Social Media is widely accepted as an essential tool for marketing teams and customer service teams, but when it comes to sales teams the uptake has been slow.
With potential customers typically being as much as before they first make contact with your sales teams, it’s time to be proactive and harness the power of social media integrated with CRM.
Benefit #1: Using Social Media to Identify Prospects
With the use of your sales teams can monitor conversations around your products & brand.
They can research customer needs, problems and concerns, and find the answers to their questions before even picking up the phone or sending an email.
The social insights gained by listening to these conversations can shape sales strategy, dialogue and even product development.
On top of this, your sales team can (and should) also be part of those social media communications, turning a cold contact into a warm one.
Beware though, it is essential that your team understands that they shouldn’t be blasting adverts all the time, or going in to hard sell. These are platforms for discussion & listening.
Benefit #2: Watch Competitors and Gain an Advantage
Monitoring competitor activity on social media can give your sales team a serious advantage.
Not only can they see what they are doing right but, and perhaps more importantly, they can see where they’re missing out.
Understanding how a competitor is performing can highlight gaps in your own offering that you need to fill or even identify areas of your service that your sales team should be pushing.
It is also worth having your sales teams identify who your competitors’ customers are and monitor what they are saying – are they unhappy with the service and possibly thinking about switching providers?
Microsoft Social Listening reports how people are interacting with your competitors on Twitter and Facebook so you can follow the conversation, gauge the mood and seize an opportunity!
Easily create a dashboard n Microsoft Social Listening listing the most recent social posts that reference your competitors to stay up to date on their activty.
Benefit #3: Respond to Social Sales Queries Quickly and Make a Conversion
Whether sales queries are directly aimed at you, or conversations are happening around products that you sell, if your sales team is using Microsoft Social Listening they can respond ahead of the competition to answer them swiftly.
A prompt and well-informed response leaves your potential customers with a positive image of your company, so that when the time is right to make a sale, your sales team’s job is a whole lot easier!
Get alerted to new sales conversations and sales questions started on social media networks by adding the keywords and search terms to that your prospective customers will use to research your products and service.
The face of selling has changed, and now is the time to adapt your practices!
Microsoft Social Listening is freely available to all customers with at least 10 Professional user licences. CRM On-Premise customers are able to add Social Listening for an incremenal cost.
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