Nimble CRM for Solopreneurs

How to Build Sales Intelligence for Social CRM [G+ Hangout]

Articles, CRM

This morning I had the honor to be the guest of Richard Young who is the Managing Director for the U.K. and Ireland for Pipeliner CRM. I have known Richard for some time now and let me say that he and his company are both top notch. Not only is their product innovative, they are actively taking it on themselves to provide some really great education outreach to the sales and marketing world via Hangouts like this, their Sales Chat Series, and also their blog. I was very flattered to be asked to join them to discuss “How to Build Sales Intelligence for Social CRM”.

The video from the session is found below and after that I have included, not a transcript but, my notes going into the session. iPad and Google Slides makes for a poor man’s teleprompter 🙂 [Tweet “Sales intelligence and Social CRM is not an oxymoron :)”]

Q1: How is Social CRM different from traditional CRM?

In my mind traditional CRM is not much different than what we used to call Contact Management. Not that there is anything wrong with managing your contact information. In fact, for most salespeople, this is one of their biggest challenges. There is, however, no “relationship” found CRM. Here are a few of the things that make SCRM different …

  • People no longer wish to limit their conversations to the traditional channels instead choosing text, twitter, facebook, linkedin, google+, & others. How do we monitor these conversations let alone participate in/respond to them? A good Social CRM will allow us to do this.
  • People have always bought from those that they know, like, and trust. This intelligence needed to do this is found on the social networks and SCRM will allow us to leverage this in order to increase our sales.
  • Social CRM will also allow us to monitor the social networks for opportunities and need (people and products)
  • SCRM should be both company facing as well as customer facing and this will allow you to leverage the power of your team in order to consistently exceed customer expectations.

While traditional CRM has become significantly more robust, It is difficult for these platforms to make these leaps due to their existing legacy frameworks. For SCRM, all of this together means that you can build sales Intelligence that is both real-time as well as actionable and in meaningful ways. This also happens to be today’s topic.

Q2: What are the key benefits for salespeople to use #sCRM?

I think of a SCRM as a platform that connects traditional CRM (The 3 C’s – Contacts, Calendars, & Communications) with Social Networking in order to allow me to sell more. It is a tool. Nothing more and nothing less.

SCRM does not replace my traditional tasks and activities. It augments them by making me better at what I already do. However, if you currently suck at what you do, your SCRM will allow you to suck even more because it amplifies. Therefore, you may wish to weigh your current status prior to proceeding. But, if you are good, SCRM will …

  • Allow you to become better organized – post it notes in manila folders be gone!
  • Better manage both you time and your territory – just being organized will naturally yield this result
  • Manage your leads, your pipeline, and your forecast (good for management and for sales)
  • Learn more about your customers and develop tighter relationships which leads to sales & customer retention
  • Be able to make the touches consistently because SCRM will remind me to do this. Manage your activities.
  • Allow me to remember what we talked about last since I keep good notes.
  • Discover new opportunities and new connections by being able to monitor conversations, conduct social network searches, and map connection relationships.
  • Expand your circles of influence beyond your traditional boundaries (geographic or otherwise)

All of these lead to one thing and that is increased sales. Increased sales = increased income which is generally a prime motivating factor for good salespeople.

Q3: What is it going to take for salespeople to get the ball rolling
on Social CRM?

S__t rolls downhill and this ball should also start rolling at the top of that hill. If management does not support a SCRM initiative, while not impossible, it is going to be a hard row to hoe.

Of course, salespeople have always hated CRM because …

  • it’s drudgery
  • it’s seen as being record keeping
  • it takes time away from selling
  • it’s change and change is uncomfortable. On the surface, it can be seen as being somewhat overwhelming.
  • it is seen as one more way for management to keep their foot on the back of the salesperson’s neck
  • it’s not their idea 🙂

Used properly, SCRM will do for salespeople what they desperately need and what they have traditionally struggled with … organization. Effective organization will lead to higher sales and, for most salespeople, higher sales = higher earnings and, as we said before, good salespeople have always responded well to those incentives.

Still, salespeople really need to have a system that is easy-to-use and they will require training. Without both, they probably will not be successful. The really unfortunate part, and this goes for traditional CRM as well as SCRM, is that it often ends up being used as little more than an electronic Rolodex.

Q4: How do you develop a good Social CRM workflow?

This is really a very good question and having a good workflow is the same challenge today as it was back in the 70’s when I was starting out except that now it is even worse. Remember that practice makes permanent and that you have to have a plan and you need to work that plan. It is very easy, much more comfortable, to fall back into old habits instead of creating new ones.

You have to understand your platforms including your SCRM itself, content systems and websites, and the social networks themselves. More importantly, you need to be active on the social network or networks that your customers are found on (network and geographies) because, if your customers are not there, then why are you? You start with a new lead and then use your SCRM features to move it into your pipeline and then manage that opportunity into a sale.

Daily duties – Check your lists and engagement opportunities and respond to same. Same for saved searches. Begin progressive engagement for new connections.

“As they happen” duties – Keep good notes! Reset reminders

Weekly duties – Review your results and plan for next week

Q5: How do you manage the workflow keeping the social customer
in mind?

It starts with understanding exactly what the expectations of your customers are and then how can we ensure that what we are doing will consistently exceed, not meet, those expectations. Meeting expectations is nothing more than a neutral experience and I want to be perceived as being remarkable and memorable. I don’t want to be a vendor. I want to be a member of your team, a trusted advisor.

I’m not even sure if the average customer knows what a social customer even is let alone if they are one. That being said … buyer behaviors have changed. They know about the internet and how to use it for research. They are asking a getting recommendations from friends, they always have, but now they are doing it on Facebook. The buying decision may have been largely made before they even call you. The new selling model is education, conversation, & visibility.

