The Elements of Social Selling

THE ELEMENTS OF SOCIAL SELLING

WITH EXPERT CONTRIBUTIONS FROM:

AARON BLAU THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA

KAREN WALKER CISCO

KARE ANDERSON SAY IT BETTER

PAUL M. RAND ZOCALO GROUP

R. JENNIFER BARR CISCO THE ELEMENTS OF SOCIAL SELLING

CONTENTS

03 INTRODUCTION 04 THREE UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLES OF SOCIAL SELLING 06 HOW TO GET STARTED WITH SOCIAL SELLING 09 BEST PRACTICES: 10 WAYS TO SWAY THE SALE 13 CONCLUSION 14 ADVICE FROM SOCIAL SELLING EXPERTS: Aaron Blau of The University of Iowa Karen Walker of Cisco Kare Anderson of Say It Better Paul M. Rand of Zocalo Group R. Jennifer Barr of Cisco

INTRODUCTION

The way your target customers make purchase decisions is changing. Consumers turn to their mobile devices, laptops and tablets to discuss basically everything – from their personal needs and desires, to the quality of your products and what it’s like to do business with you. No matter whether your customer is making a purchase decision for their personal life or their business, the reality is that people live online, and enterprises can both passively and proactively influence their sales via social.

This shift is the key to the emergence of a new element of sales – social selling. In a world where your customer is 57% of the way through the buying process before your sales team reaches them, your enterprise has to adopt new tactics or risk being left behind.

78.6% WHAT IS SOCIAL SELLING?

For the purposes of this document, we define social selling as when a sales representative participates in social media on behalf of an organization to sell directly to prospects. And guess what? It works.

Forbes shared a 2012 study that showed 78.6% of salespeople practicing social selling outperformed those who didn’t have a social selling strategy. When executed correctly, social selling can drive new revenue and establish lucrative relationships that can yield benefits for years to come.

THREE UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLES OF SOCIAL SELLING

The fundamental element of social selling is building trust. Sales representatives must show that they are likeable, knowledgeable, experts in their field, and build relationships on that basis. To that end, there are three critical principles to social selling.

THE AVG. PERSON SPENDS

MORE THAN THREE HOURS

ON SOCIAL MEDIA EVERYDAY

I. GET PERSONAL The average person spends more than three hours per day on social media. They post their interests, they share their Amazon favorites, they discuss products they like and dislike. And all of this data is freely and publicly available. This information is rich with explicit and implicit clues to what individuals’ needs are, and also what their likes and dislike are.

As a business, your organization must learn to find these clues, assemble them into a coherent picture that informs action, and then act on that data to improve the likelihood of a sale. That is a daunting task with traditional sales and commerce, but new technologies as well as methodologies are making it easier.

SPEND 90% OF THE TIME TALKING ABOUT THINGS THAT INTEREST YOUR AUDIENCE. SPEND 10% OF THE TIME PROMOTING. PROVIDING REAL VALUE IS KEY. PAUL M. RAND, ZOCALO GROUP

II. ADD VALUE Sharing content is one of the most important ways in which people relate to one another online. Sending an article to someone because you think they will benefit, and then being right, is the ultimate sign of thoughtful interaction. Creating and sharing an insightful blog post, beautiful image, inspiring video, or even a highly relevant offer, can establish trust and influence customer preference significantly.

III. NURTURE OVER TIME One of the key lessons every marketer and salesperson has internalized over the last few years is that buying decisions are a journey, and that it’s very difficult to push someone into a purchase until they are ready. In fact, it’s often the case that the best you can do is be top of mind when the right moment in that journey comes. Basically, what we are talking about here is creating preference through long-term nurturing. By being personal and adding value consistently and over time, you can influence the person at the key point in their buying journey.

The trick is to influence that perception by being a source of value over time. Most people and organizations lack the attention span to consistently provide this over a long period. The salespeople and brands that create value over time are the ones that come out ahead.

HOW TO GET STARTED WITH SOCIAL SELLING

Whether you’re a B2B or a B2C company, you’ll need some basic capabilities in order to succeed at social selling. Here’s what they look like.

