We’re taking a holistic view of the experience customers have with a company or brand, and the role social selling can play in shaping this experience. We talk with Marcy Fluitt, Marketing Strategy Consultant with 17+ years experience in enterprise marketing.
We cover:
About Marcy:
Marcy Fluitt is a seasoned marketing professional with 17 years’ experience in enterprise marketing across industries, from construction engineering and machinery manufactured product lines to telecommunications and technology solutions. While Marcy has worked across the entire spectrum of marketing functions, her sweet spots are marketing strategy, go-to-market, new product introductions and customer experience.
What sets her apart is her passion to think about marketing holistically, advancing opportunity for impact. Simply put, Marcy always keeps the overall customer experience front and center while selling the brand’s solution value.
In her most recent position as Global Marketing Director at Spectralink Corporation, Marcy focused on digital marketing and introduced a social selling program to the sales organization.
Marcy lives and works in New Orleans, Louisiana, and enjoys food & music festivals!
Connect with Marcy or follow her on LinkedIn.
About our sponsor ReadyForSocial:
ReadyForSocial is a leading social selling company and sponsor of this podcast. Since 2014, ReadyForSocial has supported large companies in the DACH region, Europe, and the USA by introducing, managing, and expanding their social selling programs.
Learn more about their solution and services here.
Lisa and Monika both work for ReadyForSocial. Feel free to contact them about this podcast or about ReadyForSocial's services: Lisa Davidson and Monika Ruzicka.
We’re taking a holistic view of the experience customers have with a company or brand, and the role social selling can play in shaping this experience. We talk with Marcy Fluitt, Marketing Strategy Consultant with 17+ years experience in enterprise marketing.
We cover:
About Marcy:
Marcy Fluitt is a seasoned marketing professional with 17 years’ experience in enterprise marketing across industries, from construction engineering and machinery manufactured product lines to telecommunications and technology solutions. While Marcy has worked across the entire spectrum of marketing functions, her sweet spots are marketing strategy, go-to-market, new product introductions and customer experience.
What sets her apart is her passion to think about marketing holistically, advancing opportunity for impact. Simply put, Marcy always keeps the overall customer experience front and center while selling the brand’s solution value.
In her most recent position as Global Marketing Director at Spectralink Corporation, Marcy focused on digital marketing and introduced a social selling program to the sales organization.
Marcy lives and works in New Orleans, Louisiana, and enjoys food & music festivals!
Connect with Marcy or follow her on LinkedIn.
About our sponsor ReadyForSocial:
ReadyForSocial is a leading social selling company and sponsor of this podcast. Since 2014, ReadyForSocial has supported large companies in the DACH region, Europe, and the USA by introducing, managing, and expanding their social selling programs.
Learn more about their solution and services here.
Lisa and Monika both work for ReadyForSocial. Feel free to contact them about this podcast or about ReadyForSocial's services: Lisa Davidson and Monika Ruzicka.
Hi straight to business listeners and welcome to our latest episode. As always, Monika and I are thrilled to welcome you to our show and share the latest social selling knowledge with you. In today's episode, we want to focus on the impact of social selling and the customer experience. So let's dive right in. Customer experience, often abbreviated as CX refers to customers holistic perception of the experience with a business or brand. So it involves all interactions that your customers have with your company across all stages of the customer journey. This can range from pre sales to the service they receive post sale. So it's no wonder that customer experience matters because it can increase customer retention and lifetime value, impact brand loyalty and reputation and ultimately create competitive advantage. Now social media can have an essential influence on the customer experience, be it through social media marketing, where the brand communicates via social channels, or through social selling where salespeople use social media to interact with customers and prospects. To get you insights into social selling and connection with customer experience. We are excited to have Marcy Fluitt as our guest speaker today. We have worked with Marcy in the past. And what really stood out to us was her passion for a holistic view of marketing and creating an exceptional customer experience. Hi, Marcy. We're so happy to have you here with us today. It's a pleasure to join you. Hi, everyone. So before we ask Marcy, everything you want to know about social selling and its impact on the customer experience, I'd like to give you at home some background information on our guest speaker. Marcy Fluitt is a seasoned marketing professional with 17 years experience across enterprise industries, from construction, engineering and machinery manufacture product lines to telecommunications and technology solutions. While Marcy has worked across the entire spectrum of marketing functions, her sweet spots are marketing strategy, go to market, new product introductions and customer experience. What sets her apart is her passion to think about marketing holistically advancing opportunity for impact. Simply put, Marcy always keeps the overall customer experience front and center while selling the brand solution value. In her most recent position as global marketing director at SpectraLink