Starting to engage in Social Media may look simple, but it is not (see my post Social Media, Free and Dangerous). There are lot of questions that need to be answered before you can make a start.
In this series of posts I want to inform you on how I am going to try and get through this process the coming weeks. If you want to comment or share your experiences with us, please do not hesitate to post a reaction.
Let’s try to make a start.
Who
The first thing you need to do is figure out who you want to reach or communicate with. In B2B that will generally be suspects (people that might be interested in your products), prospects (you are pretty sure they will be interested) and existing customers. Moreover you may also be looking at winning back lost customers.
When
The way you interact with people depends on where they are on the timeline of your sales process. This ‘when’ question is important because along this timeline the way you communicate will change.
Where
The next thing is figuring out where you most likely are going to find or meet all these people. Will that be on your website, on Twitter or Facebook or on whatever other platform available. The answer to the question ‘where’ depends on your relationship to the customer (the ‘who’ question) and on their position on the timeline (the ‘when’ question).
The Sales Process
The answer to the first question (Who) is relatively simple. If you have enough knowledge of your market you will be able to identify the suspects and prospects. You know your existing customers and you also know what lost customers you want to win back. Of course there are different types of customers (end-users, installers, OEM’s etc.) but I will come back to that at a later stage.
Now it is important to get an answer to the ‘When’ question. You need to look at your sales process and try to identify a number of different stages where your (would-be) customer can be at any moment in time. The sales proces may be slightly different for you, but in my case I am able to identify the follow stages:
- Ignorance
People in this stage of the proces do know about you or your products. These people will generally not be looking actively for your products or your company.
- Inquisitive
These people know about the type of products you sell, but maybe not about your products or your company. In this case people are looking for more information.
- Send an inquiry
People know your products and now want to receive a quotation.
- Negotiate
After receiving your offer, people may want to negotiate with you.
- Purchase
Your offer has been succesful and the order is being processed.
- Delivery
The ordered product is delivered to the customer.
- Installation
The customer may need your assistance installing your product.
- Service & Support
At some stage in the future the customer may need your assistance again.
Because we can look at these stages as pretty much ‘stand-alone’ positions, we are able to determine for each phase what the best approach is.
Of course it is wrong to only deploy Social Media in the first or only a few stages of the sales process. It is all or nothing.
In my next ’Getting started’ post we will have a closer look at the first stages of the sales process.
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