TRAIN YOUR ORGANIZATION Most enterprises approach social selling by training community managers or distributed salespeople to engage in social. That model makes sense for many organizations since it’s so much easier for individual people to build authentic relationships than for a centralized mothership to do so. However, in the rush to begin selling, you shouldn’t neglect training. Remember that consumers perceive your brand holistically and don’t view one segment of the experience as distinct from another. For them, it’s all just one company even if they have talked to 25 different people. As a result, it’s critical that you train employees on brand standards for language, safe topics to discuss (and those to avoid), data privacy and compliance.

All this information is typically codified in a handbook. The handbook should be: a rulebook, a manifesto, and a snapshot of your company’s solutions. But most importantly, it should be a guide for your sales team, complete with best practices and a comprehensive guide to the solutions you provide. Any employee should be able to pick up this handbook and have an immediate understanding of your company’s vision, voice and planned responses for common scenarios.

PRO TIP: PICK THE RIGHT PEOPLE We all know that you shouldn’t hire an intern to run your social channels, but what makes an ideal social salesperson? This is a crucial role because it’s often the first direct interaction a customer will have with your brand. If a customer notices your representatives are either unresponsive or impersonal, the common response is to assume the same of your brand. You’ve not only put your authority in jeopardy, but have also potentially lost another customer.

The best social salespeople typically already exhibit an aptitude for and desire to participate in social media. You can often find them by simply calling for volunteers. They want to represent your brand online, and have lacked the enablement to do so. You should train them carefully, but you’ll be surprised by how capable your employees already are.

BUILD A CONTENT LIBRARY Social media is a conversational medium (even the ads are built from content postings!). A diverse content library of both original and curated content equips your community managers or distributed salespeople with assets they can repurpose in their day-to-day social selling. Neglecting content is dangerous since you can’t build relationships without conversing actively, but beware of stale content libraries. No one wants to just hear a series of outdated formulaic talking points.

ENSURE MONITORING AND GOVERNANCE No matter how strong your training program is, people can make mistakes. It’s important to have the ability to track your social selling efforts closely from a centralized dashboard. The more automated and integrated that tracking is, the easier it becomes to ensure safe social selling. Set up monitoring for the accounts that participate in social selling, recording of all inbound/outbound messaging, and where possible use automated rules to trigger warnings for actions that might be non-compliant or messages behaving abnormally. Most of the time, if your social salespeople go viral – it’s a good thing. But if it’s the wrong message, then it could be a very bad thing indeed.

KNOW YOUR CUSTOMER Start by taking a snapshot of your audience in terms of sex, income and location. Then create a similar snapshot of terms and keywords that appear in discussions associated with your products or the problems that your products address. Once you have this information, you’ll have a clear picture of who you’re dealing with and how they converse.

With that picture you can use listening and analytics technology to see which platforms tend to host your target buyer and also which platforms tend to draw the most conversation related to the problems your product solves.

BUILD AND STORE INDIVIDUAL PROFILES Personalization requires context, and context comes from capturing and studying information. Once you’ve found your target audience, you must build a profile of the individuals you are trying to interact with. Recent advances in social media management systems (SMMS) let you both manually and programmatically build profiles of audiences based on behavioral actions and profile characteristics. This lets you understand what is likely to be interesting to your audience and stores that information in one place, so that it can be integrated to other systems (like your CRM), or simply accessed whenever it is time to converse with a potential buyer.

As you get more sophisticated, you will be able to group profiles and employ tactics broadly to target larger and larger groups of people in a personalized way. If you’re using an SMMS to do this, make sure it stores data for multiple years. You never know when you’ll need a list of profiled individuals from a prior initiative.

WE USE PROFILING AND MESSAGE HISTORY IN ORDER TO PROVIDE CONTEXT AROUND (AND NURTURE) OUR SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS. AARON BLAU, THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA

II. Stop Selling, X. Start Engaging Measure the Impact

IV. Identify Best Practices: Buying Signals 10 WAYS TO SWAY THE SALE IX. In order to create awe with your audience and Collaborate and Get have a shareholder base that grows by the day, Feedback you have to think outside of the box and go beyond the obvious to please them.

V. Be Honest

VII. VIII. Be a Curator Take of Content Selling Actions VI. Activate Employees THE ELEMENTS OF SOCIAL SELLING

BEST PRACTICES: 10 WAYS TO SWAY THE SALE

We’ve already established that social selling is about building relationships, but how do you make this conversation go in a direction that adds value and sets you apart from your competitors?

A quick way to do this is to start viewing even the smallest customer as a top shareholder. Remember, each individual who interacts with your brand, in store or online, has power beyond the dollars they spend with you. They influence others and can amplify or weaken your brand’s reputation. In order to create awe with your audience and have a shareholder base that grows by the day, you have to think outside the box and go beyond the obvious to please them.

Here are 10 key characteristics of a great social selling program:

I. KILL THE COLD CALL

Cold calls are impersonal, a waste of resources, and an inconvenience to your customer. If you see any traces of this in your marketing strategy, kill it immediately. Replace it with a warm call. There’s no excuse not to warm up a relationship through social, and follow up with personal and meaningful content that your customer actually desires.

II. STOP SELLING, START ENGAGING

Social technology should facilitate real human interaction, not avoid it. Once you find your target customer, you have to give them valuable content that enriches their lives and offers a real solution to their pain points.

When a brand cultivates customer relationships with helpful, engaging content, the customer starts to trust that brand’s product, advice, and the name attached to both.

III. INVEST THE TIME

First, you must make the customer aware of you, then you have to get them to like you, then trust you, and then comes the purchase. This relationship takes a true investment of time and care.

Step outside your own four walls and put yourself in your customer’s shoes – taking the time to understand where your customer is coming from, what they need and what they don’t need. This is how you create user profiles that you can source for future and current engagements.

IV. IDENTIFY BUYING SIGNALS

Finding customers with pain points you can solve, who aren’t engaging with you yet, is possibly the most advantageous social selling tactic you have in your arsenal. Being able to listen across all platforms and anticipate these customer conversations will help you identify a consumer who has a specific problem and is ready to buy your product today.

A SOCIAL LISTENING PLATFORM IS WHERE WE BRING TOGETHER THE ART AND SCIENCE OF MARKETING. KAREN WALKER, CISCO

V. BE HONEST

Regardless of the user profile, your customer is going to be two things: strapped for time and skeptical of a sales pitch. Don’t waste their time by selling them something they don’t need and be upfront about what your intentions are. This goes back to treating your customers like shareholders. Consumers value a brand with integrity – so admit when you’ve messed up, tell the truth, and make it right. sprinklr.com [email protected] (917) 933-7800 © Sprinklr 2014. All rights reserved. 11 THE ELEMENTS OF SOCIAL SELLING

VI. ACTIVATE EMPLOYEES

In the digital age, everyone in your organization is now on your sales team. Your employees are a representation of your company, on and off the job. Encourage them to be social by giving them ready-to-publish, approved content that they can easily use to amplify your brand message.

VII. BE A CURATOR OF CONTENT

Refrain from simply regurgitating standard corporate marketing material. Instead, become a curator of your customers’ interests. This will position you as a trusted information aggregator and deliverer of insight, ensuring that you’re not only attracting the people who share content, but also the ones lurking behind the scenes.

VIII. TAKE SELLING ACTIONS

Don’t be afraid to talk shop. If done tastefully and in an authentic way, it’s fine to mention promotional offers or solutions that might solve people’s problems. You’d do it for a friend, so why wouldn’t you do it in social? Just make sure you’ve earned the right to sell, and that you aren’t constantly spewing coupons (or their equivalent).

IX. COLLABORATE AND GET FEEDBACK

If it’s your customer’s problem you’re trying to solve, then why not hear it straight from them? Collaborating with your customers will help you create solutions that are tailored to the consumers’ exact wants and needs.