Corporation, Marcy focused on digital marketing, and introduced the social selling program to the sales organization. Marcy lives and works in New Orleans, Louisiana, and enjoys food and music festivals. Marcy, you have an impressive background with lots of industry experience and knowledge. Could you explain first? Why social is the channel where brands can really make an impact these days? Thank you, Lisa. Yes, I just feel social just really allows for a huge impact a brand can have because it allows you to just reach not only your existing audience, but prospective audience and it builds community and engagement and eventually customer loyalty as time goes on. So let's look a little more into the opportunities social has to offer. We know that social media enables us to deeply connect with the audience on an emotional level, and lets us proactively participate in conversations. What's your take on this? Well, I think at the very beginning, it's so important to really know who your audience is what makes them tick, what type of demographics are you working with, or selling to what interests your audience has, and really understand their customer needs? Because you want to be able to, throughout your messaging and conversation, be able to connect those value dots on what you have to offer? How are you going to solve that customer's problem? What are the the types of things that they're looking for? What types of solutions are going to make their life easier? And why should they care? And then you can create that messaging that is resonating that can cause some sort of action or emotion that's driving that action. Marcy, Can I just jump in with something that builds upon what you said to really understanding your customers and I think social really offers some unique opportunities. We just had a recent episode with Jeff Epstein, who is VP of Marketing at Triton, a medical device company and they sell to the medical profession, including nurses and while they use LinkedIn a lot as a channel to communicate with the audience. They also heavily read Lie on Facebook because they realized that that's the main channel where their audience meets after work, and where they discuss not confidential things, but where they discuss about the ins and outs of their work. What's hard about the world? What challenges do they have? And I thought that was so so clever to use Facebook to really learn about the pain points of your audience? And where would you get this information other than the social conversations? Yeah, that's exactly right. And I think it's equally important that you're doing that analysis, as you're shaping or creating those profiles of your audience and your primary customers, you know, who do you really want to resonate with? And what are they engaging with today that you can really bring in something new or innovative, and maybe it's industry trends, or something specific to their particular position at the company, or solutions and operational processes that they do on a day to day basis? How can you come in and really add some clarity or even meaningful conversation around the solution that you offer? And why should they consider you the next time that they're thinking of going in that direction, or even to learn more, you really want to create that actionable element within the conversation. Yeah, that's another unique thing about social that you can actually engage in these direct conversations with your audience, both as a brand and as an individual marketing or sales person or product development person. So I think that's another thing where social selling the one on one interaction with your clients really shapes the customer experience, because you can indeed make it an ongoing conversation that is really immediate. And if you offer value, your audience is gonna be engaging in your conversation. And if you don't offer value, they're not gonna engage in the conversation. So it's also pretty immediate feedback that you're getting from your audience. Yeah, absolutely. And you want to be in the midst of that conversation, because you want to be top of mind to that customer or that prospect the next time that they're thinking along those lines, you want them to think about you and what type of service or solution that you're offering. We're about you're an expert or a leader in this particular industry, and that, so I think it's a great way to start the conversation and to be a part of it. And then to really add meaningful elements to that conversation. Yeah, actually, I was listening to a Customer Experience podcast yesterday and interesting term I came across, they talked about digital pollution, and how it is important for businesses. And then also, I think, with regards to social selling to be intentional in the messages that you send out. Also, you know, to tell your people who are sharing messages on social media to be intentional and to have the value in mind to always offer either insights or value or expertise. When you share something on social media. I thought that was just an interesting concept. Because they said, if you have too much of content or too much of messaging out there that is not relevant to your audience, or distracting to your audience, then you can negatively impact the customer experience. I thought that was an interesting aspect. Yes, absolutely. I think it's so important that you remain consistent with that messaging, and that that's incorporated into your strategy because it is so important to have that core message and it could be three to five things that are just repeated in different ways. And not to just distract or to clutter the conversation with things that are not resonating or even relevant to your audience. Marcy, before we give more tips on how to improve your customer experience with social, I'd like to ask you our