Sales Savvy

Think Outside The Box: The Sales Process and Social Media

April 7, 2011 by Valerie Dennis

Is a single tweet, YouTube video or Facebook post good intel for selling? Possibly…but it’s far more informative when you look at the aggregated picture. I recently did this and gained some great insight that can be used to facilitate the sales process. While it’s reasonable to assume that not everyone jumped on the social media bandwagon, it’s worth checking into. If they have a presence, you are likely to find meaningful information to break into that target account or create new opportunities for selling.

I recently looked at a week’s worth of Twitter and Facebook activity for a durable goods company and then followed their links to several YouTube videos. Here’s what I found out:

I have access to a decision maker: Contact information to the VP of Marketing (and we have two LinkedIn connections in common)
They are customer-centered and actively tracking end customer trends
Identified end customer priorities: Insight into their end customer (identified 3-4 challenges)
Positioning: They market and sell solutions vs. products (and you can directly see how they are doing that)
Positioning: They emphasize ease of doing business and adding customer value
Product development: They are sharing product development insight
They have visibility into how their distributors and independent retailers are positioning and promoting their products (and so do you)
They are soliciting real-time feedback and testimonials on their products

In the aggregate, these points can provide you with a good degree of specificity and insight. This allows you to create a targeted, meaningful discussion that is directed to your customer’s business interests and increases your sales effectiveness. Customers expect you to be experts at their business and today, meaningful pieces of information can reside in new places. They also want you to be efficient with their time…

As a side note, there are a number of sites that can aggregate online information. In some instances, the old-ashioned way of directly reviewing a Twitter feed for example, will give you greater context in conversations, rather than fragmented posts. Coupled with traditional resources for customer intelligence, you have the opportunity to access decision makers, gain insight into end customer challenges, see how they position themselves in the market (or don’t), and define your selling strategy and tactics, etc.

Is this the magic bullet? Not at all and it may not work in your industry. But before you dismiss the idea, you might want to check it out. Beyond the traditional social platforms are networks that are specific to job function and industry—seek them out too. The unique opportunity in social media is that you (may) gain real-time feedback from your customer and their end customers. Depending upon the product or service you sell, that may be helpful to you…

Posted in Sales, Social Media, Strategic Selling | Tagged Customer Engagement, Customer Intelligence, Sales, Social Media, Strategic Selling | Leave a Comment »

Is Your Management Team Equipped For What’s Coming Next?

February 3, 2011 by Valerie Dennis

Recent surveys show that most senior execs don’t believe they have the right management talent in place to move their business forward in 2011. The economy and corresponding attrition are factors but it’s also important for companies to determine if their behavior is driving mediocre, under-leveraged management.

A lack of confidence in your management team can lead to isolated and poor decision-making that can have long-term consequences on your company, not to mention the health of a team. For those preparing for what they do know (and don’t know) about their prospects in 2011, management readiness will be a key success factor.

If your management team is not ready, it will need more than a superficial look to figure out why. You may have the right people, but not getting the best out of them. In the context of preparedness, here are some things to consider:

Have you identified the key attributes needed to move your business forward?
Do you have the right inventory of existing skills to match your business requirements?
What organizational elements stand in the way of building an effective management team (processes, policies, cultural elements, etc)?
What does your organization embrace (status quo or original thinking)?
What knowledge needs to be shared and by whom?
Does your training get your managers through the day or through their career?

We tend to put managers through rote activities and assume they know what they are doing and why. I’ve seen managers obsess over a $5 discrepancy on a P&L that won’t move the $10M needle, but they did it because they were asked to find discrepancies. The result was wasted time and effort; they missed the bigger opportunity to evaluate emerging fiscal trends and its impact on their market. Unfortunately, they didn’t know to look for the trends and when asked, they couldn’t explain it. So ask yourself, are you doling out tasks without deepening skills and responsibility?

Managers are not often empowered (not a newsmaker, I know). The decision-making hierarchy is generally well-defined and it silently communicates to your staff: stop thinking, we’ll do that for you. Analyze your approval and workflow processes and your personal practices, it is likely that there are things in place which add complexity but not value, so remove or simplify them. This pushes responsibility down and creates an environment which lets your staff do the thinking. If they make a small mistake or two along the way, that’s okay too. Empowerment is often seen as losing decision quality and creating chaos, and yet when done well, it increases morale and corporate performance.

