Are you keeping track of your leads with a simple CRM and sales tracking app? Wherever your leads are coming from – be it social media, referrals, or cold calls – it’s important to manage your leads to win more deals.
In recent years many more small business owners and companies have become more active on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. Self-proclaimed experts claim that social media is the latest and greatest ticket to achieving sales success.
However, launching a social media campaign won’t necessarily cure your sales problems. Here’s why…
1. Most social media efforts focus on the seller.
The majority of social media conversations initiated by companies shout “Me! Me! Me!” They tend to focus on the products and services they offer without really engaging people. People see through thinly disguised advertisements and are quick to dismiss companies whose sole message is, “Buy! Buy! Buy!”
I see corporate tweets and Facebook postings where the company makes an offer but that offer is very generic in nature—which by the way, is okay if you’re selling to the masses. However, if you sell to a targeted niche or business-to-business it is critical that you focus on developing a connection with your audience and closely tailor your offers so that they are relevant to your customers (or prospects).
Plus, offers of this nature need to be carefully spaced so that you are not inundating people with sales messages.
2. Negative encounters can explode.
A twenty-year old statistic states that someone who has a negative experience with a company will tell up to 32 people. In today’s highly-connected world there is no limit to the number of people who will hear about a bad situation.
A colleague wrote a blog post this past fall describing a particularly bad customer service experience he encountered at a restaurant chain. The post went viral and generated hundreds of comments of outrage on the author’s blog. It eventually attracted the attention of the CEO of the chain but the damage had been done; tens of thousands of people learned about the behavior of a few employees with the click of a button.
3. Companies (and people) often drop the ball.
Social media can be a terrific platform to capture customer discontentment and concerns. And many companies monitor social media networks for chatter and comments. However, many of them drop the ball when it comes to responding to these conversations.
Not long ago I encountered an extremely poorly handled situation when dealing with a particular company. I tweeted about it and the company in question responded directly to me in a matter of hours. They directed me to a web form where I submitted my complaint and a few days later I received an email stating that someone would contact me directly. Well, someone did…
However, he left me a brief voice mail message but did not leave a telephone number. His phone number did not register on my caller ID so I could not return his call. And, he made no attempt to reach out and connect with me again.
When I tweeted about this, I received the same generic reply directing me to a web form. Clearly, this company meant well but they simply did not execute.
4. You still need to know how to sell.
A great social media campaign can be effective in driving traffic to your website or getting people to call you. However, if the people answering those calls can’t sell, then your efforts (and money!) have been wasted.
I see this time and again.
A company spends thousands of dollars driving people to their stores, website or call center, only to have the person-to-person interaction go sour.
If your goal is to get people who call your company to buy something, it is critical to teach your staff how to actually sell. If they are simply responding to callers’ questions then you are missing out on valuable sales opportunities.
While I agree that social media can contribute to your sales, too many ompanies put too much stock into this platform or end up mismanaging their efforts.
Social media CAN be used to improve your sales. However, it needs to be used properly and executed effectively if you want to achieve that goal.
I totally agree here we really need to be more diversified with our marketing efforts anyway. Social media the internet and all of that are just tools every business is still a people business.
Steve