This ridiculous notion of “dialing for dollars” is so yesterday. Sales people resist cold calling like the plague and with good reason. At some level, they know it doesn’t make any sense to call a stranger and expect them to buy within seconds of receiving their call no matter how charming they may be. Old school sales thinking is that you just call enough numbers and eventually somebody buys. What a waste of time and energy! Not to mention how potential buyers detest this approach. They don’t appreciate your rambling, inarticulate, blathering feature dumps and the evident randomness of the call. As a business owner, I can relate. Maybe I’ll create an audio book one of these days with the “best of the worst” phone calls that I’ve ever received. I save them. Hilarious and painfully sad at the same time. Hint: if you have to cold call then at least do some remedial homework. Make sure I’m in the market for what you sell. Everyone is NOT your customer!

Get over the notion of cold calling. Nobody likes it, it doesn’t work. Instead, what about using social media/social networks, email, Twitter, Facebook, referrals and the like to start paving the way for a great relationship? There is just NO excuse anymore for sales management to think that “dialing for dollars” has much chance at success. Instead, invest time in learning to use social media to augment and extend your sales reach. Insist that your sales people use social tools and social networks to begin conversations that will lead to finding common ground and getting to know each other. Then, when you do reach out to secure that sales appointment there will be nothing cold about it!

Your customers and potential customers are sharing a wealth of information and insight about what they want – online. In 3 easy steps, here’s how you can begin to capitalize on the wealth of opportunity staring you in the face.

1. Determine where your current customer (or prospect) is likely to “participate” online. Don’t assume they are using Facebook or Twitter or any other social technology people tell you is the hot thing. Put your thinking cap on. Consider the demographics of your audience. What do you know about them now that can help you identify where they travel in the online space. EXAMPLE: Your customer is the VP of Sales in technology and telecommunications companies. What does he/she care about? What challenges are top of mind? In what forums or groups are they talking about what they need or wish vendors provided?
2. Listen to what is being said. Now that you know where your customers live…listen to what they are talking about. What questions are they asking? How are they gathering feedback about products and services on the market? Don’t show up in a group and start pitching your wares. Take the time to listen.
3. Engage them in dialog. Ask relevant questions and don’t argue the answers. Defending your turf  only looks and sounds self serving. Your goal is to set your agenda aside. How else can you really understand what is important to your most valuable asset – your customer? Use what you learn to innovate your products and services and build stronger loyalty with your customer base.

It’s hard to know what that 46% was thinking when they answered the question posed in the poll, but it seems certain they may be missing the entire point and opportunity that social media represents.

Social Media’s Role in Sales

Here are just a few of the benefits that, I believe, social media brings to the sales process:

• Fill the pipeline with “better qualified” buyers.
• Improved efficiency of lead generation efforts.
• Shrunken sales cycle and reduction in the “cost per sales hour”.
• Increased conversion rate of leads generated to clients enrolled.
• Enhanced customer loyalty that leads to sustained revenue and higher profits.

One key to success using social media as a sales prospecting and lead generation tool is in the ability to reach more people with less effort and cost. It is a way to build visibility, demonstrate expertise and capability to potential buyers, while also keeping abreast of what’s happening on the competitive front. Done well, social media reinforces your brand so that when your ideal buyer is ready to make that purchase, they think of you!

No Magic Bullet

The opportunity to increase sales using social media is real, but success doesn’t happen overnight. It takes thought. It takes planning. It takes training. It takes commitment to use the tools – often. It most definitely requires patience. There is no quick fix, regardless what so many of the so-called “experts”, who inevitably arrived on the scene, would have you believe. They would tell you that the key to success lies in your ability to get 200 Twitter followers a day, and other such silly nonsense.

Getting Results

For each sales organization and sales person, the approach taken and the technologies used will vary, but the fundamentals of getting started will not. Boring as it may sound…determining your purpose, identifying the characteristics of your ideal buyer, developing your brand message and creating your plan are the things that must come first. Without these things, what difference does it make how many people follow you on Twitter or belong to your LinkedIn network? Better to have 20 of the right people following you than 200 of the wrong, an important fact conveniently ignored by those desperate to believe that a social media profile today means an influx of sales tomorrow.

AND I think it’s just a tad rude to ask me to do something for you when you haven’t kept in touch, nor did you offer to do anything for me in return.

People please don’t let this be you. I am empathetic to people finding themselves suddenly out of work. But it is up to you to keep your network fresh and to stay in touch with people regularly even IF you have a great job today. Lack of time cannot be your excuse. Not when you have plenty of social tools to make your life just a little bit easier.

Remember, you never know when you might need someone’s help down the road. If you haven’t done your part cultivating the relationship, then don’t expect a lot when you need something.

