is what prompted me to write about service again. The experience has me thinking about what can happen when a family owned business is bought out by a mega corporation who clearly doesn’t care if customers are happy or not. This company is stagnating – not an innovative thinker in sight. No matter what the situation, they not only have one excuse after another, but after 5 months they have yet to resolve the problem. Frankly, I don’t care about their operational issues or the lack of staff, though I will say that if you must reduce your staff, please make sure you don’t keep the village idiot on board. Whatever their problems, they are not mine! I’m a paying customer who expects accurate billing and promises kept. What about you?

In the bestseller, The Pursuit of WOW! Tom Peters reminds us that 70% of customers hit the road NOT because of price or product quality issues, but because they did not like the human side of doing business with the provider of the product or service. Research conducted by The Forum Corporation supports this fact and indicates that 45% of these same customers said they switched to another company because the attention they did receive was poor in quality.

Is providing great customer service really that difficult? IBM founder Thomas Watson is attributed with saying, “if you want to achieve excellence, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less-than-excellent work”. Delivering WOW service is a commitment to do whatever it takes to serve the customer, and that commitment must be imprinted on the hearts and minds of every single employee. Only then can any organization stand apart from their competition.

Based on my own professional experience, I have defined four rules crucial to delivering winning customer service:

Rule #1: Listen! When customers complain there is a reason. Hear them out. This is an opportunity to make it right and to learn something. Listen without interrupting, giving excuses or arguing.

Rule #2: Don’t take it personally. Customer complaints are about products or services that did not live up to their expectations. Taking it personally, getting defensive, or getting angry only makes the situation worse.

Rule #3: Offer a sincere apology for the inconvenience and then fix the problem! Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Consider how you feel when something you bought didn’t do the intended job or caused an even bigger problem than the one it was supposed to fix.

Rule #4: Never say, “It’s not my job, my department, or my responsibility.” If you work at the company that made the product or sold the service – it is your job! Make a personal commitment to do whatever it takes to fix the problem even if it is not in your job description.

In the end, only those companies with an ongoing commitment to listen and serve can consistently keep their customers delighted and buying from them. Now would be an ideal time for my vendor to heed these words!