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Do Phone Calls Have a Place In Social Selling?

Jamie Shanks
Jamie Shanks

Social selling isn’t replacing the telephone, but it is replacing cold calling.

“Baby please forget me not, I want you to remember.”
– Patrice Rushen

For those of you that are too young to remember, those are lyrics from the classic “Forget Me Nots” (seriously, check out the song).

And that’s exactly what people think the phone is saying to sales people today, “don’t forget me”. But, here’s the problem… IT’S NOT! How can it?

The Phone is Here to Stay

The phone is not forgotten. It’s a vital medium for communication. How can we forget it or stop using it? It’d be foolish, right? I mean, you don’t expect to talk to people through two soup cans do you?

However, things are different now from the way they used to be. Buyers are going online to research products and services. The buyer will get a huge chunk of information this way before they even start to reach out to a company via phone calls or emails.

Why am I taking the time to explain my views? I think there’s been some confusion. So let me be very clear once and for all. Social selling isn’t here to replace the phone. However, it IS here to replace cold calling… only if you want it to. Did you know that approximately half of all sales people don’t research the people they’re cold calling? Dude, really?

Social  Selling Expert

By using social selling to your advantage, you can begin to gain remarkable insights on who you’re calling and truly have a shot at making them future advocates. If you call someone without researching them first, you’re basically planting a dangerous thought in their minds, which is that you care more about the transaction than the relationship.

Making This a Reality

There are a many ways to achieve this in the world of B2B. Here are some for you to consider.

Phase 1:

  • Marketing and sales can work together to build and release lots of solid information that will make it to your buyers. Check out XO Communications and the innovative way they’re approaching content marketing.
  • Marketing can even take it a step further by using some SEO, SEM and PPC strategies. Result: more eyeballs, baby!

Phase 2:

  • Sales reps can use information they find online and mix that with what their marketing team has provided, to start conversations that are a little bit warmer. After researching LinkedIn profiles, tweets and articles/blogs, there are many ways to position themselves to a buyer.

The Bottom Line

Being a Mercedes fan doesn’t make you a hater of BMWs, right? Of course not!

Similarly, being a social selling advocate doesn’t mean I’ve completely done away with the telephone. The fact is that I’ve still got a phone number. Yes, us social sellers still use the phone. What we don’t do, though, is make cold calls. We make smart calls using information we find on social media channels.

I trust this clears up the fog around whether social sellers use the phone. And, if we like really cheesy 80’s songs. The answer to both is yes.

Need help getting started with social selling? Contact me and we can chat about how to use social media for sales.

Amar Sheth

CTA

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