Go beyond training managers for the basics of their job. Broaden their thinking—give managers context to the larger implications of their role, including the financial, operational, customer and legal aspects. In this case, there’s a need for formal training but there’s also a need for leaders to proactively communicate and share their knowledge. It sounds simple but not all bosses offer the context, knowledge or resources that will empower their staff and improve their effectiveness.

When you give managers greater freedom and responsibility as well as the context and tools to be more effective, they are more inclined to embrace their role and their growth and contribute in new and positive ways. Who wouldn’t want that?

Posted in Employee Development, Leadership, Training | Tagged Employee Development, Empowerment, Leadership, Training | Leave a Comment »

How Did We Manage Employees Before Social Media?

December 16, 2010 by Valerie Dennis

I just read an article which (among other things) suggests following your employees’ social media updates to gain insight into them and possible workplace issues. I cringed when I read it and I re-read it five times to make sure I wasn’t missing something. What did we do in the days before social media? And should we consider monitoring employees a responsible management technique?

As a conversation starter, the article uses an example of an employee who is up late, tweets about his/her fifth cup of coffee and comes into the office looking tired and sluggish. The manager can use the insight to ask the employee if he’s overworked. Huh? The context for this example is that social media can help you identify areas of trouble for employees or the workplace that you may not otherwise see.

I get the point, but I think that’s a slippery slope if your efforts are un-formed and uneducated. Social media doesn’t replace the basic fundamentals of people management. If you don’t consider work factors such as a change in productivity or work output, then tweets aren’t going to help you and they may misguide you. If you reacted to every single tweet or post, or responded to what you thought was a possible work issue, then you might want to put a couch in your office and place an “in therapy” sign on your door. That’s all you’ll be doing.

The second example encouraged reading Facebook pages and even setting up a social media search to monitor employees. Manager McCreepy comes to mind. If the recommended management tools come down to Google alerts and social media updates, then I think we’ve missed the mark about what it means to be a manager.

My point is that some of these things are great tools for the workplace but you need to think them through. Can you imagine an employee walking into your office to find his/her aggregated social media activity on your computer? How will you explain it? How do you think the employee will feel? How will you repair the relationship? What would you do with the information you find without overstepping their privacy? How will you manage the workplace fallout, because that news will spread quickly—and probably on Facebook and Twitter…If you’re linked to your employees, you should have legitimate, justifiable work objectives and full transparency.

Social media can be a productive tool for managing employees but it must be done with integrity and with specific work objectives in mind. In defense of the article, it does talk about setting up company policy, training, etc. but not in the context of managing employees. Social media can be a great communication tool, a vehicle for building teamwork, best practices, collaboration, etc. Social media does not replace management responsibilities, so here are some Don’ts to consider:

Don’t use social media as an employee-tracking tool.
Don’t assume that the management environment hasn’t changed, it has.
Don’t assume your managers have the skills to manage the social media-related issues without guidance and training. Social media create a lot of opportunity but also a lot of risk, make sure your managers are trained on what is legally appropriate.
Don’t think social media is bad for your business or your workplace. Encourage its use to support your business, but set guidelines and equip employees with the knowledge and skills to establish formal, productive work initiatives.
Don’t manage the tweets and updates and fail to manage your employees.
Don’t ignore the development or revision of your company policy. Help yourself and your employees by developing (or updating) policy that defines what’s acceptable to your work and culture.
Don’t connect with your employees or use it to manage your employees unless you have a plan and goals in mind for doing so—a plan and goals that your employees fully understand.

Clearly, I don’t advocate using social media to check up on your employees. If social media factors into managing your employees (and it’s likely that it will), then use it as a tool to enhance your work relationships and output. Most importantly, take the time to build the relationship, trust and communication channels to connect with your employees. You’ll get more out of them and from them if you manage in the 3D world, and use social media in the proper context.

Posted in Managing In A Digital Age, Social Media In The Workplace | Tagged Managing In A Digital Age, Social Media in Workplace, Social Media Risks, Workplace Challenges | Leave a Comment »

Culture 2.0: Is It Time To Update Your Culture?

December 9, 2010 by Valerie Dennis

I think we all have friends who for the past several years thought that social media was for the unemployed, stay-at-home moms (and dads), Gen X’ers and parents who needed to monitor their teenagers. It took a while before they realized that the web traffic from one cubicle to the next was not on the company sites, but on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc. Eventually, they recognized the pervasive personal activity but still overlooked the business opportunity. In a time when companies are doing more with less, have we lost our creativity, curiosity and innovation? And can we really blame it on the current work climate? So why is it important to have a culture that promotes learning, innovation, passion and creativity? And what does that have to do with social media?

