Social Selling: Sure, but is Your B2B Website Social?

I absolutely love the research the Altimeter Group cranks out on a weekly basis – it’s must read stuff if you want to understand what is coming down the pike. It’s a fun brainteaser to try and map evolving social trends back to B2B sales and marketing processes.

There’s a good deal of chatter on social selling and how buyer 2.0 is changing B2B sales organizations’ go to market strategy. Most of this conversation zips right to which magical Sales 2.0 technology to buy to help sales reps take advantage of relevant social media conversations and trigger events happening on the web.

IMHO that’s like asking a woman to marry you on the first date just because she is hot.

You buy the ring, get hitched and realize the two of you can barely have a meaningful conversation 1 year later – or sooner. The sparkle has faded and you are left where you started off because you did not invest the time to build the proper foundation. Too many companies are doing the same thing today when trying to capitalize on the social evolution.

Try asking these two questions first:

1) Does my company website encourage social conversations and provide relevant content for every stage of the purchasing decision and post sale ON MY WEBSITE?

2) How can we change the above?

To help answer these two questions and a super useful framework have a look at Jerimiah Owyang’s presentation below:

Secrets of Engagement: Leverage Social to Unlock User Value on Your Site from Janrain on Vimeo.

Related posts:

1. Selling Social — What the Heck Is That?
2. Use Google Alerts To Increase Selling Opportunities
3. Why is the Social Graph Vital to B2B Sales Organizations?
4. Sales 2.0: B2B Sales is Social Networking
5. B2B Sales and Social Media – Very Cool Infographic from InsideView