Okay, I don’t actually hate prospects—I just hate calling them “prospects.” My priority is to create customers who become advocates. That's why I also hate the old-fashioned tug-of-war methods most firms still employ to capture customers...it doesn't get the relationship off on the right foot.

Old School vs. New School

When you treat a potential customer like a prospect, you are likely to follow a 'rule' that is dead wrong: the more cold calls you make, the better you will perform. No, no, no!

The old rule of thumb for a sales pipeline was four times your quota; that produced pipelines that were full of fluff. They were big, but very cold.

The new pipeline is three times your quota and full of warm leads. The more targeted your leads are, the smaller your pipeline will be, but the more likely it will be to generate significant revenue. 

In the past, companies utilized print, radio, TV, phone calls, email, and websites to attempt to reach a buyer—and too many still do! These methods persist, but they cannot be the sole foundation of an effective pipeline. Why? Because that isn’t where buyers are spending their time.

Buyers are on social media networks. That's why social selling is the new channel for reaching buyers and transforming them from prospects into customers into advocates. It is effective, scalable, and measurable. Adapt or die be replaced. You need to be on social. If you aren’t on LinkedIn, you don’t exist to me.

To generate targeted leads, just remember R³:

Research: Study your buyers, what interests them, whom they follow, and how they are interacting online.

Relationships: Use social media to build relationships with these folks. Provide them with a steady—but not overwhelming—flow of highly credible and immediately actionable content.

Revenue: If you consistently follow the first two steps, revenue will flow naturally from these efforts.

Change the Channel–Win the Race

Here's the bottom line: you have to be where your buyer is. You must ABC–Always Be Connecting. You must provide meaningful content to your connections in order to build their trust and demonstrate your subject matter expertise.

Social media is the greatest channel ever invented for sales professionals who genuinely care about building lasting relationships with the right customers.

 A "prospect" who trusts you... is soon to be a customer who advocates for you. 

If you want to learn more about social selling best practices, join me on July 24^th for the Live Webcast: ‘Using Social Connections to Turn Prospects into Customers’.

About the author

Jill Rowley designed, deployed and drove adoption of a global Social Selling program for Oracle’s 23,000 sales professionals.  She recently launched her own company, JillRowley.com, to provide #SocialSelling and #ModernMarketing expertise to B2B companies that want to modernize the beliefs and behaviors of their Marketing and Sales teams.  Jill brings deep subject matter expertise, passion, and her #CustomerCentered #CustomerCentric #CustomerObsessed culture to her clients.

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