Selling With Social Media

Can you sell your product using social media networks?

Selling With Social MediaYes, you can, but NOT in the way that most people may think. It requires an understanding of a New Sales Process. I like to call it “Subtle Selling”. Today’s sales rep is more like yesterday’s sales clerk. If you don’t understand how the shift is taking place, you may be wondering how your new, young competitor took away your old established clientele.

Social Media is a part of the larger category of New Media tools. It is an area where you must be very careful if your primary goal is to sell more. Don’t think of it as a giant audience to throw your marketing message (translated sales pitch) out into the crowd. Think of it more like any other giant audience where you are gathering with many people for something in common. Let’s say, hanging out in the mall, while on a break from the store where you work located within the mall.

You don’t immediately enter the crowd giving out a sales pitch and your business card to everyone you encounter in the food court, do you? No, but through small talk, conversations, and chance meetings, you may sometimes encounter a potential customer that you will make a subsequent appointment with to explore a business dialogue or extend an invitation to meet you back at your store.

The Social Media area of the New Media is a listening platform, NOT a selling platform.

Use it to engage people. Grow your network. Give generously and people will follow you (hopefully back to your store). Some may become fans and others may even become friends. But leave the selling activity to step number 5 in the New Media Sales Process.

The New Media includes lots of different tools to communicate and market your message. Business websites (your store), blogs (your community involvement), and customer search capabilities are the key elements to providing a place to tell your story and share the benefits of your product or service. The social media sites are where people gather outside of the business “stores”. Think of them as the common areas of the mall.

A facebook profile page is like your home whereas a facebook page is more like your blog. And, Twitter is like the conversations in the common area among the stores. Use discretion while you blurt out your message. You can display your product in the store front window where people can see it and choose whether to enter your store, but if you “get in their face” out in the common area, you might cause more harm to your brand and actually chase away a potential customer.

Twitter can also be used like the classified ads of the past with a large category of the personals section taking center stage. You need to be clear in the type of ad you are posting. Is it to announce a garage sale or to make a new connection for a date? Either way, be aware of the lines you cross and watch your behavior to be effective.

It may help to compare the old sales process to a new one. Sales Reps used to managed the process, whereas today, the customer is in control. You can use either as your sales strategy, but sell appropriately with a sensible marketing strategy. Here are 7 Steps of the old sales process compared to 7 steps of the new sales process.

Old Sales Process vs. New Sales Process

  1. Sales Rep Gets Leads vs. Customers perform online search for wants and needs.
  2. Sales Rep Qualifies Leads vs. Customers research their favorite choices from what they found in initial search.
  3. Sales Rep Makes Appointments vs. Customers follow and watch their favorite vendors visibly or silently.
  4. Sales Rep Presents Product/Service vs. Customers decide what they want before first contact (maybe even trial or test an offering).
  5. Sales Rep Questions and Handles Objections vs. Customer invites vendor to take order their order.
  6. Sales Rep Closes the Sale vs. Customer becomes a fan through a satisfactory experience.
  7. Sales Rep Moves on to next Lead vs. Customer posts public review of his/her experience with the vendor, good or bad.

With a better understanding of the new sales process, the sales rep of today might be better served to re-allocate his/her time expenditure towards more marketing in the New Media and less pushy selling activity in Social Media. In the past (pre-internet era), the customer was dependent upon 2 or 3 sales reps to educate him on the benefits of their solution to his problem. Today, the customer usually knows more about the product the sales rep is selling than the sales rep does.

Today’s sales rep has become more like yesterday’s sales clerk who waited in the store for the customer to enter. The sales clerk function was not so much to educate the customer, but more to guide the customer toward the best available item that is readily available for the customer to purchase now.

In addition, because people buy from people, today’s challenge for the sales rep is to become the sales rep of choice when the customer is going through the first steps of the new sales process. This is why you cannot ignore the New Media and where Social Media fits into the bigger picture.

What can you do to use Social Media more effectively and become the vendor of choice? Join me on a complimentary Web Marketing Webinar where we can talk about Selling using the New Media. We will explore the many different ways to use the New Media to attract customers and sell more effectively.

By Howard Howell

Howard is an Internet Sales Consultant. He speaks professionally about Web Marketing and Sensible Selling from an experienced entrepreneur’s viewpoint. He also provides individual coaching, group training, and web marketing consulting services. Contact him now.

123 comments

  6. Wow Thanks for this write-up i find it hard to stumble on awesome resources out there when it comes to this content thank for the information site

  23. Wow Thanks for this site i find it hard to acquire very good content out there when it comes to this blog posts thank for the site website

  32. The music video for “Vocal77” was directed by vocal77pro. It is a tribute to rave culture and electronic music. It consists of a compilation of various amateur slot vocal77 recorded

  38. The VOCAL 100 club is our monthly lottery which raises money for carer support and pays out half of the fund in cash prizes. This

  44. The best dubs go beyond the basics of the format, and make those vocal77 loops sound as if they absolutely need to be vocal77 repeated.

  46. Cyberchase is an animated science fantasy children’s television series that airs on PBS Kids. The series centers around three children from Earth: Jackie, Matt and Inez, who are brought into Cyberspace, a digital universe, in order to protect it from the villainous Hacker (Christopher Lloyd).[4] They are able to foil Hacker’s schemes by means of problem-solving skills in conjunction with basic math, environmental science and wellness. In Cyberspace, they meet Digit (Gilbert Gottfried for the first 13 seasons, Ron Pardo since season 14), a “cybird” who helps them on their missions.[5]

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *