The #2 way to sell more by using social media is to harness the power of people and relationships to get things done and the single most powerful relationship building and relationship harnessing social media resource is LinkedIn.

Now a lot of readers will say it should be #1 and for the longest time I would have agreed with you. I do agree it is the social media tool with the biggest number of different ways it can be used to sell more but in the last year I have found a social media tool that provides users with the most powerful information to sell more.

There are so many different ways to use LinkedIn to sell more that Amazon lists over 200 books on how to use LinkedIn.

Here are my three favourite ways to use LinkedIn to sell more:

1. Company Search: A search on a company lets you know who to target and the best way to get to them. The #2 most powerful Trigger Event is when there has been a change in decision makers at a prospect. These people who recently experienced the Trigger Event of being hired or promoted are the ones most likely to have interest in your products or services. When you do a company search you can see who recently got hired and who recently got promoted. A company search also lets you see who in your network works there now and who use to work there. Those in your network who use to work there can give you some valuable insight or context for your sales pitch and those  in your network who work there now are the ones likely to make the most valuable introductions.
2. Contact Information: Someone who was a customer in their last job is likely to become a customer in their new job. Being connected via LinkedIn give you access to their latest contact information and with this contact information you can reach out to congratulate them on their new position and see if and when they will have a need for your products or services in their new position.
3. Profile Organizer: Keep track of all your interactions with your connections – I have a personal plus account which allows me to use LinkedIn’s new profile organizer. This allows me to organize contacts and even keep notes on my activities with each person. The best part is you don’t have to be connected with someone to add them to a folder or make notes. It’s like a mini Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. Sometimes it’s not worth the time and effort to add every prospect’s contact and company information into your CRM tool until there is enough activity or interested in becoming your customer. Now there is a quick way to keep track of the early interactions without having to take the time and effort required to enter all that company and contact information into a CRM tool first.

So this month’s question is how else can you use Linkedin to create or harness relationships to sell more.Win $2,000 worth of Trigger Event services by submitting either a great example of, or great idea on, how to use LinkedIn to sell more. To win the $2,000 prize you must get the most votes for your answer. This month there is also a second prize of $1,000 worth of Trigger Event Selling services to the person who gets the second most votes for their answer.

Answers are submitted by commenting on this blog post. Answers are voted on by clicking on the button that appears at the end of each answer/comment.

Winners are announced the last Tuesday of the month – March 30^rh – so voting ends at Midnight (MST) on Monday March 29^th.

Answers/comments need to be approved – to avoid spam – which typically takes just a few minutes. Contact me by phone (+1.403.874.2998), Skype (Craig.Elias), or this contact form, if you don’t see your comment approved within a few minutes of posting it.

Use the button below to Tweet , Stumble!, Digg, and email your friends so you get the most votes, because the voting system I use does not allow you to vote for your own answers.

Good luck & have an eventful week!

Craig

In my last post, The #3 Way to Sell More by Using Social Media, I showed how you can sell more by using a free service called AddThis to make it more convenient and therefore more likely that viewers will share your content.

In that post I offered $3,000 worth of Trigger Event Selling™ services to the person who provided either the most popular example of ,or idea on, how to sell more by using sharing tools.

Carla Young is this month’s winner by sharing with us a second way to maximize word of mouth by using a content sharing service and getting the most votes for her idea.

In her comment Carla mentions “Sharing links through social media is just one of 5 key strategies for increasing your social media exposure!” I’m going to reach out to Carla and see if I can get her to write a guest post explaining the the other 4 strategies.

In her comment Carla also mentions that “social media tools maximize word of mouth”. It’’s a well known fact that the #1 way to grow business is through word of mouth. One of the beauties of Social Media is it’s like word of mouth on steroids.

Traditional word of mouth is when, as the saying goes, you tell two people and they tell two people and so on and on and so on. Social word of mouth is when you tell a thousand people and they tell a thousand people and so on and so on and so on. It doesn’t take long and that becomes a really big number. Just look at the over 100 Million people that have seen Susan Boyle’s videos on YouTube.

Stay tuned as next week I announce the #2 Way to Sell More by Using Social Media.

In the mean time have a look at the Seven Steps to Word of Mouth Success by Joe Cullinane.