mandatory question here on our podcast, and that's what's your favorite dish of food from your part of the world? What can you recommend our listeners whenever they make it to Louisiana? Well, you definitely can't go wrong. I mean, I really love seafood Creole. There's so many different flavors and you could have something as simple as a seafood gumbo if you don't like too spicy but the biggest thing to look for is the Louisiana land Yap and that is a little something extra can always be found in the food and the dishes that are prepared. That sounds delicious. Okay, well, let's circle back to our topic. Everything we talked about so far. sounds great in theory worry, but how can you craft the strategy across the entire sales cycle reaching from awareness to post sale and Net Promoter Score? And just a quick definition for our listeners who might be new to this topic? Net Promoter Score is a widely used market research metric. It measures the loyalty of customers to accompany typically by asking respondents how likely it is that they would recommend a company product or service to a friend or colleague. So to get back to my question, I'd like to know how you can craft the strategies we talked about across the entire sales cycle. So the easiest thing that I tried to always reference is to start and end with the customer, because every sales journey starts with your customer and ends with the customer. And so it doesn't matter if it's a new acquisition that you're trying to attain or repurchase. But the brand has to earn that unique positioning in the market. And so you your journey mapping is a method where you're going to outline the areas of the customer experience where a brand can have the greatest impact. And that comes back to that intentional outlining of the experience that you want your customer to have, and how you plan to influence the market perception, engage how you're going to address customer pain points with your business value, offer solution benefits at each step of that customer journey, and really dig into how you want that to resonate with your customers. Marcy, can I ask a follow up question to that. And one thing that I come across often in my work is how do you cooperate with the different departments internally that are involved in shaping that customer experience between marketing and sales and customer service? Or Customer Success management? Can you talk to that a little bit? What are good practices of really making sure that the messages are actually consistent? Because oftentimes, you know, messaging is off created by the by the marketing team, but you want it to be consistent across the entire sales cycle. And then if you lack social selling into it, you lose a bit of control of that messaging, because then you have all of a sudden, all these individuals going out there and sharing messages. Can you talk to that a little bit from your experience? Or what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I think it's always important to break down your customers into profile groups that, you know, you're building a set of messaging to engage with that particular audience. So if it's a new acquisition, you're gonna want to do that in a different way than if it's a repurchase opportunity or renewal. So I think it's important to just set your different groups and then determine throughout that journey, those key moments that you can create a wow experience, or you maybe it's an offer that you have that you're bringing to the market, a new product that just came out, or it could just be talking about the way that your company is able to see you want to take these groups and really determine the appropriate messaging that's going to resonate across these different buyer profiles. And this is just going to help you once you start to publish or engage in these conversations. But it also allows you to create that action, you know what, what's going to get them to click learn more about what I'm saying or schedule a demo. But what is going to provide that, that window to open up the conversation in a way where they can immediately take it and create some action off of it is the best way to kind of strategize your messaging in between those groups. Yeah. Can I just ask another question about this? So when we talk about the holistic customer experience, I'm curious inside of the organization, who typically owns the customer experience? So as I mentioned, the Net Promoter Score, how is that typically gathered? And who owns that at the organization? Is it marketing? Is it the customers success or customer service department who was really responsible, ultimately for the customer experience being great? Well, I think it definitely has to be something that comes from the top down and the bottom up, but everyone at the organization is responsible for providing that stellar customer experience. And you know, it's up to the company to kind of set that standard around how they want that to work, and it truly is more of an operation. In all or transactional process, you're just trying to get a metric out there of how likely someone is to recommend your company to another. But being prepared to utilize the data in a way that you're going to take action to either use the information to develop something new, or maybe it's changing a process, or it's asking, Well, why did you give me that recommendation? Is there anything that I could do differently as a company or an organization, that would increase my chances to gain more of that promoter audience and so you really want to look at it holistically, but typically, I mean, it's, it's a transactional area, and typically owned by marketing or sales. But a customer facing group is usually managing the Net Promoter or customer loyalty programs. Because you know, it does stem from the overall corporate messaging and