We have team members and we have departments which can lead to silo thinking such as sales vs marketing. Make no mistake, the lines have blurred and all departments must work together toward the common goal. For example, marketing can craft and supply messages for sales that promote the company and the salesperson brands.

Everything that we do ties back to our goals, objectives, and strategies. Ask yourself if what you are doing, right now, supports those steps. Are you adding value to your customer? Suffice to say, social provides us with new and unique ways to address the needs of all of our customers, social or otherwise.

Q6: It´s all about a good defined strategy. What´s the process to
develop a social strategy?

Keep in mind that it is social plus traditional and not social instead of traditional.

Define your Objective / Goal = Increase new account and existing account sales

Understand the power of social media – If you don’t, then learn and teach!

Develop your Strategy = Develop programs to increase relationships with customers and potential customers. For example …

  1. Be present where the buyer is
  2. Provide value, build credibility, create authority
  3. Develop trust which leads to consideration which leads to the sale!

Set Benchmarks and Goals = How will you know how you have improved if you don’t know where you are now?

Deploy your Tactics = First, share this with your team! Develop buyer personas, create A, B, C classifications, place accounts on recurring touch schedules, mix up touch methods, track activities

Measure and adjust = make changes where necessary and hold people accountable to their tactical goals

Q7: How can you ensure that the social strategy is being leveraged
to increase sales?

When I think about this question I need to craft my answer within the context of my life experiences. Specifically, going back to the late 70’s when I was selling business calculators door to door in Los Angeles. Everything I needed to do, wanted to be able to do, back then … same thing today.

The rules of the game have not changed. Sales strategies and social sales strategies all go by the same rules. All we are doing is deploying shiny new tools in order to reach our goals. Social does have the advantages of REACH and ATTRACTION and these are only two of the ways that we can leverage the new cornerstones of social selling.

Let me say this, social is very well designed to be leveraged to increase your sales. Mind you, social is a tool and not unlike any other tools, social and traditional, that we might deploy. Social activities are just that, activities, and they are absolutely no different than our traditional selling activities like cold or phone calling.

So then, if I have a good understanding of social media, social selling, and social crm … and my strategy is to deploy these tools as a part of my efforts to increase my sales … and I do this continuously and consistently … how could the outcome be any less than successful?

Well, it is going to come back to that last step in our strategy … “Measure and adjust = make changes where necessary and hold people accountable to their tactical goals”. If we are not successful, I can assure you that there has been a breakdown in the process. Probably multiple 🙂

Q8: For salespeople looking for better customer engagement, how
does SCRM fill this need?

How you can do this will largely vary by SCRM platform but, these things all hold to be true …

  • Customers are looking to engage, wanting to engage, on multiple channels but not all channels
  • This is critical – You must engage with them on their channel(s) of choice and with content and conversation that is relevant to THEM
  • They are also asking to engage in multiple ways including being an active part of your company’s plans
  • They want to be a partner in the conversation, not the object of the conversation.

Now, you are welcome to have a dozen tabs open on your browser and jump from network to network or … you might be able to address a major part (not all) of this from one station … your SCRM. Your SCRM may have a homepage that will alert you to engagement opportunities and perhaps even with those that are with contacts who you have tagged as being the most important. You may have a social dashboard similar to Hootsuite or Sprout Social that will allow you to monitor social streams for keyword opportunities. Contact records themselves may feature that individual’s social streams and attempts by both of you to engage on the social channels or by other methods.

The important thing, and this is one of the oddest things to me, is that many times people will attempt to engage with another and that person will not engage in return. If you are going to be the “non-engager”, that’s a problem. Salespeople who can effectively and consistently engage will not only be perceived as being unique and memorable, maybe even remarkable, they will elevate their position from vendor to that of trusted advisor. Who wants to sell pencils when they can eat lunch in the C-suite? Engagers make sales. Those who do not take orders.

Q9: What role does content play in #sCRM and what does that mean
for salespeople?

When I first got started with social media, this gal told me to get on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and to start a blog. Once she explained to me what a blog was … I had absolutely no idea of why I would want to do something like that but, I did it anyway. In retrospect, It was probably the best thing that I ever did professionally.

Now then, there is a lot of discussion as to whether or not we should be asking salespeople to create content. There is no question that they need content and I feel quite strongly that if they can create it, and not at the expense of sales, there are large dividends to be had. Creating content allows you to formulate and promote “brand you”. Speaking as a salesperson, and let’s say as a commissioned salesperson, content that promotes me is of higher value than content that promotes my company. Just sayin’.

Content works 24/7 unattended and it attracts others to me. I have always been and always will be an outbound salesperson. However, my published content is my inbound sales and marketing component and inbound commissions pay just the same as outbound commissions do. You are probably already a good talker. Now put that in writing! If not a blog like WordPress, think Tumblr or even LinkedIn Publisher.

Content may be the best way I know of for you to showcase and demonstrate your expertise. Content that has been created by yourself, your company, and from other sources should definitely be a part of your weapons cache to be used for making touches. I regularly email articles to clients and prospective clients. It’s easy, it’s personalized, and it works! It’s not magic.

Craig M. Jamieson

Craig M. Jamieson

Managing Member at Adaptive Business Services
Craig M. Jamieson is a lifelong B2B salesperson, manager, owner, and a networking enthusiast. Adaptive Business Services provides solutions related to the sales professional. We are a Nimble CRM Solution Partner. Craig also conducts training and workshops primarily in social selling and communication skills. Craig is also the author of "The Small Business' Guide to Social CRM", now available on Amazon!
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