How Salespeople can use Social Networking and Social Media tools in business

In the last post, I mentioned that there is a 4 step process that you need to develop in order to optimize your PERMISSION based sales attraction strategy. Here is a brief overview of the steps:

Step I, is to develop your own professional network as a salesperson. It is very important that you review your contacts carefully, and input only your vetted, first level contacts. This is also a great opportunity to re-establish your business relationships. Here are some sites that I would highly recommend to use to build your professional sales network.
They are:

www.linkedin.com
www.xing.com
www.ryze.com
www.plaxo.com
www.spoke.com


Step 2, is to develop your professional “Brand” as a salesperson. This represents how your buyers perceive your value to them. The purpose here is to demonstrate your expertise, and provide interesting relevant content “OF VALUE” to your customers. Join groups and associations in your industry. Provide relevant feedback from your discussion posts. You can also build your own website, with content relevant to what the buyers are interested in, or link to a company provided landing page, on their website. Here are some sites to use:

www.linkedin.com (Use your profile,as your reputation and “Branding” as a salesperson)
www.facebook.com (Join groups, to expand your reach, demographics, and markets, etc.)



Step 3, is to use sales social networking sites to expand your business network. Here are some suggestions that are useful Social Networking sites for salespeople. They provide a whole host of resources such as; Sales Blogs, Supplier Lists, Podcasts, Research, Whitepapers, Business Connections, Lead Exchange Tracking, VARs(Reseller Channels), and “C” Level Executive Projects and Partnering.
They are as follows:

Sales sites to review:
www.thesalescommunity.com
www.salesHQ.com
www.salesconX.com
www.salesgravy.com
www.vois.com
www.partnerup.com
www.salescircles.org


Step 4, provides a way to continually leverage effective multiple touch points, using Social Media tools, to interact with your buyer community. It is important to create a following of buyers, who will purchase your product or services. You need a way to influence these people to follow you. This is where Sales Blogs, VideoBlogs, Audio Podcasts, and Microblogs can help gain you visibility. Here are some sites that I recommend:

Microblogs:
www.twitter.com PC to PC, and mobile devices (They follow you, or you follow them)

For Blogging:
www.blogger.com

For posting your sales content:
www.youtube.com Videos
www.flicr.com Pictures
www.seesmic.com Multimedia

For event scheduling:
www.meetup.com
www.dodgeball.com
www.brightkite.com

For Online meetings:
www.gotomeeting.com
www.webex.com

You also need a way to search for the sites that your Buyers are visiting, and find out what they are interested in. You also need to evaluate what your competition is doing. Social Media tools like, RSS feeds and readers (Google Reader), tagging of relevant information, and relevant search methods (Google Alerts), can be used to research your client base. There are also many types of aggregators that are newly emerging, that are designed to attract information to you, based on your specific interests. Some of the recommended sites are:

Aggregators:
http://friendfeed.com
http://alltop.com


I hope this helps.