Are You an Insight Curator?

One of the things that sets the very best sales reps apart isn’t just their ability to challenge customers (as we’ve seen with our research around Insight Selling), it’s how they engage with their customers before the sales process even begins. The best reps know that their customers are now learning on their own more than ever before and that success means not just responding to customer demand, but actually creating it. Consequently, sales reps are using social media to teach their customers where they’re learning.

The best sales reps understand that a successful social media presence is not about using social media to create another commercial channel, it’s about becoming an information curator to help deliver insight earlier in the pipeline right where their customers are learning. Sales reps who establish a credible social selling presence are becoming valued contributors to their customers’ professional community and act as the hub for their professional network of customers, influencers, industry experts, and leaders.

Let’s say you’ve taken the plunge as an organization and have committed to actively supporting a social media initiative. Now what? Below are some tips and resources that will help your reps become valued insight contributors:

How can our sales reps build a personal brand around themselves on behalf of our company?

Sales reps should be the living, breathing embodiment of all that their company has to offer. That said, make it personal! Customers want to know that there’s a person on the other end of that tweet, not a corporation. A sales reps’ social media presence should be a reflection of who they are. To help gauge what that looks like find leaders in your industry and have your reps emulate what they’re doing.

How can our reps improve their social media presence?

Reps should be sharing information regularly. This will help them build their personal brand image as an expert in their industry and as a hub for their professional network. Reps should be Tweeting, Retweeting, posting content, blogging, and connecting people to each other. They should be following their customers and the influencers of their customers, reading what they read, attending tradeshows and industry events, and then sharing that information with their network. They should be learning about the organizations, networks, events, and resources that are valuable to their customers and incorporating them into their social media presence. If their customer wins an award or writes a great blog post your reps should promote it on behalf of their customers. If your reps read an interesting article they should always be thinking how can this information help my potential buyers or existing customers?

Want more information on how your reps can create a powerful personal brand?

Meet Jill Rowley. She is currently the Social Selling Evangelist at Oracle and has over 12,000 followers on Twitter! We profiled her when she was Eloqua’s top salesperson three years running to understand how she created such a powerful social media presence. To learn more take a look at this webinar interview where Brent Adamson, Managing Director of the Sales Leadership Council at CEB and co-author of the Challenger Sale interviews Jill.

Check back next week for tips and resources on how sales organizations can enable and encourage their sales force to utilize social media in a scalable way.

CEB Sales members, listen to our recent webinar on Social Selling, and read our full study on Getting in Early: Shaping Demand Through Pre-Funnel Engagement.