EVOLVE Business and Professional Magazine November 2016 | Page 29

USE SOCIAL MEDIA T O BOOST

Your Selling Power
by Amos Benning

A

s with almost every aspect of business, the technology

sales wasn’t even on my radar screen, but after graduating from

sales techniques. One thing that hasn’t changed is the

always landed on sales jobs because they paid more. Given my

revolution has had a dramatic effect on professional

need to create and nurture customer relationships by pursuing
leads and following up with your contacts. But where have all
the good leads gone? Why does hardly anyone answer your

calls? The answer is that your clients have evolved, and, to be
successful in today’s world, you need to evolve too.

Luckily, you can use technology to your advantage by

developing a social selling strategy. Buyers who use social media
have budgets that are 84 percent larger than those who don’t

use social, and 73 percent of salespeople who use social media
outperform their nonsocial media peers. Yet very few sales
1

professionals have tapped into the exponential power of social
selling—leaving lost profits and potential clients at the table.

I began my sales career in 1974, before people were thinking

about digital marketing and social selling. In fact, a career in

college with a finance degree and marketing minor, my eyes
humble beginning as the son of a Georgia sharecropper and

being the first in my family to go to college, I was determined

to maximize my earning potential. It turned out I was a natural
at sales. Back then, I was introduced to what many still believe
is the greatest sales training course ever developed: Xerox’s
Professional Selling Skills. The fundamental principles I

learned at Xerox continue to guide my sales approach, even as I
constantly update my skill set to match the ever-changing
buyer landscape.

For sales professionals, social media is a game-changer.

Eighty-four percent of business-to-business (B2B) decision

makers now use social media to help them make purchasing

decisions.2 These and other customers no longer require a sales

representative—they are doing their own legwork online. In the

NOVEMBER 2016 | 29 |