 | Issue: | Europe II 2015 |
| Article no.: | 9 | |
| Topic: | Making social selling work, in a privacy-focused world | |
| Author: | Michael Stenberg | |
| Title: | VP, Web & Infrastructure | |
| Organisation: | Siemens | |
| PDF size: | 220KB |
About author
Michael Stenberg is the Global VP Digital Marketing, Siemens
Past career: Vice President Web & Infrastructure at Siemens, Partner Director, Central Europe & Eastern Europe at Yahoo!, Vice President Global Sales …
Michael Stenberg was educated at Harvard Business School, INSEAD, and Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg.
Article abstract
People want to follow people, but that is also were privacy issues can arise. We have to be careful about the information we share in public, including our own intellectual property and our sales leads. And we have to be careful that we do not misuse our contacts’ personal information, and so lose that hard-won trust.
Full Article
Social media is an increasingly important tool for all businesses, even in manufacturing and other “business-to-business” fields that might seem a long way from the world of Facebook and Twitter.
As firms such as ourselves embrace social media, we are finding that it has enormous potential – but also that it raises some very real privacy and security issues. These have to be tackled right at the start, especially if a firm is to make use of emerging techniques such as social selling.
Our business has been an engineering powerhouse for more than 165 years. Operating in more than 200 countries, with a focus on the areas of electrification, automation and digitalisation and as the world leader in offshore wind turbine construction. Annual turnover for 2014 was €71.9 billion, and has around 343,000 employees worldwide.
Sustaining that business means winning new customers, as well as satisfying existing ones.
Social media plays an increasingly important role in the customer journey. And that customer journey has changed over the past view years.
Contact with customers often takes place later in the process, and the customer – with access to so much information online – may have a pretty clear idea of the solution they want before they even approach a vendor.
Research shows that in business-to-business 57 per cent of research is done before a customer reaches out to a vendor. Previously it was just about 20 per cent. You would contact a vendor and have detailed discussions with them. But that now much of that takes place digitally.
People are familiar with using search engines, webinars and websites for their research, especially in the business-to-business world. The self-education aspect of buying goods and services has grown dramatically, and that is, itself, a dramatic shift.
Decision makers use social media more and more, and not just in a private, but in a business context too. It is a communications channel, in the way that email was in the 1990s. Today, we reach out through our social media channels, so social media is a key part of how we engage with our stakeholders, and how we engage with thought leaders.
As would be expected in a large organisation, we have a strategic communications plan. That centres around three main areas of the business: sustainable energy, future manufacturing, and intelligent infrastructure. It is all around the digitisation of business, and we are looking to increase our share of voice around those key themes.
Our corporate social channels are run by marketing and communications. And we do differentiate between our corporate and personal social media presence, because staff can – and do – use their own social media accounts to communicate with stakeholders.
Two years ago, we started a policy that encouraged – and empowered – our staff to set up personal profiles and to use them for business. That is supported by a clear policy and IT framework covering how we reach out to customers over social channels. We are one of the front runners in this, and we’re actively creating an environment, in business to business, where employees can use social media for commercial purposes.
Along with most other large companies, we have corporate systems of record for content creation and distribution, to make sure social media content is shared by the regions, and we use social media monitoring so we’re aware of the buzz around the business, and where the communications stream is going.
We do also use private social media networks, and blogs, for internal communications. Increasingly, these are seen as an alternative to email, and have been adopted by more than 30 per cent of staff in short time. But these are totally different to our public social media feeds. Like any large organisation, we need to make sure that private conversations are not shared publicly.
It was a deliberate decision within the company to use personal social media profiles for business purposes, but that does raise potential privacy issues. A lot of the answers to these problems, though, are common sense, and go hand in hand with our wider communications policies.
Naturally, we have to ensure that communications are “on message”. To do this we must have good internal communications to support our messaging, and to ensure what is shared outside the business is consistent, not least when it comes to sales.
Social media within the business, though, is about more than awareness raising or corporate communications. Increasingly, it is a core part of the sales process.
We have seen social media drive a change in the sales model, even though we are a business-to-business vendor. In the past, business development teams would have called customers to arrange a sales demonstration, or to qualify leads. The barrier was making contact with the right people, to find the target buyers.
Now, social networks are the brokers of those conversations. There is also a huge element of education: educating potential customers brings engagement. Educational tools such as webinars are part of the social sales model, which drives potential customers into lead-nurturing programmes. The next step, however, remains a personal meeting.
In the business-to-business field, trade fairs and exhibitions will always be an important way to exchange more detailed information about products, and to be positioned as a potential partner to our customers.
Getting in touch with the right target groups, though, is a more personal effort. There are so many potential target groups, so finding the right people to engage with, is a key role of employees. They build networks individually: engineers might talk to opinion formers in the wind turbine industry, for example. Our social media strategy helps them to do that.
Research into social media shows that information shared by individuals, rather than corporations, is considered more relevant. There is more relevancy attached to communications from individuals than from companies. People want to follow people.
But that is also were privacy issues can arise. We have to be careful about the information we share in public, including our own intellectual property and our sales leads. And we have to be careful that we do not misuse our contacts’ personal information, and so lose that hard-won trust.
We have clear guidelines. You have to identify yourself early in the conversation – ideally at the beginning. Transparency is the key.
You also need to know when to take the conversation offline. People might reach out to us for advice initially, but it becomes clear that we should connect to them offline, for more detailed discussions. Social networks – and social selling – are a first contact medium, rather than a way to do in-depth business.
Social media is, of course, openly available and shared openly. There is some information that can be shared before the conversation has to be made private. It is important to make sure that employees understand that openness, and make sure that details are not disclosed that could harm the business, such as sales leads.
There are areas, too, where not all information can, or should, be shared. Our business has a large presence in healthcare, a highly regulated industry. We have guidelines on what can be shared, and an obligation to make sure employees know what can be shared. We also support that through training.
Social media is a great resource for insights into the market: comments, opinions and feedback provide a great resource for R&D and product development, and naturally you can use that in business.
When it comes to people sharing information, though, you do have to make sure that internal secrets are not revealed. But it is the same behaviour that applies to other business communications, including email: privacy and security issues are not platform specific. This is regulated through our business conduct guidelines. The guidance doesn’t change because we are using social media, but it requires sensitivity about the possible consequences of openness.
Largely, though, we rely on self regulation to ensure privacy and security. We rely on a strong element of trust: there is no way to track the actions, on social media, of our employees.
It is, though, worth the effort to overcome potential privacy and security issues. Social media provide opportunities that would not be there if we did not use these networks.
It is quite transparent that these contacts are taking place – in that way, it is little different to people talking to each other at a congress – but you need to know where the relationship is heading, and when to take it offline.
We see very promising opportunities for business in social media and social selling. But it has to be about being relevant to the audience and about adding value. Social media is not another broadcast channel, but about individual conversations. That is why privacy is so important: both our privacy, and that of our potential customers.