You can also attain feedback that will help you better understand the role that social is playing in the purchase process, and how your efforts are driving revenue.

X. MEASURE THE IMPACT

Once the conversation has taken place, you need to measure the impact it has had on your brand and bottom line. This way you can continually improve your social strategy and selling efforts. sprinklr.com [email protected] (917) 933-7800 © Sprinklr 2014. All rights reserved. 12 THE ELEMENTS OF SOCIAL SELLING

CONCLUSION

It doesn’t matter if you’re a B2B or B2C company, a well-planned social selling strategy can have a huge impact on revenue generation and your brand reputation. Get to know your customers on a personal level, engage with them, and see your legacy grow to new heights. Social selling is here to stay. Don’t you think it’s time you joined the conversation?

ADVICE FROM SOCIAL SELLING EXPERTS

We recently asked leading experts at Cisco, The University of Iowa, Zocalo Group and Say It Better to provide a few best practices and practical advice for social selling success. The following pages are their responses. But first, meet our team of guest contributors: AARON BLAU ASSISTANT DIRECTOR & NEW MEDIA MANAGER THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA

KAREN WALKER SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT OF MARKETING CISCO

KARE ANDERSON FOUNDER AND CEO SAY IT BETTER

PAUL M. RAND PRESIDENT & CEO ZOCALO GROUP

R. JENNIFER BARR SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER, ONLINE BRAND CISCO

AARON BLAU ASSISTANT DIRECTOR & NEW MEDIA MANAGER, THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA

Aaron manages the official social media accounts for The University of Iowa and develops social media strategies to actively engage followers.

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/pub/aaron-blau/6b/794/532 Twitter: @AaronBlau

FINDING, ENGAGING AND RETAINING PROSPECTS: THE NEW COLLEGE TRY

Managing social media at a major, public university isn’t all that different Admissions is a major part of what we do in social at The University of than managing social media for a large business or a corporation. The Iowa. We want to show our prospective students that we are socially terminology might change but the end goals are the same. engaged on our campus and hook our ‘clients’ as early as possible.

We have a brand strategy at The University of Iowa and we want to The trick is knowing your audience. In the business world there is no represent those values in social. Businesses have products to sell – typical customer. The same can be said for higher education - there is we have programs and degrees. Businesses market to clients – no typical student. A prospective student could be a 17-year-old high we market to prospective students, current students, alumni, and school kid who is visiting campus for the first time. It could also be a 45 friends of the university. year-old parent going back to school to finish his or her degree. How we engage with those different types of students has to vary drastically. At The University of Iowa, we have put a substantial social focus on enrollment. We use our social presence to find prospective students In order to do this successfully, we need to be able to see and track all and enter into genuine conversations with them, hoping to generate an conversations and provide the most relevant content. application and eventually if that turns into an acceptance letter, they become students, then alums, then lifelong advocates.

FINDING THE RIGHT CONVERSATION But through our enterprise social management platform, we can now easily look at the message history and user profile to see more Nearly all of our early touch points in admissions-related content information about the student. Are they a junior in high school? Are revolve around campus visits or acceptance letters. If a prospective they a full-time mom thinking about going back to school? What student tweets that she enjoyed her campus tour, the university can careers are they pursuing? respond from its official Twitter account to ask her what she liked and how we can improve. If this same individual enrolls later on, we have Knowing the context of these conversations helps us add value every documented context of that relationship. We can then nurture this time we reach out to a ‘client.’ relationship and engage with the student as she becomes an alumna, possibly a donor, or an advocate for our university. ADDING VALUE TO EVERY INTERACTION

