Add Social Media to Your Outbound Efforts by lisafugere

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Add Social Media to Your Outbound Efforts
by lisafugere

Outbound prospecting is an important part of sales strategies, and social networks can be crucial for the execution of a successful prospecting strategy. Social prospecting is all about utilizing sales intelligence to find key insights about potential customers and to provide them with personalized sales messages.

Search for the Right Prospects
Social media can significantly expand your qualifications for an ideal customer. A typical target list will contain companies that fit a target profile because of their size or industry. A social target list is dynamic. Executives from companies that don?t fit your typical target profile may still have a great need for your products and services, and you can find them through social media. You can start looking for them by becoming an influencer in topics that relate to your offerings. If you grow your network of influence, prospects may come to you. You can also seek them out by listening to conversations related to the needs and opportunities your products and services fulfill.

Find Out More about Them
Traditional data will help you find basic contact information for prospects: names, titles, email addresses, Twitter handles, etc. Social intelligence tends to contain much more useful information. The personal and professional profiles of prospects can provide you with the information that you need to deliver an intriguing, unique and well-targeted message.

Outbound prospecting is all about familiarizing yourself with the preferences and the needs of your potential customers. Go through their profiles to find out the groups of which they are members, the applications that they use most often and the individuals to whom they are connected.

Offer a Personalized Solution
Once you familiarize yourself with your prospect?s profile, you?re in a better position to offer a personalized solution than were you to simply rely on traditional data.

The way in which you contact a target customer is essential for the success of your outbound prospecting efforts. A good message needs to contain the following:

    Who you are and what you do
    Your reputation and the quality assurance that a client needs in order to establish a healthy relationship with you
    Why you are contacting that particular individual
    What your offer is and why it will be mutually beneficial

Your Profile should Do the Work on Its Own!
Social prospecting will gain momentum if you are ready to put some effort in the preliminary stages of the process.

Work on your profile. It has to be search engine optimized and it has to demonstrate your professionalism. Focus solely on your area of expertise for lead to opportunity conversion. If you want to increase B2B sales, you need to tell the world why you are the best partner inside a particular professional niche.

Create a Dialogue
Creating and maintaining a dialogue will keep prospects involved with you.

Find ways to spark lively discussions. Share interesting content inside your area of expertise and ask your connections to comment on the topic. Answer the questions that your followers have.

Answering in a prompt, polite and professional manner will help you establish relationships. Building long-lasting connections is the heart and soul of successful outbound prospecting through social networks.