The Thought Net Blog

Shift Happens: Social Media's Impact on Business

2011-07-06T11:50:00.000-07:00

If we look back at our selling process over the years and how companies and people have transacted sales in the past, the majority of outbound selling has been done in a very proactive, assertive and masculine way. In other words, you don’t just wait around for the customer to come to you - you go out and find them. This is what’s commonly known as a “hunter” sales person.

However once the sale was made, we then wanted someone who had good "farmer" sales skills to help grow business within the account. If you’ve ever seen the 1992 movie “Glengarry Glen Ross” then you are familiar with the way it portrays a great example of the traditional hunter “Sales Cycle” which has been about the seller pushing the prospect to make a sale. And, often times whether the actual prospect wanted or needed the product at all. Have you ever heard the saying he could sell you swamp land in Florida? Well, that’s referring to a sales person who is able to convince you to buy their product no matter what your circumstance. And, we used to call that great salesmanship!

There are many good sales people out there who really listen and help their clients. However, there’s still a corporate push mentality when it comes to selling in business. It used to be all about the “Push” which also included a lot of Push Marketing. That’s where the seller controlled all the information and the dissemination of that information. Needless to say a very controlled environment, (reminds me of several governments I know).

Shift #1: That all changed with the advent of the Internet, which in turn had a direct impact on the way businesses marketed to their customers. We then entered a new phase called “Pull” marketing where people could “Opt-in” for information and make requests to companies for more personalized information to be sent to them. We started to think about ‘relevance’ of information based on need and want, and how that might influence a customer buying our product.

Shift #2: Companies had to start to look at what it meant to create a relationship with their customers and then manage it. And, oh my goodness … for many companies this was an entirely new way of relating to their customers and prospects. It’s kind of like asking someone you’re in a relationship with to now start going to therapy with you because they want to improve or save your relationship – a relationship you thought was going great. Other than having a customer service dept (CSD), many companies didn’t really take into account the “Voice Of the Customer” (VOC) into their marketing, sales, product design or service policies. Hence, companies didn’t integrate their knowledge of their customers’ needs and wants any further than their own CSD. How many companies today still don’t have integrated marketing and sales departments? And, how many have spent millions on a failed CRM system? I’ve personally seen a number of new client sales that have been lost by a lack of communication between sales and other internal departments.

Shift #3: Over the past several years there’s been another shift taking place and it has to do with a change in the way people interact together socially using the Internet and mobile devices. It’s a shift in how we socialize, share and get information, but also it’s becoming more about how we collaborate, network, learn, play and do business. You’ll notice I put the “do business” piece at the end of the sentence. That’s because the ‘social’ part came first and the business piece is only now over the past couple years really starting to evolve. Look at how long it’s taken LinkedIn to grow its audience compared to Facebook. There are several terms being used to help describe this shift such as, Social Media, Social Networking, Social Business, Social …Branding, Gaming, etc.

An impact of this latest shift is that companies are starting to hire people to help create and handle different aspects of their company’s social media marketing and governance processes. Why? Well because social media is what’s “happening to them” and they’re trying to get a handle on how to make it work for their business. Social media is an external shift that’s forcing companies to make internal changes in their communications with just about every department in their company, employees, customers, partners and potential clients. Large companies are now hiring people who they consider (and hope) have background experience/expertise in social media to help them figure out their internal and external social media platforms.

Current examples of this would be Chris Heuer, an old timer in social media, who founded the Social Media Club back in 2006. He was recently hired by Deloitte Consulting to help with their Social Media – Social Computing Strategies. Another example is Jen McClure, who helped found the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) and who over the past two years worked on several Social Media Summits and research projects on various areas of social media, such as governance and processes within corporations and Social Media ROI metrics. She was hired by Thompson Reuters as a consultant last year to sit on a social media task force and recently accepted a job offer as their Social Strategist to help them set up their internal social media platform. Which means -- helping them figure out a set structure for both their internal and external social media governance process and rules.

There are some relevant examples of companies out there who’ve made the effort to both listen and engage with their customer audiences, and who’ve taken those learnings and incorporated them into their social business outreach. I could give examples of those companies’ social media outreach programs, but that will be for another article. Suffice to say… with a little online research you can check out some of the recent social media programs from EMC, IBM, Ford and Fiskars.

Here are two examples - a B2C & B2B:
1). http://www.scrapbookupdate.com/2008/10/02/the-genius-of-fiskateers-leveraging-social-media-to-promote-fiskars/
2).http://www.btobonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110404/SOCIAL/304049953#seenit

So what does all this mean to everyday business and the way we’re going to relate both now and in the future with our customers, partners and prospects? Notice I didn’t say “sell?” If you think back to the best experience you’ve ever had with a company that you’ve bought a product or service from – what do you remember most? Was it the great product itself? Was it the great customer service they had?

