Social Selling – being a fly on the wall of your customers …

It becomes more and more a hot topic: Social selling, how to use Social Media in your sales cycle

• to get information on your potential customers,
• to connect with potential customers,
• to listen and identify opportunities
• to influence …

This posting from Mark Fidelman and Jim Keenan Forbes  is great. I wrote up my summary on Otto (the old-fashioned, still successful seller) and Julian (the young guy leveraging Social in his sales process) a few months ago – unfortunately in German. Perhaps I have to get it translated.

Social media is now a powerful communication platform and communication will always be at the heart of selling.

Selling through social channels (social selling) is the closest thing to being a fly on the wall in your customers, prospects and competitor’s world. Using Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and other social media – supplies information that is almost impossible to obtain through traditional means. …

The phrase; “Go where you customers are.” has always been true and now it’s truer than ever. Your customers and prospects use social media. Their employees use social media. Their fans and detractors use social media, and they are ALL talking. …

Customers are changing how they buy. They are engaging vendors much later in the sales cycle. They have access to more information than ever before. Their conversations, thoughts, frustrations and concerns are becoming increasingly more public and visible. Their customers are expressing their thoughts, frustrations, and concerns publicly. All of this is changing how sales is performed and how quota is met.

To play in this environment and to access this information means sales people need to embrace social selling. It means they need to have a Twitter account. It means they need to participate in LinkedIn groups. It means they need to comment on blogs.

via The Rise of Social Salespeople – Forbes.