Umberto Milletti, in his post on the Social Media B2B Blog, describes the value that using social media tools in the sales process can bring to improving or enhancing lead generation activities for your sales team. He describes some of the key benefits as:
- If they are not the decision maker, identify decision makers within the prospect’s company
- Leverage your social connections to identify a common SENIOR connection between you and the decision makers
- Tap into social intelligence to listen to what the decision makers care about or talk about
- Learn enough about your prospect’s current business challenges and needs to convince the common senior connection to agree to an introduction
- Discover which other executives might be involved in the decision making process
I wrote a comment back to Umberto’s post and below is a summary of my response to how he indicates/perceives that social media can improve the sales lead generation process. I have a few major concerns – especially among entrepreneurial-to-middle market companies:
It seems that many senior executive decision makers are NOT using social media. They are not on Faceback or Twitter. They are not actively using LinkedIn. Forget for a moment senior executive decision makers. Most senior sales professionals are not using social media tools in their own sales efforts. We’re still very much in the early adopter phase for most social media practical B2B uses – outside of very young professionals and those in the tech sector.
Has this been your experience? How much are you using social media in your sales function? Are all your sales professionals trained in the latest techniques of using Umberto’s ideas to improve lead generation?
To read the full article on improving B2B lead generation, please click the link below.
Can Social Media Be Used to Improve Lead Qualification
Barry Deutsch
P.S. Is it time to take our Social Media in Sales Self-Assessment to determine if your sales team is leveraging social media and networking to the fullest potential in your company?
Very thought provoking points you got here Barry, thanks. There is really so much in social media and we just have to tap into it. The only problem is we sometimes allow the MUCK to cover up its fullest potential and accept things as if they will never change. It’s really about time to make an assessment and improve social media because it has what it takes to boost our sales lead generation. Thanks again.
Hello Barry, the article you have shared is really useful, but it is about B2B. I would like to request you to release an article on “Improving B2C sales lead” so that small businesses will get some idea from your points and make their efforts worth.