Remember the department store Nordstrom’s? (Located on the West Coast) When they began back in 1901 they got a lot of attention because it was their policy to “offer the customer the best possible service, selection, quality and value.” “Employees are instructed to always make a decision that favors the customer before the company. They are never criticized for doing too much for a customer; they are criticized for doing too little. If you treat customers like royalty and let them know that you will take care of them, they usually come back to you.” (Source: http://EzineArticles.com/80701)

Urban legend has it that a Nordstrom’s customer returned a radial tire to them for a refund, which they received. However, Nordstrom’s doesn’t sell tires. So, what is the value of a customer to your business? If you look at a successful customer engagement lifecycle, you’ll see that it reflects and integrates components of a great relationship. Sales engagement is only one part of that relationship.

All of these shifts that are taking place in business are around the way companies engage with their customers, influencers and prospect audiences. It’s all about relating and relating doesn’t work so well in a push sales environment.

As companies learn to be more relational in the way they transact business, they become better listeners, more transparent and better social communicators to their public. Traits that are often considered feminine and traits that are now being adopted by large and small businesses alike to keep up with their customers and win new business from their prospects. This will also open new doors for new types of businesses models that are more in alignment with the way women think and work. Women often tend to work very collaboratively and gather information first by listening to people’s needs before suggesting solutions. All types of businesses are having to figure out how to engage with their target audiences using social media marketing, networks, and tools. No matter your size, or industry this will probably apply to your business too.

These new shifts are happening because of social media, and the impact it’s having on business is not going to go away. We’re moving from the Information Age to a Relationship Age. More companies will be spending dollars and time to understand, adapt and learn how to use social media to help grow their business relationships and better relate to their customers and public.

We see it happening now in the increase in spending by businesses on both Social Media Marketing and Social Media Ads. For example, Forrester Research predicts that B2B firms will spend $54 million on social media marketing in 2014, up from just $11 million in 2009.

Whether businesses know it or not, this is just the beginning of the Social Media Wild Wild West. The impact of social media on business is truly one of collaborative influence and transparency. Businesses are being faced with the need to become Social Citizens, and figure out for themselves just what that means, not only with their external customers and public, but internally with their employees as well.
By: Natalie L. Wood - The Thought Net, LLC

Trends that will transform business in 2011 and beyond

2010-12-09T17:15:00.001-08:00

A few of our thoughts on how current trends will impact business in 2011 and beyond...

Trends that will transform business in 2011 and beyond

View more presentations from Stephen Debruyn.

Thought Leadership in the Marketing Automation Arena

2010-11-05T15:55:00.000-07:00

I attended the B2B Marketing University event organized by marketing automation firm Silverpop this week in downtown San Francisco. The Giants tickertape parade was held on the same day in the city, so no shortage of excitement getting to the event location J

The presentation schedule contained some highly relevant content of interest to anyone who wants to understand more about changing buying and sales cycles, content marketing, and prospect engagement. Presenters included Adam Needles from Left Brain Marketing (he formerly played an evangelist role at Silverpop), Mac McIntosh from Acquire B2B, Carlos Hidalgo from the Annuitas Group, and Will Schnabel from Silverpop.

Supported by a considerable amount of research data, Adam Needles presented a convincing argument that even though the B2B buyer might still go through the same reasoning process during the buying cycle, how he or she obtains relevant sales information, and from whom, has radically changed. Buyers today leverage the wealth of information available on the Web in order to orient themselves in a given marketplace, and identify and select vendors. This presents challenges as well as opportunities for the seller. The balance of power in the relationship has shifted to the buyer - so the seller better adjust, by providing content that is relevant to the buyer during the various stages of the cycle, and presenting that content via the online channels and platforms used by the buyer.

Research shows that there is a significant disconnect between the buyer and seller in terms of where they spend their time during the sales cycle – buyers spend the majority of their time in the early stages of the cycle, whereas sales is almost exclusively engaged in the final stages of the cycle. This is remarkable, and presents clear opportunities for marketers to engage buyers during the early stages of the cycle, and nurture them along the path to purchase through dialogue and support with relevant content.

All in all, presenters came to very similar conclusions as we did at The Thought Net – see our presentation on the Buyer Cycle Revolution. However, we focused more on the opportunity which today exists for organizations to present a thought leadership position during the early stages of the buying cycle. We also believe that sellers should increasingly focus on engagement via social media outlets, platforms and communities, as that’s increasingly where buyers congregate to gather content and obtain advice from peers and colleagues. In addition, we believe that the engagement tactics outlined above should not be limited to prospects – significant revenue benefits can be extracted by developing engagement strategies with existing customers. This is an area which historically has been neglected by both marketing and sales.

