Whenever I speak, it is not unusual for people to tell me that they understand that social media is important to their business but that they just “don’t have time” to do it.
Here’s the thing. You need to make the time. It needs to be a priority.
You may feel you don’t have time, but I’d bet the farm that if you carefully evaluated where and how you spend your time for just one week, you would realize that you waste time or spend time on activies that are not leading to sales results. Let’s face it, everyone has time wasters on their calendar. Take the time to figure out yours. I wrote a post in April about managing your social time that you can read here.
I also know that it is easy to fall into ruts and convince ourselves that running around to all of those in-person networking events are worth the time invested. They usually aren’t. I’m not saying you shouldn’t attend in-person events. You should. Provided that you consider two things:
- Is this your target buying audience? If it isn’t, should you really be attending?
- What’s your follow up plan? Most folks are horrible at their sales follow up.
Generally, people don’t think about their networking in a strategic way and it is important that you do if you plan to close business. Your goal should be to have a strategic mix of offline and online networking that is followed up with phone calls, email, email marketing, etc. It is not one thing that leads to the results that you want. It is a combination of approaches.
Using social media to create visibility and advance credibility for your work will speed up the sales cycle and help you close deals more quickly. That alone should be reason enough to stop procrastinating and just get going. Yes, you need to get some training to learn the tools and discipline yourself to incorporate social approaches into your daily sales process. The investment is worth it for several reasons.
Your buyers are there.
Your competition is there.
Which means…
You need to be there.
Let me assure you that the reason most folks flounder with their social networking activities is because they are not clear about what to do while online. So, here are 5 things that you can do in 15 minutes every day on LinkedIn that would go a long way toward helping you achieve your sales goals.
- Invite someone to connect
- Answer a question in a group
- Post a status update
- Share a whitepaper, presentation, case study or your blog post
- Do research on 3 of your prospects
By the way, I can do these things using Twitter or Facebook.
Set a reoccurring appointment on your calendar for 15 minutes in the morning (before you get sucked into email, which is the subject of another post) and do five things daily to move things along.
Here are few more things you could do in your 15 minutes:
- Post an event that you are hosting
- Ask a question of the broader LinkedIn community in the Answers section (excellent way to gather feedback on trends or new ideas)
- Update your book list
- Promote the good works of a colleague
- Make a recommendation for a peer
If you are sharp and laser focused and know exactly what you plan to accomplish, you can get quite a bit done in 15 minutes.
If you are serious about increasing sales, isn’t 15 minutes a day worth the investment?
Thanks Barb.
I think it is very easy to dismiss something that one does not understand very well. If SoMe is the direction that businesses are moving in, it seems foolish to ignore that fact in favor of status quo.
It is also easy to dismiss something if it does not produce results instantly. All good sales and marketing takes time. Shortcuts are rarely good business strategies.
Cheers,
Marc
Thanks Marc for sharing your thoughts. I love what you said about people wanting instant results. With or without technology, that just does not happen. Some things will never change. There is no quick fix!