Finding prospective students can sometimes be a challenge. Not every We have hundreds of thousands of stories coming from our campus. student on a campus visit takes the time to mention @uiowa in a tweet We obviously can’t flood our channels with every story. We need to or searches out our accounts in social. That’s why we have enlisted the mine the stories that will drive engagement and resonate with our aid of a strong social listening platform to proactively search for what’s audience. Message tagging makes that possible. being said about our ‘brand’ across all social platforms, not just our We have set up specific message tagging that allows us to track metrics owned channels. based on topics surrounding our social posts. Was the story from our If a prospective student tweeted that she’s thinking about becoming news site that we posted related to parenting research or astronomy? a doctor, we can see this conversation and respond with information What department are we talking about the most? We can answer those about our top-rated medical program. We’re able to engage in questions with a simple mouse click and have factual data to back it up. conversations when our ‘clients’ might not be expecting a response We are constantly revising our strategies to deliver the right content to from us, giving us more credibility and increasing our reputation with the right audience. We’re even reaching out to students and hosting that prospective student. ‘social focus groups’ to discover what they would like to see (or not see) KEEPING TRACK OF THE CONVERSATION from our social channels. Social managers have only one chance to make a great first Solid relationships don’t stop after one conversation. We use profiling impression, whether it’s with a client in the business world or a student and message history in order to provide context around (and nurture) in the academic world. Genuine engagement is the key to making that our social relationships. first impression last over the span of your social relationship. We don’t Before we enlisted the help of a management platform, we had want to just engage to see successful metrics on the back end. We care no effective way of tracking these conversations (other than Excel about the opinion of our ‘clients’ and want their voices to be heard. spreadsheets). No surprise here, that system doesn’t support scale. Students take away a wealth of knowledge during their time at our university, but the knowledge we gain from those students in social is more valuable than they will ever know.

KAREN WALKER SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT OF MARKETING, CISCO

Karen leads Cisco’s global Go To Market Organization that creates and delivers the integrated global marketing plan for the company, from marketing strategy through to in-country execution of brand campaigns and marketing programs. Her team takes an integrated marketing approach from brand to demand, using digital and social media to engage customers and partners on their purchase journey. She continues to champion marketing’s role as an accountable business function aligning closely with sales teams and a vital resource to partners.

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/karenmwalker Twitter: @KarMWalker

SMART COMPANIES WILL EMBRACE SOCIAL SUPPORT AND SOCIAL SELLING

What makes a company smart when it comes to being social? They A 2013 Havas Worldwide survey showed that nearly half of consumers recognize three things: around the world are frustrated by slow social response times. Yet a Social Media Marketing University (SMMU) survey found that few brands 1. Your customers’ social expectations continue to rise. have strategies in place to deal with the relatively high incidence of complaints received via social media. Less than one in five said they 2. Offering social support to your customers brings valuable respond within an hour – and yes, that’s how quickly your customers insight – and can help or hurt your brand depending on how expect you to respond, according to a recent Millward Brown Digital you do it. survey commissioned by Lithium Technologies. 3. The changing role of marketing as a revenue engine means you More than one in five say they rarely, if ever, respond to customer can’t afford to ignore social selling. complaints made via social. Yikes.

RISING SOCIAL EXPECTATIONS If you think social expectations are high now, think about the next generation of buyers. They’re more and more likely to be digital natives. More and more consumers and B2B buyers are contacting brands If your social responsiveness and content isn’t timely and engaging, through social media. Brands that fail to meet social expectations risk you’ve lost them. alienating a large percentage of customers. sprinklr.com [email protected] (917) 933-7800 © Sprinklr 2014. All rights reserved. 17 THE ELEMENTS OF SOCIAL SELLING

