1. There is no ROI in Social Media
I wrote this article in March 2015, nearly three years ago
Using Twitter to get C-Level Appointments a Case Study #Socialselling
The article goes through how a friend of mine was (he still is) getting C-Level meetings using social media.
There is also my #TimTalk with @michaelnlabate @SAP where he talks about their implementation of Social Selling at SAP. Luckily he was given permission to go public with the fact they are now getting 1 Billion (that’s a Billion not a Million) Euro in pipeline from Social Selling https://buff.ly/2nKOZrm
I could go on, we are seeing people make 20 – 30% incremental (net new) revenue increase using social selling. So if people in your organisation say that there is no ROI, you may find your competition are nibbling away at your customers!
2. Social Selling Takes a Long Time
This is a fallacy spread by social marketers mascaraing as social sellers. (Tip: Always check a social sellers sales track record before hiring them)
If you have the basics in place then in fact you can get higher in an organisation faster than you can get with cold calling.
I for example in the early days of Digital Leadership Associates (DLA) when we needed to do cold outreach (we don’t anymore) contact the Managing Director of a multi-billion Telco company on a Thursday, the next Tuesday my co-founder, Adam Gray and myself had a meeting with him, his Marketing Director and his head of PR.
Another example is when we were training a large media company and the second training session into our 12 week program. So only 3 weeks from the start of the program, one of the sales people got a meeting with a senior executive at Microsoft and was able to put $1 Million in his pipeline.
3. We Cannot Measure what we do on Social Media
We have been using Brandwatch here at DLA since we started out, and while we don’t connect it to a CRM you can. We are also now Microsoft Dynamics partners and we are able to demonstrate the direct connection between social media and drop the “leads” directly into the CRM.
What we also like is the ability of Dynamics is it’s ability to listen on-line, each sales person can checked the items it has found and say, yes or no and the system will learn through machine learning. If intent data is found on-line and the sales person agrees this fits the right lead profile, this can drop into the CRM as a lead.
Related: Can You Be the Best at Social? You’d Better Work With the Best at Social
4. My Customers are not on Social Media
We often hear this, in fact one sales person told me that all of his customers where over 40 and therefore not on social media. I can only imagine his customers are like some sort of “Stepford Wife’s” organisation where you cannot join until your 40th Birthday.
We have also had a company tell us that their target person, Chief Finance Officer (CFO), in the town where they operated where not on-line. This town is different were we told. Like there was a line drawn outside of the town where CFOs would not cross.
These are always sweeping generalisations and can be turned around by asking questions. You mean there is nobody under 40 in your accounts? etc.
We have also using Sales Navigator to show people who is online and how often they post. For example, we found in the instance of the CFOs, we found the same ratio of CFOs online in that town as there are for the rest of the country. The town is not different after all.
5. You Think Social Selling is Just LinkedIn
While LinkedIn is a component to social selling, LinkedIn is only 30% of your social network. If you think your network covers your presence on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Email, just looking at LinkedIn being social selling can leave a lot of money on the table.
For example, if you are calling upon a CEO that is the brother-in-law of your friend, you might not see that relationship on LinkedIn, but you would on Facebook. A great example, of how LinkedIn only relationships places your pipeline at risk.