Instantaneous: occurring with no delay; “relief was instantaneous”; “instant gratification”

It is sooo tempting to want instant. Instant success, instant love, instant cash flow, instant sales, instant weight loss…basically, instant results. It’s human I suppose. We feel pain and then want something – anything – to give us instant relief.

Instant is a myth, except perhaps in just one thing. We can instantly decide to change ourselves, our thinking, or our approach if things are not working the way we want them too.

But instant sells.

The problem with wanting – and naively expecting instant – is that it can only lead to more frustration. I don’t know about you, but I have never found that anything actually worth achieving just sort of happened…uh, instantaneously. Though using the word might make for an enticing marketing promotion or book title, the truth is that anyone trying to sell you instant anything is only perpetuating a lie.

Using social media and social networking to boost your sales efforts is no different. You can absolutely “speed up” your success, but it does not happen in an instant. You must determine your purpose, shape your brand, help others, participate often, be persistent, cultivate a following, invest in delivering value to others and be patient. There are no over night successes here. But it will happen IF you decide to…

• Stop going for cheap. Your success requires an investment in time & money to learn from people with proven experience.
• Make time every day - YES, every day! – to participate in the online space…this is part of your sales process NOT an add on!
• Forget the notion of “instant”. Sweat equity is required if you want to create a strong brand presence on AND offline that leads to sales.
• Reset your expectations. I’ve been in sales 30 years and using technology for almost as many…do you really think sitting through a 1/2 day social media class gets you to my level in an instant? It takes time!
• Do your darn homework. If someone says, “I can teach you to get 200 Twitter followers daily.” – you must make sure they are doing it for themselves. It might be important to know if they use the system and tweet themselves. Duh.
• Slow down. Stop being desperate. Be in it for the long term. Think about the message you want to communicate to potential buyers (or employers) who have not met you yet. Craft compelling profiles. Share valuable information. Get help if you need it!

Finally, give up on instant! Decide what you want, believe you can have it, take the massive action required to get there, and you will achieve results! But sorry…it will not happen in an instant.

Instantaneous: occurring with no delay; “relief was instantaneous”; “instant gratification”

It is sooo tempting to want instant. Instant success, instant love, instant cash flow, instant sales, instant weight loss…basically, instant results. It’s human I suppose. We feel pain and then want something – anything – to give us instant relief.

Instant is a myth, except perhaps in just one thing. We can instantly decide to change ourselves, our thinking, or our approach if things are not working the way we want them too.

But instant sells.

The problem with wanting – and naively expecting instant – is that it can only lead to more frustration. I don’t know about you, but I have never found that anything actually worth achieving just sort of happened…uh, instantaneously. Though using the word might make for an enticing marketing promotion or book title, the truth is that anyone trying to sell you instant anything is only perpetuating a lie.

Using social media and social networking to boost your sales efforts is no different. You can absolutely “speed up” your success, but it does not happen in an instant. You must determine your purpose, shape your brand, help others, participate often, be persistent, cultivate a following, invest in delivering value to others and be patient. There are no over night successes here. But it will happen IF you decide to…

• Stop going for cheap. Your success requires an investment in time & money to learn from people with proven experience.
• Make time every day - YES, every day! – to participate in the online space…this is part of your sales process NOT an add on!
• Forget the notion of “instant”. Sweat equity is required if you want to create a strong brand presence on AND offline that leads to sales.
• Reset your expectations. I’ve been in sales 30 years and using technology for almost as many…do you really think sitting through a 1/2 day social media class gets you to my level in an instant? It takes time!
• Do your darn homework. If someone says, “I can teach you to get 200 Twitter followers daily.” – you must make sure they are doing it for themselves. It might be important to know if they use the system and tweet themselves. Duh.
• Slow down. Stop being desperate. Be in it for the long term. Think about the message you want to communicate to potential buyers (or employers) who have not met you yet. Craft compelling profiles. Share valuable information. Get help if you need it!

Finally, give up on instant! Decide what you want, believe you can have it, take the massive action required to get there, and you will achieve results! But sorry…it will not happen in an instant.

I had the opportunity to demonstrate Twitter’s power in an “off the cuff” sort of way during a business meeting yesterday…at Brio in Buckhead. Yes, I know it’s crazy, but I do eat lunch. So we were talking about Twitter and I simply asked…what executive level are you trying to reach in corporations to talk with about your services? Sales VP was the answer. Without any real thought or tweaking, I whipped open Twitteriffic on my iPhone and simply typed Sales VP Atlanta. And wouldn’t you know that a major corporation in Atlanta had just placed a hiring notice for that exact position within their company. You’re saying to yourself, Barb is that really so interesting? You bet. It just so happened that this particular company is EXACTLY who my lunch guest had been trying to penetrate to not only discuss services, but because she works for a major placement firm, she knew that several of her clients fit the bill for the position. She was stunned! It didn’t occur to her to use Twitter as an alternative mechanism to traditional job boards.

