Yesterday, I talked about social selling. What it is and why it is important for sales executives to pay attention. Given the confusion around the meaning of Sales 2.0, I thought it would be a good idea to clarify the dialog, because the terms Sales 2.0 and social selling are often used interchangeably.

Often described as the use of better, technology-enabled sales practices to improve speed to close, team collaboration, strategic accountability and customer engagement, Sales 2.0 signifies an evolution in the approach to the sales process. Today’s buyer can circumvent your company’s fancy marketing programs and advertising to find out anything they want to about you through their social networks.

Yes, technology can increase the gains in sales-to-close conversion, but technology is only a portion of the equation. There is an attitude that must be cultivated and adopted in companies – and specifically sales organizations – of all sizes and industries, which recognize that Sales 2.0 is – at its core – is about helping sales people spend more time with their customers.

Isn’t that what every company wants?

If you’ve written a book (like I have with co-author, Joan Curtis), congratulations, because you’ve crossed a major hurdle. Now that I’ve gone through the process myself, I truly understand why writing a book can seem like such a daunting proposition. But, you’ve done it. Now what?

Writing the book is one thing, but how you will market and sell your masterpiece is another. The following is a guest post from top blogger and best selling author, Chris Brogan

Read on to learn how Chris suggests you prepare for your book launch utilizing the power of social media.

1. Set up a URL for the book, and/or maybe one for your name. Need help finding a URL? I use Ajaxwhois.com for simple effort in searching.
2. Set up a blog. If you want it free and super fast, WordPress or Tumblr. I’d recommend getting hosting like Bloghost.me.
3. On the blog, write about interesting things that pertain to the book, but don’t just promote the book over and over again. In fact, blow people away by promoting their blogs and their books, if they’re related a bit.
4. Start an email newsletter. It’s amazing how much MORE responsive email lists are than any other online medium.
5. Have a blog post that’s a list of all the places one might buy your book. I did this for both Trust Agents and Social Media 101.
6. Make any really important links trackable with a URL shortener. I know exactly how many people click my links.
7. Start listening for your name, your book’s name. ( Covered in this post about building blocks.)
8. Consider recording a video trailer for your book. Here’s one from Scott Sigler (YouTube), for his horror thriller, Contagious. And here’s one from Dallas Clayton for his Awesome Book. (Thanks Naomi for pointing this out).
9. Build a Facebook fan page for the book or for bonus points, build one around the topic the book covers, and only lightly promote the book via the page.
10. Join Twitter under your name, not your book’s name, and use Twitter Search to find people who talk about the subjects your book covers.
11. When people talk about your book, good or bad, thank them with a reply. Connect to people frequently. It’s amazing how many authors I rave about on Twitter and how few actually respond. Mind you, the BIGGEST authors always respond (paradox?)
12. Use Google Blogsearch and Alltop to find the people who’d likely write about the subject matter your book covers. Get commenting on their blog posts but NOT mentioning your book. Get to know them. Leave USEFUL comments, with no blatant URL back to your book.
13. Work with your publisher for a blogger outreach project. See if you can do a giveaway project with a few bloggers (here’s a book giveaway project I did for Donald Miller’s A Million Miles in a Thousand Years book).
14. Offer to write guest posts on blogs that make sense as places where potential buyers might be. Do everything you can to make the post match the content of the person’s site and not your goals. But do link to your book.
15. Ask around for radio or TV contacts via the social web and LinkedIn. You never know.
16. Come up with interesting reasons to get people to buy bulk orders. If you’re a speaker, waive your fee (or part of it) in exchange for sales of hundreds of books. (And spread those purchases around to more than one bookselling company.) In those giveaways, do something to promote links back to your site and/or your post. Giveaways are one time: Google Juice is much longer lasting.
17. Whenever someone writes a review on their blog, thank them with a comment, and maybe 1 tweet, but don’t drown them in tweets pointing people to the review. It just never comes off as useful.
18. Ask gently for Amazon and other distribution site reviews. They certainly do help the buying process. And don’t ask often.
19. Do everything you can to be gracious and thankful to your readers. Your audience is so much more important than you in this equation, as there are more of them than there are of you.
20. Start showing up at face to face events, where it makes sense, including tweetups. If there’s not a local tweetup, start one.
21. And with all things, treat people like you’d want them to treat your parents (provided you had a great relationship with at least one of them).

