Increase Sales with Social Media

First, the good news. This is not a piece about how to get you message out through social media. This is a piece about how to take advantage of the fact that everyone, including your prospects and clients, are happily exposing their lives on social media.

If you have a social media profile anywhere then you probably have fans, friends, and connections. These are all people who have given you permission to learn more about them. In fact, they are handing you the lessons on silver platters!

Here’s a perfect example of someone taking advantage of social media. I received a phone call several months ago and the first thing I heard was “I follow you on Twitter” even before she told me her name. She got my attention, and my willingness to listen because I already felt a connection. Are your cold calls that effective? What do you really know about your prospects? 

Search

Most social media sites include a search function. For our purposes I am going to stick with Twitter, LinkedIn and FaceBook, but there are many others to explore. You can search everything from generic keywords to specific companies and start connecting the dots to build detailed profiles about your prospects.

The key to a great Twitter search is not in the small search function on the main screen, it is at www.search. twitter.com. Select “Advanced Search” and you are on your way to finding golden nuggets of information.  The search areas include Words, People, Places, Dates, Attitudes, and Other.  You can search any combination to find the people with whom you want to do business. For example, search for anyone talking about your product or service, within 25 miles of your zip code, who posted in the past week. This is really great for local businesses.

At LinkedIn the search is a little more expansive as there are more parts to a LinkedIn profile than the Twitter profile. Again, for the People search use the “Advanced” feature, located at the top right of the LinkedIn interface. The options here are very specific and include Company, School, Industries, Interested In, Years of Experience, and many more, however most of them require that you have a paid subscription to LinkedIn.

FaceBook is gaining popularity for businesses, so even though you can’t always see personal information (depending on their security settings) you can almost always find fan pages since they are typically public. Simply use the search field at the top of the any FaceBook page, enter your search term (i.e. a keyword, person, company, location, etc.) and all relevant matches are retuned in a pull-down list.

Gather

The popularity of these three social media sites (and all others too) are not exclusive. Typically, if you find someone on Twitter or FaceBook, they are on all three. (The standout here is LinkedIn - not everyone at LinkedIn has embraced all social media.) So don’t limit your search to just one, search them all to collect as much information as possible on a keyword, person, or company. This is effective because each site offers a platform for different types of information and communications. When you find someone at all three, read all three, and you will have a much more rounded picture of your prospect.

Connect

Connecting takes many forms – follow, like, friend, direct connect, mention, retweet, comment and connect. Start the conversation by offering something they can use, such as advice, a link to an interesting article, or an introduction to one of your other connections that you feel is a good match. Becoming a resource is a great way to earn trust.

As far as the sale itself, it doesn’t have to be a hard sell. If you are on the phone tell them about a great sale or discount opportunity in a way that makes them feel like an insider. If your initial communication is via email, then include a coupon or discount notice at the bottom, even in your signature, so that it is not the focal point of your message.

You will save a lot of time in your sales cycle by having more information about your prospect prior to initiating communication. The detail of the profile you build will allow you to discuss topics that are of interest to your prospect and create a more targeted message. By developing customer relationships you create better bottom lines!