5 Ways Social Media Changed The Sales Game (#5)

And to finish of our series on social media and how it has changed the sales landscape, we’ll cover the idea of Closed Loop Marketing.

#5 Closed Loop Marketing

If you’ve ever worked in corporate America; either in sales or in marketing, you know each has a long standing distain for the other. The marketing team has it’s objectives, processes and absolute truths; so does the sales team. If you haven’t guessed yet, they are NOT the same.

Because there is a separation between the departments, there is a separation of information; each in its own silos.

There are a few buy products of this dichotomization:

• Marketing is not capable to review the product of their marketing in terms of quality

• Departments work towards their individual goals, causing the consumer to be treated like a kid caught up in a bad divorce

• Both sales and marketing groups end up talking “at” consumers vs. with people

Enter Social Media.

Social media is one of the purest ways to bridging the gap between marketing and sales, both philosophically and practically. Now that marketing is becoming conversational (a move most sales pro’s made a decade ago, great ones sooner), a universal language can be used (i.e. metrics).

A small business using social media can integrate their digital networks, marketing initiatives and sales pipelines into a single silo of information, their CRM. This allows your company to know how to best communicate with your clientele. You can track where they spend their time on social networks (FaceBook), how your sales team can build a digital network (Twitter and LinkedIn) and the conversion of online marketing campaigns via new lead conversion tracked in your internal systems.

This allows both, the sales and marketing teams, to view the same information and communicate with the client where they naturally live as well as knowing where to market.

Here is a great example of a client of mine who uses Twitter to find out how their affiliates wish to participate in marketing initiatives. This information goes into their CRM and when they are ready to launch a campaign or initiative, they know who to leverage and what their interests are.

Check out what a company of mine does to make this happen.

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