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Using Social Networking to Find Decision-Makers
By Aleshia Humphries and Pat Ryan
Tough economic times are not new to training or HR. We are always the first to feel the pinch (along with marketing!) Yet whether times are good or bad, keeping your sales pipeline flowing is essential – perhaps more so during bad times. Management doesn’t care what the excuse is - they expect sales to have a full pipeline.
In the spirit of trying to do more with less, some sales people are getting creative and engaging in social networking in hopes of finding leads and generating sales. What could be better than connecting to hundreds if not thousands business professionals for FREE?
Management should be happy, right? It depends.
Many salespeople look to various B2B web sites within the Web 2.0 world to find business contacts, interact with customers, get answers to specific problems, get a nudge in the right direction, or find insight on how to resolve a specific issue. Many are great business tools where people can easily maintain professional profiles, relationships and exchanges that are business related.
Social media is a revolution that changes everything. It empowers companies like never before to:
- Build a following and a community,
- Get involved in discussion groups and exchange of knowledge, and to
- Create dialogue around your industry or your product!
Most employers consider the time spent on Web 2.0 sites as "professional development” and, rightly so, because it is truly an educational opportunity with tremendous potential.
Yet others consider it a low cost way to generate a list of prospects. Sales people without quality leads can spend time trolling around looking for someone to sell. This is an opportunity within Web 2.0….but one must go into this endeavor with both eyes open. Why?
Point #1
Selling in the networking environment is quite different from building a list and blasting out your sales pitch. You can’t use the same techniques as you do with Direct Marketing. First, the numbers just are not there. Quality marketing requires a minimum of 1000 contacts to deliver your message to, preferably much more. Remember the old marketing maxim: “The wider the net, the more fish you catch!” Looking for prospects one at a time is not really using a “net” at all, so beware. Second, contacts don’t appreciate “being sold to” within a social networking environment - which leads to the question, is it appropriate? Do contacts on a networking site expect to be sold to in this environment? Not to say it can’t be done, but understand that building online B2B social networks and participating in all the aspects that it entails does not yield the more comprehensive results that Direct Marketing campaigns can.
Point #2
At first it seems like a great idea being “linked in” with several hundred prospects for free or almost no monetary investment. However, before adopting this as a lead-generation strategy, consider these questions:
- Is digging through Web 2.0 sites really free?
- Is it really the optimum use of your sales person’s time?
- Is it really the optimum use of Web 2.0?
Using Web 2.0 for lead generation purposes (exclusive of other quality marketing) can ultimately prove to be costly for bottom-line sales if you are not prepared for the consequences of doing so.
Example:
Digging around the various Web 2.0 sites to find contacts is more time-consuming than most realize. The longer you have been exploring it, the more time you tend to spend. Sales people get sucked into the vortex. Before they know it, they are spending more time than they intended – a lot more time. Some B2B networking sites even have you building a list for someone else – unloading your contacts in exchange for others. (Do you want to be paying your sales team to populate someone else’s database?)
If not careful, a sales person will find herself spending several hours a day on these sites scouring online communities, reading blogs, looking at profiles, and requesting to be connecting with people for the purpose of generating leads and building databases.
NOTE: That is not selling. That is research.
Some sales managers may say “Fine – we expect our sales people to roll up their sleeves!”
Reality check:
- What do “best-practice” sales people do?
- What do optimally-effective sales people do?
Sales people sell when they talk to decision makers - period. That’s how they make more sales. That’s how they make more commissions. Avoiding ALL other activities is advisable to maximize sales. Think of it in terms of a well-known business principal:
The Pareto Principle
This powerful idea, as it relates to sales, reveals that:
- 80% of sales are made doing only 20% of the tasks!
The most effective 20% of tasks a sales person does, no doubt, includes primarily, talking to the decision maker. The other 80% is everything else.
So in order to sell more, sales reps must spend more time on the 20% activity – talking to decision makers – and less time looking for decision makers (“research” – 80% activity).
Hypothesis:
- The most successful sale people focus on the 20% of tasks that makes them most productive. In other words, they talk with decision makers more often than less successful sales people.
- Looking for decision makers (the 80%) is time spent ineffectively.
- Instead of spending x hours per week LOOKING FOR the decision maker – isn’t it more sensible for a sales person to spend that x hours TALKING TO the decision maker?
Sales people spending valuable time looking for decision makers on social networking sites are engaged in an 80% activity (i.e. not optimal use of time). (They wouldn’t have to if you gave them a better strategy. Additionally, most sales people are getting paid a salary, so the $ clock is ticking while they are chumming for leads on a B2B site. Time is money!
How can you get your sales people spending more time talking with decision makers?
The good news is that there is a company that specializes in finding corporate training decision-makers (and HR, talent management +++).
Mentor Tech Group (MTG) value proposition:
- Saving time for sales people, so they can do what they do best – SELL!
Question: Is it wise for your sales team to spend lots of time developing contacts themselves? (The 80% activity) Or would you rather have sales spending most of their time talking with decision makers? (The 20% activity)
Wait – before you answer: Now consider that maintaining a list of decision makers is a full time, never-ending proposition . Why? People move around – a lot. A contact list you have today is GARBAGE in just four months. (See below)
Realities of building a contact list:
During the four-month period from September 2011 to December 2011, Mentor Tech Group’s 30,000 contact training/HR database had a 49.6% change rate.
- That is, 49.6% of the contacts had their information change in just four months!
- The rate of change for the previous four-month period (May-August 2011) was 50.8%
The economic turmoil may be subsiding, but the four-month change rate over the last ten years for our database has never been below 25%.
Can your sales people keep up with that change without help?
And do you even want them to try??
Trust me. It’s a full-time job.
Unlike social networking sites that drive quantity, not quality, investing in a quality list of confirmed training or HR decisions-makers will save your company valuable time and resources, especially if your are asking your sales people to do more with less. Let them get back to what they do best – SELLING!
With MTG’s Market Intelligence at their fingertips they can call, email or send a direct mail piece to 100 confirmed decision-makers in less time than what it takes for them to build a quality list of 10 confirmed decision-makers using social networking sites.
Clever companies are going from Point A to Point B in a straight line - speaking directly to thousands of decision makers - and leaving the maintenance of their ever-changing targeted information to MTG.
Which makes for sense for your business?
- Making your sales people find their own leads? (80% activity)
- Empowering your sales people to sell (20% activity) by investing with a company specializing since 1999 in finding training and HR decision makers?
The choice is yours.
To start saving money, please call us at (651) 457-8600.
Watch a 2min message on how MTG can help you.
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2009 Mentor Tech Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved
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