3 Ways to Shorten Your B2B Sales Cycle Through Personal Branding

Creating a personal brand and using social media to strengthen it can help you greatly shorten your sales cycle and ultimately achieve better results.

Accounting firm associates, agency account executives, law firm rainmakers, real estate sales representatives, pharmaceutical sales representatives, software sales professionals, and insurance producers all have one glaring thing in common - long sales cycles. In my recent discussions and interviews with professionals from all the above walks of life, it has been clear to me that the sales cycle challenge is one that needs some good resolution.

On top of the fact that these industries' sales processes are long, there is also the obstacle of saturation in digital marketing. There are literally millions of competitors locally, regionally, nationally, and globally that are all pushing to shorten their sales cycle. Some invest heavily in direct marketing, some through industry conferences, some in paid search marketing, some in meal and travel expenses and the list goes on. In that there is also one common advantage - each sales professional is a unique personality.

A properly developed and utilized online personal branding program can work to shorten your sales cycle. Learn the top three ways you can shorten your sales cycle:

1. Identify Your Winning Position and Exploit It

Your "personal brand" cannot work for you unless you first identify what it is that equals your winning formula. To do this, you need a review. Answer these questions:

• What type of clients are drawn to me and why?
• What do I know better than my colleagues, competitors?
• Where do I spend the majority of my time developing new business?
• What are my top strengths? 
• What do people love about me?
• How do I sell? Do I tell stories? Do I like to dig into facts? Am I great at uncovering the return on investment (ROI)?

From this, you will start to understand where you should focus your personal brand and develop a winning position. Exploiting this position through effective online personal branding style and communication will help to shorten the sales cycle because it will start to develop a relationship with your target, where they can see what you do without you having to push or worse, wait for them to reply.

2. Identify Your Best Online Personal Branding Machine and Make It a Daily Practice

Once you have identified such critical personal branding success metrics as your thought-leadership position, your target audience online behaviors, and your selling style, you need to identify your online selling machine. This is where social selling, social sales, or social business comes into play. You can utilize such areas as your own branded blog, your LinkedIn profile, your Twitter profile, your Google Plus profile, and your YouTube channel to deliver a daily online personal brand. This requires a social media strategy and commitment to delivery and management.

So that you can get started in building your machine, answer these questions:

• How do you currently communicate online?
• How do you prefer to communicate?
• How does your target audience make buying decisions? What information do they need and in what frequency?
• Where do you currently network online?
• Do you need the help of a writer?
• Do you need the help of a designer?
• Do you need a video person?

Social media channels and tools provide opportunities for you to amass a targeted online audience and the potential to shorten your sales cycle by creating relationships online.

3. Identify Your Sales Location and Focus, Then Commit to Relationship Development

In the world of SEO, we know that focusing locally first can help to drive results more quickly than going global or focusing on broad terms. The same holds true in the world of driving influence and sales in a local or targeted area versus a broad approach. This is why, as I am sure the sales professionals of large sales organizations such as Eli Lilly, Oracle, IBM, Aon, Northwest Mutual, etc. structure their sales teams in local areas or by specific vertical focus.

In the practice of personal brand development and delivery, the strength of the thought-leadership position is paramount to its success. This is why you will need to identify and build a strong position relative to your location and focus. You will be able to become an expert rather than the next salesperson in your industry for your target audience. If you are in a position to call the shots in terms of where you gain new clients, then a location focus can support community build.

A great way to shorten your sales cycle with a location focus is to join and participate in LinkedIn Groups in location and by target industry focus where you can demonstrate deep experience and help to nurture a community. Other ways you can support your personal brand online and drive more sales in a shorter time frame include starting and growing a G+ community based on your focus area or running a tweet chat doing the same.

When your prospects start to visibly see that you can provide education to support their needs and answer all their questions, they will hold you in a higher regard. Once you are seen as a thought-leader as opposed to a salesperson, prospects will undoubtedly stop playing the many games we as sales trainers know as "power-shifting." Once the games are eradicated, the sales process can be shortened.

(via)

Related articles

• Scoping Out the Competition: The Importance of a Competitive Social Audit
• Letting Your Leads Choose Their Own Adventure With Dynamic CTAs
• 17 Keys to Success in Social PPC
• How to Effectively Target Your Audience
• Finding Leads Through Facebook Advertising: Audience Targeting

Mobile Commerce Booms to 15.1%, Social Commerce Falls to 1.9%

New data from IBM (with accompanying report below) shows mobile commerce in 2012 is booming – now representing 15.1% of all online sales (Q2 2012 – up from 13.2% in Q1).

If e-commerce from mobile devices is shining, the same cannot be said of social commerce (defined for the study as sales from shoppers referred from social networks) – which dropped 20% in Q2 2012 to account for just 1.9% of online sales (down from 2.4%).

Of course, we’re comparing apples and pears here – m-commerce is about the device, social – in this report – is about sites. And social commerce is far more than simply converting e-commerce traffic from social sites.  Indeed social commerce is a game of four quarters

• e-commerce on social (e.g. pop-up stores in social media such as Burberry, in-app purchases for social apps)
• social on e-commerce (e.g. social plugins on e-commerce sites – e.g. from social media buttons a la American Apparel, to users reviews)
• e-commerce in-store (e.g. social features in traditional stores – Facebook-connected fitting rooms such as Diesel Cam)
• in-store on social (e.g. retail events streamed into social media – e.g. Facebook launch of Ford Fiesta0

In the IBM report, all the four quarters of social commerce are essentially excluded if social commerce is reduced to social e-commerce traffic – so social commerce sales are under-reported.