SOCIAL SUPPORT: SOCIAL SELLING: HELPING YOUR CUSTOMER PLEASE HELP ME – OR ELSE… ALONG THEIR PURCHASE JOURNEY

Social customer service can be both an ROI driver and a cost-saver. A social listening platform is where we bring together the art and CMOs are seeing the cost benefit of shifting money from person- science of marketing, and contribute to the changing role of marketing intensive tactics to social, mobile, cloud, and analytics. And the benefits as a revenue engine rather than a cost center. go beyond cost. Social tools offer huge potential in terms of how marketing can Really, it’s not just social support, it’s social development. Our accelerate the sales process and the time to revenue for your company. customers give and get help from each other on social platforms. If With them, you can see how your customers have traversed your social you listen in and listen carefully, it’s a tremendous source of insight to and digital communities – where they’ve been, what they’ve looked at, providing a better experience and a better product. Getting that real- who they’re talking to and what they’re saying. Then you are able to not time feedback about your product or offer enables you to innovate and only give your sales teams a good sense about what the customers are move much more quickly from a business standpoint. interested in and where they are on their journey, but also give them something compelling for their customers to be able to take that next Great benefits, yes. And what’s the risk of not offering social support, step in their purchase journey. or of doing it poorly? According to the Lithium study, 38% of respondents will feel more negative about a brand that fails to meet Social listening is part of managing the buyer’s journey. Recent ITSMA their expectations for timely social response, and six in 10 will “take research shows 85% of B2B buyers use social media during the unpleasant actions to express their dissatisfaction.” purchase process. Smart marketers begin discussions with buyers on their own terms and in the social environments where buyers seek That unpleasantness includes shaming the brand on social media. information. About one-quarter of the brands in the SMMU survey said their reputations had been tarnished by negative social media posts, and a Smart companies turn social listening into the winning combination of significant portion had lost customers and revenue. social support, social development and social selling.

Makes it sound like a no-brainer to have a strategy in place to deal with negative social comments, doesn’t it? Yet one in four respondents to the SMMU survey said they don’t have a strategy in place – and they don’t have plans to develop one. Don’t be one of those companies, at greater risk of losing control of the conversation about your brand.

KARE ANDERSON CO-FOUNDER & CEO, SAY IT BETTER

In addition to her role as CEO at Say It Better, Kare is also a TED and TEDx presenter on mutuality matters, author of Moving From Me to We, columnist for Forbes and Huffington Post, and an Emmy-winning former Wall Street Journal and NBC journalist. Her clients are as diverse as Salesforce, Novartis, 18 startups, and seven pro-athletes. As David Rockefeller Jr. said after hearing Kare speak, “She forever changes how you see yourself and your world.”

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/kareanderson Twitter: @KareAnderson

SOCIALLY EARN A PLACE IN THEIR HEARTS AND MINDS SO THEY WANT TO BUY

In our increasingly connected, information-flooded and complex Six ways to communicate-to-connect and socially sell: world, those who become successful at social selling will combine the traits of empathic communication intelligence (ECI) and social tech 1. REALLY STEP IN YOUR PROSPECTS’ SHOES savviness. Additionally, their insights – drawn from first-hand contact Many companies’ ostensibly customer-centric content starts with with prospects and clients – will make them an integral part of their describing their product, with words like ‘our’ instead of citing a familiar company’s operations. Companies able to retain these top performers problem, opportunity or situation that is top of mind for the people will be those that encourage and facilitate ever greater cross-support they seek to serve. The most credible situations to cite, of course, are and innovation, inside and outside the ‘walls’ of their firm. Here are those that existing customers describe in their own words, not as ‘use some traits that may make you one of those sought-after social cases.’ Consequently, a top goal for any company is to enable their selling stars. happy customers to gain visible and valued bragging rights that can be shared with the firm and directly via social channels. That way, you can cite them in fresh ways that pull in new prospects, highlight customers in ways that support their goals, and motivate people to keep sharing.

