Use social media for what it can do – and don’t ask it to do what it can’t.
Many people don’t know this, but he late, great country comedian Jerry Clower started out as a feed and fertilizer salesman. Some of his jokes and stories were from this life, and one of my favorites is this one. As they say, if it isn’t true, it ought to be. He was once selling to a hog farmer, and he asked the farmer what he fed his hogs. “Slop,” the farmer replied. He then began extolling the virtues of the advanced hog food he sold, and closed by saying, “With this food, your hogs could be grown and market-ready in half the time!” The old farmer looked at him and said, “What’s time to a hog?”
That story illustrates how the same words can mean different things to different people – and few things exemplify this more than social media. “You’ve got to be on social media,” one person says. Another says, “Quit prospecting – social media is where it’s at!” However, at the root, what salespeople are concerned with is not social media; it’s prospecting and lead generation. To that extent, social media has one big Achilles’ heel that no one is talking about.
The Achilles heel is this: Your target must KNOW about you before anything you do with social media has any effect.
One of the big positives – for the user – is that social media is an opt-in mechanism. You might be Tweeting some great stuff, but if I’m not following you (by my choice, not yours), I’ll never see it.
If you’re a salesperson, this is a big problem. Part of what we need to do in our new-business selling process is to reach out to people to make it so that they DO know us.
“But wait,” you say. “People pass along what they see in social media; that’s how people build audiences.” Sounds great, and it does happen. That’s what they call “going viral.” But there’s a problem: In the real world, very little business-oriented material gets the reTweet or the Facebook recommendation.
One example of this is a prominent sales author who in recent years has been, shall we say, emphatic about the power of social media. At the start of 2011, he promised that he’d tell his readers how to monetize social media. At the start of 2012, he said that he’d hired a consultant to help him show people how to monetize social media. So far in 2013, the discussion hasn’t advanced. However, last year, he posted an example that speaks volumes.
He gave an example of a pithy comment that he posted, and, he said, “It was re-tweeted 18 times!” Sounds great. Except that he has 30,000 followers. I don’t even want to run the ratio involved. And this guy has been a best-selling author for 20 years, which is how he got his 30,000 followers.
Now, it may sound like I’m down on social media. I’m not. What you’re reading is a form of social media, and it’s been very beneficial to me for eight years. That’s why I keep publishing it. But to succeed in selling, it’s vital that we understand what social media CAN do and what it CAN’T.
Social media CAN be a great mechanism for reputation-building, relationship development, and demonstration of expertise. Many buyers will use it as a “check-you-out” mechanism to learn more about you….AFTER they have encountered you from some other mechanism (such as personal contact at a networking event or a prospecting call).
Social media CAN’T be a primary contact mechanism, because of the Achilles heel issue that I mentioned earlier. There’s an exception to this rule; salespeople in B to C businesses should probably invest more time in social media for two reasons: First, cold-call prospecting is virtually nonexistent in B to C. Second, what does get forwarded and re-tweeted tends to be information on personal purchases, entertainment, etc. Real estate salespeople, in particular, have had a lot of success with social media.
I should also qualify what I said in the last paragraph. At this time, the social media technology does not exist that will get past the opt-in provisions of the genre, and allow social media to be a primary sales contact mechanism. That technology may exist someday, however (and I’m sure people are working on it).
Last week, at the ASI Show in Dallas, I did a little test. I was speaking to a group of about 150 people about prospecting. I asked all the business owners in the room to raise their hands. About 50 did. I then asked every one of the business owners to keep their hands up IF they watched their Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn feeds to find new vendors.
Every hand went down.
Since most of you reading this are B to B salespeople, that should tell you something. Use social media for what it can do. Don’t ask it to do what it can’t.
