After a long hiatus from blogging for myself, I am back with some information for the sales professional. Yes, social media can be a distraction but it can make you work less (4 Hour Work Week style) and make you more money than ever before. Yes, you may have heard this in a seminar that got you fired up but you did not execute on the plan. Or, maybe you did and are getting some results but maybe have not taken it to the next level. In the event you are looking to work less and make more money (I do not know anyone that will disagree with this thinking), here are some ideas to put into action:

1. Revisit LinkedIn – With over 33 million users and now getting 1 million users every 2 weeks (up from 1million every 4 weeks earlier this year), your prospects are here. Better yet, if you have a blog and have powerpoints that you publish on SlideShare.net, you have a license to promote your services in your profile and be the hunted in social media.

2. Get Active in Twitter – I now use twitter to update all my social media profiles like Facebook, FastPitchNetworking.com, my blog, Plaxo and many more. Better yet, Twitter is a great tool to find people and businesses that you have things in common with…common ground is the basis for long tern relationships. A great example is a friend of mine started following (hunted) a CEO on Twitter he wanted to land as a client. He suggested a great Sushi place to him because he learns from Twitter this CEO loves sushi and a few months later, there are working together.

3. MRSS – Wikipedia says: Media RSS (MRSS) is an RSS dialect used for syndicating multimedia files (audio, video, image) in RSS feeds. It was designed in 2004 by Yahoo! and the Media RSS community, and adds several enhancements to RSS enclosures. Mint Social created 10 videos for a client from a 1 hour interview, researched the most relevant terms and optimized the content before we syndicated it to 50 of the top video and blog websites like YouTube, Revver, Viddler, etc. and generated thousands of views within the first month and created stacked (multiple) rankings in the search engines for over 20 of our targeted terms. Request a a copy of this case study by completing the form at the end of this post.

Social media marketing is really about listening to the conversation going on about your market, identifying the key players and competitors and engaging in the conversation. Everyone loves to ask the question, what is the ROI on social media. Well, one of the best sources online that you can subscribe to is LinkToYourWorld.com for great information on social media. They did such a great job of answering this question, here is an except from the article titled “What is The ROI for Social Media?”

How and Why Do You Measure Relationships?
Any good sales person will tell you their number one objective is building relationships over time. Yet few if any company bothers to measure the cost of building relationships rather they measure the results of relationships. Measuring the results doesn’t tell you “how to build effective relations” or “which methods create the best relations.”

Relationships come from human experiences, not corporate spin and hyped promises. Human relationships are measured by trust, sincerity and common values. If you want a return on social media then focus on conversations that build lasting relationships based on value exchanged and create great experiences. Why is ROI so important? Because that is all you know how to manage. Get it?

Great stuff. So, get engaged in social media, especially if you are a sales professional and make your life easier. Here is a parting tip to think about. If you lose your job, you take with you your social media network. If you have 500 people in your network associated with your expertise and industry, do you think another company in that space would be interested in your network?

Request a case study below on Social Media Marketing Success Stories

Now that I have my online profiles positioned properly and have grown my network in LinkedIn.com, Facebook.com, FastPitchNetworking.com and Twitter.com , I have now become the new term in sales…the hunted. The traditional CONCEPT OF THE HUNTER AND FARMER no longer provides the full picture for all types of sales people. Let’s introduce the top of the food chain when it comes to sales…the hunted. This updated term describes how businesses seek out the experts and utilize social networks to find the “perceived” best in class companies and individuals to work with. You get hunted and sought out for your expertise.

Some of my former managers used to call inbound leads “Blue Birds” and “Riding the Gravy Train”.  Now, social networks can be set up to create a constant flow of inbound, qualifies leads. This is what we now call being “The Hunted”. To be the hunted there are three significant things that need to be in place:

1. A strong network that businesses can use to hunt you down (referrals and recommendations from your network are key)
2. Well positioned profiles and syndicated content that defines you as “The Expert” and not a “jack of all trades, master of none”.
3. Making it easy for “the hunters” to get in contact with “The  Hunted”.

If you fast forward this concept of the hunted 5 or 10 years from today, it seems quite realistic that one or two top notch sales experts could replace an entire fleet of sales people by having 1 through 3 from above in place. If you hire “the hunted”, you can knowingly predict the results that this person can deliver, especially if they have worked in the same industry as your business. The hunted are essentially bringing a network that is dialed in and directly connected to your customer base and can bring immediate results from day one. It almost sounds too good to be true…but is it?

Well, to get to the level of the hunted you need to become the expert and there is no better way to do this than through social media marketing. An expert is well published in their niche market. The best way to do this is to have a blog that is set up as a publishing vehicle that syndicates this content to relevant marketing channels. A market channel is defined as a website of social network that is RSS enabled. It is all about the syndication of compelling content that is related to your niche market or area of expertise. Some of the best ways to mass market your information is through press releases, article submission, social networks, video networks and of course, search engines. Always overlooked are the profiles that you set up in social networks like LinkedIn, Plaxo, Fast Pitch!, Naymz.com, etc.

Take 5 minutes and look at one of your profiles on these networks. Cut and paste all of the content in your profile into a Word document and read it. Do you come across as the expert? Do you have the terms in your profile that make you easy to find?

This is an entirely new way to sell and one that becomes more service oriented. It goes without saying that this new sales model will enable businesses to focus more effort on managing the  business and building stronger relationships because less resources are directed at hunting for new business.

Additional resources on “The Hunted”:

- www.CompleteStrategery.com by Aaron Bare

- Setting up a Social Media Marketing Strategy to be The  Hunted by Matthew O’Brien