Chapter 9
Increase Sales
Growing a product's or service's top line means growing sales. However, in today's era of higher-quality items at all price points, many competing offerings are similar and, therefore, hard to distinguish. Certainly, product features, performance, and their price and advertising imagery are still important, and have to be up to snuff. But consumers are increasingly paying closer attention to emotional connection, attachment, and experience—all of which are becoming important drivers of sales.
Take the hot dog, for example. People appreciate franks nowadays for their contribution to enjoying family get-togethers, barbecues, and sporting events, and for their less obvious role in improving kids' nutrition, as parents today serve hot dogs with other foods they sneak in to broaden their children's diets. Selling hot dogs is really about selling love, nurturing, and good times.
Social media listening plays an important role in tuning companies in to their customers and prospects, and providing the knowledge that leads to the creation of compelling and effective sales strategies, programs, and tactics. This chapter looks across the range of sales situations that firms of every size face, to varying degrees and complexity. Our case examples demonstrate applications for social media listening that contributed to successful sales results. Listening assisted in: developing a meaningful sales strategy; finding, and helping to resolve, “pain points” that discourage ...
