B2B Sales Lounge » Social Media

Hi Tech Industry, Engineers, and a Younger Crowd Represent Majority of LinkedIn Users

Dan Vescuso — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 15:33:50 +0000

As LinkedIn becomes more and more popular among B2B sales and marketing professionals, it is important to take a look at the user demographics of the social network to gain insight into how to attack the audience. While it might be perceived that the majority of the users on LinkedIn are made up of sales and marketing individuals, it is actually people in the engineering field that take the top spot. According to analysis of LinkedIn’s user base by Vincenzo Cosenza using LinkedIn’s direct ad data, Engineers make up 15% of all LinkedIn’s users, with sales coming in second at 11% of users.

While the amount of engineers on LinkedIn may be surprising, what is not shocking is the age demographic. 51% of all LinkedIn users report their age in the 25-34 year old range. This is to be expected, as people in this age group were exposed to the web at a younger age, and are probably more likely to be looking to network and use LinkedIn for a job searching purpose. Over 25% of users are in the 18-24 age range, which follows the same logic, leaving only 23% of all LinkedIn users at the age of 35 or older.

Almost 24% of the users on LinkedIn report that they work in the Hi Tech industry, which represents the largest industry segment. Finance comes in second at 18%, and Manufacturing third at 15% of the user base. The large Hi Tech and Manufacturing segments seem to explain the hefty number of engineers that are LinkedIn users.

While the majority of users reside in the United States, Americans only make up about half of the total user base. The global nature of LinkedIn may explain why 34% of the employed users work at a company with a workforce of over 10000 individuals. Large international companies will encourage their workers to join sites like LinkedIn in an effort to build up a social media presence.

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The Rules Have Changed: Web 2.0 Calls For Visibility

Dan Vescuso — Fri, 14 May 2010 16:58:55 +0000

As we move through this new era of Web 2.0, we experience changes in how many things in business now work. Beyond the look and feel of business, the free flowing river of information that is the web powers new trends, and even new rules, as to how business works. Chad Levitt recently posted about the new rules of B2B sales in his New Sales Economy blog. Here we see how the rules have changed: the lines between marketing and sales have blurred, so Chad urges salespeople to make themselves visible by publishing relevant content and promoting themselves through virtual channels content.

Chad is onto something here, and a few of his points really stand out to me. He mentions that the cause of this shift to sales 2.0 is web 2.0; meaning the increase in the flow of information that social media and the web has created is allowing for more informed customers. It also allows for more informed sellers; for example it is incredibly easy to look up a prospect on LinkedIn, get a sense for their business personality and then to look up the company they work for through information services or by simply googling it.

Chad also mentions that at the “center of all this change is content and how we interact with it”. If you have interesting blog posts, tweets that speak to your buyer’s needs, or some other sort of intriguing or valuable thought, you will drive a following and in turn drive more sales opportunities. However it is also important to monitor others content; if your buyers can find information about your product and about you, then you can certainly find information about some of your prospects and their companies. In addition, you can find all sorts of valuable tricks of the trade by searching for articles, blogs, etc. Since you are reading this blog I guess you already know that.

Beyond the necessary information on your prospects, monitoring social networking and/or business sites can also keep you up to date with client events and will keep you on top of certain activities that can trigger sales, such as a merger or management change. While it may prove time consuming to do this on your own, there are information tools that can help you do this (iSell for example).

Bottom line: Make yourself visible on the web through effective content and self promotion, and take advantage of existing content by searching social channels or through business information tools.

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The Future Looks Bright for B2B Sales, but Hold the Rose-Colored Glasses

Dan Vescuso — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 20:32:06 +0000

Recent economic reports indicate the recession is coming to an end and a survey conducted by OneSource shows that B2B sales professionals agree with that sentiment – approximately 50 percent surveyed saying that their 2010 sales pipelines are healthier than this same time last year.

