Does Social Media generate Social Selling?

 It is important to understand what Social Media generates and what it can contribute to Social Selling. Social Media in itself does not generate Social Selling and is not supposed to do so. As mentioned in a previous blog (The shifting power from enterprise to consumer) Social Media is supposed to create an advanced dialog between the costumer and the company. As been discussed before, Social Media is a dialog between “Many-to-Many” and NOT a “One-to-Many” speech. The influence of the buying process has changed as the dialog and conversation has change from the company to the costumer. The Costumer is in “control-Costumer empowerment” and it has an effect on the buying and selling process. If you want to participate in the conversation and want to have influence on the costumer network and influence the opinion of the costumer, you need to be able to deliver a valuable content and place it in the context, which will give sense to the costumer. Social selling is based on this new reality – you cannot fool the costumer and don’t even try. Start to recognize that your costumers is more knowledgeable  and even better informed that you used to think – the costumers is connected in social networks where they discuss everything- and this could be your advantage if you deliver the content which will give the costumer and advantage. The expectation from the new Social costumer is that;

• There is a demand of relevance from you as a seller – content in the right context in an honest and open way.
• There is a demand to the seller that you know about your costumer, their companies and their needs before engaging with them in any sales.

Sales are not able to come with a standard “elevator pitch” where the common problems, is addressed.

Using the social media for sales, demand that you actively listen, and engage and add value to the costumer conversation – content in the right context. What costumer wants is a strong collaboration where they get the feeling that they are being, taken seriously and maybe even taken into the development of new products. Your costumers expect you to know as much about them as they know about you. The company need to have its sales intelligence in place to be able to catch the knowledge, which is, presented in both traditional data and from Social media from their costumers.

As a company you need to be aware of that the Social Costumer would only use your marketing material for a second opinion, and instead turn to their peer network or to people they know to evaluate the vendors product or service and even diagnose their news collected before taking a buying decision. The new reality is that costumers will formulate their opinion without the company and sales persons influence if they cannot deliver a valuable content to the costumer. A growing number of business in especially the B2B segment, is started and closed without any face-to-face meeting as costumers are collaborating online with the company they are buying from. This demands openness and flexibility from the companies, which is difficult as you are, exposed to your competitors looking into your business, as that is a demand from costumers.

Using Social Media in a corporation during a financial crisis, will that create competitive advantage?

 

The global crisis which we are in should “jump start” our brain to think “change”. It is not just financial change but change in:

• How we do business?
• How we consume?
• How we communicate?

It is not an easy task, we have to change behaviour, which we have been used to and have considered as fundamentals and essential for our life especially in the western hemisphere. We are facing enormous challenges.

We have to change the way we do business. Today corporate economy has a strong focus on profit maximization in order to satisfy shareholders. This is not a sufficient path to solve tomorrow's challenges there is a need to think differently. Thinking differently is likewise to think out of the box, change habits and taking in themes such as social and environmental responsibility and innovative thinking into the company's way of communicating with its customers.

We have to change the way we consume. The growing population consumption will within a short time span gives us a lack of fossils fuels, lack of clean drinking water and food sources. We have to think and change to green technology for energy consumption, water cleaning and even food production.

We have to change the way we communicate the messages to the population and how we want to secure that our companies can continue to produce sustainable products and service, which is beneficial for business for consumer and for the environment. A communication model, must be chosen.

How do Social Media fit into this quit complex reality facing the entire population on our planet?

A way of getting change is to communicate with people and get a dialog among people. There are several layers of using Social Media, both on a Macro (governmental) and Micro (company) level in economical terms. In today’s challenging world the communication must be more unified which mean that the Micro level economy – our companies -  will have a responsibility to communicate business messages on a more responsible and sustainable way – taking into consideration how our product/services will affect our social and environment behavior. If this should happen in a positive way the companies has to benefit from it and the consumer and state has to benefit as well from this change. To create this change in communication, a number of questions, must be asked  from a company perspective;

• The change, which happens, during a crisis will Social Media in a communication perspective create competitive advantage?
• Taking advantage of social media’s high value and low cost, will that benefit the company in a changed world?
• Could the change to a Social Media infrastructure help the company through a crisis into a new changed world?

To create competitive advantage a company has to do things different from its competitors and secure that it catches the newest trend in the consumer segment the company is working in. First, you should not drop all you other marketing activities just to use social media. You should use Social Media in coherence with your other marketing channels and secure that you start get the collaboration and dialog with your costumers. The strong thing about Social Media is when you get the peer-to-peer dialog up running. if you as company have been able to create a good content of your product and service and have placed in a context where it naturally explains what you can do for the consumer the peer-to-peer conversation will take it on from that and spread the message. In that perspective, your company will have competitive advantage.

The next level you as a company have to consider is even though Social Media create high value for a relative low cost you have to develop the environment for social media to happen and create the dialog and collaboration, and this is not an easy task, it takes time and internal resources to get there. If you have the resources and time, internal in the company, you would have the possibility to benefit from Social Media in a changed world.

There are certainly some benefits to have a social media infrastructure in place before you have a crisis either internal in the company or external in the form of a global financial crisis. It takes time and energy to build a well run and function Social Media infrastructure. A Social Media infrastructure where you have the collaboration with your costumers, and where your company organization, have accepted, the new way of communicating with the costumers. When these two factors, are in position the Social Media can help the company through a crisis, because you get a lot of information from the market and end-user consumers, which will help you take the correct decisions.

It is very easy to say that using Social Media in a corporation in crisis times will crate competitive advantage this will not do for every company. As described above, you have to have certain criteria being present, and you should have a corporation, believing in change to get real competitive advantage. But if you have these criteria’s in place you will benefit from Social Media in a financial crisis as present today.