The very polite gentleman I followed on Twitter sent me a direct reply to ask me, “How are you this afternoon.” I thought that this was a nice engagement and replied, “Perfect! You?”
And then . . . I got social sold. My new Twitter friend had, in his mind anyway, done enough to have earned the right to close me for an appointment. He wrote, “I’d like to chat with you and learn a bit about your marketing strategy for 2016 & how I can help you leverage design to help you exceed your goals this upcoming year. Is that something you’d be interested in discussing?”
It’s like a cold call from someone who is afraid to make cold calls. He did no research. He didn’t share anything that might have created value for me.
Leaving Twitter and checking the mess that is the LinkedIn inbox or chat room or whatever, I find a note from someone who has connected with me. But the note or email or chat or whatever is directed to 38 people. It reads, “We are dealers in all kinds of ELECTRONICS GADGET, MOBILE PHONE’S, LAPTOP’S . . .” I have no idea why they are yelling at any of the 38 of us on this thread, but their grammar gets consistently worse the louder they become.
The person social selling me ends with, “If you are interested in buying any product from our company do get back to us to any of our Contact:: So we can give you the full details of the product ok.”
Awful. Makes spam look like a compelling ask. Each day brings more that look just like it, some with better grammar, none following any reasonable research.
If we are being honest, this makes up the bulk of “social selling” attempts.
In a few short years of preaching and proselytizing the unwashed masses, we have set sales back three decades (especially prospecting). Instead of teaching salespeople to develop the business acumen and the ability to bring real value, we’ve told them to use the social tools for prospecting.
The social tools are excellent above the funnel, and they’re clunky, awkward, and inferior when it comes to making the ask.
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