8 Ways to Successfully Sell Using Social Media

By Mike Schultz
Published April 19, 2011

There’s this age-old problem with selling: If we could only get more people to pay attention to us, we could build relationships that lead to sales.

Fortunately, social media offers an amazing source of business opportunities. If you approach it the right way, you can build many relationships that could be crucial to your business growth and success.
Check out this video to see the sales potential of social media

This article is about successfully “selling” with social media. I’ll explore how to achieve success with the “two people getting to know each other and starting up a conversation that might go somewhere” kind of selling.

Here are 8 ways to strike up social media conversations with people you want to meet:

#1: Boil the Frog

There’s an old wives’ tale (some truth to it), that if you put a frog in boiling water, it will sense the heat and jump out. But put a frog in cool water and turn up the heat slowly and the frog will hardly notice.

When reaching out online to people you’d like to meet, don’t come on like gangbusters. Nothing screams “jump out of the hot pot” more than a blatant “let’s talk so I can sell you something” message.

Start cool and warm up slowly. Comment on their blog post. Retweet them thoughtfully. Compliment something they wrote. Become familiar to someone—even if they don’t engage you right away—and it’s more likely that they’ll engage you in the future.

For example, this person wrote to me personally, said something pleasant and left it there. Nice start!

Dr. Rachna Jain, who studies the psychology of social media, says, “When people see you more, they like you more. The shorthand is that familiarity breeds likeability. Especially if you’re seen as giving them value or good content or information.”

#2: Givers Gain

The world of social media changes faster than the Clippers change coaches. But some things never change—like the golden rule of networking (social or otherwise).

The golden rule? Givers gain. (Bet you figured that out from the section header.)

As Dr. Jain said, “…especially if you’re seen as giving them value or good content or information.” How? Share a white paper. Share a relevant piece of research. Invite them to a private local business event.

Remember, starting relationships can take many touches. Do this right, and people will perceive you as valuable even before you interact with them personally (which we’re getting to), and you boil the frog at the same time.

#3: Make Henry Kissinger Proud

There’s an old story that’s been told and retold about how Henry Kissinger approached getting the best out of his staff. Before reviewing anything from his people, he’d ask, “Before I look at this… is it your best work?“, and the staff would go back and keep working until they could say yes.

When reaching out through social media, give it your Henry Kissinger effort.

As president of a company and publisher of a reader publication (RainToday), we have about 150,000 subscribers and followers.  And they reach out to me fairly regularly and want to connect.

Many of them remain strangers because they made no effort to relate to me. A standard, “my products would be of value” overture does not catch anyone’s attention. No personalization… no genuine connection. Even something better than bad would be good.

But every once in a while, someone reaches out with real effort, energy and thoughtfulness—the kind that would make Henry Kissinger proud. Here’s an example of how one gentleman started a conversation:

This example goes on with several more paragraphs explaining our connections and reasons for why we might both be interested in connecting. This contact effort was obviously customized and it resonated well with me.

#4: Be Brave

Call reluctance is common on the phone. It happens online, too. People don’t reach out online because of some kind of fear. “They won’t respond.” “They’ll say no.” “They’ll be angry with me.”

The fact of the matter is most customers believe salespeople don’t reach out enough. In the online world, there’s a heavy emphasis on the concept of inbound marketing. I think inbound marketing is a great approach. But that doesn’t mean proactive outreach—the online equivalent of cold-calling is either dead or bad. (By the way, cold-calling isn’t dead. See the research in Bloomberg Business Week from 2007. The 2010 study revealed the same thing.)

When you find a particular person you want to connect with, reach out.

As long as you keep points 1, 2 and 3 in mind, you’ll be fine. As business guru Wayne Gretzky said, “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

Be brave. Take shots.

#5: Be Positive and Pleasant

When some people gear up their bravery for outreach, they think, “I’m about to reach out to a big-time person. I need to seem big time too!” So they puff out their chest and brag about how awesome they are.

Who made the rule that “important” people should be temperamental and full of themselves? Not endearing. I’ve had the good fortune of interacting with lots of guru types and most of them are pleasant and humble.

Don’t try to come off as the BMOC. The fastest way to come off as inconsequential is to keep saying how influential you are.

Todd Schnick says it so well:

“Actions make you influential. Not your words or tweets. People who serve, people who help others, people who share the cool things that others are doing… those are the actions that make you influential.”

Right on, Todd.

#6: Prepare for Window Shopping

When you reach out to people, expect that they’ll check you out. When someone writes to me and I’m curious, the first thing I do is Google and see what comes up.

Make sure when the people reaching out to you search for you online, you’re portrayed exactly how you want to be. Determine how your personal brand and online reputation come across, as they’ll greatly affect people’s impressions of you.

#7: Let Your Personality Shine Through

People build relationships with people they like. If you want to build relationships, be endearing. And the best way to do that? Let your personality shine through.

Boring is forgettable. Personality is memorable. And social media outlets are the perfect place for you to be yourself.

For example, in my research for this piece, I came across articles by Amy Porterfield. I visited her website, and saw her nifty little description of herself:

I BELIEVE in:

• Hard work, but that you have to be able to throw it all away for love and family.
• No drama. Really… not even a little!
• Acceptance. No judgment lives here.
• Wearing my heart on my sleeve.
• Embracing whatever’s next.
• But most of all, I believe that social media should be something you enjoy, not dread, every day.

