Who is my Customer?

The Social-ID is the basic information you need about your contacts to interact and access their profile (likes, dislikes, preferences, interests) in Social Media.

If we are selling transactionally, we meet customers and try to convince them to buy. If they are not ready we move on to the next lead. Social Sales is about sharing the control of the buying process with the customer. That requires personal engagement over time and Social Media is the tool we use for that.

Your Social Sales and Marketing tool needs to help to capture the Social-ID and manage that social engagement.

Social ID blended with the traditional Business Database that you have of your customers and prospects let you know more about the 'person' and about the persona of the company. When you start to notice what they blog about, who they talk to in social media and the things they are promoting for their business you really start to get an additional insight as to what is important to them.

• It helps us to know who we are, so we can communicate better with each other.
• We're removing our mask at social media and revealing ourselves. social-ID is about that.
• Before social media we only had the business card - that has business information - now we have personal information due to the social-ID
• Social-ID is your facebook, linkedin and tweeter connector

Social-ID is the key to know your customer better and to engage with them in social media.

How social media affects relationships?

Business people pursue relationship but what they’re ultimately seeking is trust. That is to say, they use relationship to reach customer trust, which is the holy grail of success sales. Trust is essential for customers to decide on the product or company that you represent. You may enjoy spending time with your customers at dinner table or golf club but ultimately it’s more important they trust you than like you.

Genuine relationship is free of interest and doesn’t belong to the landscape of business rather to the realm of heart and spirit, something beyond our rational path. We don’t choose the people we like, instead we freely like them.

How social media would affect our ability to develop relationships? Consider that this technology is causing behavioral change on us. It’s naïve to assume that we’re in control and social media is a passive tool, as Marshall McLuhan taught us “technology works us out completely.”

After few years of being exposed to social media I’m listing some patterns that I’ve experienced when using it:

• Let people know who you are. You’re the same person in the real or virtual world.
• Be natural and spontaneous. Talk like a person.
• You belong to a network and not the other way around.
• Share something with people whenever you believe they’ll benefit from it.
• Expose your ideas; the time of solo specialist is gone.
• Share without expectations, the reward will come in an unexpected way.

How social media is affecting business? This topic is hot and the discussion is out there. A topic of my interest is social CRM, which is related to social business, social sales, Enterprise 2.0, sales 2.0, etc.  It deserves a future blog.

Sales is a human and unstructured activity where processes can't cope with its dynamic. In fact, sales people are the process themselves.

I did a Google search on the words religion and sales process to find out that religion beats sales in the number of occurrences only by a factor of five. That shows that sales process is a real concept, at least in paper, as we encounter thousands of well documented processes with neat models and flowcharts. The question is how the well structured sales process contrasts with the real world of sales that is messy by nature.

Sales is a human and unstructured activity where processes can't cope with its dynamics. In fact a good number of sales people don't follow a linear process; they are the process themselves. They ultimately internalize sales methodologies learned through seminars and sales trainings and use what works for them.

"Despite all that's been written, resources that have been invested, and results recorded, 60% of responding firms continue to operate on an ad hoc basis" - Source - CSO Insights Report. On a survey which includes a question on adherence to use sales process.

The majority of available sales processes were designed for what we call here "the classical company" that due to the digital medium is evolving towards "the click company", an organization aligned with this medium. Please refer to the table.

How do you think sales processes and sales people role would change with social media?

The Classical Company vs the Click Company - Taken from the book "The Click Company" by John Lima and Marcio Saito. To find out more request your complimentary copy from books@coffeebeantech.com

Sales is about decisions, which are not rational but colored by emotions as we know by experience.

I grew up selling coffee in a remote area of Brazil when I’ve intuitively learned that telling my story would help to connect with my customers and improve my sales performance. My passion for technology gave me the opportunity to work in sales in the USA and Europe when I realized that regardless the culture the same formula would apply.

Stories embody fragments of our selves, our belief system – personal mythology – and, when exposed, resonate with customers creating trust and deep connection. They operate at unconscious level and for this reason you need to be genuine, authentic and don’t wear masks.  We’re not able to fool the unconsciousness.

Being trusted and truly connected to your customers has influence in the buying decision; Decision is core for sales since your customers need to decide on your product over your competitor’s or doing nothing. As we know by experience, decisions are not rational but colored by emotions. That is true even in the B2B space, where data and information are highly used. We use data to justify decisions and portrait a reality created by our minds.

Until recently we’ve used face-to-face meetings to connect with our customers and consequently influence decisions. Can we truly connect to people though social media – facebook, linkedin, skype, twitter, etc? How social media affects relationships?