FreshNetworks Blog

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One of the most important mantra’s of successful sales people is to ‘Earn The Right’; get some diary time, or hold a short telephone conversation with a new prospect or stakeholder, you must first ‘Earn The Right’ for their valuable time.

To get the attention of the stakeholder when you are selling social media, one technique is to inform what his peers or competitors may be doing. If his competitors may be gaining advantage from the use of social media then why wouldn’t he want to urgently explore this with you?

You may only have ten seconds in an initial contact with the stakeholder, and therefore your key message regarding their competitor (or other compelling justifications – I’ll cover these in future posts) must be snappy, relevant, and vital. For this reason, it is sometimes called the ‘elevator pitch’, i.e. you are in the lift (elevator in US!) with the stakeholder, and you only have a few seconds until he leaves at the next floor, what will you say to get his attention? Be concise and high level. Carefully rehearse the message beforehand. And then rehearse again, and again!

For example, I was watching breakfast television this morning, and Jeffrey Hayzlett, Chief Marketing Officer Kodak was interviewed, explaining how social media has re-shaped their business. He said that social media can excite, evangelise, educate, and engage their customers, and makes a real difference to their changing brand. Their brand was previously deemed old and out-dated, and now, with the help of social media, they have re-vitalised the company.

This is a great story. I know of at least five brands that would compete directly with this brand and I will contact them later today with my elevator pitch! Let’s see if it is effective and earns the right for a further dialog with them.

Read all our posts on Selling social media here.

Some more reading

• Kodak’s Social Media Tips (viralblog.com)
• Why Kodak Thinks You Should Use Social Media (kylelacy.com)
• Twitter at C Level (marketingpilgrim.com)

Image by horizontal.integration via Flickr

A post from Lon Safko on the Fast Company blog today talks about The 10 Commandments of Social Media. The advice is good and serves as a great starting point for individuals, brands or any organisation looking to use social media. Safko’s ‘Commandments’ are:

1. Thou Shalt Blog (like crazy).
2. Thou Shalt Create Profiles (everywhere).
3. Thou Shalt Upload Photos (lots of them).
4. Thou Shalt Upload Videos (all you can find).
5. Thou Shalt Podcast (often).
6. Thou Shalt Set Alerts (immediately).
7. Thou Shalt Comment (on a multitude of blogs).
8. Thou Shalt Get Connected (with everyone).
9. Thou Shalt Explore Social Media (30 minutes per week).
10. Thou Shalt Be Creative (go forth and create creatively)!

These ideas are great, and they encourage people to specific activities. However, I would add one simple and perhaps over-riding consideration:

• Experiment and innovate – give social media a go

I once heard an interview with Jeffrey Hayzlett, CMO at Kodak, who advocates experimentation in marketing, saying that if you not going to kill somebody or break the law you might as well give social media a go. I think there is some truth in this, social media is a relatively forgiving environment as long as you are honest and open about who you are and what you’re doing. The cost of entry is also relatively low – it’s free to set up a Twitter account or a blog, and as long as you commit what can be a relatively small amount of staff time you can experiment and find out what works for you.

So whilst I think it’s great to get people to upload videos or photos, comment or write a blog, I think there is a simpler call to action – have a go, try things out, learn what social media is like by doing it and find out what works for you.

Some more reading

• I’m Your Customer and I Can’t Hear You (slideshare.net)
• Jeffery Hayzlett, Kodak’s CMO about Social Web and Marketing (pravdam.com)
• Brands say social media still an ‘experiment’ (thisisherd.com)