Marketing, marketing, marketing – that seems to be all your hear about in regard to social media these days. While no one can argue it has completely changed the way marketers have to think and act going forward (although many still haven’t adapted and believe traditional methods still work) I wanted to talk about something I think is critically STRATEGIC for the organization. The area I believe has some of the most vital potential for an organization is in using social media for SALES…
To start with, think of the “language” used by sales – engagement, relationships, trust, reliability, customer-focused, customer experiences, advocates, word-of-mouth to just name a few. Are these the words commonly used by marketing and others? Rarely. These are the words and the language sales leaders and their teams talk about every day.
Yet when you get under the covers of social media and see what it is all about, it is EXACTLY THE SAME LANGUAGE. Social Media thrives in helping build deeper and stronger relationships, gives us the tools to share information and experiences, allows for word-of-mouth to happen 10X faster, creates many new relationships, sharing customer experiences, and building advocacy among clients and partners.
Sales is indeed undervalued in this discussion. Marketing jumped all over social media, and for good reason – their traditional marketing methods are dropping like flies and becoming less and less effective and relevant. It seems natural to put this in their domain and under their control. But is it the right place for it to reside? Maybe, depends on who is running marketing. I have met a number of very savvy marketing leaders who get this and will be very effective. Unfortunately I have met too many others that don’t get it and won’t be very effective.
Sales needs to be in the mix in a very active way. Whether they choose to “own it” or just be an integral part of it is determined by the company. What I hope you as a business leader take away from this is to think broader about social media and where it’s value lies inside your organization. Upon further examination, I think you will see the sales group not only needs to be in an active partnership with marketing but possibly even own it. Worth the time to investigate…
Hey this is kinda of off topic but I was wondering if blogs use WYSIWYG editors or if you have
to manually code with HTML. I’m starting a blog soon but have no coding know-how
so I wanted to get guidance from someone with experience.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!