Tweet Them, Friend Them,
Make the Sale
KEY LEARNING SUMMARY
featuring Barbara Giamanco and Kent Gregoire
July 17, 2012
Sponsored by
© 2012 Harvard Business School Publishing. Created for Harvard Business Review by BullsEye Resources www.bullseyeresources.com.
Tweet Them, Friend Them, Make the Sale
July 17, 2012
Tweet Them, Friend Them, Make the Sale
Barbara Giamanco, President and Social Sales Strategist, Social Centered Selling, LLC
Kent Gregoire, Chief Executive and Sales Strategist, Social Centered Selling, LLC
Julia Kirby (Moderator), Senior Editor, Harvard Business Review
OVERVIEW
The question for companies and their sales people is no
longer whether to use social networking but how to do so
well. Capturing the opportunities for high-quality lead
generation and increased sales is a matter of understanding
how to operate in a world where buyers are more savvy and
impatient than ever, and clearly control the sales process.
Social networking has changed how buyers arrive at purchase
decisions. Selling needs to change in response.
Used effectively, “social selling” can identify warm leads,
reach prospects far more efficiently and effectively than cold
calling, shorten sales cycles, boost closure rates, enhance
credibility and brand, and bring inbound sales opportunities
that never would have materialized otherwise. Realizing these
benefits requires implementing a disciplined five-stage social
selling strategy.
CONTEXT
Drawing from their July 2012 Harvard Business Review
article, the speakers explained the concept of social selling
and best practices for implementing it successfully.
KEY LEARNINGS
Social networking has changed how buyers operate; sales
approaches need to change in response.
Today’s buyers are savvy. They do research online, ask social
contacts about experiences with companies, and essentially
complete 80% of the sales cycle by themselves before even
interacting with sales people. Surveys of buyers show that
before making purchase decisions:
 59% engage with peers who have addressed similar
challenges.
 48% follow industry conversations on a topic.
 37% post questions on social networking sites looking for
suggestions and feedback.
 20% directly engage with potential solutions providers
via social networking channels.
Social networking has essentially created a new breed of
savvy buyer. Buyer 2.0 owns the sales process.
“Today's buyers own the sales process. We as
sales people do not. They are in charge."
—Kent Gregoire
Today’s Savvy Buyer 2.0
Leverages the social web
Does own research
Owns the buying process
Is impatient—gets info when
wanted
Expects immediate value
Avoids risk by asking others’
experiences
It is critical that companies have a widespread brand
presence online to be found by Buyer 2.0. Social marketing
can do that. But especially for companies that sell to other
businesses, more is needed than social marketing. B2B
companies need sales people who know how to create great
personal brands as well, to master the practice of “social
selling.”
The distinction between marketing and selling is significant:
Selling is marketing, but marketing is not selling. Marketing
is uninvolved in conversing with prospects, negotiating deals,
or closing sales.
Social selling fits into the sales process at the front end,
generating leads and establishing trusted relationships.
Sales relationships haven’t changed; people still buy from
those they trust. What has changed are the ways in which
sales people create, maintain, and leverage trusted business
relationships. “Social selling is the new handshake,” said Mr.
Gregoire, “But technology can’t close the deal.”
© 2012 Harvard Business School Publishing. Created for Harvard Business Review by BullsEye Resources www.bullseyeresources.com.
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Tweet Them, Friend Them, Make the Sale
July 17, 2012
Sales success today requires social media savvy, sales skills,
people skills, and business acumen to understand and help
solve prospects’ business problems.
Social media makes it easier than ever before to make social
inroads into targeted companies and to secure meetings with
decision makers through connections. But it is also easy to
pursue social leads in brand-damaging ways. Some pitfalls to
avoid and what to do instead:
 Don’t sell. Sending email that is not personalized is like
using a megaphone. It’s SPAM whether typed manually
or not. Email is good for distributing wanted information
widely; e.g., invitations and newsletters. Initiating a
productive one-to-one business relationship requires a
more personal approach. LinkedIn introductions are
ideal. A short note that includes a website link is a good
way to start a dialogue. More substantive notes follow as
the relationship evolves, but the right to engage in a sales
conversation must be earned, as trust builds. “Netiquette” dictates being authentic, honest, and truthful.