This sounds like a lot of steps. It is. But this is how people are finding success. Should this be the publicist’s job? Not even a little bit. The publicist has his or her own methodology. The author will always be the best advocate for his or her own work. Never put your marketing success in the hands of someone else. Always bring your best efforts into the mix and you’ll find your best reward on your time and effort.

You might have found other ways to be successful with various online and social media tools. By all means, please share with us here. What’s your experience been with promoting your work using the social web?

Chris Brogan is the New York Times bestselling author of the NEW book, Social Media 101. He is president of New Marketing Labs, LLC, and blogs at [chrisbrogan.com].

Today is an interesting birthday for Axel Schultze, founder of the Social Media Academy and founder and CEO of Xeequa. Axel was a contributor to my book “The New Handshake: Sales Meets Social Media”, and in an impromptu interview today, I talked to Axel about his experiences with the world of social media during these past seven years.

Many of Axel’s early experiences mirror my own, except for perhaps Twitter. Until late 2008, I admit that I was clueless about Twitter’s potential. More than just a rehash of social tools, Axel and I talked about the companies that get it, and the ones that don’t. We discussed why it is so important for a business to stop “protecting” assets and instead be willing to “risk” in order to move beyond where they are today. Finally, we talked about what sales MUST DO to adapt to this new world of customer expectations and buying habits.

The guts of my conversation with Axel are below. I’d also highly recommend you listen to the interview here, because there is no way that I can capture, in writing, of all the juicy tidbits that came from my conversation with Axel!!

In Axel’s words…

“Seven years ago Konstantin Guerke, one of the LinkedIn co-founders invited me to join LinkedIn. I had no idea what he was talking about – but my instinct told me: “go – this is interesting”. My LinkedIn ID: 8573.  I wasn’t too embarrassed not understanding the full scope because he didn’t either! But after a few exploratory meetings with Konstantin I got it. This was the birth of a new era. It was so much more than a new technology – we were on the verge of a new society. A year later I was quoted in Forbes Magazin as we started to hire people via the new media instead of expensive recruiter; I saved approximately $50,000, $30,000 on one search alone.

In 2005 I began to blog and was named one of the first executives freely blogging about my company, our strategy and our directions. The board didn’t like it – in particular because of my grammar and typos. I had to choose between authenticity and an PR department reviewed text. Here is why I voted for authenticity and why. Over the course of the next few years I learned a lot about blogging and commenting. My main takeaway: You don’t have to be nice to everybody – but focus on a value to some. Leaving a good post with no comment is like leaving a good restaurant with no tip. I learned that provocative posts are more valuable because they spark a discussion than lecturing people about your knowledge.

Early 2007 I discovered Twitter. See my first 16 tweets – silly tweets – like almost everybody. One of my friend’s reaction: “Axel, are you completely out of your mind? Are you in a midlife crisis?  Twitter? Oh man…” – After all, yes it was a bit strange, but I had this feeling again – “it’s going to be big”. What I learned about twitter was very important for my social media life: If you are not interested in people walking their dog and eating pizza: You are listening to the wrong conversation – because YOU decide who you follow. Getting massive amounts of followers is like collecting photos or stamps or old cars… (the farmer / hunter model). But the most important learning was this: You learn more about a person within 50 tweets (takes about 50 seconds to read) than you would ever learn in two or even three Face 2 Face meetings. You can argue that but only if you tried it for yourself and failed.

