One of the debates regarding social media’s role in the B2B sales world is the difficulty of dividing time between social media and cold calling. Skeptics believe that social media is good for information gathering, but doubt it can have any further impact. They see social media as a waste of time that would be better spent elsewhere. The things naysayers generally do accept about social media include: LinkedIn may generate good prospects more easily. They target key decision-makers and influencers efficiently and choose the most effective social network. MORE >>

But, here’s the twist—not the geographic proximity that most companies typically use to assign leads, but the social proximity of the lead to the salesperson. The importance of social media in B2B sales was one of the most surprising findings in our research last year. In fact, we found that the best salespeople don’t rely on Marketing at all for leads, instead use their own social networks and personal brands for lead generation. And, for good reason; social media is increasingly where customers learn to get ahead in the sale (the very task you hire salespeople for). MORE >>

If they can rely on social networks and third party consultants to force us into a price war, they’d be foolish not to do that. It’s likely some mix of social media, other peer networks, consultants, salespeople and vendors, maybe professional conferences or trade shows. Admittedly social selling has become all the rage, and having devoted a significant amount of time and energy to the topic through 2011 and early 2012, we’d like to think we help accelerate this trend. Social media provides a hugely powerful platform for accessing customers as they learn. Why not? MORE >>

This is the fifth post in our series on sales organizations’ emerging use of social media as a channel for shaping demand.). Anyone in a company that uses Salesforce is acquainted with ‘Chatter’, the social function enabled by the CRM software. Although the feature has existed for two years, the adoption rate is slow and much of the initial excitement has fizzled to rumors of “just another social media outlet.” It may be difficult to get acceptance on Chatter if employees are seeing it as a haphazard social forum.  The Buzz CRM Sales Technology Social Media MORE >>

(This is the third post in our series on sales organizations’ emerging use of social media as a channel for shaping demand.) . Although many people agree that social media can be an incredibly helpful tool for sales prospecting and due diligence, the question we hear over and over is “But is it scalable? The challenge facing many organizations is the best way to roll out social media use and ensure that it doesn’t negatively impact other initiatives, or backfire entirely. The Buzz Sales Operations Sales Tools Social Media MORE >>