Prospecting and Social Media:
Out with the Old, In with the New

By Landy Chase

When one considers the fundamental activities that drive an effective social media strategy – having a list of prospects, researching contact information, collecting and distributing information to prospective clients, to name a few – it becomes evident that there is nothing new here.  These activities have always been the fundamental building blocks of acquiring new business. Yes, the methods that were used in the past are different from what we have presented in this book, but the basics remain the same.

Of course, the time that would be required to execute all of these activities, old-school style, would make such a thing a near-impossibility to accomplish. Think about it. You would need one person to manage databases, another person to research, print, and distribute articles and other items of interest, and another to scour the marketplace for new prospects using telephone directories and other print products. A private secretary, an intern or two, and half of your available work schedule would be an appropriate manpower requirement to attempt such an undertaking. You have probably worked in a company (or may do so currently) where these activities are still being executed in this way. If so, you already know what kind of time commitment is involved to make this effort worthwhile.

The incredible power of the internet, and specifically the technological power of social media, has completely transformed this heretofore labor-intensive set of tasks into a very manageable and minimally time-intrusive process that can be managed by just one person – you. Once implemented, it takes very little time to execute, and needn’t interfere in any way with your normal selling activities. There are a number of social media marketing advantages, all driven by technology, that make this possible. The more significant ones would almost certainly include:

  Working outside of your normal selling schedule: If you are like most sales people, you must integrate your day-to-day selling activities, such as telephone work and face-to-face sales calls, into normal business hours. Social media marketing, on the other hand, has no such limitations. It is an activity with a 24/7 opportunity window. With no time constraints involved, social media marketing can – and should – be managed outside of normal selling time. (We are not suggesting that you take your work home with you at night, however.) We will discuss how, and when, to do this in more detail later in this chapter.

Minimal time needed to input, maintain and store prospect data: You can forget about maintaining a database of prospects – with social media marketing, this process is already done for you. To cite one example, your LinkedIn account, as you have seen, is basically an online, real-time database operating as a social media community. By updating their own profiles, the members of your LinkedIn community do the database maintenance work for you, and as a bonus, the system constantly suggests new prospects to you to add to your list. By linking some sites such as LinkedIn with your databases such as Salesforce.com and Outlook, all your contact information will be automatically updated in real time as your connections change employers, job titles, etc. How cool is that?

 Reduced Research Time: Practically no time is needed to locate information for distribution to your sphere of influence. Traditional marketing methods would require hours of tedious, ongoing research to do this. As we have discussed in this book, selecting a handful of high-quality resources, and following them via an RSS feed, eliminates the need for you to search for valuable content; it is served to you, fresh daily.

Information distribution made easy: Virtually no effort is required to distribute information to your followers. In the past, this would have involved making copies of an article, creating a cover letter, printing labels, stuffing envelopes, buying postage and hauling a box full of mail to the post office. Now, the same result is accomplished with a click of your mouse.

So one of the most revolutionary aspects about the Social Media Selling Revolution is its impact on the amount of time required to develop new contacts and new business. Want to research an account for key contacts? Sign in to LinkedIn and type in the company’s name; their system will serve you with everything that you need to know in a matter of seconds – and tell you, for each contact, who you mutually have in common. Want to send out a new article or item of interest to your prospects? Log into your email account; there will be a list of high-quality content, courtesy of the sites you follow, waiting in your in-box for you to review. See something there that you want to distribute?  Click on the groups within your social media network that you wish to receive the information, and hit ‘send’.

Done. All by yourself. And what was the actual time investment on your part to get all of this accomplished? Let’s be generous and call it thirty minutes; with a little practice, it will probably be closer to twenty. Learning social media marketing is not that different from learning to ride a bicycle; once you get the hang of it, you keep getting better and better at it.

Social media has revolutionized the time and effort required for developing new business – and in the process, it has given you the power to control your effectiveness and your destiny. Consider the implications of what we just reviewed for your current prospecting efforts, whatever they may currently be. Once you have joined the Social Media Selling Revolution, you will be able to scale back your current traditional-marketing activities, channel that time into your social media marketing efforts, and accomplish the following:

• Cut your marketing time commitment to a fraction of its current requirement

• Get exponentially more accomplished

• Reach exponentially more people

• Replace interruption-based marketing with value generation

• Build a personal brand

• Eliminate cold calling

• Have new customers chasing you, not the other way around

• Look forward to marketing, instead of dreading it.

So, are you in? Are you ready to get started?

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