I once heard someone describe a company as having a “not made here” culture. In the highest ranks of the company, any idea or opportunity to learn from a source outside the organization was ignored, good ideas only came from inside the organization. The end result was a lack of productivity in practical initiatives (working harder, not smarter), and on a much larger scale, a culture that didn’t acknowledge severe market shifts until they were hit head on.

I have a friend who is starting his own business and stated recently that despite the stress of starting up, it is the most challenging and exciting time of his career. He is having fun, he’s learning, he’s engaged and successful. Wouldn’t it be great if your employees felt the same way?

Deloitte’s 2010 Shift Index calls employees with a “questing” and “connecting” disposition as passionate workers. Passionate workers are engaged and constantly seek to improve their individual performance. Unfortunately, less than 25% of workers surveyed are passionate about their work.

Despite the fact that the “topple rate” has doubled, (the rate at which big companies lose their leadership position), the Deloitte survey shows that most companies have not addressed the organizational, management, technical or cultural barriers (among other things) that inhibit engagement and high performance. And yet, it’s a known reinforcing loop, the more skilled and engaged your workforce is, the more likely you will build and/or sustain your leadership and performance in the marketplace.

So how does social media fit into all of this? Social media has changed how we socialize, learn, communicate and do business. It adapts and changes quickly through innovation and yet some people still see it as a playground for teenagers. So in the context of social media, it’s representative of your leadership and company mindset: Do you have a “not made here”, “long live the pony express” or “how soon can we start” attitude? A mindset that encourages curiosity, creativity and willingness to explore new things will have a ripple effect inside your organization.

Education, communication, and executive participation are key elements in updating your culture. Passionate workers won’t stay and they don’t over perform in companies that don’t foster their individual potential, let alone the potential of the business. Companies that establish a foundation of learning (and hence, training) and cultivate a habit of curiosity will be far more prepared for the changes ahead and will stay far ahead of the competition.

Posted in Corporate Culture, Employee Engagement, Social Media, Social Media In The Workplace | Tagged Corporate Culture, Employee Engagement, Social Media, Social Media in Workplace | Leave a Comment »

Are You Making The Best Of Bad Times?

December 1, 2010 by Valerie Dennis

In tough times, it seems that leadership gets abandoned for crisis management. That can translate into short-term gains but a loss in long-term progress. Without a doubt, tough times can change how a company operates and how leaders perform. Here’s an example of some who got it right:

Good leaders set the example for leadership and culture. It took GM two years to change a culture that lasted for decades.
Every crisis eventually ends. Good leaders find a way to reinvent themselves. MySpace found a way to turn a declining business into a new niche.
Bad days don’t mean you still can’t have a positive view of the future. Mark Zuckerberg continues to change the game despite bad decisions, bad press and a loss of trust.
Good leaders remove filters, listen to their customers and employees and act decisively. Ford took the Fiesta on the road six months before its launch and used consumer feedback to make changes before it officially entered the market.
Good leaders find a way to fill an existing need with relevance. Groupon.
Good leaders exploit existing technology in new ways. Foursquare.
Good leaders stay true to who they are. Southwest Airlines has sidestepped the old airline practices, maintaining the lowest costs and the high service levels.

The past few years have been tough and we can blame companies for bad leadership and bad management and the blame wouldn’t be misplaced. Thankfully, there are leaders who remind us that great things can happen during tough times.

Posted in Leadership | Tagged Leadership | Leave a Comment »

Reinvention: MySpace Finds Vision In Its Reality

November 19, 2010 by Valerie Dennis

The recent news of MySpace and Facebook is ultimately about MySpace (in my opinion). It’s about evolution, and knowing when to pull back and find new ways to edit the vision and create value. I think they have done just that.

High growth can lead to no growth and even negative growth unless companies keep pace with their market. Having recently talked with a company in a high growth mode, you can quickly assess what makes them successful today and into the future. A company with a strong niche and the ability to replicate its success across several verticals. It has the benefit of staying ahead of the market with real-time decision making, expert talent, fast execution and building the organizational foundation to support the growth.

The challenge for many fast growth companies is balancing the tactical needs of the organization to support the pace of change while managing for the future. I remember one CEO, when asked about his company’s long-term plan (which six years ago, admittedly, was easier to evaluate) he said the plan was to “fix the operational issues”. There was no evidence of a plan other than to fix the immediate issues. They subsequently missed the change in key market factors that strongly diluted their position and thus, their revenue and margins.

