Social selling is a HOT topic as of late and rightly so. This week I have been honoured to be training soon to be digital agencies in Manchester, doing webinars on social media and creating app content about social media for a national telecoms company. All through Great Marketing Works.
All have their eyes on social selling. But it’s the first client that has inspired this blog all about the New Rules of Engagement.
Twitter, especially with the new changes, will become a tremendously powerful tool for engaging with people especially in the B2B realms. It could be seen as your perfect cold call replacement. Warming up a cold contact and making it that you never have to sell through your phone again.
IN fact, from working with many clients, this is what they find, as Gary Chaplin puts it:
“Twitter has fueled my business to the extent that in coming up two years in business: I have still not made a ‘Business Development’ call.”
Imagine that – a successful (and growing) recruitment business that has been working at (over) 100% capacity for two years, that has never made a sales call.
A generation of 90s recruitment hacks have either just spat out their collective coffees or they are turning in their career graves. Hat’s off to you Gary.
But back to you.
How are you going to do the same? How can you use Twitter in this powerful way to replace your sales drives. Well, some of you can’t, as your demographic aren’t on Twitter. But for everyone else, here are the 7 new rules to engagement. To make you never need to cold call someone again.
A couple of caveats first.
- These ideas are purely for Twitter. LinkedIn is different and so is Facebook.
- This is mainly made to engage with higher up / C suite business to business contacts rather than business to consumer.
- The same principles would work for B2C but they just wouldn’t scale, as it would take too long for each contact, which is why we built Follogro (a different story.)
This tactic flow, presumes you know who you want to go for and you have their Twitter handle, if not maybe you could use something like Twtrland and find out who you wish to meet.
The 7 stages for manual Twitter engagement.
Follow them.
Then they know who you are.
Make sure your profile looks great and is professional*
Favourite their Tweets.
It’s a compliment.
So is giving them a #FF - no bad thing.
Retweet some of their Tweets.
It’s giving them social proof.
But make sure you don’t do too many.
Comment on one of their Tweets.
It’s like saying “hear – hear”
But do say something clever / charming.
Read something they have blogged about.
And comment in their blog and retweet this on Twitter.
Question some great content you have found, asking them and another person.
It’s like you are talking in a group.
i.e. Content Link…but what think @dansodergren and @ukmarketinghelp?
Ask them a direct question about other content you’ve read.
It’s like talking to them personally.
i.e. Content Link…but what do you say @dansodergren? Is it right.
Send them a direct message
With the new twitter function you aren’t limited to 140 characters.
But remember NOT to spam them – this is NOT the point of this new feature.
A couple of warnings to finish with.
- Take your time. This whole approach can take up to two – three weeks.
- Remember if they are very famous (either in truth or in their own eyes) then follow some of their friends first J
- If you are asking them lots of questions and no reply then STOP.
- The latter stages need a reply to you before you proceed.
- Maybe even ask BEFORE you DM them.
*We will be covering this and other things in my course next month.
This training course will focus on Twitter, looking into why it's changing and how to adapt to the challenges in generating new business, increasing sales and conversion rates.
Is this course right for you?
- This course is aimed at sales and marketing professionals who have a basic knowledge of Twitter and are already using the platform to drive sales and create brand awareness.
- You will be interested in creating a strategy for Twitter that fits into your business sales and marketing plan.
- Class sizes are limited to no more than 15 people and attendees are encouraged to participate and ask questions as much as possible.
- Want more information… click here.