Online Listening for Sales People

Last week I discussed very briefly several areas where online listening is much more than just a buzz monitoring activity. Online listening is more about gathering business intelligence across the enterprise (or SMB for that matter). We get caught up in talking about social media monitoring but there is a lot more to this.

Over the next few posts I will be looking at how using a tool like Trackur can help a business in many areas including sales, marketing, PR, HR, legal etc. etc. I’ll start of by examining how online listening can allow your sales efforts to flourish in these less than robust times.

Sales are about opportunity. This opportunity has to exist on both sides of the equation in order for good business to be done. In old school selling everything is an opportunity. If your prospect doesn’t need your product or service you would then have to convince them that they did and make sure you “close them” before they truly understood that they were making a poor decision based more on coercion than need.

As the buyer has evolved so has the sales process. Sales people have to be more intelligent about who they approach, when they approach them and most importantly why they are approaching them. Online listening can help turn the sales process into a truly productive activity for both buyer and seller alike.

So how can online listening help sales?

• Identify prospects early in the cycle – As a sales person there is nothing worse than coming into a sales opportunity right when the prospect is set to decide within a week about who they will be going with. You are late to the party and chances of success are very slim. By listening online your prospects may be giving off clues about their desire to find new sources / vendors long before they actually start the process. Get in early to make your case over time and not against it.

• See where the competition is faltering – If you are not monitoring your competition’s brand just as closely if not more than your own then you are making a huge mistake. Disgruntled customers of the competitor may be talking about their bad experience right now online. Would it help your cause to be aware of this? Of course! So don’t hope you catch a prospect at the right time with a cold call. Know you have someone interested when you call because they have already said as much.

• Look smarter than your competitors – By listening about everything in your industry and. By default, your prospect’s industry you are going to be more informed and appear more intelligent than the competition. People like to work with smart people. Listen and get smart!

• Work smarter than your competitors – Picking up a directory and making cold calls is something that can only work at scale. In other words, there has to be a large number of people making a large number of calls for the law of large numbers to kick in. Most businesses don’t have that luxury so they need to be more targeted and intelligent in their efforts. Online listening saves the time, effort and tiring effect of unnecessary cold calls in large numbers. Anyway, no one in sales actually makes a lot of calls if there is a better way. Find the better way and use it.

• Have objections answered before they are asked – There are plenty of hints online as to what are roadblocks to purchasing just about anything. You can know the trouble spots and have answers for objections simply by being aware. If you get caught in a sales call with a question that an answer exists online for you will look bad and will hurt your cause more than help it.

• Be an internal information depot – An informed salesperson is very important to many organizations. Why? Sales touches all aspects of any business and if the sales team / person is a source of incredible knowledge then they get more done internally. Be a source of information to your co-workers not a source of frustration.

What other benefits can a sales team member get from listening online? Let us hear your suggestions because we know that the world of online listening is evolving rapidly every day. Let’s learn together.