This week I presented at Communitech‘s the Tactical Sales Peer2Peer event in Kitchener-Waterloo.

The topic being addressed was how growing businesses can leverage social media throughout the B2B sales process. If you’re a close follower of our blog, you’ll know that I’ve given many of these presentations over the last year.

There’s always a great amount of interest from the salespeople I meet at events on how they can take advantage of social media, but there also tends to be a lot of confusion. Here are 4 of the most common ‘social media for B2B sales’ questions that come up during sessions like ones below.

1. How Do I Get Started on Twitter?

The best way to get started on Twitter is to follow 10-20 people.  I would suggest people that you know and trust, and that also serve a similar market to your business.  See how they are tweeting and try a few yourself.  There are lots of great blogs and white papers available on how to get started with twitter that you can review and use as well.

2. Why Should I Use Apps Like HootSuite Insteand of Twitter.com?

Hootsuite is a great tool from a great Canadian startup success story. Beyond that, the reasons I prefer Hootsuite include:

• Being able to view multiple lists, columns, and searches quickly
• Updating multiple social media platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter from HootSuite
• Scheduling tweets so that they can roll-out during the day
• Great mobile experience which is similar to my web experience

3. How Can I Use LinkedIn for Prospecting?

This is a great question and one that I wish I was asked more, because there are many ways that LinkedIn can be used for prospecting, including:

• Using LinkedIn advanced search can help identify companies and contacts that are the right targets.
• Leveraging a first connection to get to a 2nd connection.  Uncovering these hidden connections can help with that call or meeting to the right person.
• inMails are a good tool for contacting people that are hard to find.  The success rate is slightly higher than a cold email.

4. Is There a Way to Tag a Contact in LinkedIn?

There’s a new version of LinkedIn that is being rolled out right now. It has more features that allow for it to be almost like a light CRM.  These new features include the ability to tag a contact and create notes. You could tag a connection as a possible future employee, company prospect, or great connector. It also has the ability to run reports based on these tags. Best of all, all of this information is private.

These are just a few of the many questions I typically get from salespeople on how they can better leverage social media to earn sales. Ultimately, there are big benefits for any salesperson that chooses to embrace the power of ‘social selling’. If you’re looking for more social selling guidance, sign up to our monthly newsletter to stay in the loop.