Have an eventful week!

Craig

I had to take a hiatus from blogging in order to finish the manuscript to my upcoming book “SHiFT! Harness The Trigger Events That TURN PROSPECTS INTO CUSTOMERS,” in time in for the publisher keep his May 15^th release date.

Now that it’s finished let’s get back to the Top Seven Ways to Sell More by Using Social Media. Remember, the person with the most popular answer to my question at the bottom of this blog post wins $3,000 in Trigger Event Selling services.

The #3 way to sell more by using social media is to harness word of mouth by using a content sharing tool like AddThis or ShareThis. The reason you want to use one of these tools is because your content is more likely to be shared when you give readers the convenience of sharing without having to leave your web site. The more convenient you make it for people to take action, right now, the more likely they are to, not get distracted by something else and, finish what they started doing.

I started out using ShareThis but readers had to click on the button in order to activate it and my experience with e-Commerce in the late 90’s told me that requiring people to take just that one extra mouse click reduced the likelihood of action – The statistic was that you lose people at the rate of 50% for every click you force them to make.

I moved to AddThis when the Trigger Event of noticing a competitor using something that did not require the initial mouse click caught my attention. I moved to AddThis right away and in my first week I had twice as many people use the AddThis functionality – via mouse over – than I had with ShareThis. About a week later I received an email from ShareThis validating my perceptions and my experience. The email said “After conducting extensive tests with select partners, the findings indicate that allowing the button to open on-hover increases sharing activity by 50% per page view compared to the current no-hover option”

Once I started using AddThis I went through the process of customizing the button so the most important sharing options (email, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Digg, and Facebook) were shown on the left – in order of importance – putting the next most important ones (Favorites, WordPress, Delicious, Reddit, and PDF Online) on the right side, and customized the header. I selected the order based up on a report on how people share content and what Active Conversion (my marketing automation and sales optimization service provider) told me about which sites generated the most inbound traffic.

The interesting thing is that a few weeks after I switched to Add This, ShareThis came out with the same functionality. But at that point I had already switched and had made the investment of customizing the AddThis button and I was no longer motivated to spend time on the problem.

So this month’s question is what other sharing tools can be used, or how can they be used, to maximize social word of mouth?

Win $3,000 worth of Trigger Event services by submitting either a great example of, or great idea on, how to use a word or mouth tool like AddThis or ShareThis to maximize the sharing of web site content. To win the $3,000 prize you must get the most votes for your answer. This month there is also a second prize of $1,500 to the person who gets the second most votes for their answer.

Answers are submitted by commenting on this blog post. Answers are voted on by clicking on the button that appears at the end of each answer/comment.

Winners are announced the last Tuesday of the month – February 23^rd – so voting ends at Midnight (MST) on Monday February 22^nd.

Answers/comments need to be approved – to avoid spam – which typically takes just a few minutes. Contact me by phone (+1.403.874.2998), Skype (Craig.Elias), or this contact form, if you don’t see your comment approved within a few minutes of posting it.

Use the AddThis button below to Tweet , Stumble!, Digg, and email your friends so you get the most votes, because the voting system I use does not allow you to vote for your own answers.

Good luck & have an EVENTFUL week!

Craig

You may have noticed that I missed posting the winner of December’s $4,500 worth of prizes, which was scheduled for the last Tuesday of December, and my first post of 2010, which was scheduled for the first Tuesday of January.

Since getting my Trigger Event Book finished on time took me off my regular schedule, I will get back on my first and last Tuesday of each month schedule by:

• Posting December’s prize winner (there was only on person who submitted an idea on how to use a social media group to sell more so the second prize of $1,500 will be added to January’s) today
• Posting the #3 Way To Sell More Using Social media next Tuesday
• Announcing the winners of January’s $3,000 in prizes the Tuesday after that

Congratulations to Dale Underwood of Federal Appliance. He is the winner of $3,000 worth of Trigger Event Selling services. His ideas about Google alerts so he can comment on other peoples’ blogs and other people’s comments and his participation in IT equipment groups on LinkedIn are a great way to influence decision makers who use social media.