MySpace benefits from luck and learning, but also leadership. It takes leadership to face the reality of their old vision, and find vision in their reality (social entertainment).

Posted in Strategy | Tagged Collaboration, Reinvention, Strategy | Leave a Comment »

Social Media And Carnac The Magnificent

November 9, 2010 by Valerie Dennis

I hold in my hand the envelopes…No one knows the contents of these envelopes, but you, in your divine and mystical way, will ascertain the answers having never before seen the questions. [Ed McMahon]

I once had a boss who loved the book How Will You Know Unless I Tell You? (author Jerry D. Twentier) and he used it as a basis for discussion in our management development program. The title sticks with me after all these years because it was also his counter to almost anything we did or said (how will they know unless you tell them?). We came up with some pretty clever responses (all in fun), some of which he probably didn’t appreciate as much as we did…While the premise was on positive praise, the title is a reminder of a universal management concept. We often expect certain outcomes without setting expectations or providing training, and when it comes to Social Media risks, we aren’t asking, let alone telling (or guiding).

I recently attended a workshop and while on the topic of Social Media, it became apparent that some companies were in a “don’t ask, don’t tell” mode. Several other companies were starting to get questions or see management issues crop up, and were unsure of how to handle them. The issues that surfaced were managed on a case by case basis but they didn’t seem to progress toward formal practices or a workplace strategy. That’s a bit like a slow leak in a tire, very annoying and possibly hazardous so why not patch it?

The level of opportunity and risk will vary by company but assuredly the HR and legal risks will be greater if your employees don’t know what they can or can’t do, or you don’t tell them how to handle things. And just because you don’t know about it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist… Social Media shouldn’t be the corporate frenemy, it can be a productive tool if you educate your employees.

From some, the counter response is “that’s easier said than done” and if so, my suggestion is to dumb down your approach and start somewhere. You know your workplace realities in terms of time, money and resources but creating awareness is a good starting point and pretty easy to do. In the world of 140 characters or less, try emulating some of the key attributes:

Have a plan and develop your key messaging
Treat your communications as a process, not the final submission of War and Peace
Think short bursts of information—frequent, not spammy and focus on the key points
Avoid posters, brochures, booklets and PowerPoint. I repeat, avoid posters, brochures, booklets and PowerPoint
Let employees contribute content
Attribute employee generated content to increase engagement, interest
Use the most effective channels and remember that email is old school
Don’t promote Armageddon, use best practices as well as cautionary information
Make the content fresh and fun and offer incentives to contributors

In the case of Social Media in the workplace, if you don’t find it, it will find you. The best thing you can do for your employees and your company is start somewhere down the path toward enlightenment. To loosely paraphrase that same boss, if done effectively, the right message can create awareness and awareness can help to change behavior…

Posted in Social Media In The Workplace, Training | Tagged Social Media in Workplace, Training | Leave a Comment »

When It Comes To Social Media, Do You Have A “They Should Know Better” Approach?

October 27, 2010 by Valerie Dennis

When it comes to over-sharing or thinking before they tweet, the perception remains that this is a GEN Y issue, particularly when it comes to the workplace. Gen Y is getting a bad rap but more importantly, it’s time for companies to abandon the view that their employees and management “should know better” or that mistakes are more likely to come from younger employees.

The reality is that more Baby Boomers and GEN X are in strategic or supervisory positions. They are more likely to be privy to sensitive corporate information given their tenure in the workplace. The result of online confidences is not always news worthy, but it can be business-worthy. Lowered morale, respect in the workplace and productivity are all possible consequences of what gets shared online. Even with tight privacy settings, private postings can become public knowledge.

Why this isn’t a GEN Y problem:

GEN X
- Teachers are sending inappropriate comments to students on Facebook.
- A manager tweeted to a friend that his company was going to announce a layoff and he hoped he didn’t have to tell his employees before the weekend.
Baby Boomers
- On Facebook, a senior exec announced a restructuring and his subsequent promotion a day before the formal announcement. The privacy settings were obviously not private enough or a Facebook “friend” disclosed the information.
- Within hours of laying off some employees, a senior exec blogged that she felt bad about having to let some employees go and to feel better, she was going shopping.
- Alan Greenspan’s niece (after she was fired from her firm) emails her former hedge fund clients urging them to find a new firm, citing the company’s “considerable management turmoil”.

People will make mistakes but company risk comes from assuming that employees “should know better” and that they fully understand their online social environment. Execs who “should know better” don’t consider who might share what they say. In such cases, employees can be naively over-confident about privacy and the loyalty of their online “friends”.