More essentially, it’s becoming clear that it’s a mistake to think of social as a channel.  Channel thinking is legacy thinking; instead social – and indeed mobile – should be seen as a layer, not a channel or silo, in commerce.  Social commerce is about adding social features to the shopping experience not creating another sales silo.

Nevertheless, it’s clear that mobile commerce is growing bigger and faster than social commerce.  Why?  Well, mobile-enhanced commerce has a clear value proposition that hits one of the core 4C’s of marketing – convenience.

Social, on the other hand has yet to communicate and deliver real value with social.  This is ironic because there is a crystal clear value proposition for social commerce – it makes shoppers smarter.  Social commerce allows people to learn from the experience of others.  Only fools learn only from their own experience.  Social commerce is smart commerce.  That’s the value proposition we need to pursue if we are to crack the code of social commerce.

Read Full Article Here

Related articles

• "Cash Mobbing": New Social Commerce Trend

  ---

• The Future of Social Commerce: Not a Revolution, but a Plugin

  ---

• Why People Share Things Online

  ---

Content Strategies that can Revitalize Your Brand

Image via CrunchBase

Social media has changed the game entirely for entrepreneurial organizations eager to build their reputations, expand their brand communities, and attract new customers. Today the size and current reach of your organization are no longer limiting factors on how vigorously your brand can grow.

We all know that the relationship potential of your website and social media assets is a critical success factor today. Even the smallest organizations are using social media to engage audiences with stimulating commentary, discussions, contests, and solicitations of user-created content. Even so, this core of “mutuality” can be reinforced and enriched by imaginative content strategies that touch on the human-interest and shared value implications of your business.

Here are four proven content-anchored approaches that can boost your brand’s reach and appeal when you implement them with style, authenticity and a creative touch.

1)      Energizing your online presence with real-world stories and case studies.

You should certainly anchor your online self-presentation in factually descriptive information about your enterprise and what it can do to answer customers’ needs or challenges. But you paint yourself into a very conventional corner by limiting your online pitch to this cast-in-concrete value proposition. Blend in real-people testimonials and customer narratives, and use photos and illustrations amply to propel your value proposition beyond the predictable left-brain orbit. As I pointed out in a June post on Social Media Today, if you manage the narrative aspects of your branding skillfully, you’re well on your way to inspiring not just human interest, but the stirrings of felt community, the secret sauce in 21^st century branding.

2)      Allowing your enterprise’s values to speak to your online community.

This is the social common ground where members of your brand community will develop connections, real or imaginary, with other like-minded individuals. Old-school types don’t really get this softer side of branding, particularly as a tool for smaller enterprises. But emphasizing the values—not just the commercial value-- behind your can jump-start its viral spread in a big way, no matter how large or how small you are. Healthy brands attract vibrant social communities--and not all members of these self-organizing communities are customers, nor are they necessarily the highly-vocal contributors who may populate your Facebook page and YouTube channel.

The social gravity that holds these ad hoc affinity networks together originates in the strongly felt values that individual members of the community share--or like to think they share--with their fellow members. Among the most obvious examples of these brand communities: Apple, Nike, Starbucks, and Pabst Blue Ribbon. Dwell on this proposition for a moment and you’ll likely come up with many more exemplars from your personal or corporate sphere of interests and values. Bringing your core values forward can make a difference in your brand community.

3)      Associating your brand with a global theme or cause that aligns with your core business.

 Smaller organizations may wonder how they can possibly stand out in the noisy universe of social media. One approach is to reframe your brand in the context of a big idea, using your content outreach to link your brand with a theme that’s more expansive or public-service-oriented than market-centered value propositions. In effect you’re borrowing prestige and viral energy by this linkage—if there’s an authentic business–related foundation for linking your brand to the bigger theme.

Many brands today have stepped up into this realm: Cisco’s Human Network, IBM’s Smarter Planet, GE’s ecomagination, and UPS’ self-identification with logistics typify this approach among the big players. A smaller non-global brand can both embrace and reach beyond corporate social responsibility by establishing a visible Web- or Facebook-anchored affinity partnership with a non-profit or charitable organization. Several commentators have begun to call this approach “shared-value” branding because of its parallels with Harvard guru Michael Porter’s theory of business strategy in an increasingly co-dependent global environment.  

4)      Fueling your brand’s viral energy with emotional and inspirational momentum.

Positioning your brand as a values-based touchpoint can mean engaging on the level of the creative, the emotional and/or the inspirational. If you‘re hesitant to cross this line because you think your potential community may be too sophisticated for what you think is an over-sentimental approach, consider what many of the major players are up to with video content in both social and mass media. Here are just a few recent examples, although the approach is anything but new as a brand-booster. The take-away here: all these brands go for the heartstrings first, the product-sell second.

• VW’s pint-sized Darth Vader
• Nike “I would run to you”
• Procter & Gamble: “Thank you, Mom”
• Chrysler: Clint Eastwood’s “Halftime in America” spot (SuperBowl) 
• Tree Top Apple Juice: “A sense of wonder”

 You don’t have to be a major player to apply or adapt these four branding best practices in your own market. Cultivate your online brand with creativity, polish and an eye for the authentic and the heartfelt, and you can achieve new levels of awareness, fellow feeling and esteem in an expanding brand community.

(via)

Related articles

• Do You Think About Your Social Brand?

  ---

• Seven tips for maximising engagement with online video ads

  ---

• Social Media Metrics That Matter

  ---

• 5 Ways Online Businesses Are Succeeding With Social Media

  ---