First, a warning – this particular article is long enough that it will be split into three installments. So, if you have a short attention span, this is notice that you’ll need to make sure to read the HotSheet the next two weeks to get the full story. These articles will be a little wordy; I’m laying out a complete case here. And with that, let’s dive in.
I have commented on Online Social Networking numerous times within this space, as well as in live events. However, until now, I’ve never really laid out where and how I feel Social Networking should fall within a comprehensive sales strategy, and more importantly – where it should NOT fall. That’s what I’m going to do here. I feel almost forced into making this declaration, but it’s time that someone combats the increasing level of hysteria and even silliness surrounding social media and online social networking.
That silliness has reached its height with recent writings by the man that I consider to be the top sales trainer in the USA, Jeffrey Gitomer. Now, don’t waste your time e-mailing me about how much more famous he is, how much more he makes, etc. than I do. I’m painfully aware. That said, I think Jeffrey (and many other trainers, he’s just the top of the heap) have gone off the reservation. His latest stance (summarized) is that, “Social networking is today’s cold call; stop cold calling and start Tweeting.”
Nonsense. In fact, let me go further: If you are a professional Business to Business Salesperson, and you take that advice as written, you are committing professional suicide. Period.
First of all, let’s define Online Social Networking. Online Social networking is the communication with others, through sites such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other such sites, with the objective of generating business interest. Online Social Networking – which I will hereafter refer to as OSN – can be a good piece of a selling strategy, depending on what you are selling. For most business to business salespeople, it is not a strategy in and of itself.
Now, let’s talk about why my stance – which will surely get me criticized as a technophobe or some other nonsense – is the correct one. For most of us, one of the big pieces of appeal to a selling career is the fact that you can control your income; i.e. through your own efforts, you can increase your income by increasing effort and achievement. There’s a basic equation that expresses this, which I teach in my sales training courses:
(Quantity of sales activity) x (Quality of sales activity) = RESULTS.
In other words, the more you do it, and the better you are at it, the more results you get. For most sales environments, we express that in terms of ratios – i.e. X amount of calls leads to X amount of appointments, which leads to X amount of proposals, to X amount of sales. Even Jeffrey still recognizes this principle; his common putdown to those who believe in cold prospecting is, “Go ahead and make 100 cold calls. You’ll sell one of them.” What doesn’t follow here is the crucial element in my argument against OSN as a primary selling strategy.
There are no ratios with OSN. No one can tell me (or you) how many Tweets lead to an appointment, how many “likes” on Facebook leads to a Proposal, or how many videos on YouTube lead to a sale. The basic principle and appeal of professional selling – controllability of achievement and income – is gone if you rely on OSN as a primary selling strategy.
So why are people preaching it so hard? Simple – it’s marketable as all get out to salespeople. The reason is simple: Ever since cold prospecting has existed as a method of new business generation, there have been (a lot of) salespeople who disliked it, and looked for a way around it – a “magic button” to new prospects, if you will. And there have been trainers who have capitalized on this tendency by claiming that they had the “magic button.” They’ve been wrong in most cases, and continue to be. There’s no rejection when you Tweet; there’s no hang-up when you put up a Facebook page. Hence, there’s a ton of appeal to salespeople about OSN.
Now, I’m not totally against OSN. This Blog is a form of OSN, and it’s been great for reputation-building for the past six years. In fact, that’s where OSN should fall for most salespeople – as a reputation builder. And before this sequence of articles is over, we’ll talk about doing just that.
And with that said, we’ve used up this space for this week. With everything that I said, you should remember that I do believe that OSN plays a part in the business-building activities of most salespeople. We’ll talk about that in upcoming weeks. Next week, we’ll move into live face-to-face networking, which should be your second priority. After that, we’ll get into OSN and how to use it.
