The social selling ecosystem probably is the last place you would associate with Quality. Most of us link Quality with Manufacturing and the production of consumer goods. Let’s think this through, together.
Who invents all that equipment and puts it all together to create high quality input-throughput-output? Who creates those software interfaces which convey high quality interoperability, and zero defects, among the various manufacturing systems, some of which are located in other continents?
Evaluating the quality of your social selling process is no different, regardless of whether you are a small business or a startup. What are your 
current social selling components?
These platforms, apps, and strategies are critical to consistently delivering high quality information about your company’s products, services or platforms to your marketplaces. Your social selling strategy builds brand awareness, virtually as well as physically, which translates into buyer receptivity.
There is nothing hit-or-miss about your social selling process. Like that manufacturing machinery, the quality of its output is consistently applied against marketplace dynamics. You can measure and evaluate not only the marketing value of social selling, but also the impact your strategy has on influencing buyer decision-making.
Your process requires integration of various social selling platforms and professional disciplines. High quality, consistent, fully integrated social selling processes depend on teams (“components”) who will collaborate. Just as the parts of manufacturing machinery must work in perfect order, so must the elements of your social selling process.
Sales, marketing, IT, finance and operations integrate to respond to demand generation and fulfillment. Often cross-functional collaboration requires that you communicate across the interface between sales and engineering, the non-technical and the technical, right brain, left brain.
The root cause of the quality of your sales process outcomes (aka revenue generation) may rely on quality outcomes along the sales-engineering interface®. How well do you communicate, let alone collaborate, with the rest of the folks sitting around the business table?
I recently had a conversation with a marketing/social media person I met at a networking event. When I mentioned social selling to her, she asked me, “What’s that?” When I explained social selling, she replied: “Well that’s cute!”
Many of us take for granted that everyone is well-informed about the value and ROI of social selling. Conversations like this underscore that not everyone understands or embraces social selling as anything other than sprinkles on the business development cupcake or a shiny bauble.
Social selling is the front end of revenue generation for your company. It deserves your attention. When curated properly and implemented with consistently high quality, social selling delivers sustainable ROI.
When considered in this manner, social selling is, well, a bit more than “cute.” More like an essential component to a well-integrated revenue generation process.
What is the quality of collaboration that your sales, marketing, IT, Ops, and manufacturing teams apply to your social selling initiatives? Something to chew on this week.
Babette N. Ten Haken, Founder & President of Sales Aerobics for Engineers®, LLC, brings entrepreneurial mojo and business- and revenue-producing collaboration and communication tools to startups and small and mid-sized businesses.
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