Social media represents an incredible opportunity for salespeople to get first-hand thoughts, concerns, and opinions directly from their target audience. It’s like having a full time focus group at your disposal that is always on and always providing a stream of consciousness that you can tap into for insights, opinions, and research.

However, many great salespeople are missing out on this opportunity by not engaging in social selling. All the information a salesperson needs to close a deal is out there on social media already, it’s just a matter of knowing where to look and having a strategy in place for putting that information to work for you.

Just as dashboards allow you to sort through big data for the metrics that really matter, social listening tools allow you to sift through the firehose of social posts to identify the ones you truly care about. Creating a social dashboard with social listening tools like salesforce.com’s Radian6 can be an easy way to identify, at a glance, the social media information you should focus on. This means cutting the time you need to invest in social from hours down to minutes.

Here are a few things you should consider listening for on social media:

Industry news

In order for you to best serve your customers and establish yourself as an industry expert, you need to stay up to date on the latest industry news. This means filtering social results to return trending topics,and industry developments that could have an impact on your prospects’ companies or campaigns.

Buying signals

As we mentioned before, much of the sales process is taking place long before a prospect ever contacts a sales rep. This means that this research stage is often occuring on social media where you can easily identify potential purchase behavior. You should be looking for any social posts that include:

• Negative sentiment about your competitors

• Frustration over a business problem you can solve

• Questions about your product or industry

• Recommendations for provider of your product or service

Social posts around these topics give you the opportunity to help potential prospects and develop a trusting relationship that will allow you to pitch your product later on.

Existing leads

For leads that are already in your pipeline, you should be monitoring their social activity as well. Keeping an eye on what they are posting and the types of content they are sharing should give you a better sense of how to connect with them and how to position your product. According to CSO Insights, 42% of sales reps feel they do not have the right information before making a call. Social media can dramatically improve that percentage. Do you have a mutual connection or share a love for a certain hobby? Use this information to strengthen your connection and turn cold leads into much warmer connections.

Your competitors

In addition to being a good way to identify potential prospects, monitoring the social presence of your competitors can also give you an edge in competitive deals. Look for posts with negative sentiment from existing users. This will show you where the potential shortcomings in their offering are and where your product can gain an edge. Monitoring their corporate accounts will also let you know what features they’re pushing and how you can plan to counter them in conversations with your leads.

For everything you need to add social media to your selling arsenal, download the free e-book The Simple Guide to Successful Social Selling.