Sales Enablement: Harness and Control the Power of Social Media
Craig Nelson, CEO, iCentera

According to a recent Aberdeen Group research report, Sales2.0 Social Media for Knowledge Management and Sales Collaboration, Aberdeen Research states that 94% of best-in-class companies are now using social media within their marketing departments, and 88% within their sales organizations.  Companies of all sizes must respond to the surge in popularity of social tools such as Twitter, wikis, and other tools.  Once primarily used by staff outside of work, today these tools are showing up in mainstream corporate use.

Social media has huge benefits, but, left unchecked, it poses great risk or simply clutters the airwaves.  As part of an overall Sales Enablement platform strategy, social media content becomes an immediate and effective way to harness the power of the collective knowledge of your company, your partners, and your customers, to, in a sense, “build your marketing bench” with information proven in the field to sell.  As the saying goes, “there is power in numbers.”

Imagine marketing material being refined based on field usage, or material being engineered and published in the course of selling.  This is great news for marketing: no need to start from scratch! Content flows daily based on field input, thus netting out best practices as a by-product of doing business.  But, there must be controls to ensure there is no harmful, unsanctioned content.  I hear daily how content, once it’s published on a web page, becomes gospel — whether it’s correct or not. Can you say consistent messaging nightmare? No question, rogue wiki pages and marketing content created in the field keep corporate marketing up at night.

Social media is business-critical, not a “nice to have.”  Today, subject-matter experts share and collaborate online, reducing the cost of sales and allowing organizations to scale more effectively with fewer resources.  In addition, companies gain enhanced awareness by reaching the larger social community — including partners, analysts, press, and others that influence new business — while driving sales directly by establishing more robust communications with customers and prospects.

Tags: Marketing Automation, Marketing Effectiveness, Sales Enablement, Sales Readiness

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 13th, 2009 at 6:35 pm and is filed under Enablement. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.