Wouldn’t it be great to have an almost sure-fire winner when it comes to marketing your business or yourself?  With all of the hype and discussion about Social Media, some people are assuming that they’ve found the answer.

In fact, I’ve had several people ask me if Social Media really was the end-all be-all silver bullet that everyone is making it out to be.

The answer obviously is NO!

However the answer to whether or not business owners and professionals should be participating in Social Media is a resounding YES!

The better question is what should you be doing and how can someone who’s an independent professional or selling Business to Business really use these tools in a meaningful way?  This is the first post in a short series to give you some ideas on how to use these tools.  Here’s the link if you’re interested in seeing the second post in the Silver Bullet series.

There are lots of ways to use Social Media for businesses:  Best Buy is doing a great job using Twitter for Customer Service (as does Jet Blue, Zappos and many other well known companies).

Interesting restaurants like Kogi BBQ are using Twitter to drive traffic and word of mouth about their product.  Sprinkles Cupcakes uses Facebook to get the word out on discounts and get people talking about their product.

However social media for professionals or for business to business situations is a bit less obvious.  Here are a couple of general ideas – at the end of the day you have to find what works for you and your situation.

Demonstrate Expertise

You’re really good at whatever it is that you do and people are likely already paying you money to help them with something.  Social media is perfect for sharing some of your expertise and there are several ways to do it.

Blog – the most obvious way is to start a blog and focus on the problems you solve.  Not only does it tend to demonstrate your expertise and give you credibility, it also becomes a great way for people to see the kinds of things that you do…and if they have a problem similar to that, they will be much more comfortable coming to you.

Roy Ginsburg is an attorney who practices employment law.  His blog is called Quirky Employment Questions where he posts real life questions and situations and offers up his thoughts on how things could be handled.  Because he’s a lawyer, he does need to be careful in how he says things and to make it clear that he’s not offering specific legal advice, but it does a great job of showing his thought process (and indirectly the results he’s getting for his clients).  It also becomes a resource for buyers in his target market.

On a side note, he also does a nice job of humanizing the blog and adding his personal touch with trivia contests and occasional personal anecdotes.

Answer questions / add value – LinkedIn gives you the opportunity to answer as many questions as you’d ever want to answer.  Find a couple that fit your expertise and knock out a great answer – for extra credit you can also send them a link for more information (which is even better if that happens to be a link to your blog article on the same topic!).

Be careful not to sell directly with your answers…think of yourself as a doctor analyzing the problem and suggesting solutions.  Yes your service might be part of that solution, but you need to educate and add value first or you’ll just be viewed as a spammer!

Answer 3 or 4 questions a week…it would take you less than an hour overall and it would quickly establish you as someone who knows a lot of stuff!

What do you think?

How could you demonstrate your expertise on Social Media?  Blendtec isn’t really B2B, but their Will It Blend YouTube campaign is a brilliant example of how to show the outcomes they can deliver…could you do something similar?

The next post will look at some other ideas on how to really use Social Media in meaningful ways.  What works for you?  Do you have any examples of experts that you follow?  Share your thoughts in the comments below – I’d love to hear them.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business CoachSimilar Posts:

• Is Social Media a Silver Bullet – Part 2
• The 4 Levels of Social Business Engagement
• An updated look at Social Media NOW!

Outbound sales and marketing are dying…(or at least becoming a lot less effective!).

The folks over at Hubspot pointed this out almost 2 years when they talked about Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing.  To me it’s intuitively clear  the internet, along with caller-id and sophisticated phone systems have made it much more difficult to successfully sell a prospect that isn’t currently in a buying mode.

However if you’re like most business owners, you’re spending a good portion of your time thinking about how you can ‘sell’ your stuff to your target market.

Stop selling and start educating!

Education as a strategy

You might be thinking…I don’t really want to educate my prospects, I just want them to buy something.  Why would I waste my time with a round about approach of education?

1.  Most people aren’t in Buying Mode right now!

Last spring I had a chance to read The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes.  It is one of the best (and most practical) business books that I’ve ever read in terms of focusing on what it takes to sell products or services.

There are a lot of great discussion points in the book.  One of the things that really caught my attention was the discussion in Chapter 4 about people that are ‘buying now’.  Based on his personal experience and research, the author, Mr. Holmes, determined that in any given group of people, only about 3% are ready to buy something right now.  You can see the rest of the breakdown in the illustration below:

So if you want to reach more than that 3%, then you need to make your sales pitch worthwhile, and the best way to reach the most people is to educate them on industry trends or issues that impact them (and position you and your product as a likely answer).

There’s a free download of Chapter 4 of the Ultimate Sales Machine on Chet Holmes website if you’d like to learn more about this idea.

2.  Position yourself as an expert

The other thing an education approach can do for you is position you as the expert in your field.  All things being equal, if I have a choice between two providers of a product or a service, I’m going to go with an expert over just a sales guy every time.

Establish your expertise by strategically teaching me about all the issues, implications and problems that I’m likely already facing (since I’m in your target market) – framing you and your product as the most obvious solution (and by framing, I don’t mean stretching things so you magically ‘fit’ the best – you need to actually have the best solution).

Keep this in mind – experts don’t compete on price.

3.  Become the trusted advisor

Although this is much more of a long term play and may not apply to everyone, using an education strategy is the best way to set yourself up for the long term win-win relationship of being the customer’s trusted advisor.  If you can reach this level, not only do they want to buy your product / service, they want your help configuring it to work for them, they want your help selecting products or services that you don’t sell (talk about influence in an industry…) and they will look to you for long term support for the next time they’re ready to buy!

Become a trusted advisor by educating your customers on the big picture within your industry and helping create win-win scenarios so their business thrives!  Help them succeed and solve problems.

Keep this in mind – trusted advisors don’t compete on price and they get to sell add-on products and services without any competition!

How do you educate?

The next time you find yourself thinking about a sales pitch, maybe you should back up and think about developing a core story of data that will benefit your customers and make them more effective in their business.  It will also educate them on the buying criteria for your industry so they understand the value of your product and service, not just the price.

What core story could you use to educate your target market on your industry?  If you’re in health benefits / insurance right now, you are talking about health care reform.  If you’re a lawyer specializing in business formation, educate your prospects on the downstream implications (taxes, sale of the business, maintenance) of choosing an S-Corp over an LLC.  If you sell landscaping services, educate your prospects and clients on the trees and plants that thrive in the local climate (and those that don’t).

What’s your core story?  How do you educate your customers?  I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coaching

Similar Posts:

• A sales secret you need to start using?
• Is Social Media a Silver Bullet? Part 1
• I guarantee you’ll get something out of reading this!