24 business breakfast Go social to get ahead
Buyers have changed and the art of selling needs to encompass social media if businesses are to thrive in the future, Thames Valley businesses were told at a special SME100 Business Breakfast in Reading, writes John Burbedge of The Business Magazine
Today, buyers are besieged by mass marketing with its generic emailing and cold calling, and frankly more and more buyers find such impersonal selling annoying, pushy, boring, or even worse, explained Andrew Yates, CEO of Artesian Solutions.
Blocking methods such as spam filters and voicemail are now common, and only 8% of sales decision-making is made as a response to inbound marketing, he revealed.
“Sellers need to change because buyers already have. Buyers have stopped ‘listening’ to traditional sales marketing, instead they are increasingly influenced by their own Internet research and the views of their peers through social networking,” Yates explained. “Social platforms are where the buyers are now hanging out.”
Nearly 90% of B2B buyers now use online resources to gather information, and 75% plan to use social media as part of their decision-making in the future, he added.
Around 60% of customers are almost two-thirds through the buying process when they engage with a seller, stated Yates. “A huge part of the buying process has disappeared, so sellers need to change their approach.”
Artesian is using the power of Internet technology in a different way through ‘Social Selling’; delivering to its clients commercially valuable business insights derived from the millions of
Highlighting the legal perils of the Internet
Since 1995, global use of the Internet has grown from 0.4% to nearly 40% of the world’s population.
The Internet’s rapid growth, global scope and fresh sphere of technology had presented challenges for the legal world admitted Tom Phipps from Field Seymour Parkes: “But the law is slowly catching up; it is getting there.”
Phipps suggested online legal concerns could broadly be headlined under three areas: defamation, intellectual property and data protection.
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sources that the Internet provides – stories, contacts, facts, figures, and views from news providers and the social web.
The Internet is currently growing at 5,000 pages per second, Yates pointed out, adding that that one person with 500 connections on LinkedIn alone could lead to a network with 2.3 million contacts. Twitter he believed was fast becoming the real-time news channel for many online users.
Artesian’s insightful research and analysis allows sellers to target prospects more accurately and engage with them more relevantly. “We are aiming to change the way businesses engage with customers, for better, forever.”
Yates claimed clients using ‘Social Selling’ techniques had achieved 15% higher customer retention, and 31% higher sales quota attainment.
So is ‘Social Selling’ catching on? Well, Artesian is a British software company based in Winnersh Triangle, Reading. Its customers include major B2B corporates such as Santander (co-sponsors of The Business Magazine SME100 company listings along with VitalSix, Haines Watts, and Field Seymour Parkes) and it is currently growing at 200% year-on-year.
Andrew Yates addresses the participants
Sellers, he suggested, should use social mediums to understand their existing and potential customers better, rather than simply communicating with customers at random.
Defamation – “untruths that would damage the reputation of a third party in the eyes of a right thinking member of society” – largely came within the written-word bounds of libel when related to the internet, he explained.
Authors, publishers and ISP web operators were likely to be liable for any defamatory items, and Phipps exampled the recent case of Sally Bercow, fined for libelling Lord McAlpine with a short comment placed on Twitter.
Reasonable care taken to avoid defamatory remarks might be a defence, but failure to remove known defamations from an online site would not be, he advised. Even the forwarding of emails bearing defamatory content might be actionable.
A new 2013 Defamation Act was on its way, he added.
Artesian Solutions is also currently developing a social intelligence platform to assist mid-market businesses, and Social Seller benchmarking to assist sales team performance.
Intellectual property – trademarks (words, logos, sounds and smells), domains and copyright – was another contentious area. Phipps highlighted how companies could fall foul of image usage and non-endorsed publicity, especially with well-known personalities or brands. Singer Rihanna recently won a legal battle with clothing retailer Topshop over a T-shirt bearing her image.
Data protection – any use of personal data from which an individual can be identified, was the key concern. Also, companies receiving a Data Subject Access Request and failing to respond within 40 days would face enforcement action or even criminal proceedings.
Compliance was an overriding necessity in all such perils, advised Phipps. Companies needed to put appropriate systems in place to avoid the risks, and operate those systems diligently.
www.businessmag.co.uk
THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – THAMES VALLEY – OCTOBER 2013
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