Stay tuned as next week I take $500 of the $1,500 left over from December’s prizes  and add it to the first prize and create a second prize of $1,000 for January’s winners. To win all you need to do is have one of the two most popular answers to my question about the #3 Way to Sell More by Using Social Media.

Until there here the link to a recent article by Roger Demers of Microsoft Dynamics. that shows how you can you incorporate Trigger Event Prospecting into your daily activities.

The link provided is to a page on the Trigger Event Marketing page on Facebook because a number of readers have told me they can’t always get to links that point directly to a .pdf file.

If you prefer to access the .pdf file you can do that here.

One of the keys to selling is reaching decision makers when they are most likely to be influenced: Influenced on what is the best solution to their problem – not who is the best supplier.

Solutions are all the different ways of solving the same problem or obtaining the same outcome (think of these as your competition), suppliers are alternate providers who sell the same solution (think of them as competitors).

Using this framework banner ads, Google ad words, and search engine optimization would be considered my competition because they provide alternate solutions that deliver the same  outcome – increased sales. Other sales trainers would be considered my competitors because they are alternate providers that deliver the same solution – sales training.

If you want to learn more about the difference between these two, Rene Mouborgne and W. Chan Kim explain the difference in an article, on Blue Ocean Strategy.

Recent research by Don Bulmer and Vanessa DiMauro shows that more and more decision makers are utilizing social media peer groups to form and validate decisions. Social media peer groups are those you would find on social media sites like LinkedIn, eCademy, Facebook, or Ning.

So the #4 Way to sell more by using social media is to create or participate in groups to influence those decision makers who experienced a Trigger Event that put them into the Window of Dissatisfaction BUT have not started the process of searching for alternative solutions yet.

I have a group on Linkedin called SHiFT! that has almost 2,500 members and a Trigger Event Selling Group on Facebook that has 300 members. I started these groups to encourage people, who have similar interests and aspirations, to share ideas, resources, and success stories about using Trigger Events to turn prospects into customers. It turns out that in creating these groups I am influencing decision makers on an alternate solution to increase sales.

To extend my reach I now participate in other groups related to sales, marketing, entrepreneurship, and innovation, that my target market (CEOs and VPs of  sales of small and  mid-sized organizations) joins on LinkedIn, eCademy, Facebook, and Ning.

Participating in these groups allows me to share my expertise with decision makers and influence their thinking while they are still in the formative stages of making a decision about which solution (sales training, banner ads, Google ad words, search engine optimization) they could use to increase sales.

So this month’s question is how can you leverage groups on social media sites to sell more?

Win $3,000 worth of Trigger Event services by submitting either a great example of, or great idea on, how to use a group on LinkedIn, Facebook, or ANY other business oriented social media group to sell more. To win the $3,000 prize you must get the most votes for your answer. This month there is also a second prize of $1,500 to the person who gets the second most votes for their answer.

Answers are submitted by commenting on this blog post. Answers are voted on by clicking on the  button that appears at the end of each answer/comment.

Winners are announced the last Tuesday of the month – December 29^th – so voting ends at Midnight (MST) on Monday December 28^th.

Answers/comments need to be approved – to avoid spam – which typically takes just a few minutes. Contact me by phone (+1.403.874.2998), Skype (Craig.Elias), or this contact form, if you don’t see your comment approved within a few minutes of posting it.

Use the button below to Tweet , Stumble!, Digg, and email your friends so you get the most votes, because the voting system I use does not allow you to vote for your own answers.

Good luck & have an EVENTFUL week!

Craig

In my last post The #5 Way to Sell More by Using Social Media I gave an example how you can sell more by using the social media application Twitter.

In that post I offered $2,000 worth of services to the person who provided either the most popular example of ,or idea on, how to sell more by using Twitter or any Twitter application to sell more, and a $1,000 to the person with the second most popular answer.

It appears that everyone was either stumped or too busy selling to give an answer. As the Mother Hubbard nursery rhyme goes “I looked for some ideas … and the cupboard was bare”.

Next Tuesday – December 1^st -  I announce The #4 Way to Sell More by Using Social Media and offer $4,500 in prizes – $3,000 to the first place winner and $1,500 to the second place winner – for the most popular answers on how to use that form of social medial to sell more.

