Many professionals in sales and marketing today have been charmed and persuaded to believe that success in today’s hyper-competitive business climate is predicated by how many digitized B2B or B2C contacts you have? Successful sales and marketing is simply not defined by the sheer numbers of Twitter followers, LinkedIn connections, Facebook likes and Instagram followers one has. Feeding these purported “must update” social channels and checking them 12 times per day can be mind-numbing, boring and counter-productive.

But you can enhance the “social selling experience” with people by following a few of the suggestions I am presenting in this article. I have been utilizing various social media channels for the past decade to leverage my sales and marketing footprint, but doing so to create a genuine and rich experience for the individual.

How sales professionals think about and utilize and execute social selling strategies for a competitive advantage will ultimately determine their success. The future of sales today relies on one’s ability to engage with qualified people (human to human) in an authentic and personal way. We want to build these relationships that are more human, more real and more valuable.

All businesses and working professionals are time-starved and do not and should not waste time on non-productive sales and marketing practices. Before you embark on a social selling/marketing initive, you should define what is the goal of utilizing these social media channels? Part of any good business plan is a well developed, practical and creative marketing plan. This includes digital marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click (PPC), content management, reputation management and video optimization. These are the primary areas to consider in your digital marketing plan. The old business adage, “if it can’t be measured, it can’t be managed”, is even more relevant today.

These key performance indicators (KPI’S) should be linked to key business, sales and marketing metrics to ensure success and adequate ROI for senior management to make well-informed business decisions.

The real challenges for sales people in social selling/marketing are:

– Marketing automation and having the right technology stack in place

– Seamless integration of existing and future technologies to the “tech stack”

– Aligning compelling content that will resonate with each constituent group and facilitate a conversion to a goal, e.g. Completion of a contact us form, email or phone call.

– Aligning content to business and revenue goals.

– Understanding how content strategy can scale to meet the companies needs over time.

I submit to you and invite you to consider that the power and reach of a well developed and executed social selling plan can pay huge dividends. Initially, it will take more time and effort as you launch your plan/campaign, but after launch, it should not take more than 30 minutes per day to manage and feed. And before you know it you will be connecting more effectively and easily with an H2H (human to human) social selling approach.