How important Social Networking is for a Sales Professional?

I'd say it is very important for sales professionals – offline or online - it depends of where and for how many hours a day they do their selling. It does not guarantee their success though; that still depends on their approach and business acumen.

If they work and sell online, it is very important for them finding their clients on social networks. Even if they spend their time in the street and going around the companies, they'll equally engage in social settings where they can network, spot prospects and "work" new sales relationships but it will be offline.

Sales is all about contacts, contacts and contacts. No matter what you are selling, who your target audience is and what's the size of deal, at the end of day, "People Buy, not the organizations". Sales people rely on their ability to connect with other people and leverage that to both parties' advantage. Not only is it basically hard wired into every sales person's personality to do so, but it also is mandatory for growing one's business.

As they rightly say; when any company hires a salesperson it actually captures his/her business contacts and practically hires the sales leads not the person. Therefore, without any risk we can say that a sales person is as successful as strong is his/her network and his/her ability to tap this network.

In this post, we will talk about online social networking using Social Media. Relying on social media means meeting new people and meeting more people via these new people and there is a high chance that someone within this network is surely going to utilize your services or products or refer you to someone who will. Not to mention referrals are as good medium for business as advertising is or may be even better than advertising.

It also depends on the sales cycle of product/service that you are selling. Social media makes more sense for a sales person with shorter sales cycle. They are high-activity salespeople who often have a low detail orientation and a disdain for step-by-step process, and their sales performance can be improved with consistency in social networking. Engaging in a social network is just the first step - a true professional then needs to know how to leverage the network to provide mutually beneficial outcomes. Sales people managing large accounts with a longer sales cycle focused on more targeted and strategic approach of social networking.

For sales and marketing that means "pull" rather than "push" and initiating "conversations" with prospective clients. So the Web is no panacea. It depends on the style and modus operandi of the sales person. Having the gift of the gab and being extroverted is one thing, but if the person tries to "push" themselves or the product on others, that will backfire, even more so in cyberspace than in the real world. Networking is not selling, it is about establishing relationships so that those in your network come to like and trust you and refer you to their contacts and the people they care about.

Seek to meet the movers and shakers and work to build quality relationships with them by helping them expand their business. The old adage, “what goes around, comes around” holds true in networking. These are not overnight strategies for success in networking but then, there are no overnight success strategies for any true profession and selling is no exception to this truth.

Using Social Media for Direct Marketing

Social Media is defined as decentralizing the authority of one individual over content from the World Wide Web. It’s a website that contains everything from posts, videos, photos, links, bookmarks to pod-casts and web-casts via user submission. All these submissions can then further distributed via RSS feeds to the second level of networks.

This content is open for world to comment / rate / vote which essentially means not only you are sharing your knowledge and ideas with the world you are also authorizing them to be judgmental about it and when they do its a happy sign for you as it means that your site is becoming popular.

Social Media brings new opportunities for Direct Marketing as it gives readymade and packaged audience to marketers according to different geographic, demographic and social factors. The social media platforms like Yahoo! Groups, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Linkedin, YouTube, Flickr, Digg, Delicious, Technorati, and blogs are the readymade base of millions of users. It is a platform where in a marketer can advertise and be assured that his message is being heard.
Suddenly it has become the buzzword as the technology has made this concept quite sellable; though the concept is not new. The approach is new as it is better empowered from technology. Earlier also marketers have used tools like Bulletin Board systems and live chats to spread the word across the online communities, but today’s technology have changed the entire ball game all together.

All you need is a wireless network, a laptop and a camera and you are all set. You can market your products / services instantly anytime from anywhere using live streaming over the internet, video/audio blogging etc. All the technology is available to make you mobile and productive 24*7 in doing direct marketing over social media.

Web 2.0 has made the web as advertising paradise for the marketers as they can customize their marketing efforts for different set of customers on the World Wide Web. Web 2.0 has transitioned websites from isolated information silos to sources of content and functionalities. Web 2.0 has enabled machines to understand and extract meaning out of users profile for social networking and delivering information to users in innovative ways creating consolidated information about the users to marketers.

What is critical for a marketer is to understand how to connect with this readymade audience. Now when you have reached the audience; what to do with them sets the rule for further game. The marketer has to be very careful with his message as traditional messaging and too much of exposure can result in offending the audience rather than wooing them. Understanding and implementing proper community engagement protocols is of supreme importance.

So, all needs to be decided now is to what to speak – whom to speak and how to reach them is pretty sorted!!!!! :)