Social Networking can be leveraged as an innovative opportunity to generate new business and drive sales.
It generates opportunities that are additional to, and supportive of the results of more traditional selling methodologies.
It does this by leveraging the capabilities and characteristics of social media platforms to virally propagate the personal and product identity of the agent.
It significantly increases the capability of existing clients to deliver high quality leads and introductions while effectively distributing the work associated maintaining multiple relationships over time.
Socially networked selling becomes particularly powerful when targeting customers in technical and start-up companies where familiarity with social network platforms is the greatest.
This community is already sharing information and insights within this space as well as using it to organize, communicate and create face to face networking opportunities.
The agent can develop a virtual identity that exponentially increases his exposure and visibility within his targeted community.
This identity will take on the characteristics of an actual brand and, as such, can be search engine optimized, shared, re-tweeted and otherwise rewarded for quality products and services that are well delivered.
Face to face networking is supplemented by its digital footprint in communities like Twitter, Facebook and Plancast and allows for the establishment of relationships to validate the highly mobile, virtual identity.
Of course bad news travels as quickly as good but the real relationship that is established by the agent and the client mitigates the risk of negative press and allows for effective issue tracking and trouble shooting within a highly transparent and real time virtual environment.