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What's the "next big thing" in social CRM?
What's the "next big thing" in social CRM for sales and social selling, for which sales professionals should start preparing now?
This question is from Paul Greenberg's presentation "Social CRM: Selling to the 21st Century Customer" at our 2010 Focus Interactive Summit: Evolving Your Sales Game Plan
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2 Answers
When it comes to social sales, the most important thing that sales professionals can get ready for is the use of sales intelligence for gaining not just a competitive edge, but greater knowledge of who the customer is. Keep in mind that traditional sources for sales information such as Reuters, etc. are still useful and important but hearing what the prospect or those in the opportunity mix are saying is as important and at times more important. That means not just monitoring the intelligence through tools like InsideView, but also making the intelligence actionable. As a corollary to that, there is an increasing interest in the use of social network analysis in the world of B2B so that not only can you identify who the decisionmakers are that you have to reach to close the deal, but also those who influence the decisionmaker. What social network analysis can dig out is that the persons you think are the most influential aren't necessarily the most influential and that there are others who are far more important in helping the decisionmaker decide. That also changes over time and good SNA tools which are just starting to emerge on the market (and I mean "just") can see the shifts in influence.
I would be alert to the growth of the sales intelligence category and be aware of the tools in that area though the idea of using the unstructured data for actionable insight to aid in a sales process is really the key to the "next big thing."
Thanks for the shout out too. :-)
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Paul Greenberg
The question is backward. Sales professionals should continue to improve their listening skills and understanding the customer, who he is, how he buys, what does he really get out of having the product. Depending on the sales professional plans to implement his strategy, Social CRM may be one of the enabling tools. Knowing what tools are available helps do the job better, but one shouldn't be preparing for the tool. It's like all the people lining up to buy Windows 95 at midnight on the release date, and many didn't even own computers. It's wonderful what marketing can do.
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