(1888PressRelease)
June 17, 2009 - Bryan McCrae, founder of Cognitive Sales, claims that social media is enabling businesses to speed up the relationship process as more information is now available online about the prospect via profiles on Linked In, Ecademy, Facebook and Twitter. He claims that all help to build a more rounded picture of the person and helps the savvy sales person to adapt their selling approach based on this new information.
“Thanks to social media, businesses are seeing real returns. For example, a company in the Events business saw one of its main clients implement a major redundancy programme. As a result it lost many of its sales contacts as they were made redundant or left the organisation to find other jobs. Whilst some of the contacts were maintained many were lost. Several of the contacts were in the age group 25-35 and were suspected to be users of social media so I suggested to the one of the younger people in my clients organisation that they searched for these people through their existing Facebook account (which had never been used for business) and if found, make gentle inquiries about whether they had managed to find another job yet and build new relationships with them through Facebook,” explains McCrae.
As a direct result communicating with the ex-employees via Facebook, the company managed to secure two major new clients wins for the company. McCrae suggests that those who do not utilise social media in the sales process could be missing a trick and reveals two of the many ways that sales people can use social media in their selling activities.
“When you get a new sales enquiry, as well as researching the company through the normal channels, use social media to build a profile of the individuals involved in the company from e.g. LinkedIn, Ecademy, Facebook to find some areas of common interest that can be dropped into a conversation to build affinity and the relationship more quickly. When looking for new contacts use social media to identify people who seem to be 'hubs' in their domains, with lots of well-developed relationships and contacts. These people make excellent clients as they have a ready made network that they can easily refer you on to,” explains McCrae.
But whilst social media is as way of fast tracking the psychology of relationship building, this is always going to be based on the assumption that what people portray on their digital profiles is a true reflection of them as real people.
“Social media as a set of useful tools? Yes, for sure, but be careful to look for real life evidence to back up what is portrayed in the social media and choose the right tool carefully to reach your sales targets.” advises McCrae.
Information supplied by Media Jems. For further information or images, please contact Rebecca King on 01603 283 506 or email Rebecca ( @ ) mediajems dot co.uk
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