Social Media Webinar - Executive Summary

         
 

Carrie Bedingfield, Managing Director, Onefish Twofish                        

INTRODUCTION

Carrie gave a hugely relevant and useful presentation, sharing her social media expertise with us and demonstrating practically where Social Media fits into the sales cycle.

This is a concise executive summary detailing some key points.  To see the full slideshow scroll to the bottom and click on 'See Slideshow'.  To view a replay of the full webinar, scroll to the bottom and click on 'View Webinar'.  Both contain more detailed information and examples.

OVERVIEW

Carrie highlighted that Social media is about two core things: building brands and connecting people.  Assuming that Marketing has the brand part under control, she focussed on the Sales part: connecting people.  Carrie then gave us 5 tactics for real sales people, doing real selling:

• The power of one
• Being the expert
• Being the hub: flaunting your network to get results
• Building the trust with info and offers
• ...and a ‘what not to do’: the blatant social networker

KEY LEARNING POINTS:

1. Social media allows us to communicate at the right time with individuals, e.g. a great relationship on LinkedIn can unlock lots of potential business as the person moves from role to role.  Link in early, keep in regular contact, say hello/goodbye as they change jobs, congratulate award wins, use 'Like', positively reinforce their comments, plug their content (they'll be tracking), and flag shared connections...

2. Prospects don’t want to talk to sales people - they want to talk to experts.  Establish your area of expertise, then use LinkedIn & Twitter to distribute and share content.  Make sure your LinkedIn profile is powerful and also uses key words/areas of expertise so you can be found

3. Be the hub: prospects like to speak to people in the know, show that you move in the right circles via social networking.  For example, blog your travel and sales experience.  Also be generous and show abundance by making introductions as if they are a dime-a-dozen

4. Social media is instant so there are two obvious uses: communicating time-bound offers (people will get used to checking your updates regularly to get the best offers), & giving regular service messages or tips (e.g. deliveries are running 2 minutes behind).  Another benefit is that you can make messages personal, building personal sales credibility & visibility

5. Thinly veiled selling can do a lot of brand damage.  Social media is all about tone, and sales people need to understand the rules of the game.  Yes to: abundance, energy-neutral communication, 'yes… and…', & positive reinforcement.  No to: sycophanticism, 'know-all', pedantry, patronism, & platitudes (the biggest danger!)

If you do just one thing...

Manager of sales people: make your social media sales strategy clear and empower members of your sales team to have a credible online opinion, to be the expert

In a sales role: set up your own semi-automated system for ‘being the expert’ in 10 minutes a day

Listen: get specific information (what do people think of new models, etc) and absorb, get under the skin and be on the radar

See slide show

View webinar

© Onefish Twofish 2011