In this episode of Thought Leader Life, thought leader Lori Harmon talks about social selling and how companies can make quantum improvements in sales results by using social media as a tool. I speaks of Lori as someone who is not a “sales person” but a “social seller”; Lori says what she does nd does what she says. With 25 years of experience in high-tech sales under her mettle, Lori knows how experience can be used to build interest and awareness among future advocates and advocates. She gravitates towards the “awareness” section of the thought leadership funnel because awareness is the head-start to the process. After awareness is established, then the sales team’s task would be to follow or to find the leads. Lori thinks that a sales thought leader appreciates the importance of building awareness. In that sense, a thought leader should help people get ahead of the market by introducing innovative and leading-edge ideas, help people come along into the “new,” and help them move forward to better heights.

The discussion provides a deeper perspective about social selling and Lori has some relevant points to say about social selling and winning over future advocates. In today’s world, marketing is leveraging social media to build awareness. Once awareness is built, sales people can leverage social media to find sales leads and advance the sales process. That basically is the essence of social selling–being able to build awareness, and from there, being able to rev up the sales process. I touch on the issue of which is the better social media tool for sales. Lori mentions LinkedIn and Twitter as the two most popular and appropriate platforms companies can use to introduce and promote themselves and the company although she mentions Facebook as also having a role it can play for business. Michael finds SlideShare effective and calls it a hidden gem because, per his experience in a Fortune 100 company, Slideshare, which they did not really give priority to, turned out to be a great traffic generator.

Lori talks about some challenges she and her team at Quantum Sale met as they help big, mature companies go through the infancy stage of social selling. The biggest challenge is having top management become models for the rest of the employees and get CEOs personally do social selling.

To learn more about social selling and how it can help you be successful, subscribe to the Thought Leader Life YouTube channel.

Here are a few “‘aha’ moments” from the episode. See more in the upcoming book, soon to be a part of the THiNKaha app-only book series and watch the interview below!

You can’t prove your model unless you build awareness. @quantumsale

Brand awareness is very important. You have to keep it, maintain it, and build it forever! You can’t stop that process. @quantumsale

Social selling is leveraging the sales tools to establish credibility. @quantumsale

Follow Lori on Twitter at @loriharmon or @quantumsale. Tune into Thought Leader Life every Saturday for more thought-leader goodness!