Social Commerce on Ulitzer

The Customer Collective has released a new eBook with contributions from some truly insightful sales leaders to help us understand just what "social selling" means in today's marketplace.

Although we all know that our buyers have changed, business is moving so swiftly these days that its hard to know just how we need to adapt to keep pace...and keep selling. This eBook shares some great perspectives on what's required...and what's working.

As a preview, I decided to pick some of my favorite insights from a few of the featured experts - but this is just a taste. You really should go download the eBook. It's good stuff!

Paul Greenberg, President of The 56 Group and author of CRM at the Speed of Light has been one of my favorite people to follow for a long time. His turns of phrase often spark light bulb moments for me.

"...it's no longer good enough for a sales person to have a great relationship with an individual. The customer or prospect is expecting the entire company to be a 'person like me.'"

"And this must be the case throughout not just the transactions, but all interactions, regardless of whether it's an in-person visit, a website visit, an email marketing campaign, or a mobile text message. Doesn't matter. The "company like me" is what makes or breaks the successful sale."

Anneke Seley, CEO of PhoneWorks and author of Sales 2.0, is someone I've gotten to know personally this year. She's doing some revealing work into how the execution of selling is shifting to address our buyers' growing social appetites. She showcases two case studies in her article. Take a look at one outcome:

Dan, the Regional Director of Sales at a sales productivity technology company "claims 80% of his qualified leads now come from referrals, social networking and social media, which he considers technologies that enable communication with his personal referral network."

Jay Dunn, VP of Marketing for Lane Bryant, discusses how to build market value through social networks. He offers up an interesting take on how to apply value to the followers of your followers. He calls this Dunn's Equation:

"Annual Value X Network = Network Value"

The example he uses is if there's an annual purchase value [$50] and your customer has 5 followers that share similar interests in your products, then the network value is $300. It's an interesting premise and one I'm mulling around for B2B demand generation - maybe related to cost per qualified lead. Hmm.

Jouko Ahvenainen, a co-founder of Xtract, the world first social network analytics company, and Grow VC, the first global peer-to-peer micro-funding service for startups. Among other things, he talks about Social Intelligence and targeting Alpha users.

Social Intelligence: better understanding consumer preferences and peer-to-peer networks and influence so companies can help people find offers that are relevant to them.

Alpha Users: the most influential customers within a social network - the ones who can spread the word and market/sell for you.

The articles written by these experts (and others) go into a lot more detail about successful sales strategies in today's social world. Go download the eBook: The Art of Social Sales, today. [registration is required - but worth it]