The story I just shared is why I love Twitter. It is more than dribble about where people are eating breakfast. There is power and potential beyond what many people realize.

Now for the story of why I don’t like Twitter! Or maybe I should say that it is the users without a clue who leave a bad taste in my mouth.

I wasn’t with Twitter from the beginning, but I’m told by those in the know that it used to be totally about building relationships. There was a genuineness about wanting to get to know the people who wanted to follow you.

By the time I came on the scene, there was definitely a divide between the camp of people (like me) who think you use the tool to build visibility, credibility and relationships without spamming the network and those people who think there is nothing wrong with spitting out one tweet after another that is merely a sleazy sales pitch.

And now we have the abusive use of the direct message feature aka DM. It is used to SPAM people who have decided to follow what you have to say. It works like this…I decide to follow Johnny, because he seems sort of cool and his tweets are interesting. Minutes after I click the “follow” button, I receive in my Twitter inbox a direct message that is “automated” and says something like…”hey, thanks for the follow…check out or buy or sign up for my whatever…” It is all about what they have to sell without any thought as to whether I’m their buyer or not. Slinging hash on the wall basically.

Look at the picture I’ve included with my post…these are some of the messages sitting in my inbox right now. First it is…”now follow me on Facebook”. Then it’s “cool affiliate program”. Next comes “wanna make some moola?” And my personal favorite, “I just added you to my Mafia family, you should join.” Sure, I’ll get right on that.

Do you really think any of these people care about getting to know Barb? No way. I cannot stand this practice so much that the 35 people who’ve done it to me recently are now being booted from my network.

Sales people (and anyone who sells a product or service) take note. This is NOT what buyers want. In fact, they are tired of being inundated with this sort of garbage. It is what gives social media sites like Twitter a bad name. Some of us truly do want to create value and develop relationships that ultimately lead to sales. In my opinion, these DM tactics are used by people either ignorant about the impression they are creating about themselves, or they are so desperate to make a sale that they don’t care.

I’m curious, what do you think?

I had the opportunity to demonstrate Twitter’s power in an “off the cuff” sort of way during a business meeting yesterday…at Brio in Buckhead. Yes, I know it’s crazy, but I do eat lunch. So we were talking about Twitter and I simply asked…what executive level are you trying to reach in corporations to talk with about your services? Sales VP was the answer. Without any real thought or tweaking, I whipped open Twitteriffic on my iPhone and simply typed Sales VP Atlanta. And wouldn’t you know that a major corporation in Atlanta had just placed a hiring notice for that exact position within their company. You’re saying to yourself, Barb is that really so interesting? You bet. It just so happened that this particular company is EXACTLY who my lunch guest had been trying to penetrate to not only discuss services, but because she works for a major placement firm, she knew that several of her clients fit the bill for the position. She was stunned! It didn’t occur to her to use Twitter as an alternative mechanism to traditional job boards.

The story I just shared is why I love Twitter. It is more than dribble about where people are eating breakfast. There is power and potential beyond what many people realize.

Now for the story of why I don’t like Twitter! Or maybe I should say that it is the users without a clue who leave a bad taste in my mouth.

I wasn’t with Twitter from the beginning, but I’m told by those in the know that it used to be totally about building relationships. There was a genuineness about wanting to get to know the people who wanted to follow you.

By the time I came on the scene, there was definitely a divide between the camp of people (like me) who think you use the tool to build visibility, credibility and relationships without spamming the network and those people who think there is nothing wrong with spitting out one tweet after another that is merely a sleazy sales pitch.

And now we have the abusive use of the direct message feature aka DM. It is used to SPAM people who have decided to follow what you have to say. It works like this…I decide to follow Johnny, because he seems sort of cool and his tweets are interesting. Minutes after I click the “follow” button, I receive in my Twitter inbox a direct message that is “automated” and says something like…”hey, thanks for the follow…check out or buy or sign up for my whatever…” It is all about what they have to sell without any thought as to whether I’m their buyer or not. Slinging hash on the wall basically.

Look at the picture I’ve included with my post…these are some of the messages sitting in my inbox right now. First it is…”now follow me on Facebook”. Then it’s “cool affiliate program”. Next comes “wanna make some moola?” And my personal favorite, “I just added you to my Mafia family, you should join.” Sure, I’ll get right on that.

Do you really think any of these people care about getting to know Barb? No way. I cannot stand this practice so much that the 35 people who’ve done it to me recently are now being booted from my network.

