The following post is taken from the soon to be released white paper entitled: The Effect of the Great Recession and the Rise of Social Media on Sales & Marketing Integration
SOCIAL MEDIA AS A SALES TOOL //
Although the use of social media is now becoming widely considered and adopted by marketing organizations, it has yet to be accepted by many salespeople. As part of Channel Marketing’s research effort, the team explored areas where social media tools could provide value in the sales process. As featured in Figure 5, a simple two by two approach is mapped out along a common six-step sales process on one axis and the “BANT”(Budget, Authority, Need and Timeline) lead qualification process is aligned to the other axis.
SOCIAL MEDIA AS A SALES TOOL //
Although the use of social media is now becoming widely considered and adopted by marketing organizations, it has yet to be accepted by many salespeople. As part of Channel Marketing’s research effort, the team explored areas where social media tools could provide value in the sales process. As featured in Figure 5, a simple two by two approach is mapped out along a common six-step sales process on one axis and the “BANT”(Budget, Authority, Need and Timeline) lead qualification process is aligned to the other axis.
Figure 5 shows opportunities in the sales process to apply social media tools to accelerate the lead management process and improve account management and support (the bottom of the funnel activities) based on what sales people and customers are trying to accomplish during those steps. Utilizing social media at the beginning of the sales process, many B2B firms are increasingly using those tools as prospecting devices. Studies such as David Gode’s publication in the Harvard Business Review on Better Sales Networks, suggest that to be successful at sourcing prospects, a salesperson’s network should be made up of contacts that are diverse in functional role and industry.
As a result, LinkedIn and similar platforms are helping salespeople create a more efficient marketplace network where each contact knows a more diverse array of people, creating a wider web of prospects. Identified prospects can also be used to help grow opportunities for buy-in and up-sell by allowing a salesperson to build relationships with individuals at a company beyond his or her immediate network.
Beyond opportunity identification, social media can address the problem of stalled opportunities. According to the Sales, Marketing and Communication Leadership Council, the most important front-line manager activity to drive growth is sales innovation, namely collaborating with reps to ‘unstick’ deals. Often times, the culprit for a “stuck” or delayed deal is merely the fact that one or more identifiable ‘BANT’ lead qualification elements have not been met.
While in many cases B2B sales and marketing teams have ready access to the necessary information regarding budget, authority and timing, Figure 5 highlights social media’s coverage and the specific tools that address customer’s “Need” applied to the sales setting.
As mapped out in Figure 5, it is clear that organizations are using social media to help better understand, anticipate and address customer and prospect needs. Allstate agents, for example, created a community portal on a Ning platform that provides agents with an online discussion area to post and answer questions, send out bulletins, blog about events, and share useful knowledge. Allstate news headlines on the site keep agents up to date and the network provides agents the chance to connect with each other and share insight with only a few keystrokes.
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