The most common, and dangerous misconceptions about social media is that it’s not yet a business tool. In fact, some companies continue to block worker access to popular social media sites in the mistaken belief that using them diverts workers from the real business of serving customers. My Response: ROTFL.
If you help resellers learn how to use social media tools to grow their business (and sell more of your products) you can really earn the title “trusted business advisor.” Here are some examples of how social media can build your channel.
Finding New Customers: All of the people on-line are somebody’s customers - and they are all accessible to anyone who looks for them. Vendors are now staffing to conduct on-line customer research, which basically means finding sales prospects in forums, on-line communities, and networking sites. Once found, these prospects provide a wealth of information about the products they use and the problems they have with their vendors. You just have to read their comments and posts.
Improving Proposal Close Rates and Shortening Sales Cycles: Customers almost always go on-line to find information about the products and services they need. And they seek out current users who have purchased before them. When both groups are in the same social network, they help each other make a purchase – with or without a sales person. According to a recent Powered Social ROI Report, customers in an on-line community are 68% more likely to purchase a product if they learn about it in an on-line community.
Training Employees and Customers: Remember when your customers had to drive four hours for a product training session? Not anymore. Today they can go to their favorite social media site and immediately get the information they need. Type Cisco into the Flickr search engine and get 50,000 matches, many of them are detailed pictures of Cisco products to help technicians set them up or repair them later. Do the same thing on YouTube and find 10,000 Cisco videos on products, programs, and services. Many of these videos are neatly organized into play lists so resellers or customers can watch them in order.
Improving Customer Satisfaction: Customers are happy when their needs are met quickly. So if they get information, find technical support, or communicate with an experienced user about a potential product purchase on a social networking site, then their needs are met quickly. This is much better than looking for what they want on a vendor website or waiting for a sales rep to finally call them back. Customer satisfaction surveys consistently show that customers are significantly happier when they are in active on-line communities.
Building Partnerships with other Resellers: As the number of resellers declines, partnering with the ones who are left is increasingly difficult. But not if you know where they hang out in the social web. Go to LinkedIn or Facebook and find one of the partner groups or create a profile on Partnerpedia (or any other on-line reseller community). Then get to know the partners and their issues. This is how many new SaaS developers are building their channels.
These examples are in addition to using social media to help with advertising, building a brand, recruiting employees, disseminating information, filling webinars, and other business building functions.
Some vendors are already training their partners on how to use social media to build their business and increase revenue. (Cisco recently announced a $30 million program to do just that!) Vendors that are serious about helping their partners already understand that Social Media is a next generation channel marketing imperative.
Mike Dubrall is Managing Director of Gilwell Group, a consulting company that specializes in “Channels of the Future” research. He is a regular blogger on Channel Champions and manages the Channels of the Future group on LinkedIn. (All channel managers are welcome to join the group.)
www.gilwellgroup.com ; Channels of the Future Community - www.gilwellgroup.xeequa.com
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