But let’s not put on the rose-colored glasses just yet. OneSource’s B2B SalesPulse survey also found that most sales professionals are facing longer sales cycles (59 percent reported longer sales cycles; only 16 percent reported shorter cycles). This might suggest that even though more B2B sales opportunities are popping up, tighter budgets during this early economic recovery phase continue to reign in spending, drawing out the competitive evaluation process before prospects are ready to sign the PO.

With longer sales cycles and more thorough evaluations from buyers, it’s no surprise that B2B sales professionals are relying more on sales intelligence tools and a mix of traditional and social media sources to uncover the hottest leads. Among social networking information sources, LinkedIn was rated the most effective by a wide margin for B2B sales prospecting and research when compared with Facebook and Twitter and blogs.

Looking ahead to Q2 and beyond, we expect social media sources to play an increasingly important role in the sales intelligence mix. Stay tuned for more B2B SalesPulse surveys that we’ll be conducting to watch and track what’s coming next.

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Get to Know Your Prospects to Improve the Bottom Line

Dan Vescuso — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 20:19:01 +0000

Are you doing all you can to prepare yourself for a sales call? It is extremely important it is to be in touch with the latest information about your clients and prospects in order to make a better sale. This is not limited to how much they buy or how frequently they buy-take your sales to the next level by learning even more about your customers. The more information you know, the more likely you are to make a sale, improve existing relationships and begin new ones.

In fact, Brian Vellmure of CRM Strategies recently posted on the importance for sales individuals of being “social anthropologists”. This means knowing not only the basics about your clients but also knowing what influences them such as who they associate with, their interests, preferences etc. Brian describes it as striving to learn about your customers in the contexts of their lives. He describes how understanding how your customers work will allow you to gain insight into how they influence others, which can lead to additional sales for you.

Being connected via social networks is imperative to a sales 2.0 world, where this up-to-date information can often provide more valuable insight into customers/prospects than static information. For example, in a recent survey conducted by OneSource, it was found that 47.8% of those surveyed were using LinkedIn more this year than last year for B2B sales prospecting. This suggests that sales professionals are using social media more and more for prospecting purposes, most likely because of the amount of readily available information it provides about the prospect. The more information you can gather about a prospect, the more likely you will be to close.

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Social Networking Gaining Traction Among B2B Marketing and Sales Pros

Dan Vescuso — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 21:20:23 +0000

As you have heard by now, social media is becoming a more important and widely used tool by sales and marketing professionals. In a recent survey conducted by Outsell and covered in eMarketer on expected B2B marketer spending on social networking, Outsell asked respondents to rate the different social media sites in terms of there effectiveness. Somewhat surprisingly, Facebook came out on top with 51% of respondents claiming that Facebook was extrememly or somewhat effective. LinkedIn came in a close second with 45%.

Other recent surveys, such as the SalesPulse survey conducted by OneSource and a survey conducted by Hubspot found that sales professionals surveyed rated LinkedIn as most effective.

The Outsell survey also showed that 43.3% of respondents had showed an increase in the amount of spend in the last year on social media marketing. Whether it’s Facebook or LinkedIn or some other emerging channel, social networking is becoming increasingly important to sales and marketing execs for identifying new opportunities, qualifying leads and taking action at the right moment in the buying cycle to close sales.

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OneSource Survey Shows LinkedIn Preferred by B2B Sales Professionals

Dan Vescuso — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:00:13 +0000

In this era of web 2.0, where social networking sites dominate the social and now the business scene, it is difficult to tell just how beneficial some of these sites are for B2B purposes. OneSource Information Services recently conducted its own primary research on the topic, asking B2B sales professionals about the types of information resources and tools they use for building their sales pipelines and qualifying opportunities. They found that most social media tools are not having a large impact on the way they research companies and contacts:

66% of respondents suggested LinkedIn is “significantly” or “moderately” changing their methodologies
23% said the same of Personal & Professional Blogs
Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube did not achieve mentionable numbers (4% or less)

To some this might be surprising, but to me it makes perfect sense. I have heard again and again from a range of marketing and sales professionals that LinkedIn is providing real value to business professionals, as opposed to the other social networking sites. While a site like Twitter can help you keep connected and up to date, it takes too much effort with too little a reward for marketing purposes. Sales reps may occasionally catch a tweet from a prospect or customer that gives them valuable information to use during a call, but for the most part LinkedIn will be their go-to source of info.

