Perhaps like you, I have read a ton of articles pertaining to the somewhat elusive topic of the effectiveness of social sales. As business people, we are driven by the need to secure a return on our investments (ROI). As salespeople, our requirements are no different. In fact, for those of us who are paid directly based on performance (commissions), social sales ROI is the only thing!
In speaking with salespeople, the most common objection that I hear when the topic of social selling is brought up is …“Who has the time for something that I can see no value in?” Since I said the same thing, that’s probably a reasonable question. In responding to this query, quite often the discussion will migrate to metrics & quantifiable statistics based on things like retweets, leads, conversions, engagements, analytics, and many other topics. Salespeople collectively groan … “What!?”
I’m a salesperson, not a statistician!
My personal problem with all of this is that, as a salesperson, not only do I not have the time, I also do not have …
- The expertise
- The resources
- Or even the inclination
to dive through piles of social data, let alone even know how to gather or evaluate, these key performance indicators. SEO? Barely. Marketing automation? Fuggetaboutit. I struggle with getting out a newsletter in MailChimp. Google Analytics? I can tell you how many visits I have had to my website and pages and that is about it. When it comes to all of this, while you may be like Einstein, I’m more like Mr. Magoo. I do my best, given the time allotted, and then I open my wallet and I look inside at my folding money. $100 bills trump $1 bills. My best guess is that I am no different than most salespeople. We are wired to sell, not to obsess.
You can make the argument that the marketing department has that responsibility, as well as the tools and knowledge, to execute that plan. That’s all well and good except … we are now asking salespeople to participate directly in the social sales process as well which takes us directly back to square one. We both know that salespeople will remain focused on easy-to-evaluate and quantifiable results like … their wallets.
Recently I read an article by Anthony Iannarino titled “How to Measure the ROI on Social Selling” and it is as simple as it is brilliant. A must read! Anthony points out the prospecting is a campaign that is conducted with many activities. Cold calling is an activity as is sending a thank you note. Social activities are really no different therefore, if we are to attempt to calculate our ROI on these, it is no different than attempting to run these metrics on any other sales activity like … bringing people donuts. Hmmm. Same rules, new tools.
The fact is, there are really only two types of sales activities that matter!
- Finding new revenue sources
- Maintaining and increasing existing revenue sources
Since we still only have 24 hours every day, and as we spend that full day in fruitful business pursuits anyway (we do, don’t we?), our investment in time is actually no more, no less. Our investment in dollars (see my $50/month social sales tool box) is minimal at most. Let’s take a look at traditional and social sales activities and their effectiveness in these measurements.
Prospecting – Old school – Beat feet on pavement and/or bend ear on phone. New school – Create and monitor searches for keywords on the social networks that indicate a need for my product/services.
Referrals – Old school – Ask for them or wait for them. New school – Request an introduction via LinkedIn. Teach my existing connections how to provide great referrals and return that favor!
Acknowledgement – Old school – Send thank you donuts with a thank you note. New school – Connect your customer via the social networks to someone who will do business with them.
Who knows someone at …? – Old school – pick up the phone and start dialing from my rolodex. New school – Go to LinkedIn or Facebook, do a search, and find connections. Now look for common connections and go to Referrals (see above).
Expand my network – Old school – Chamber of Commerce events. New School – Searching on LinkedIn (or any other network) for people who meet my target buyer criteria, initiating engagement, connecting, and building a relationship. Then leveraging my existing connections to connect to their connections who meet my desired profiles.
Social Sales will not replace your traditional selling activities. It augments them but, you cannot possibly sit there and tell me that these social activities are not only less time consuming but are, in many cases, more effective than traditional sales activities as well!?
Everything comes back to relationships!
Our success with these activities is largely dependent on our ability to create and maintain relationships. Therefore, we can reduce everything down to that.
- I secure new customers by finding and creating relationships with both my existing customers, who give me referrals, and new customers who have an identified need. Better yet, my social networking activity attracts many new customers to me!
- By developing closer relationships with my existing customers, I will ensure that everything that they can possibly buy from me, they will.
When it comes to measuring our return, this is directly tied to our activities:
- New revenue dollars (not “likes” on Facebook)
- Increased revenue dollars from our existing customer base
- A net increase in existing, and buying, customers (lost customer prevention)
And, once again, all of this comes back to relationships!
I tend to be a bottom line kind of guy. Since I never actually micro-measure my traditional selling activities, and as I consider my social selling activities to be extensions of those things that I do naturally in real life, I am hesitant to micro-measure these either. I would much rather expend this energy on the activities themselves and then refer to my key performance metric, my wallet, in order to evaluate my results. There, I said it. I like things simple.
This is not to say that I do not find value in numbers. As a former sales manager, that would be sacrilege. Still, I always preferred to manage results and relationships rather than call reports. Not everybody would agree with my methods. I never did like cold calling either. Warm calling is another matter. Referrals are the bomb.
I’ll leave you with a quick relationship story. A little over 8 years ago, I decided that I was tired of managing people. I love selling so I became an independent contractor in the electric sign industry which is my background. I spent my first month compiling a list of construction sites (new construction = signage) and when I turned around, I had something like 500 potential, yet unqualified, suspects. Where to begin? I ended up shredding that entire list and, instead, I reached out to my relationships. I never made a cold call during that tenure. I have always sold based on relationships. I just generate those more effectively today.
This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet. I’ve been compensated to contribute to this program, but the opinions expressed in this post are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.
Craig M. Jamieson
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