How do social media and sales development overlap, and why? Today, we look at why this powerful tool is such an important part of modern sales processes. Companies that don’t use one or the other are holding themselves back from their own success!
1: The Evolution of Sales Development
Sales development grew out of the growing inefficiencies of traditional cold-calling. Salespeople were long known for spending a significant chunk of their working time reaching out to prospects over the phone. The trouble was that as industries and markets grew, prospects became saturated. They started to rely more frequently on gatekeepers to filter calls, or to ignore unknown numbers altogether. When sales agents and managers started to realize that it was taking more calls to reach the same number of viable prospects, they began to change their thinking. At first, it was a matter of getting more creative about how to pass the gatekeepers. The job was still getting harder, though.
At some point, sales teams began to split into two complementary groups of specialists. Sales development representatives or SDRs would now work exclusively on making cold calls and very basic rapport-building. Upon connecting with a lead who showed interest in possibly being a viable prospect, rather than develop that relationship themselves, the SDRs would turn that lead over to an account executive. These AEs would then work on building that business relationship to and beyond the point of closing deals and providing services. This is the business environment we now find ourselves in around the world.
2: The Business Power of Social Media
While the primary technology of sales development is the telephone, many of the tools that have arisen thanks to the internet have been a boon for businesses of all kinds. Social media, originally designed to connect individuals around particular topics, is one of these.
Social media makes it easy for people to find others who are interested in the same things as themselves, or who otherwise have real-world commonalities. Famously, Facebook was originally meant as a Harvard University alumni group. But the versatility of tools like Facebook quickly made them useful to many, many more people.
Not only can businesses create listings and pages on Facebook and similar sites, but there are also entire platforms centered on building business relationships. Chief among these is LinkedIn, which doubles as a kind of live digital resume for each user, and as a networking tool. There’s not much of a need to hold onto hundreds of business cards if you’re active on LinkedIn. The possibilities for using social media to establish and cultivate mutually beneficial business relationships around the world are staggering. It’s safe to say that the world has barely scratched the surface of the potential that these kinds of tools carry within them.
3: Where Social Media and Sales Development Intersect, Relationships Accelerate
This is where social media and sales development have such great combined promise. Sales development agents are able to improve their results to a significant degree by leveraging social media in their outreach efforts.
By scanning posts related to relevant keywords, SDRs can quickly find people who are talking about the kinds of products and services that their companies offer. When one of those posts indicates an unmet need, the SDR can reach out to that individual and start a dialogue about the specific conditions they’re dealing with. That can lead to emails, phone calls, and in-person meetings with account executives down the road!
Social media and sales development also work in the opposite direction. Companies can use these platforms to establish their authority on relevant topics. By sharing and commenting on relevant content, they can put their brand out there as one that other companies and people searching for solutions can trust. When someone starts looking for answers, they will find them. Social media helps the companies with the best answers rise to the top faster.
Using Social Media in Sales Development Efforts
All in all, social media and sales development go hand-in-hand. Here at Boom Demand, we’ve made sure that it’s an integral part of our agents’ daily workflow.
Our SDRs use a proven and successful cadence of specific contact methods, spread out over multiple weeks, that they use to ensure they’re doing everything possible to contact their leads. That cadence includes phone calls and emails, as well as social media commenting and messaging.
One of the things that makes this cadence so successful is that it’s not spammy. When our agents reach out via social media, it’s to talk about what matters to each lead or prospect. We do it that way because we know that sales is not just about us. It’s about who we can serve, and what’s the best way to do it!
Get Help From Boom Demand
If your sales organization is getting burned out from the constant load of cold-calling, we can fix that. Boom Demand SDRs are experts at finding the right prospects for our clients to work with. We bring you the deals, you close them. It’s that easy. Contact us today to discuss your sales development needs!