All in all, with these event series Silverpop is really practicing what it is preaching – carving out a thought leadership position for itself in the marketing automation space, by providing prospective buyers with highly relevant and captivating content. An excellent iniative…

A Few Take-Aways from a Social Media Monitoring Conference

2010-10-22T23:39:00.000-07:00

I attended the Monitoring Social Media conference in San Francisco this week, organized by InfluencePeople, a social media events and training company founded by Luke Brynley Jones and Murray Newlands. They started these events in London and are now apparently expanding their activities to the US; the event series started in Boston in early October, and will end in New York City in November.

The San Francisco conference featured a packed schedule of presentations and panel sessions on a variety of topics including influence, reputation and sentiment measurement methodologies, the dynamic of time in relation to social media campaign planning, and more. Presenters Constant Contact and Marchex focused on how small businesses can optimally leverage social media. Social media case studies were presented by eBay, Microsoft and Seesmic. And of course the event would not be complete without a panel discussion on the topic of social media ROI.

Of particular interest was a presentation from Semphonic about social dashboards, highlighting the importance of effectively culling and classifying data, and placing it in the right context in order for ‘social’ data to be meaningful.

A few of my key take-aways after a day of presentations:

1. Organizations are slowly, gradually embracing ‘social’ (I don’t’ want to use the term ‘social media’ here, as this is increasingly a misnomer). While initially primarily marketing, sales and PR were impacted, ‘social’ is now beginning to infiltrate virtually every department of organizations. Eventually ‘social’ will become the norm – at least, that’s the vision.

2. A perception of greater openness towards ‘social’ by the C-suite - it’s no longer just bottom-up, ‘social’ initiatives and directives are now also coming from the top. On this front there’s still a long road to hoe it seems, but at least a trend is discernable.

3. There continue to be substantial issues around monitoring ‘social’ activities, the measurement of their effectiveness and a calculation of any type of associated return on investment.

On the monitoring side, the complexities relate to setting up the right type of queries, effective spam filtering, and arriving at a manageable set of relevant posts and articles which need to be classified in a meaningful way.

On the measurement side, the issues relate to the ability to extract actionable intelligence from the data. Reams of statistics related to ‘social’ efforts are meaningless; they need to be placed in context in order to have any meaning. There seems to be a consensus that automated sentiment analysis is fraught with inaccuracy, and that a combination of human and automated analysis is – at least at this stage – the only way in which a reasonable level of accuracy can be reached.

The issue of the ROI of ‘social’ has been a thorny and controversial issue for quite some time, and nothing seems to have changed lately. Not surprising, but as ‘social’ data are increasingly linked up with the more structured CRM data (and most likely will eventually merge with it) and combined with campaign-specific information in marketing automation solutions, it will eventually become possible to adequately address the issue of ROI.

All in all, a great conference with dynamic speakers at probably one of the funkiest venues in San Francisco. Look forward to the next one…

By the way, at least some of the presentation slide decks can be found on Slideshare.

On another note, social media monitoring tools can be used effectively to identify the most promising social media outlets and platforms to engage with in order to propagate a thought leadership position online. Once this engagement is ongoing, these tools can be used to track online exposure on relevant thought leadership topics - and that of competitors, for that matter. Check out this in-depth review of the main social media monitoring vendors; this review site includes the main sponsors of this conference, Brandwatch and Radian6.

2010-10-20T16:19:00.000-07:00

Why should businesses care about Thought Leadership?

Many companies are now taking on thought leadership branding initiatives as a part of their own intellectual branding campaigns. The main reason a business should care about Thought Leadership ties back to how their company is viewed by the marketplace.

Thought Leadership, as defined by RainToday.com… “centers on earning trust and credibility.” Thought Leaders get noticed by offering something different—information, insights, and ideas, for instance. Thought Leadership positions you and your company as an industry authority and resource and trusted advisor by establishing your reputation as a generous contributor to your industry.”

A growing number of companies have started to realize that thought leadership is a core component of becoming a successful market leader. Most companies aspire to having their brand seen as one of the more knowledgeable and innovative in their field or industry. And, many may want to be seen as the market leader, but haven’t put together a strategy or resources needed to make this happen.

Thought Leadership has the ability to help you and your company:

Raise Company visibility and credibility to the world
Educate and reach customers
Enlighten the media on your contributions to the market
Inspire customers and partners to connect with you in new and meaningful ways

As the business world changes, thought leadership is playing a greater role in how many of these changes are taking place. People are becoming a part of the new era of brand development. Many product focused brands are also now transitioning to people focused brands through social media, communities and increasingly through thought leadership.

People represent how a product and company are perceived by their customers and the market at large. A company’s credibility, market reach, standards of conduct and recognition are affected by the value and brand of their people. Thought leadership is the new marketing platform for people and the companies they represent.

A key finding from the survey: Engaging Global Executives: Ten Megatrends in B2B Marketing, shows that 56% of companies consider Thought Leadership as their second biggest objective for B2B marketing. That’s number two behind building new business as the top priority in the next 3-5 year (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2008). http://wwwthethoughtnet.com