In the mean time take a look at the 100  most popular Twitter applications and see which ones you think can add the value to your own efforts by learning of Trigger Event information to sell more.

Have an EVENTFUL week!

Craig

This post has two items:

1. The continuation of our countdown of The Top Seven Ways to Sell More by Using Social Media, with a $2,000 prize.
2. A link to the article that resulted in Harvey Schachter writing about Trigger Event Selling in this Monday’s Globe and Mail.

#5 Way to Sell More by Using Social Media

A wise female entrepreneur I know once commented on sales people, who were always in a hurry to get down to business, by saying “Hold my hand and take me to a dance before you take me to the altar”.

She is not alone in her thinking. A large majority of decision makers choose who to buy from based upon an analysis of risk vs. credibility and the depth of your relationship with a decision maker is often the deciding factor on how much credibility you have.

The challenge most sales people have is how to start the relationship building process when decision makers are too busy to take, or return, their sales calls? Jerry Vass’ ‘Flanking Strategy’ – start by adding value, in a non-selling way, and build a relationship from there – is one way to make this happen.

The #5 Way to Sell More by Using Social Media is to use it to start the relationship building process.

From a Trigger Event Selling perspective the best way, I have found, to do this is to use…

AND

One of the reasons I joined Twitter was to start the relationship building process with decision makers who are looking for insights on how to enhance their organizations selling efforts.

The idea is to add value and build a relationship before a Trigger Event happens and they have a need for services like mine.

I typically Tweet, once or twice a week, about ideas, resources, or success stories on how to turn prospects into customers by harnessing Trigger Events.

I decided to combine Twitter with Social Oomph after I read the Lead Follow Up Research by MIT. The research shows the importance of following up with those who complete a web form, within five minutes!

The intent is to enhance the relationship building process, that begins when someone follows you on Twitter, do it in a value adding/non-selling manner AND do it as soon as you can after they following you.

It turns out that Social Oomph makes it incredibly simple to do that. One of the great features of Social Oomph is that you can automatically send a direct message to every new follower. The free version checks your new followers every eight hours and the professional version checks every eight hours. One small word of warning. If you use Social ‘ vetting process – or anyone else’s. E.g. TrueTwit – the auto responder does not go out until you approve the follower. I had Social Oomph’s vetting turned on this morning which explains why I have 43 autorepsonder messages waiting to go out.

If you follow me on Twitter I have Social Oomph configured to automatically send you a direct message, that includes a link to access my best ideas on how to replicate your biggest sales wins.

This content is ONLY AVAILABLE TO MY TWITTER FOLLOWERS. I suggest you follow me so you can see the practice in action AND get access to a no-charge resource that can have a significant impact on your selling efforts.

Win $2,000 worth of Trigger Event services by submitting either a great example of, or great idea on, how to use Twitter, Social Oomph, or ANY other Twitter Application to sell more. To win the $2,000 prize you must get the most votes for your answer. This month there is also a second prize of $1,000 to the person who gets the second most votes for their answer.

Answers are submitted by commenting on this blog post. Answers are voted on by clicking on the  button that appears at the end of each answer/comment.

Winners are announced the last Tuesday of the month – November 24th – so voting ends at Midnight (MST) on Monday November 23^rd.

Answers/comments need to be approved – to avoid spam – which typically takes just a few minutes. Contact me by phone (+1.403.874.2998), Skype (Craig.Elias), or this contact form, if you don’t see your comment approved within a few minutes of posting it.

Tweet , Stumble!, Digg, and email your friends so you get the most votes, because the voting system I use does not allow you to vote for your own answers.

The Article That Harvey Schachter Liked

In the May of 2008 I submitted an article to Rain Today in the hopes it would be published on their site. In July of 2009 – over a year later – the Trigger Event of a change in people (the editor) resulted in a phone call and a request for permission to use my article the week of October 26th – this past week.

The article caught Harvey’s attention and last week he called to verify some information so he could write about the article in the Globe and Mail’s Monday Morning Manager. An online version of Harvey’s writing is available here.

The original article titled Shorten Sales Cycles by Harnessing Trigger Events is about a hypothetical sales person (Jed) who learns to vastly improve his prospecting activity by looking for and taking advantage of Trigger Events.