No drama. Not even a little. I love it!

Now that’s letting your personality shine through.

#8: Take It Offline, When It’s Time

Social media outlets are great places for starting conversations, but they’re not the only place to have them. When the time is right, take the conversation offline.

You can start with a phone call or go right to face-to-face (assuming you’ve boiled your frog correctly). In any case, take the leap.

Selling is a contact sport. After you’ve begun your conversation and built rapport, find a good reason to take the conversation offline and see where it takes you.

And a little bonus…

There are so many social media tools available now it can be difficult to keep up. Here are a handful of tools that are helpful for lead generation and sales:

• Google Alerts and Twitter Alerts help you find reasons to create conversations by following trigger events.
• SocialToo can help you keep track of new and lost followers.
• GeoChirp is good if you need to focus on a specific geography.
• TubeMogul can help you spread the word with video.

TubeMogul is a video advertising and analytics platform that connects advertisers with highly targeted audiences.

• Twellow finds people you’re looking for with a sort of Yellow Pages for Twitter.

Twellow is a directory of public Twitter accounts to help you find people who matter to you.

• SproutSocial helps if you’re getting serious about this whole thing. And, of course, the three biggies: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

One last thought—selling is a big topic. There are so many approaches to succeeding with selling. I think about sales a lot, but I don’t have a corner on the best ideas by a long shot.

If there was a ninth way to succeed in building relationships and selling with social media, and you were to add it to this article, what would it be? Leave your comments in the box below.

*No frogs were in any way harmed in the process of writing this article.

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Tags: conversations, lead generation tools, mike schultz, psychology, sales process, sales tools, selling, social media sales, social media selling

About the Author, Mike Schultz

Mike Schultz is president of the sales training company RAIN Group, author of Rainmaking Conversations: Influence, Persuade, and Sell in Any Situation and publisher of RainToday.com. Other posts by Mike Schultz »

If you do things right in social media than one can capture 1.5 million loyal followers (JetBlue on Twitter).

Yet, companies can also stub their toe in the world of social media as evidenced by the YouTube success of United Breaks Guitars and Kevin Smith’s quarrel with Southwest Airlines.

Some items are beyond your control no matter how good you are at social media. However, there are a few to steps give you the best chance for success in the social media travel world and to increase sales.

social media escalator

As showcased in the diagram, the four steps are:

1. Listen – to your customer and conversations around your brand.
2. Interact – Join the conversation.
3. React – Adjust your services based on feedback.
4. Sell – If you Listen, Interact, React, this will happen with less effort.

Companies often enter the social media fray and jump straight to step four, selling. This is the worst thing you can do, and it won’t be effective.

You need to start with step one, which is listening. Without listening, the other three steps won’t achieve any degree of success. As many have said before me, there’s a reason we have two ears and one mouth.

After listening, then you have the appropriate baseline and credibility to join the conversation.

Imagine if you were at a housewarming party and walked up to a group of four people who were already engaged in a conversation and said, “I’m not sure what you are talking about, but here is what I want to talk about.”

You don’t want to be “that girl” at the housewarming party and you don’t want to be “that girl or company” in the socialsphere.

Many get the listening and interacting correct, but then they commit a terrible crime. They don’t do anything (react) based on the suggestions and information gathered?

If 90% of the people complain about a certain aspect of your hotel, airline, etc, it’s imperative that the issue is resolved, and resolved promptly.

If 90% of the conversation is centered around certain aspects of the hotel or customer service that people love, then it’s imperative that this information is placed in the appropriate hands (PR, production, sales, customer service, etc.) – let’s make sure we do more of this! Everyone loves it.

We won’t touch on selling too much, because if you do the first three steps well (Listen, Interact, React), then the selling will happen with a proper push here and a prod there.

Notice in the diagram that the steps for the customer then happen in the reverse order of the company. This is huge. It’s these steps that the customer takes within social media that give an exponential return (good or bad).

If it makes it easier to grasp, you can consider the following as steps 5, 6, 7, 8. This is where the magic can really happen.

* Listen: The customer books the reservation from the selling company. The customer’s first step is to listen for what to expect (important expectation setting here). What is the value that will be delivered? What experience can I expect?
* Interact: The customer will then travel.
* React: During or after this interaction, the customer will react according to his or her experience (good/neutral/bad).
* Sell: The consumer’s reaction to the experience will determine if they sell for or against (the company/airline/hotel/cruise line). Keep in mind if it’s a negative reaction, you still have a chance to correct the situation by interacting and reacting.

That’s the beauty of social media. As a company, if you appropriately engage in the four steps, then the stairs in the diagram act more like an escalator (pun intended) rather than a traditional stairway (ie. Social Media Escalator).

It will create a positively circular motion, which, with the appropriate greasing (effort), will continue to take your travel offerings to the top. And that is the true beauty of Socialnomics.

The best strategy in social media is a simple one. Always remind yourself of the fundamentals.

NB: This article is written by Erik Qualman, author of Socialnomics. His book is available on Amazon.
as published in PAII Innfo Newsletter