2. MAKE YOUR MESSAGE ALMOST AS VITAL AS A.I.R. Hint: Find a familiar and affirming product or situation to which you To capture attention and move more prospects closer to buying, compare one of your product’s main benefits. include the three elements of an indelible message: 5. GET CLOSER TO SELLING SOONER BY • Actionable: Build in at least one action they can take in SAYING IT QUICKER response to you message. Be brief. This is the sister virtue to specificity in social selling. It not only proves that you have chosen your most A.I.R.-filled point, but • Interestingness: Provide a startling tip, label, insight or other also that you distilled it to its essence, thus increasing the chances that detail that gets their attention. prospects, though busy, will be pulled into reading more. • Relevant: Directly address their situation with what you write, and the social medium in which they can receive it, when they 6. BUILD STEPS ACROSS THE POND TO most need it. WHERE THEY’LL WANT TO BUY Like stone steps across a pond, each pithy point, in the right sequence 3. GET SPECIFIC SOONER and properly spaced, keeps prospects stepping toward buying. One overly long or misplaced point will stop them cold. Every segue The specific detail can prove the general conclusion, yet seldom the between steps should be blindingly obvious. reverse. Unfortunately, even in sales, considerable content begins with generalizations. Yet choosing the reverse will demonstrate that you YOUR ULTIMATE REWARD WITH VIVIDLY RELEVANT know what your prospect needs most. SOCIAL SELLING? Generic statements don’t have as much impact as a specific detail Whoever most vividly describes a situation usually determines how about your product or service (e.g. It takes ¼ of the time compared to others see it, describe it to others and ultimately decide on it. Make competitor X’s product). That being said, don’t be so specific that it’s your characterization the most credible and compelling, and others incomprehensible. Convey specific facts in a way that people will inside and outside your firm – from peers to prospects – will cite it. easily understand. If your description or offer is the most compelling, it becomes the 4. ADOPT A ‘COMPARED TO WHAT?’ ANALOGY ground on which that situation is most discussed. Like earworms, communicating to connect messages stays with us and can spread Make an attractive comparison from a different profession or industry. farther and faster in our increasingly connected era. Plus, those who I coached a biotechnology CEO who had just 20 minutes to present at listen closely, socially, can iterate most quickly to keep that message a conference of investors where complex descriptions and fast-talking fresh and ever more relevant for those they seek to serve. were the norm. He strolled onto the stage, rolled back a sleeve, pointed to the medical patch on his arm and said, “When this patch goes on the market in April, patients who use it will feel the pain relieving effect throughout their body faster than a Porsche can go from zero to 90,” concluding with a sweeping gesture of his arm – making his body a moving billboard to reinforce his message.

PAUL M. RAND PRESIDENT & CEO, ZOCALO GROUP

Paul M. Rand is the President and CEO of Zocalo Group, Omnicom’s leading digital and word-of-mouth agency. He is also the author of Highly Recommended: Harnessing the Power of Word of Mouth and Social Media to Build Your Brand and Your Business (McGraw Hill, 2013).

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/paulmrand Twitter: @paulmrand

HOW TO BECOME THE MOST RECOMMENDED BRAND

What would you say if I told you that there was one marketing It’s the science of ‘social proof.’ As humans, we’re hardwired to look to approach that would drive sales more than anything else in your mix? others for help with decisions, and we want to help others by giving them advice. It streamlines and simplifies our lives. Think of all of the Accordingly to Nielsen and a host of corroborating sources, 92% of things children learn by watching and repeating. This same mindset consumers report that a recommendation from a friend or someone applies to purchase decisions. In fact, 91% of consumers say they they trust is the number-one influence on whether they buy a product make a recommendation after having a positive experience with a or service. This is far higher than any form of advertising, PR, direct mail particular brand, and 49% said they did it because they wanted to or even search activity. help the person to whom they made the recommendation (Zocalo Group Recommendation Study).

In today’s world of constant social sharing, this word of mouth is on 5. Regularly evaluate and evolve, but stay true to your core. steroids. People are talking about everything – from what they had Listen and carefully consider feedback from inside and outside for breakfast to which car they will buy. And the audience isn’t one or of your organization. two friends at lunch – it’s thousands on Twitter and Facebook. Things like Yelp reviews make or break local businesses, and social activity is 6. Structure and manage your organization to be impacting search results more than any other factor. recommendable from the ground up: human resources, marketing, operations, customer service and innovations. So, how can you tap into the power of the recommendation? Recommendations don’t just matter in marketing. Who better to recommend new talent to join your company than your most valuable employees? And who better to recommend new SIX KEY STEPS TO BECOMING HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: product ideas than your top most engaged fans? 1. Develop a clear and purposeful story of how you want people These principles seem simple, but if you apply them, they have to talk about and recommend your brand. the power to transform your business. You can become the most The more you effectively communicate this story, the more it discovered, recommended and chosen brand in your category. will become synonymous with your brand, informing how your customers talk about you.

