Social Selling is the 2014 challenge for the Enterprise Company

Happy social selling in 2014
Among large companies top management, it is a common misconception that all involved in social media and selling is either placed in marketing and or sales department. It is extremely important that top management is fully committed to communicating with customers and helps to bring value and Content into the dialogue with customers. The first step in this process is to have a social strategy, where working with social strategies are clearly defined and formulated so everyone knows what to do to ensure a successful social media/selling engagement. 

The traditional sales cycle process changes due to a number of factors.

·      First the decission makers in the B2B market changes, where it was the It-manager taking the decission when IT had to be purchased it is now the CFO who take the decission on recomandation of the It-manager.

·      When it in the past was mainly price and features which was the overall decission factors it is now the value creation towards the purchasing company which is top of the decission line.

·      When it was the marketing messages and the product catalougees that decided what the company should purchase it is now the experience of  other customers and their rating of the selling company value creation model which makes the customer take a purchase decission.

Enterprise Companies must fundamentally alter their marketing strategies and quickly adapt to the social selling ecosystem. To be able to take advantage of the new social dynamic environment the enterprise management must start to:

·      Gain real time knowledge of the customer decision behavior.

·      Understand the customer’s individual needs and engage in relevant communities creating valuable useful information.

Social Media has reached a new level

Social Media has reached a level where all the target-buying groups (prospects and customers) are freely offering information about themselves, their buying behavior and their communication with other potential customers. The customers are giving free feedback on their opinion of the products and services they want to buy or just have bought from any enterprise company in the same target group as your company are working in.  It is time for the enterprise company to be able to collect all the data being produced every minute of the day (Big Data) and process the data so it can be used to support the social selling.

Social selling has created a world where even B2B buying decisions start , progress and reach the closing point with little or non face-to-face collaboration. The Pre-Social Media selling where the B2B buying was governed by the face-to-face sale, the product catalough and the marketing communication sent out from the enterprise company is now beeing deminished and is under presiour from the social communication going on among customers.

The B2B sales force are feeling the presiour and know if they should keep their specialist position they need to participate in the conversation going on in the Social Media univers. The sales departments are seeing that a real shift in communication is taking place, and therefore they must urge their B2B sales people to take advantage of the power that social media content offer as a sales tool to create new prospects and keep into the collaboration with their customers.

This is where 2014 will force enterprise companies to adopt social selling in greater numbers.

Happy social New Year