There is much discussion about ROI and social media.

Everyone loves marketing but no one loves sales (aww…). Marketing is sexy, but sales does the dirty work. Sales is the bottom line – what good is any marketing unless it is transitioned into real sales? (Answer: none)

The big “I” in ROI is the investment in time – not dollars – as far as social media is concerned.

If you are spending your resources’ time on social media – how can the results be measured? Just like any marketing initiative, there must be a path to sales. In B2B sales, social media can be leveraged as a networking tool by both the sales force as well as at the organizational level.

Social Media and the Sales Force

Social media can allow sellers to engage their market(s) in order to be involved and participate in conversations. For the purposes of this post – I am sticking with social media at the rep level – but there are exciting things happening at the organizational level through social media that allows the conversation to shift to brand (another time…).

A contact of mine recently brought up a great point – there are 2 types of technology that that no sales person ever has to be taught to use… the phone and the car. Why? Because the rep sees a direct correlation from using the technology to getting them closer to the conversation. But these 2 types of technology have something else in common – they were invented over 100 years ago!

That doesn’t mean old is bad – it means that new can be good too. Some where, right now, through social media… your industry is discussing goals and challenges. Maybe even your brand is being discussed – these are places where sellers need to be. Measuring the “I” – the investment of their time is the same as any other business development activity. How many hours did you or your sales team cold call last week and what were the results? Spend the same amount of time on a focused social media engagement strategy. Now you will have something to measure.

Coming up next post… how and where sellers can do this.