Any communication trainer will tell you that the best quality of a great communicator (and actually a salesperson) is one that LISTENS – before anything else.

A good salesperson uses TWO ears and ONE mouth – the priority is on listening to what your prospective client or existing client is saying and asking of you. Time and again we find businesses jumping into social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook and all they do is ‘bump up’ how fabulous they are and they have exactly what you want and at the right price. This is just as annoying and counter-productive in the online environment as it is on the offline one!

The simplest advice I give to anyone who will listen (no pun intended) is this: behave online as you would offline. Now…if you are quite a ballsy aggressive salesperson by nature in real life, then you will have a wake-up call when it comes to social media. Subtlety is the order of the day on the social platforms – building trust and impressing your audience with valuable content should be high on your to-do list,..and “Selling” quite low down.

I’m not saying that you don’t sell – I’m saying there is a time for it and there is a benefit to being strategic about how you go about it. On social media – your value is truly measured by what other people “think” of you (that is – what their opinion is of you; how they relate that to their circles of influence; and in how they relate to you through their engagement/interaction with your content.)

Solution:

Use the social media channels as a way to really get to the heart of why your customers/clients choose you (so you can do more of it), or why some people don’t choose to become your customer/clients (so you can find out what you should be offering instead of offering what will never sell).

Here’s a quote from me:

“Steady, clear, authentic and consistent. These are four basic tenants of excellent ‘social’ communication techniques. Knowing what questions to ask and how to ask them – now therein lies the genius in learning about engagement.”