Are you stuck in old style thinking when it comes to sales?

A guest post from Alyson Button Stone, Director of Content Strategy at Nimble 

Myth #1. You should never use social media to boast about your company. Those self-deprecating tweets and posts are just transparently markety sounding.

We’ve all seen them, those sly little bragging tweets. “Wow, just heard that I’ve been nominated for the Academy Award. So not worthy!”

But there’s a loophole — the personal bio and the company profile. On your Twitter description, on your LinkedIn page, on Google+, and on your personal biography, social media welcomes the sedate brag — as long as it’s confined to the correct spot. In a company description, you are free to run amok with a list of awards, honors, and accolades. Don’t waste this stellar opportunity — update and edit these regularly. Keep them fresh and classy.

Myth #2: You simply can’t avoid cold calls if you are in sales.

Not true! With social media, you need never make a cold call again! Warm up prospects with social correspondence. Monitor the social stream, do some research, find things you might share in common or uncover a need for information. Then approach gently to enter the conversation. Think “cocktail party” behaviour. Be polite, ask questions, and build the relationship organically. The discussion, the call, the intro — all are much more graceful when you already have connected.

Myth #3: You can’t really know when your prospect is ready to buy, or tell when he’s dissatisfied with his current vendor.

Au contraire, mes amis! Your prospect is putting all sorts of clues out into cyberspace. All you have to do is put on your glasses and your hearing aid. What are they interested in? — they’re telling you on Facebook, on Twitter, on Google+. They might be dropping hints… might be letting off some steam…. Most important, perhaps, is cultivating an ability to spot “trigger events,” which signal big changes for their company and might provide an opportunity for yours.

Trigger events are times when you can more easily ask the right questions, and demonstrate a more intimate knowledge of what your prospect might need — rather than a disjointed mix of random marketing messages that will often lead to a sort of “emotional unsubscribe.” Leave the elephant gun at home and bring darts to the party. Here are some trigger events to look for between the lines (or right out in the open) when you’re reading your prospect’s social communications:

• expanding, relocating, new building
• merger/acquisition
• big regulatory changes or new legislation
• new CEO or new owner
• analyst opinions change up or down
• funding round
• new product
• awards/recognitions

There are many more sales myths that social selling practices are making obsolete — but many traditional sales practices are evergreen. Exploring where the myths meet the new social sales realities is an interesting learning experience.

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Nimble - Building Business Relationships Has Never Been Easier

Andy Hatcher of The Mapp talks about links and backlinks

(Andy is the MD of  The MAPP Ltd., a company that provides simple visual planning solutions)

“Nonsense and beauty have close connections.” E. M. Forster

Listen to Andy’s interview on Show 20 

Visitor numbers are still rising although only just about up to 243 – Summer affects everyone I am informed… 3 more free account signups which makes 27 in total.

So this week I started to have a look at the world of links – or perhaps more correctly “backlinks”. Now these little critters seem to have a special type of magic when it comes to search engines and what they are really looking for in terms of ranking your site. 

Andy Hatcher of The Mapp charts his Social Media journey.

(Andy is the MD of  The MAPP Ltd., a company that provides simple visual planning solutions)

“One may say the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility” – Einstein

Listen to Andy’s interview on Show 20 

So the weekly report now says that I have had 120 visitors this past week up from 42 so that seems great and, along with 8 free account sign ups, the figures, albeit not in any way startling are at least moving up!

The Twitter dance

 Andy Hatcher of The Mapp will be charting his Social Media journey, week by week .

(Andy is the MD of The MAPP which provides simple visual planning solutions.)

Whether ’tis nobler to be liked or to be shared?

It was with some trepidation that as summer arrived in the UK, my company finally crossed the border from the country called pre-revenue into the land that lies beyond (which I suspect is called no-revenue). The second iteration of our online service had finally been built to that magical point of minimum viability and could now be allowed out of quarantine to our slavering public.

The last time I did anything like launch a new product 

What is your favourite social media ‘rule’?

We all have them but Jeremy Waite of Adobe, who was our first guest on the show, has just posted his “80 Rules of Social Media”. Its a hilarious and irreverent, straight talking view and we’re asking our readers and listeners to tell us what their favourite rule is. 

Leave us a comment below and we’ll read out your favourites and give you a mention on the show.

Jeremy’s post is here on his blog “Follow Me I’m Right Behind You”

Would you like to be a guest blogger for the show?

From creating content to outsourcing, from measuring influence to the Zero Moment of Truth, we’ve had some fantastic guests who have helped us to describe how social media and social networking is helping to create exciting business opportunities for people who see that there is “no more business as usual” and are eager to explore new business models. 

The show is attracting some interesting comments in our Google Plus Community  and we’d like to extend this to give more people an opportunity to become regular bloggers for the show. 

If you have an opinion or a story on how social media and social networking is changing the way we do business and would like to have it published here, let me know. 

Here are few guidelines for your guest post:

• It will be in the same vein as our interviews -  broadly how social media and social networking is changing the way we do business (not how to set up a Facebook Page or a blog). 
• It will be original - never published before *anywhere*.
• No longer than 500 words (instalments are fine for longer topics).
• Submitted as a word doc or similar.  
• No images - we’ll source our own to avoid copyright issues.
• No advertorial from “professional” marketers on behalf of their clients disguised as a guest post. 
• No more than 20 words describing you, the author with your links. 

Looking forward to hearing from you!