I’m a sucker for a great story. Yesterday, I was doing some research for a client looking for a lead automation / lead scoring system, and after doing some research I decided to put a tweet out to see what others may have to say. Here’s how the social media sales story occurred:
Help: Looking for lead scoring alternatives. Looking at hubspot, marketo, eloqua, pardot, leads 360. Automation is not priority-scoring is.
— Jeremy Floyd (@jfloyd) January 22, 2013
Within an hour I had a dozen tweets from friends and a few companies. A few of which are included here:
@jfloyd we’d love for you to add @loopfuse to that list too:)We can help you with lead scoring. Free to try: loopfuse.com
— LoopFuse (@loopfuse) January 22, 2013
@jfloyd Eloqua/Marketo both have similar best practices for scoring (implicit/explicit)
— Erica Stone Gilbert (@resplendentlyme) January 22, 2013
@jfloyd I’m a fan of @visistat‘s current Lead Caster functionality…& it looks like a new version is coming soon. visistat.com/visistat-webin… — Chris Hill (@ChrisWHill) January 22, 2013
@jfloyd @actonsoftware also has lead scoring capabilities: act-on.com/products/lead-…. Let me know if I can be of assistance #marketingautomation — Paige Musto (@PR_Maven) January 22, 2013
@jfloyd Jeremy, pls feel free to check out our latest white paper on scoring & let us know if you have any questions! ow.ly/h2uj9 — Silverpop (@Silverpop) January 22, 2013
@jfloyd if you just need scoring, you can use native SFDC functionality tied to your web analytics. Email me for other ideas. — Josh Hill (@jdavidhill) January 23, 2013
@jfloyd I’ve used Eloqua and currently use Marketo.From an ease of use with a full set of features Marketo has made me a very happy user — Travis C Taylor (@TravisCTaylor) January 23, 2013
@jfloyd scoring was #1 for us too – went with #marketo. Great function and simplicity. The automation piece is very valuable. Go for both!
— Delinda Tinkey (@dtinkey) January 23, 2013
Here’s the amazing part, within 15 minutes my office phone rang. To my surprise, it was a representative from Marketo inquiring about the tweet that I had sent. After a fruitful conversation, I tweeted again.
Wow! Got a few tweets from vendors about lead scoring systems. 15 minutes after the tweet, @marketo called my office phone.
— Jeremy Floyd (@jfloyd) January 22, 2013
Then about 20 minutes later, I received another telephone call from Silverpop in response to Erica’s follow-up tweet:
@jfloyd Silverpop is also competitive in Marketing Automation. Are you connecting it to a CRM?
— Erica Stone Gilbert (@resplendentlyme) January 22, 2013
Social Media Sales 2013
So, this shouldn’t be a surprise, right? Since 2008, I’ve been telling clients that the day was coming (or here) when social media was going to be integrated into real-time business functions. Still, big data and connectivity took me off guard. A reply to such a tweet is one thing, but I was amazed with the speed and the research that went into not just simply tweeting back but actually connecting the dots from my bio to my business.
You’ve heard the social media warning: Ignore at your own peril, but so often, clients believe that the warning simply doesn’t apply to them. The excuses range from “my industry isn’t using social media” to “we don’t have the time for that.” Can you imagine not having a telephone in your business? The social telephone is ringing both metaphorically and now actually. The question is how long can it go unanswered?