In my last post The #6 Way to Sell More by Using Social Media I showed how you can sell more by using WordPress and FeedBlitz.

In that post I offered $1,500 worth of Trigger Event Selling services to the person who provided either the most popular example of ,or idea on, how to sell more by using WordPress or FeedBlitz.It appears that everyone was either stumped or too busy selling to provide an answer.

I’m going to up the ante by adding this months $1,500 to next months and give the person who gets the most votes for their answer to next month’s question $2,000 worth of services and the person who gets the second most votes $1,000 worth of my services.

Stay tuned as next week I announce the #5 Way to Sell More by Using Social Media.

In the mean time take a look at Andrew Sobel’s article called “Winning a New Client When There Is an Incumbent“. The article shows the 9 principles that can help guide you in trying to win business from a new client which already has strong, existing relationships with the competition. Guess what principle #1 one is… you guessed it, “Look for Trigger Events“.

Have an EVENTFUL week!

Craig

In last month’s post on the #7 Way to Sell More by Using Social Media I talked about the importance of validating that your social marketing efforts are reaching your primary target market.

Once that has been validated, you need to reach them within a week or so of experiencing a Trigger Event and entering the Window of Dissatisfaction.

So the #6 Way to Sell More by Using Social media is to reach your target market often enough that you either:

• Reach them a few days before they experience a Trigger Event, or
• Reach them a few days after they experience a Trigger Event

From a Trigger Event Selling perspective the best way, I have found, to do this is…

AND

Yes WordPress and FeedBlitz and here is why:

1. FeedBlitz automatically emails your subscribers a preview of the content from your newest post and allows you to include links to a number of previous posts – in case they missed or did not read some of your previous blog posts. E.g. The image at the top of this blog post comes directly from the content that I have configured FeedBlitz to deliver. I do this so someone who only reads every few email updates can see the titles of my last five blog posts. This way when a subscriber experiences a Trigger Event they now notice content that they would not previously have noticed.
2. WordPress makes it easy for readers to find the additional content on the same or similar topic that is now of interest to them. This is done by tagging and categorizing blog posts to create aggregated pages of blog posts on the same or similar topic. E.g. If you wanted to see the complete list of the top seven mistakes that sales people make you would find all seven blog posts by following either the generic tag “sales mistakes” or the specific category “top seven sales mistakes”.

Win $1,500 worth of Trigger Event services by submitting either a great example of, or great idea on, how to use WordPress and/or FeedBlitz to harness Trigger Events and turn prospects into customers. To win you must get the most votes for your answer.

Answers are submitted by commenting on this blog post. Answers are voted on by clicking on the button that appears at the end of each answer/comment and voting ends on Monday October 26^th.

Answers/Comments need to be approved – to avoid spam – which typically takes just a few minutes. Contact me by phone (+1.403.874.2998), Skype (Craig.Elias), or this contact form, if you don’t see your comment approved within a few minutes of posting it.

Tweet , Stumble!, Digg, and email your friends so you get the most votes, because the voting system I use does not allow you to vote for your own answers.

Call my cell phone (+1.403.874.2998), Skype me (Craig.Elias) or use this contact form if you have ANY questions.

Good Luck & have an EVENTFUL week!

Craig

P.S. If you know anyone who would like sales training or coaching but does not have the budget , tell them to get members of their sales team to submit ideas and then get votes for their submissions.

In my last post The #7 Way to Sell More by Using Social Media I showed how you can sell more by using Facebook.

In that post I offered $1,500 worth of Trigger Event Selling services to the person who provided either the most popular example of ,or idea on, how to sell more by using Facebook.

Jos Willard is this month’s winner by sharing with us a second way sell more by using Facebook and getting the most votes for his idea.

Those are two ways to sell more by using Facebook. I’ll keep my eyes and ears open for other ways to sell more by using Facebook and keep you updated on what I find.

Stay tuned as next week I announce the #6 Way to Sell More by Using Social Media.

In the mean time be sure to download the latest MIT Lead Follow-up Study, by James Oldroyd, that reveals:

• What is the best day to prospect
• What is the best time of day to prospect
  
• How quickly you should follow up on web based leads

Have an EVENTFUL week!

Craig