Sales people (and anyone who sells a product or service) take note. This is NOT what buyers want. In fact, they are tired of being inundated with this sort of garbage. It is what gives social media sites like Twitter a bad name. Some of us truly do want to create value and develop relationships that ultimately lead to sales. In my opinion, these DM tactics are used by people either ignorant about the impression they are creating about themselves, or they are so desperate to make a sale that they don’t care.

I’m curious, what do you think?

Purpose - if you don’t know what you want to accomplish using online tools, you might as well stop right now. You will only flounder around. One of Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is “begin with the end in mind”. That’s what you need to do when you start thinking about how to best integrate the use of social media/social networking into your sales activities. What do you want to achieve? What is the message you want to communicate? How will you represent your brand? Questions like these and more must be answered.

Plan - this is a topic covered in books and articles by writers more skilled than me, but bottom line – no plan is like deciding to drive from Atlanta to California with no map. You may eventually get there, but you are certain to waste time and get lost along the way. You need to chart a well thought out course and then follow it.

Participation - I hate to break the bad news to anyone naive enough to think that popping up a LinkedIn profile today results in an immediate sale. It doesn’t! The art of the sale has always been about building a relationship with someone who gets to know you and trust you..over time. When you actively participate in social communities by contributing to the conversation, you gain visibility and help people get to know you. For me, it’s a daily practice of weighing in on questions posed in LinkedIn groups, sharing information on Twitter, commenting on blogs or writing my own articles. The more active you are – the more you begin to stand out.

Persistance - in short, it is all about follow up, follow up, follow up. Over on the Hubspot Marketing Blog, Pete Caputa talked about the phenomenon of people attending networking events, collecting a lot of business cards and then doing nothing with them. The same is true of the online world. When you make connections on LinkedIn, as an example, stay in touch with people. Drop them notes, tell them about a question they may want to weigh in on because it fits their experience, make a connection for them, recommend their services to someone else. David Mason, author of Marketing Your Small Business for Big Profits, told me during a radio interview that it is all about persistence and consistency.

Patience - just because you have something to sell it doesn’t mean that your potential buyer is “ready” to buy. That’s what far too many people totally miss. You must be patient, but not invisible. That is why it is so important to participate often in appropriate online forums. I’ve also had people tell me that they thought sending a newsletter twice a month was too much of an intrusion on people. It isn’t if you provide information that is of value to your readers. Buyers are not buying on your sales cycle, so you have to be top of mind when they are ready to purchase what you offer. Everyone these days has a short attention span, so if you are not front and center in their minds – you lose. I have picked up speaking engagements, consulting opportunities, referrals and more, simply because I’m active online, I give to receive, and I am patient!

Purpose - if you don’t know what you want to accomplish using online tools, you might as well stop right now. You will only flounder around. One of Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is “begin with the end in mind”. That’s what you need to do when you start thinking about how to best integrate the use of social media/social networking into your sales activities. What do you want to achieve? What is the message you want to communicate? How will you represent your brand? Questions like these and more must be answered.

Plan - this is a topic covered in books and articles by writers more skilled than me, but bottom line – no plan is like deciding to drive from Atlanta to California with no map. You may eventually get there, but you are certain to waste time and get lost along the way. You need to chart a well thought out course and then follow it.

Participation - I hate to break the bad news to anyone naive enough to think that popping up a LinkedIn profile today results in an immediate sale. It doesn’t! The art of the sale has always been about building a relationship with someone who gets to know you and trust you..over time. When you actively participate in social communities by contributing to the conversation, you gain visibility and help people get to know you. For me, it’s a daily practice of weighing in on questions posed in LinkedIn groups, sharing information on Twitter, commenting on blogs or writing my own articles. The more active you are – the more you begin to stand out.

Persistance - in short, it is all about follow up, follow up, follow up. Over on the Hubspot Marketing Blog, Pete Caputa talked about the phenomenon of people attending networking events, collecting a lot of business cards and then doing nothing with them. The same is true of the online world. When you make connections on LinkedIn, as an example, stay in touch with people. Drop them notes, tell them about a question they may want to weigh in on because it fits their experience, make a connection for them, recommend their services to someone else. David Mason, author of Marketing Your Small Business for Big Profits, told me during a radio interview that it is all about persistence and consistency.

Patience - just because you have something to sell it doesn’t mean that your potential buyer is “ready” to buy. That’s what far too many people totally miss. You must be patient, but not invisible. That is why it is so important to participate often in appropriate online forums. I’ve also had people tell me that they thought sending a newsletter twice a month was too much of an intrusion on people. It isn’t if you provide information that is of value to your readers. Buyers are not buying on your sales cycle, so you have to be top of mind when they are ready to purchase what you offer. Everyone these days has a short attention span, so if you are not front and center in their minds – you lose. I have picked up speaking engagements, consulting opportunities, referrals and more, simply because I’m active online, I give to receive, and I am patient!