In a recent panel discussion, someone asked me, “What is the biggest way technology is changing our lives?” It got me thinking. The Internet is exploding around us, vying for our attention at every turn. It has even become part of our sleep ritual where many of us check on the news or wake up at 2 a.m. to ensure an email doesn’t go unanswered.
The greatest possibility that the Internet has opened to us is the ability to communicate with new people. Social media is at the forefront of this phenomenon, etching paths to new connections across the globe. These connections bring people of all types together, creating relationships of all kinds. As a CEO, of course, I started thinking of the implications to a business that social media can have and realized how massively underutilized social media is as a sales tool.
As of July 2020, more than half the world uses social media – almost 4 billion users. That kind of growth all but guarantees that your business has prospects who are active on social media. And while social media has become a leading marketing channel.
Especially with the ongoing disruption stemming from these COVID times, resulting in stay-at-home orders and social distancing guidelines, social media has become an invaluable tool that both B2B companies and brands can utilize for effective marketing outreach for today’s primarily home-based audience.
Social media is also a powerful networking medium that sales teams can use to harness relevant leads. LinkedIn, in particular, has made it shockingly easy to find key decision makers at even the largest companies. The problem comes when it’s time to connect with them in a meaningful way.
With more than 722 million LinkedIn users worldwide, we simply can’t ignore LinkedIn either. This is why there is a need to simplify sales prospecting and provide fresh contact data in a single location. A data-driven solution that Stirista, as well as others, can affordably provide.
It’s easy for salespeople to get lost in the shuffle if they try to communicate directly through LinkedIn. At Stirista, a large part of my job is to grow revenue. When I can’t get in touch with the right people, it makes my own job a lot harder and wastes the most precious asset any of us have—time.
Although technology, such as smartphones and CRMs, has been changing the sales landscape for many years now, technology has affected marketing far more. B2B lead generation, for example, has access to tools that would have been as recently as the early 2000s.
Forward-looking sales teams are already looking to understand the trends associated with future of selling. We are reaching a point at which technology is transforming sales as it has marketing. With personal contact information as readily available as it is now, account based marketing and even exploring untapped markets will be easier than ever.
Since I founded Stirista more than a decade ago, I have learned how dynamic B2B sales is and see great potential in its future. Something as seemingly simple as contacting your LinkedIn connections directly is just a small part of that. If we want to stay at the forefront of this fast-paced sales environment, we must continue to harness technology in new ways.