It’s 2008. In the past 5 years I learned so much about sociology – the one area I was least interested of all when I was in school and one of the most fascinating today. Robert Putnam’s “Bollowing alone” was interesting too, because he missed the most important part of our sociological change: Mass socialization. For a while I kept the title for my own book: “Bowling with Millions”. It became apparent to me that business people around the world are using social media every day without even noticing. Social media changes the way we do business. Unlike the inception of computers or the Internet – social media is the first significant change in the way we do business introduced by the consumer not by the manufacturer. In the past 100 years technology companies introduced massive improvements to producers and traders and helped them to be more economic more effective or more efficient in the way they the organize their business.  The social revolutions is turning this behavior upside down – now it’s the consumer who introduces a better way of dealing with customers to the manufacturer and traders. Business friends in VP and CEO level asked me to help understand social media and the impact to their business. After many hours of endless discussions I understood that there is a need to build a new education model to teach social media. Not to lecture how to be more social or tweet or brush up your Linkedin profile – but how to develop a sound strategy for a better customer experience model. How to analyze and assess the companies own position in the space, how to plan and execute a cross functional social media engagement. How to organize social media responsibilities across an entire campus instead of pushing it down to a marketing person and the rest of the company does business as usual. That was the birth of the Social Media Academy. Now every month a new tool comes to the market. So the learning continues.

In 2009 we discovered an interesting aspect of maturation. The social media strategy model we developed three years ago is still valid today. The four quadrant assessment model remained to be the same. The dual presence model where we came up with a way to balance branded communities with public spaces is still best practices and so is the organization model where we moved two years ago from a “social media team” to a cross functional engagement model. The other interesting development I noticed is that leaders remain to be leaders. Cisco lead the charge into the social media age with massive engagement while their competitors were arguing about the economy and actually fired their social media people. Pepsi and Coke continue to rival each other – now in the social web and also their competitors are silent spectators of the space. BMW was very active engaging executives in the social web to get feedback on their cars while Ford tried to sue a fan club over logo usage. Comcast engaged to compensate their troubled support force through Twitter and had a great success while their competitors don’t even exist in the social web. WholeFoods while rather expensive and potentially endangered during the recession was thriving through customer engagement on all platforms in contrast to their cheaper shops like Albertsons who ceased operations in many areas. Social Media was also a game changer in 2008 / 2009 for a few companies. Companies like Zappos went from 0 to 60 in no time and bypassed every competitor. Facebook even so a player in it’s own world bypassed the dominant leader Myspace – not so much through leadership but sheer luck that MySpace was purchased and ever conceivable mistake was made after the purchase. It was also a game changer in the airline industry where JetBlue and a few others clearly made it to become the acknowledged leaders in the space.

2010 – Social Media goes mainstream. Everybody and his dog is at least exploring ways to leverage the new media. Hundreds of thousands already benefit from the space by offering webinars, addon tools, tips to gain a quadro gazillion follower, a bit consulting here and there and books how to use social media for marketing. Tens of thousands of companies will fail as they follow the $25 advice “how to increase sales” with Twitter and Facebook. Democratization of Knowledge will become the biggest obstacle because “1 Million Twitter Experts can’t all be wrong” – Right? So lets grow followership to 50,000 and blast our messages into the new channels till they clog. And this will accelerate as 55 Million registered businesses worldwide will want to leverage Social Media by the end of this decade to develop a better customer experience, grow customer base and compete for more “brand appreciation” (not brand recognition). The next two years will bring a shakeout on the consulting and expert front. The self proclaimed social media marketing gurus will make way to more business savvy consultants who can deliver a 360 degree social business model for the new agile enterprises.

If you are like me, you’ve thought about writing a book. And, if you are also like I was, you may still be walking around with that book in your head. A spark of an idea that was coupled with a dose of universal intervention and a terrific writing partner in Joan Curtis, and I’m thrilled to say that my first book – The New Handshake: Sales Meets Social Media – is available for pre-order now on Amazon.