2. Live your brand. Put your energy and focus into staying aligned with your mission.

3. Be human, transparent and live up to mistakes quickly. Mistakes happen, but a customer complaint addressed quickly and transparently can turn a brand detractor into an advocate.

4. Stay engaging and interesting. Use the 90/10 rule – spend 90% of the time talking about subjects of shared interest with your audience, and 10% of the time on promotion. Providing real value is key.

R. JENNIFER BARR SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER, ONLINE BRAND, CISCO

Jennifer Barr has been a social media marketing manager for two years at Cisco. Previously she helped launch Google+ pages and a healthcare social networking startup in Palo Alto, CA. She has worked at both enterprise and start-up companies and has experience in social media, marketing, sales and management consulting. She has volunteered on the organizing committee of 10 TEDx events, and is currently focusing on her role of co-curator of the TEDx at UC Berkeley: TEDxBerkeley.

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/rjenniferbarr Twitter: @rjenbarr

SINCERITY – THE SECRET SAUCE FOR SELLING IN THE DIGITAL AGE

Digital selling retains many of the elements of face-to-face sales. So how do you stand out among the noise of website and social If what you say is out of sync with who you are and what you do, it stream clutter? shows, and it makes people less likely to do business with you as a trusted source. Prospects. Clients. Partners. Employees. Many brands use technology and engagement strategies. Attracting and retaining clients and employees for the long run in the digital age, In 10 minutes of online search, people can find out more information however, needs to go beyond IT prowess and even great videos that about your company than you even knew existed a year ago. Long go viral. gone is the time when website content, press releases and SEC filings are the main information sources. Now even for B2B companies, your Add sincere communication and authentic connection to the mix – customers and employees may be posting pictures and comments not just because it looks good or helps you to get sales – but because and reviews all over the world 24/7. it is who you truly are as an individual or organization.

TIPS FOR SINCERE ONLINE COMMUNICATION Finally, be clear about the relationship between your communication and your business goals. That will help you to have an authentic voice. Much of the work for sincere communication needs to be It’s okay to communicate to make money. That’s what businesses do. done offline: People know that. It’s what else you have to offer that can set you apart. 1. ESTABLISH A CLEAR IDEA OF WHO YOU ARE BEFORE YOU GO ONLINE Sincerity can be an important factor to help you build a digital interface that inspires trust and loyalty, over time, with multiple stakeholders, and What is your brand? What characteristics and attributes do you want around the world. people to associate with you and your product or services? *Opinions expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect 2. FIND OUT WHO YOUR CUSTOMERS ARE AND the opinions of organizations for which I work or volunteer. WHAT THEY WANT Listen to learn before designing your website, and listen twice as much as you communicate on your social channels. Use this information as input into product design, interface and sales approach.

Once you go online:

3. COMMUNICATE TO CONNECT • Use simple, clear, consistent messaging.

• Sincerely appreciate customers, partners and peers – it’s only a zero sum game if you play that way. Come from a ‘win/win’ attitude and you’re more likely to attract customers and partners who think the same way and want to share positive customer experiences with their social networks.

• Add elements of humor and fun from time to time, even if you sell complex, technical products.

sprinklr.com [email protected] (917) 933-7800 © Sprinklr 2014. All rights reserved. 24 Sprinklr believes people never forget how you made them feel. That’s why AUTHORS we help brands manage their customers’ social media experiences by building software that connects every social media experience to every Carly Roye enterprise system.

Brian Kotlyar Unlike tools and platforms, Sprinklr is the only end-to-end integrated social relationship infrastructure. Called ‘the most powerful technology in the market’ by a leading analyst, Sprinklr accelerates the social maturity of a brand from just ‘doing social’ to being social, at scale. Sprinklr’s cloud software and strategic and analytic services enable the enterprise to innovate faster, grow revenue, manage risk and reduce operational costs.

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