The first rule of selling social media: listen
- Image by suchitra prints via Flickr
A reasonably bright school kid will build an excellent business case for a car that is 60% more fuel efficient, or a pc that is 50% faster. It’s easy! He can look at reduced running costs (for the car) or improved efficiency (for the pc), and the business case will quickly form.
But selling social media, whether to a client or internally at an organisation, requires more expertise and selling skills, because the benefits are much broader, and often a little obtuse! In my experience, every business or department that buys into a social media solution has a different business case with greatly different benefits. These could range from increasing customer-based innovation, to enticing greater web traffic, to enhanced SEO, to converting more online sales, to building the brand values, and I could list twenty more possibilities…
Therefore, for example, there is no point discussing the value of increased insight from social media, if what is really needed is to increase online sales. These are polar opposite reasons to use social media.
So the first lesson of successful selling in social media is…listen to and understand your client, because there will be a compelling business case for social media and you can help the client to reveal it.
(A note regarding my terminology:- for ‘client’ read ‘department head’ if you are selling social media internally within an organisation)
So, to get to the essence of the business case, there is no better person to understand your client’s business – than your client!
So ask him about it!
But this is where the skill comes in.
- Do your research beforehand
- Make the client (or department head) feel comfortable by building empathy
- What’s in it for him? Establish the right to take his busy time.
- At the meeting or on the telephone, ask lots of open questions, and finish with clear next steps and follow-up.
There may be some Objection Handling, but let’s discuss that some other time.
Read all our posts on Selling social media here.
Martin Meyer-Gossner:
Correct, true and trivial. But is it new? New for successful managers? Or just a revival of old communication basics? Is listening a pure social media discipline? Don’t think so. It’s the basis of a dialogue – nothing more and nothing less.
9 November 2009, 5:13 pmAl Hanzal:
Nice comments on selling social media sites. In all the excite and different rules about social media sites, it’s easy to lose sight of the fundamental rule of selling. Give the customers what they want, when they want it and how they want it. To learn this what the customer wants, you need to listen and ask the directional questions. Good job on the post. Look forward to hearing more about selling social media sites. Thanks.
10 November 2009, 2:51 amTim Fowler:
Martin – fair point – but the fact is that the basics are often overlooked. I see it so many times with both novice and experienced sales people. And do not fear, I’ll build upon the basics in subsequent blogs.
11 November 2009, 1:32 pmAkash Sharma:
Thanks for sharing this insight,We get through this thing again and again that to sell social media as a whole we need to listen to people and get back to them with what they want.I just have one question what would be the best way to engage with them so that they don’t feel as if we are interrupting their conversations.
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