Labcast: The Rise of Social Prospecting

In this week’s Labcast, bestselling author and sales trainer David Steel breaks down the emergence of social prospecting and the keys to leveraging social media as an integral part of your overall sales strategy.

Up until recently, if you were to ask sales people about their prospecting efforts, they would have talked about a variety of traditional tactics such as direct mail or e-mail marketing. As you can imagine, that conversation would have also been sure to include one of the most effective prospecting tactics of all: cold calling.
Fast forward to today and it’s a whole lot harder to get people on the phone. Just think about how often you screen your calls to avoid a salesperson. People are pressed for time and often not inclined to answer calls from numbers they do not recognize.
To get around this problem sales teams are turning to social media as a way to engage prospects. The reason is simple: social media allows a sales person to bypass gatekeepers. Buyers — whether they’re the CEO of the company or someone on that person’s team — often manage their own social media profiles, meaning that there are no gatekeepers. They may not always really understand social media, but they are often intrigued by it and experimenting with it. As a result, they tend to be more receptive to invitations and conversations online.
In this week’s Labcast, David Steel, the Chief Viral Officer at Sneeze It and one of OpenView’s top 25 sales influences of 2012, explains social prospecting and the right way to leverage social media as part of your sales strategy. Specifically, he explains:

• How prospecting has changed since the advent of social media
• Which social media channels sales people should and shouldn’t be using in their prospecting efforts and what approach to take with each
• Tips for managing a company’s messaging and value proposition across a variety of channels, including LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook
• Creating a cohesive sales strategy across multiple platforms

Listen to the full podcast below:
Labcast 97_ David Steel on Social Prospecting