This isn’t just another social media book…already plenty of those.

Yes, we do talk about social media, of course, and a complaint I commonly hear from people is that they know social media is important, but they have no ideas what to actually with do it all. Sure, all the tools look cool, but how do I use this stuff again to actually get a sales result? As I’m fond of saying…clicking on the buttons is one thing, but knowing how to use social tools to drive specific, measurable results is something else altogether.

If you are still perplexed about using social media as a business tool, or you still think social media has no value as part of the sales process – this book is for you! Be one of the first in your company to get your hand on this vital tool.  Every sales professional will want to learn about the new world of sales and the social media.  This is the first book written that helps salespeople understand the impact of the social media on sales and gives them the tools to start a social media sales strategy.

In the end, technology doesn’t matter much if it doesn’t help you achieve your sales goals. I hope you enjoy the read!

p.s. Joan and I have created e-book that we are just about to release that includes the first chapter of the book. Interested? Until we get it posted to the website, drop me an email with “new handshake ebook” in the subject line at info@talentbuildersinc.com I’ll make sure that you receive a copy when it is ready.

LinkedIn has made the Company section more robust. It is now even easier to research companies and keep up with the people changes happening with those companies.

The Improvement

You can now “follow” companies. Okay, STOP right there! Before you close your mind to it, because images of nonsensical conversation on Twitter just popped into your head, please hear me when I say that “the concept” is similar, but definitely different. This is the kind of follow that you want to engage in, because…

Sales Benefit

You will hear about key developments such as who’s joined, left or been promoted at the companies you follow, business opportunities and job openings. This moves your ability to research target companies you want to work with to another level.

Once you elect to follow a company… when you log into the Company Home Page on LinkedIn, you will see a list of updates for the companies that you follow. You will also see a “company updates” section now showing up on your LinkedIn Home Page.

This is so much easier than tracking the individual movements of people within in a company. LinkedIn aggregates the list of changes for you. You can easily scan the list to keep up with what’s changed. Here’s a quick screen shot of the company I set up to follow today to check out how this works.

How To

Find Companies under the “More” menu. Click on Companies. Search companies you want to track. Once you’ve pulled up their company page…look to the upper right and click on “follow company”. Scan the updates once a day or once a week.

Definitely check it out! Share your success stories.

Like any other major change initiative, you must present a strong argument for the value and benefits to the organization. Social media is a new way of thinking and it is still being met with resistance. So, there is still evangelism and education to be done.

To secure management buy-in, I think it is very important to forget all the techno speak…present the business case for WHY developing/executing a social strategy is a critical business imperative. It’s important to focus on the number’s, the sales potential, how social selling shrinks the sales cycle and can be used to increase customer loyalty. Talk about how your sales people can use new media to differentiate the products and services they are selling. And, of course,  point out that you can use these tools to gain competitive advantage. In other words, don’t lead with the technology. Before you jump on Twitter, you need to know why you are there.

Start with a clear vision, purpose and plan…then align the technology to your strategic objectives. Focus on measuring your results and build on them. Keep in mind that engaging everyone on your sales team will take time and needs to begin with active involvement from senior leadership. If management is asking their sales reps to use LinkedIn – they need to be acting participating themselves. Leaders model the way for their people!

This is another fundamental shift in how we approach the sales process. Don’t be fooled by the “quick fix” promises of thousands of followers over night. Numbers matter little if the followers aren’t your target customers. Integrating the right social tools will require much more than a few LinkedIn classes. Well…only if you want your financial investment to make a real difference.

As Chilean and international rescue forces work through the rubble cause by the massive 8.8-magnitude earthquake that hit near Concepcion, Chile’s second-largest city, users of social media the world over have undertaken their own rescue measures.Twitter, Facebook, and several of Google’s properties aren’t trivial, now. They’re life-saving, informational tools. –Dan Nosowitz, writing for Fast Company Magazine.

