It’s hard to believe some growing and progressive inside sales organizations haven’t even scratched the surface when it comes to social media, and yet I watch their new hires playing Words with Friends during lunch. They are socially wired on a friendship level but haven’t crossed over on the prospecting level.
When I check their tools IQ, they have plenty of programs open on their double monitors but the social programs don’t exist – especially not LinkedIn. During my training sessions, I even slipped into a 15-minute LinkedIn demo and tried convincing this renewals group the value of connecting with their existing installed base of accounts. But this was met with vacant stares. Many of them didn’t have an active LinkedIn profile.
This made me think about the type of group I’m training and how much creative prospecting they are doing. If the group is more reactive and responsible for renewing expired licenses, such as the renewals group, they may not have a need to dig in with curiosity. Especially since their main contacts are purchase, who are probably going to be the last ones who will want to be connected through LinkedIn. This renewals team is more transactional, which is more linear – and there’s nothing linear about social media.
We still say that “It’s a numbers game” but with social media, its a conversation game.
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