Execs and managers discussing sensitive company situations may have no intention of being insensitive. To give them the benefit of the doubt, I would call it misapplied authenticity (in some cases) and they don’t consider the varying perceptions of friends, acquaintances and strangers.

The solutions are well known but many companies are not taking action. To address these influences in the workplace, companies should ensure that they have a social media policy in place, distributed, discussed and documented. Secondly, because of the complexity of social media, companies should train their employees and managers to help them effectively work and manage in a digital era. When all is said and done, most employees are likely filter these comments inside the workplace, but they just don’t understand the playing field well enough to preempt over-sharing online.

Posted in Gen Y, Managing In A Digital Age, Social Media In The Workplace, Workplace Challenges | Tagged Gen Y, Managing In A Digital Age, Social Media in Workplace, Social Media Risks | Leave a Comment »

Sweat (Some) Of The Small Stuff And Don’t Poke Your Employees

September 29, 2010 by Valerie Dennis

What is a Poke?

The poke feature can be used for a variety of things on Facebook. For instance, you can poke your friends to say hello. When you poke someone, they will receive a poke alert on their home page.

Source: Facebook

A young woman, (we’ll call her Julie), is 24 years old and just starting out in her career. She’s off to a really great start and yet, two years into her career she’s experienced her first official “eeew” and “ick” moment. Her boss poked her on Facebook and it made her uncomfortable. Regardless of her boss’ intentions, it’s an official “ick” moment to her. The challenge with Social Media sites is that most communication is subject to interpretation and the limitations of the medium. Without a solid means (or opportunity) to clarify for meaning, it can unintentionally create problems in the workplace.

Despite the official definition of a poke, the unofficial definition is open for interpretation (which seems to be Facebook’s true intent). So what’s wrong with this picture? Maybe nothing, but what may be an innocent poke to Julie’s boss, may be perceived as flirting or unwanted attention to Julie. In this case, she doesn’t know her boss well and while a poke from an old friend may be acceptable, a poke from her boss makes her uncomfortable.

Unfortunately for both parties, little things like this can manifest themselves in the workplace. Truly innocent comments and actions at work may now be interpreted differently. And if he keeps poking her, a small annoyance may become a problem at work. Is her boss a perv and flirting with her? I don’t know—but her radar may now be on Amber Alert. Either way, it has the potential of diminishing a once productive, thriving work relationship.

The new workplace question is “to friend or not to friend” and there’s not one answer to it (unless your company tells you otherwise). In Facebook and other sites, we tend to think everyone is our friend—even if we haven’t seen them in 5 or 25 years or we just met them last week. As many headlines have demonstrated these days, people lose their jobs thanks to those “friends”.

Before you friend or poke a direct report, ask yourself these questions:

Should I friend this employee (or boss) and am I ready for the loss of work and personal boundaries?
If I friend one employee, I need to friend them all. Do I really want that much insight into my employees—and vice versa?
If I friend my employees, will I make the time to filter out my updates so they don’t see everything (if necessary)?
Is there anything that I might say or do (or my friends might say or do) that would cause someone to think differently of me or affect my work relationships?
Do I understand enough about the nuances of a platform’s features that if one of my employees poked me, would I be flattered, flabbergasted, wouldn’t notice or wouldn’t care?
Is there anything that my employees might say or do (or their friends might say or do) that would cause me to think differently of them or affect our work relationships?
If I saw a photo of my boss or employee in a Speedo, would that forever change our work relationship? And how many people would I be tempted to show the photo to…?? And would I call that my official “eeew” moment…?

Frankly, the Speedo would be the deal killer for me.

It’s the little stuff that crops up that we aren’t prepared for in the workplace because we’re often focused on the obvious behaviors that create the most risk. But the little things can add up and become big things that can create risk (legal and HR), so the best deterrent is to train your managers on how to manage in a digital age. The game has changed and it’s still evolving.

Posted in Management, Managing In A Digital Age, Social Media, Social Media In The Workplace, Workplace Challenges | Tagged Managing In A Digital Age, Social Media, Social Media in Workplace, Social Media Risks, Workplace Challenges | 1 Comment »

Older Posts »

Sales Savvy

Is Your Management Team Equipped For What’s Coming Next?

Are You Making The Best Of Bad Times?

Reinvention: MySpace Finds Vision In Its Reality

Email Subscription

Recent Posts

Topics

Top Posts

Archives

Blogroll

Follow “Sales Savvy”