During the past year, a lot of people have begun to realize that social media is not only here to stay, but has significant implications for the way that business is conducted. What many fail to realize is the power that social tools have for saving lives and quickly diseminating information in crisis situations as the Chilean earthquake. I remember when it first clicked how powerful Twitter could be during the Atlanta gas crisis in ’08 that had people sharing tweets about where to find gas in gasoline starved city.

Tools like Google Person Finder, live video streams, Twitter, Facebook pages and more are being used to share information, locate missing people and send much needed financial aid to the area.

Yesterday, Dawn Gartin, a colleague in my LinkedIn network, posed a great question asking what people thought their profile picture did or didn’t do for them. I love the question, because it comes up in every social sales training that I deliver. Some will debate that the picture doesn’t matter or argue that it could create bias in advance. To the first point…well, yes, I feel strongly that your picture does matter, as you’ll see in my response below. As for bias…when you choose not to post a picture that can create a bias in someone’s mind also. Are you hiding something they might be asking themselves. But the way I see it, you are going to meet them at some point anyway, right? Why not let them know who you are right up front? I suspect that often the concern is that you don’t have a great photo to use. That I understand. And it’s worth having a professional take a head shot for you, if you feel unable to tackle it on your own.

Here’s my response to Dawn’s question…

I currently use the same photo to maintain consistency across LinkedIn, Plaxo, Twitter, Blog, Facebook, etc. My business focus is on executives and sales professionals, so I use a professional picture and feel strongly about the importance of doing so to support my brand message and target audience. As sales professionals, it is important to remember that your picture helps people connect with you. They feel they are getting to know you…something about pictures and voice that draws people in. That’s why using video is so compelling.

It’s About Your Brand

Combine your picture with active online participation and you gain important visibility. Crucial to success in this new social world is being seen. You have to put the effort into participating so that when you buyer is ready – they think of you! OK, so back to my colleague, Dawn…if you happen to be in Atlanta, you might be interested in the networking “meet up” she’s got going on Thursday, January 21. You can find the details here. What I think is cool is that you can get a professional headshot taken at the event that you can then use on your social profiles. Do it! The price…incredibly inexpensive at $35.00. Again, find the details here.

BTW – having a current picture on your profiles also means that when you do “meet up” with prospective buyers or partners in person…you both already know what you each look like:)

An Atlanta executive who ought to know better (psst, not the guy to the left!) is now informing his business community that social media is worthless. He believes no results are likely to be had, and he smugly insists that the social web and all that it implies is a passing fad guaranteed to fade into the night.

Hum…

Not only does this executive do disservice to himself, what about his clients? These are the business leaders who rely on his vast knowledge, experience and future vision. Not just because they trust him, but because they pay him. That’s his job. Provide time crunched business owners with the resources, counsel and tools they need to succeed with their business – today and tomorrow.

That’s the rub really…people who dismiss what they don’t understand. These folks are part of the “it didn’t work for me, so it can’t work for anybody” club. That’s a real shame.

Here’s the deal…social media provides leverage that all businesses can capitalize on. With the right strategy as the underpinning, the time you invest in putting your social media plan into action will more than give you the return on investment you want.

2009 will be a year remembered for many things. Most of them non too positive. Financial meltdowns, rampant greed, thousands put out of work. Fear, negativity, anger and often complete disrespect for other human beings showed up everywhere. For entrepreneurs, it proved tough just trying to make it through, while at the same time companies beat them down on price and strung out the process of paying their bills to boot. Sales organizations began to finally realize that strategies that used to work, no longer did. Consumer confidence hit an all time low. Not all was gloom and doom though, and what I will remember most is how people began waking up to the power and potential of social media. Budget cuts and spending freezes forced companies to look at new alternatives to old processes that no longer made sense, and that, I think, is a very good thing.

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.