‘Netiquette’ Guidelines
Build relationships
Share information
Promote others
Connect people to
opportunities
Say “Thank you”
Keep conversations relevant
Don’t sell!
Add value
“You don't propose marriage on a first date. You
need to earn the right to have the sales conversation."
—Barbara Giamanco
 Don’t cast doubt on your credibility. Brand, personal and
corporate, can be damaged by lying about knowing
someone to secure a meeting. Credibility matters for
establishment of trust.
 Don’t skip your homework—research your prospects.
Asking leads to explain their business with questions like,
“What keeps you up nights?” makes a bad impression.
People don’t want to waste time bringing a sales person
up to speed. Approach a lead only equipped with
business intelligence, insights, acumen, and solutions.
 Ditch the pitch. Sales people need to stop thinking about
what they are selling and start focusing on how. Today’s
impatient buyer does not want to hear about the features
of your products or services. You’ll get their ear with
messages about how you can add value, improving their
business. Replace the traditional pitch with business
intelligence and insights. Deliver the right message to the
right person at the right time. That is the way to secure
meetings with decision makers.
“Sales people still pitching features and benefits
using rudimentary traditional sales skills will
become extinct."
—Kent Gregoire
 Stop cold calling—or cold emailing. Social selling is far
more effective than cold calling, which has little place in
today’s world. Research indicates that 92% of prospects
never or almost never take a meeting from a cold call.
Keys to social selling success include discipline,
consistency, targeting, personalization, and relevancy.
A disciplined social selling strategy will make sales efforts
more efficient and effective. The time investment can be as
small as 15 minutes a day to add a LinkedIn contact, answer a
group question, or share a white paper. This is less time than
it takes to attend a networking luncheon, and practiced
consistently it should yield far greater returns. The speakers’
clients typically realize a 50%–60% increase in meetings with
their prospect companies’ key influencers by using a five-step
social strategy to boost customer loyalty and sales:
1. Have a plan. Define sales objectives at organizational
and personal producer levels. Figure out how to
determine whether leads are worth the time to pursue
and at what point to disengage. Use a scorecard to
determine the degree of potential an opportunity holds.
2. Define your audience. Targeting is important online: If
you can’t define your target, they can’t find you.
3. Pick the right tools. These might include LinkedIn,
Twitter, and sales intelligence tools such as LinkedIn
watch lists. Using that platform’s advanced search
function, lists of prospects can be automatically generated with the right keywords. LinkedIn will update these
© 2012 Harvard Business School Publishing. Created for Harvard Business Review by BullsEye Resources www.bullseyeresources.com.
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Tweet Them, Friend Them, Make the Sale
July 17, 2012
weekly and email to you the new entrants on the list—
prospects delivered to you effortlessly.
4. Implement consistently. Consistent visibility online is
key. Establish a daily process and adhere to it with discipline.
5. Measure and track. There must be processes in place so
an organization knows what effects are resulting from
which actions and whose efforts.
Social selling is bound to transform how companies view,
practice, and manage the sales function.
Social selling will change all aspects of the sales function.
Consider:
 Social proximity is a more relevant way to divide
accounts among sales people than the traditional geographic divides. It makes more sense to give the CocaCola account to the sales rep most connected to people in
the company than to the sales person who lives where
headquarters are. The quantity and strength of a sales
person’s social contacts will translate into more and
better-quality new customers.
 Sales people will increasingly be hired for their
connections, their interpersonal skills, and their aptitude
and understanding of social selling. Existing sales people
will be trained to excel at social selling.
 Sales managers’ roles in social selling will include gaining support from the top, ensuring that implementation
of selling strategies is successful, holding people accountable for consistent application of the strategy, investing
in training, tracking results, and leading by example.
Email Examples: A Don’t and a Do
How to Kill a Brand:
Hi Barbara,
I have tried to reach you several times regarding how XYZ
video company has been able to help organizations like
Talent Builders, Inc. by providing a feature-rich online
video Brand Killer: Email SPAM presentation platform
that allows you to quickly and easily assemble video
content that works. There is a reason Bain Capital,
Progress Software, McKesson, Genzyme, PGA, Callaway
Golf, and many others are using our XYZ solution.
Although I was looking forward to speaking with you, I
certainly don't want to be a nuisance or waste your time.
