If you are in sales, you need to read this white paper put out by Axel Schulze and his team at Xeequa: 10 Reasons Sales People Need to Care About Social Networking [PDF].
It offers a number of very compelling reasons why you, as a sales person, need to leverage social media as much as possible. Some hits:
A) All of the following 10 aspects have one common objective:
Create a better customer experience for your clients that allows you to compete in a smarter way with a much higher degree of effectiveness.
B) The “Social Media Question” is not whether you or your company is ready.
It is whether you or your company can catch up with your customers who are already there.
Today, prospective customers (like all of us) search the Internet, read blogs, forums & group discussions, ask questions in their social networks, join on-line communities, and, in the end, know very well what they want, where to buy, and how much to pay. The more significant the purchase, the more completely the customer educates himself.
All in all a social media savvy sales person has 3 major advantages over the one who care less:
1) They know much more in much less time about the same customer than their competitor
2) Even more important, that same customers knows so much more about the sales person and where and how to reach them, that the competition has a hard time to even have a conversation.
3) A positive relationship between buyer and seller has begun, even before any direct contact or face-to-face meeting
The rest of the paper is excellent. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Convince your boss to let you use this stuff. It will make you a better sales person.
