B2B Social CRM Increasingly Important as Sales Cycles Lengthen

If you are in sales, you of all people know how challenging it is to build the right relationship with those who are buying anything these days. On top of that the reality is that 5-8 people are actually involved in the decision process at the buying end.

On the sales end, generating high-quality leads is the largest challenge in the B2B space according to recent research by Marketing Sherpa. Selecting the right tool to help you move forward in social business relationship engagement is our challenge as business development professionals. That tool is Social CRM.

Buyers have been transformed

According to the 2009 B2B Buyer Transformation Study by Onesource:

• 60% of business-to-business (B2B) salespeople say cycles for closing sales are extending,
• 43% of B2B buyers follow online social media discussions to learn about products,
• 25% of  buyers say social media influenced their selection of a solutions provider, and
• 22% of buyers connected directly with a solutions provider via social networks.

The sales process has changed

I hear sales executives say all the time that social media doesn’t benefit the bottom line. But I know better. Need more data?

A recent social media engagement report on top brands by EngagementDB.com bears this out. The report highlights the engagement these top 100 brands had with social media.  I thought it interesting to note that Siemens and Caterpillar, two large industrial manufacturers placed 48th and 57th respectively.  Manufacturing, while not at the bottom of engagement with social media, is generally thought to be lagging in adoption.  I also noted that CocaCola was sitting carefully between them at the 51st index spot.

“While much has been written questioning the value of social media, this
landmark study has found that the most valuable brands in the world are experiencing a direct correlation between top financial performance and deep social media engagement. The relationship is apparent and significant: socially engaged companies are in fact more financially successful.”

Ben Elowitz, CEO, Wetpaint & Charlene Li, Partner, Altimeter Group

Take an objective view of social media

Here are some of the sales objectives social media can help you achieve:

• Gaining competitive intelligence
• Identifying new sales opportunities
• Shortening buying cycles
• Improving sales success rates
• Increasing productivity of sales staff

If only there were a tool to tap into the power of social media…

Say goodbye to CRM and hello to Social CRM

A few months ago ACT!, my contact relationship management (CRM) tool, began having stability problems. I backed up all of my contact information and uploaded it to Gmail and Google docs for cloud storage. Then I took a serious look at the Xeesm tool (Xeequa is the Software development company) that I had been using for social link management.  and its new Xeesm – Edge social relationship management application. (Xeesm Edge  was officially released in April.)
Wendy Soucie Consulting LLC is a small company, so for me the lack of a traditional CRM isn’t a problem; however, for a larger company, I wouldn’t dump a CRM that you’re heavily invested in. Rather work with an application that can tie in the social component― one that provides the social interaction component outside of your firewall.

Using Xeesm-Edge

April has been a month of building targeted groups for a business development effort within what Xeesm calls flights .  I eagerly joined up with Xeequa as a business partner to provide training on the Xeesm Tool and to help promote the new product. [Disclosure of business relationship]. I have had to adapt my sales process to changes that buyers are making. As the ultimate connecting channel, social media creates its own “World of Mouth” with user-generated content, blogs, and “ask-a-friend” purchase strategies.
I already have two potential clients.  For both, I used social media first (LinkedIn connections), face to face meetings, presentations, and followup within social media to maintain the conversation while it progressed to the proposal phase. They are both in my Xeesm Flight!
So over the next weeks I will share my progress in using the Social CRM application, Xeesm-Edge.

Xeequa is an extremely social company and has―so far― really worked with the BETA group to address our suggestions and criticisms of the new product. I hope that doesn’t change. But, if it does, expect that I will write about it here in my blog.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Xeesm Company Introduction – Social Business Applications (slideshare.net)
• Xeesm 2020 – The fast track to social business (slideshare.net)
• Discussing Social Media with Xeequa CEO Axel Schultze (deswalsh.com)
• It’s a bird, it’s a plane! No, it’s Social Media Super-consultant! (wendysoucie.com)
• Social CRM: Not Your Father’s CRM – Forbes.com (customerthink.com)

Related posts:

1. Your Sales Process is Old | XeeSM and Social CRM | In My Opinion
2. Surviving in business by developing social business relationships
3. It’s a bird, it’s a plane! No, it’s Social Media Super-consultant!
4. Using the Xeesm dispatcher and preparing data | SocialCRM
5. Social ecosystems tracked by Xeesm social graphs