To help me understand your situation, it would be helpful if
you would respond with one of the following:
1. Hey, XYZ sales rep I'm just not interested (so you can
stop calling and emailing me). Thanks just the same.
2. I'm not the person with whom you should be talking.
I'd like for you to discuss this with ______________.
3. I'm interested, but really busy at this time. Please call
me on this specific date __________ and this time
______.
I appreciate your response, as it will help me save you
some time and effort.
A Better Approach:
Barbara,
I've spent some time on your blog and LinkedIn profile, as
well as have followed your tweets on Twitter. I notice that
you've built quite a name for yourself in the social selling
space. And, it seems you are quite an advocate for the
power of video.
While you may already know this . . . video has proven to
capture awareness from prospects roughly X times more
often than simply text on a page. That increased awareness
has led to XX% increase in sales revenue for the majority of
our clients.
With all of the speaking that you do―and it seems your
webinars are quite popular―our video platform may be an
ideal solution for reaching an even larger audience in a
more personal and engaging way. I'm not sure if our
solution is a fit, but if you are willing to chat for 15 minutes,
we could explore whether or not there is the potential to
work together.
© 2012 Harvard Business School Publishing. Created for Harvard Business Review by BullsEye Resources www.bullseyeresources.com.
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Tweet Them, Friend Them, Make the Sale
July 17, 2012
BIOGRAPHIES
Barbara Giamanco
President and Social Sales Strategist, Social Centered Selling, LLC
Barbara Giamanco is the co-author of The New Handshake: Sales Meets Social Media. An experienced sales and social media
consultant, speaker, and coach, Barb was recognized by Inside View as one of the Top 25 Influential Leaders in Sales. She has a
proven, 30-year track record in generating sales and capped a corporate career at Microsoft, where she led sales teams and
coached executives. Throughout her sales career, Barb has sold $1B in products and services.
Kent Gregoire
Chief Executive and Sales Strategist, Social Centered Selling, LLC
Social Centered Selling chief executive and sales strategist Kent Gregoire is an experienced sales consultant and speaker. He has
more than 20 years of experience helping organizations supercharge sales efforts by incorporating training and employee
development utilizing high-performance tested and proven research-based methodologies. Kent founded and served as CEO of
more than a dozen fast-growth companies, bringing solutions to market, building brand equity, and successfully leveraging sales
channels to achieve exceptional revenue growth.
Julia Kirby (Moderator)
Senior Editor, Harvard Business Review
Kirby is a senior editor at Harvard Business Review, where she develops articles on marketing, as well as other business topics.
She manages the Case Study section of the magazine and has written several cases and articles, including "Left on A
Mountainside" and "Toward a Theory of High Performance." Among the recent articles she has edited are "Defeating Feature
Fatigue" by Roland Rust and coauthors, "Selling to the Moneyed Masses" by Paul Nunes, Brian Johnson, and R. Timothy
Breene, and "Executive Women and the Myth of Having It All," by Sylvia Ann Hewlett, which was included in The Best Business
Stories of the Year 2003 anthology by Vintage.
Before joining HBR in 2000, Ms. Kirby served on the management teams of Accenture™'s Institute for Strategic Change for two
years, and Cap Gemini Ernst & Young™'s Center for Business Innovation for six years. She played a major role in the
development of several business books, including Blur: The Speed of Change in the Connected Economy (1998), Mission
Critical: Realizing the Promise of Enterprise Systems (2000), and The Attention Economy: Understanding the New Currency
of Business (2001). Early in her career, Ms. Kirby was a director in the management consulting division of Computer Sciences
Corporation.
Her formal education includes a BA from Kenyon College and graduate studies at John Carroll University and the Case Western
Reserve’s Weatherhead School of Management.
The information contained in this summary reflects BullsEye Resources, Inc.’s subjective condensed summarization of the applicable conference session. There may be
material errors, omissions, or inaccuracies in the reporting of the substance of the session. In no way does BullsEye Resources or Harvard Business Review assume any
responsibility for any information provided or any decisions made based upon the information provided in this document.
© 2012 Harvard Business School Publishing. Created for Harvard Business Review by BullsEye Resources www.bullseyeresources.com.
www.hbr.org
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