Check out the survey results here: http://bit.ly/aZop5H, and be on the look out later this month for more results from the OneSource survey.

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Sales Pros: When it comes to social media, first do no harm

Dan Vescuso — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 18:21:05 +0000

While there are lot of marketing executives tweeting, blogging, and podcasting about sales these days, many sales professionals say they are too busy prospecting and closing deals to pay much attention to RSS feeds, search engine optimization and micro-blogging. For all intents and purpose, their social media tool of trade remains the phone.

Innovation can pay off, but there is also an opportunity cost to social media. Time is money. So it’s wise for sales people to be discriminating when trying to decide which, if any, social media channels make sense.

However, there is one important aspect of social media that no sales executive can afford to ignore, and that is how they are perceived online – because their mistakes can come back to haunt them.

As George F. Snell of HighTalk.com pointed out recently, social media gives the illusion of intimacy and privacy – but you are being watched. A friend of George’s seeking a new job asked him if he should be concerned that the friend had engaged in some online political debates that were appearing in search engine results. The answer, unfortunately, was yes.

George cited a recent study commissioned by Microsoft surveying more than 1,200 HR people. Seven out of ten reported that they had rejected applicants because of information that they had discovered online.

Taking baby steps when it comes to social media and sales may be a wise plan of action, depending on your situation. But when it comes to how we are perceived online, we all must think and act like adults. Borrowing from the Hippocratic Oath (the ancient code of ethics for physicians) when it comes to social media, first do no harm. Think before you post.

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Marketing Yourself Through Social Media

Dan Vescuso — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:45:30 +0000

Last week I posted about an interview between Chad Levitt and Kipp Bodnar – this week I came across an interesting interview on the Selling to Big Companies blog in which Chad was the interviewee.

Chad talks about how important it is for salespeople to market themselves, and he’s right. In order to maximize results, sales people need to take advantage of the tools at hand – specifically social media.

Chad believes that utilizing these tools is necessary because the rules of cold calling are changing. It’s harder to reach prospects by phone/email, they’re less willing to meet in person, and they’re busier than ever.

Sales reps need to adapt in order to stay afloat. Interacting with customers through social networks not only builds your own personal brand, but also fosters stronger customer relationships.

Taking advantage of social media will also improve your inbound marketing – allowing customers to more readily find you on the internet.

It may be intimidating for sales reps who have never ventured into the world of social media, so try making a Youtube video of yourself, then building on more content from there. Take on one thing at a time – make a twitter account or join facebook. Whatever you decide, get involved. The rewards will speak for themselves.

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Social Media: No Longer Just A Tool For Lead Generation

Dan Vescuso — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 19:28:30 +0000

Sales reps: You are constantly educating yourself on the newest sales techniques and business trends, right? Well doesn’t it make sense to keep up with latest and greatest in social media? Social media is constantly evolving and sales reps need to evolve with it or risk being left behind.

Social media tools are no longer only used by marketing departments. While it is true that many companies use social media to generate leads, sales reps must also start to integrate social media into there regimen.

Great B2B sales reps have strong relationships with there clients and prospects. In a recent interview by Chad Levitt, Kipp Bodnar, a Social Media Marketing Manager at Howard Merrell & Partners, states that there is a direct correlation between a sales rep’s ability to bond with his/her client and his/her use of social media. Many sales reps don’t see the need for social media, but it can be a very useful tool in fostering and maintaining relationships with customers.

Social media is an up-to-date method of staying on top of the latest information, so for example, when you call your contact you can congratulate him on his new baby or ask him how his vacation was. You’ll already be aware of this information because you’re connected with them via social networks. It adds a personal touch which can take the relationship to a new level. As Kipp states, it’s also a great way to stay in touch between interactions.

While you may not need social networking to make a sale, it definitely helps your overall efforts and increases your chances of boosting client relationships and making effective sales.

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