Social Selling with Tom Martin – How to Sell With Social Media

June 20, 2014

Are you looking to use social media to improve sales?

Do you want to learn tips on social selling?

This week on the Social Media Social Hour, we are talking social selling with Tom Martin. Tom is the founder of Converse Digital, a keynote speaker, an author and authority figure on how to sell with social media.

I also share an awesome tech tool with you to help with Gmail productivity.

About the Show:

Social Media Social Hour PodcastThe Social Media Social Hour is a podcast for marketers and entrepreneurs looking to get on the social media fast track. The podcast is an interview format, where each week I get up close and personal with top brands and influencers to talk social media, tech and online marketing. Each week I also share tools that I personally use to help me with social media management, sales, marketing, account management, and productivity.

In this episode, here’s what we’ll cover:

  • Tech Tool of the Week: Assistant.to for Gmail
  • Tom Martin is the founder of Converse Digital, a keynote speaker and is the author of the book “The Invisible Sale: how to build a digitally powered marketing and sale system to better prospect, qualify and close leads”
  • Tom became an authority on social selling due to his job experience.
  • Tom grew up in the ad agency business and was always an account guy, but about half way through his career he began to become really invested in business development in the ad agency space.
  • Tom was the guy out there pitching all the new accounts, so he also became the sales guy for the agency.
  • He claims his twenty year background of ad agency and sales gave him a different point of view and led him to the work he does now of showing companies how to use the digital tool sets that are out there now and how to combine everything into an inbound prospecting system where it is about the warm qualified lead of selling.
  • Tom had his “ah -ha” moment when he stepped off the stage after giving a speech and looked down at his phone to a tweet from someone that claimed two people had told him to call Tom about an international speaking gig.
  • When he was offered this gig he realized that he had to go backwards, tilt the dominos back up and figure out how this happened and then more importantly build a system that activity occurred in a somewhat projectable highly repeatable process.
  • In may of 2010, Tom started his own business Converse Digital, specifically to explore how he could really do this and prove the theories correct.
  • The biggest change Tom has seen is that today’s buyers are self educating and have been freed from a buyer research process that the sellers love.
  • Buyers can use technology and social networks to learn about products and learn about everything on their own pace.
  • This allows the buyer to not tell the company that they are in the market to buy a product until they are ready and know all of their options by making a list.
  • The way to really sell today is first off, to realize that your job isn’t to sell but to help the consumer or buyer make a buying decision.
  • You do this by anticipating the questions they will have, the information they will need and providing it to them as the ultimate solution.
  • By selling with this method, companies are building more credibility for their product and purpose.
  • Research shows that 51% of buyers are getting all the way to the short list stage before they tell anyone that they are in the market for that product or service.
  • There are numerous consumer studies that show consumers are visiting anywhere between 5-18 online locations of content before they come to their final decision.
  • Since people are looking for shortcuts, this sort of research is a digital form of branding.
  • Tom says every product is a means to an end, where if your product is very simple then a company would help their consumers be better from a contextual standpoint of what they are using your product to do.
  • Anybody can produce content to educate or inform for their industry.
  • Tom says the biggest mistake is that people don’t think about how to repurpose their content as they are creating it.
  • Tom always records his presentations through ScreenFlow so that his presentation can be turned into a video piece of content and people can relive it.
  • This technique also allows Tom to take his presentation and cut it up into a highlight reel and put it on his blog with a little outline as well as strip the audio out and turn it into a podcast or transcript.
  • Screen Flow is a very easily and reasonably priced tool.
  • Tom’s number one social media platform is Facebook and he has derived more inbound client work from Facebook over any other platforms.
  • Tom says you need to have your sales staff actively on Facebook on a personal level and teach them how to social sell in Facebook and other social media platforms.
  • Social selling is helping you make a buying decision and more importantly based on seduction and to get the consumer to come to the decision that they need your product.
  • Social selling is a much slower process and is a lot more disciplined.
  • Social selling helps the consumer with the ultimate buying decision and the company’s closes are more about questions that need to be answered  as well as trust.
  • Tom says using social selling has allowed his company to close around 80% of deals.
  • Tom’s new book is written as a field guide for any company or person who wants to augment or replace their existing sales system with more of this inbound digital technique.
  • The book is set up in four sections: statistics to make the case, how to build a digital prospecting platform, content, and lastly how to close a self educated buyer.

 Tom Martin’s Social Media Six pack:

  1. What’s your favorite color? Tom’s favorite color is blue.
  2. Have you ever solved a Rubik’s Cube? Tom has not.
  3. Would you consider yourself an artist of any kind? Tom says yes, in the creation of presentations and pitches.
  4. Do you know how to change the oil in your car? Tom does.
  5. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be? Tom would chose to live in either San Diego or potentially Australia.
  6. How many pillows do you sleep with at night? Tom sleeps with two every night.

Items Mentioned in the Show:

badge_itunes-lrg