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Three Easy Social CRM Tricks for Sales Teams

Social media has huge potential for increasing your sales – here are three tips to get your team up and running with social media immediately.Need to make sales – now? If your sales team isn’t taking advantage of all the information social media sites have to offer, they’re missing a trick.

Here are three easy techniques you can try today…

1. Profiling

Knowing everything you can about potential customers helps provide the basis for creating more finely targeted sales pitches. Assuming your marketing department has already created social media accounts for your business, you should:

A. Create some saved searches based around keywords relevant to your business such as:

  • Your products.
  • Your services.
  • Your company name.
  • Your industry sector.
  • Basically, anything that reflects on your business and offers you the chance to engage with people who are showing an interest.

B. Listen! It’s tempting to jump right in and hijack conversations, particularly when people are complaining about your brand – but that’s a customer service issue. Instead, try to gauge what the public sentiment about your business is.

C. After identifying people of interest try assigning a ‘lead rating’ to categorise who needs to be contacted, and in which order.

D. Keep records of your findings particularly new sales leads, in your CRM system. If your platform already has Social CRM capabilities this will be a whole lot easier.

“Success with social in the sales process depends not just on using the tools effectively, but on capturing the results and relationships for long-term benefit to the organization.”

Vanessa DiMauro, CEO of Leader Networks

Three easy social CRM tricks for sales teams

2. Engaging

Once you have identified and rated persons of interest, and gauged general attitudes towards your business:

  • Reach out and join existing conversations with people who have shown an interest in your business.
  • Work the leads previously identified carefully to nurture new sales leads.
  • Let the client drive the conversation and continue to listen more than you speak.
“Rushing into social-computing initiatives without clearly defined benefits for both the company and the customer will be the biggest cause of failure.”

Gartner.com

3. Socialising

As well as joining conversations, social media offers your company chances to start new conversations too. Social media is about building relationships and two-way conversation, so your sales team should use targeted messages to:

  • Invite comment on topics which can further interest potential customers.
  • Share company news regularly.
  • Project a more human face for your business.
  • Show that your company maintains an active social media profile, helping to increase customer trust.
Over 62% of people polled in the UK held a deep rooted cynicism towards companies and felt that companies are only interested in selling products and services but not necessarily the product or service that is right for the consumer.

Socializing CRM eGuide

Next steps

These three tips can be implemented without any additional software or delay, allowing your sales team to get started with social media immediately. However to streamline the process and make sure that nothing falls through the gaps, a Social CRM system can keep track of interactions and lead ratings to streamline social sales efforts.