I wonder how many times in the last century a well-meaning salesperson has been sent away “happy” from a sales call because the prospect asked them to “send me some information”, and they dutifully email off the company profile and some brochures.
The follow up phone call goes unanswered. How do we know whether or not the prospect actually looked at what we sent?
At Carpe Diem we prefer to talk about social selling WORKFLOWS rather than social media PLATFORMS, but every now and then the capabilities of a specific platform make us sit up and take notice.
We believe that social selling is really about “listening”, “publishing” and “participating in communities” – but tools such as Postwire interestingly deliver the “publishing” piece, whilst at the same time allowing us to “listen” to see whether the prospect is responding.
Postwire involves setting up individual web pages for
individual prospects/customers and then posting information within that page
that we believe is of interest to them.
The prospect/customer accepts the invitation to review the page (and is free to review the information we send to them) which we can regularly update
over time.
What a great situation to be in if the prospect/customer
accepts our Postwire invitation. We can regularly update the information
contained in our Postwire page, with that page wedged into our customer’s
browser’s bookmarks.
If we’re smart, we’ll AVOID putting information about our company and our products - information which frankly is extremely BORING to our customers. We could however provide thought leadership pieces, case studies, checklists etc – using content marketing principles to position ourselves in the minds of the customers.
The trouble is, how do we know if they’re reviewing the stuff we serve up?
What’s great about Postwire (and other platforms such as SlideShare that has similar functionality) is that it reports back to us on whether or not the customer accesses our information. Furthermore, it tells us which pieces they access and when, as well as a convenient form for them to provide us with feedback.
In summary, if we accept that the knowledge as to whether or not a customer reads what we send them is a valuable qualifying tool, why wouldn’t we use these sorts of platforms to deliver information to customers rather than just “email it out”?
To learn more about social selling and how to increase your sales by using social media, attend our full-day training bootcamp: Leveraging social media for sales success, taking place in Sydney (Oct 2013) and Brisbane (Nov 2013).