communications, but also just the sales strategy in general, and how you want to talk about your solutions, you're going to want to also come back and be able to analyze the experience that your customers had after they bought from you, or after they've experienced your product or solution after, you know, three months, you want to go back and maybe ask another series of questions to see how the solution is working for them. And is there anything that you could do differently? Or at the time of renewal or even repurchase, you're kind of making that another opportunity to create a moment? You know, what type of experience can you offer at that point, that's really going to allow that customer and really make them loyal throughout the length of either the product's life or just through divestiture and repurchase. They're there for the life because they trust you and how you have how you have delivered the solution to them. Thank you for explaining that. Monica, do you want to explain a little more how social media can influence the customer experience in general, not just for the sales team? Yeah, so maybe, Marcy, we can spend a couple of minutes talking about that. Specifically, we started a little bit with social media now coming back to social media and the social selling aspect of shaping the customer experience. So one thing that I always find interesting, and you mentioned that already is the s, the customer experience spans the entire sales sites, social media, and social selling also spends the entire sales cycle and the distinction again, just for our listeners, between social media marketing, that's where the company issues messages or builds conversation with the audience as a company. And then social selling is where the individual salespeople or sometimes even a broader group within the organization, including marketing, customer success, account management, and so on comes in. So social selling social media marketing, let's look at them both how the social channel impacts the customer experience. And one thing that I am very intrigued about, and companies have different approaches to that is how do you shape that messaging on social that is consistent between what the company puts out there, what individuals put out there? What strict guidelines do you give people? What are your thoughts on that? Well, I think to really make it easy, I would just tell people to look at it in kind of a three pronged approach where you're starting at the top of the funnel. And typically you are trying to attract or build brand awareness, you're typically talking to more of a prospective audience, people that may be likely to purchase, you know, a product or solution that you're selling. And so I try to look at it or get people to take it from just like the top of the funnel. And then breaking it up into three kind of groups is where you're building that awareness messaging, but then you also have messaging that is going to continue to nurture that audience that has engaged with you up until this point, you want to continue to nurture that relationship on social and then a third is the upsell and the retention or how Having that customer become even an advocate for your brand or recommend your brand to someone else. And so there's those three areas where I would build a plan and a strategy around those three buckets in the sales cycle. Would you say that basically as part of the marketing strategy or the sales strategy that social should be that all the stages? Or do you see that's one area where social place a lesser role or where it plays a bigger role? No, I think social media can really be utilized throughout the sales cycle, because it is the brand's opportunity to reach a broader network of people and a way to be a part of the conversations that are already happening. And so it doesn't necessarily matter at which stage you're in. I think the social platforms offer just ways to engage and connect with people, regardless of what area of the sales cycle they may be in, but truly to be an advisor or an expert in your industry, to share even case studies, through your experience on what customers have benefited from the solutions that you've sold. And being able to talk about that is equally important. So I think social just provides that. That robust platform. Yes, absolutely. One other question, I wanted to ask you, Marcy, when it comes to social selling, one thing that we talk about with our clients a lot is that normally when you as a company, communicate with your customers, or with your prospects, because the communication is driven by what you have to offer, by your brand, by your products and solutions by your social and environmental engagement, but the communication is really mostly about you as a company and what you have to offer. Now, when we look at social selling, there's the expectation to be perceived as a thought leader, as an expert in your industry. So you need to make in other things other than talking about yourself, like talking about industry trends, and talking about other topics that your audience is interested in, especially when you look at social selling where the salespeople should be real people and not only act as an extension of their company. So I wanted to ask you for your thoughts on that. And how far the social channel is so important in shaping the customer experience, in that it's just not only about you, and therefore the messaging gets a little bit more ambiguous, and maybe also spontaneous because other topics arise that you didn't have on your agenda to maybe bring up with your audience. Absolutely, I mean, I think there's often times where you can kind of curate your message to be in that correct brand, voice, whatever it needs to be in order to one be a part of the conversation, if it's maybe a conversation that you're joining, but want to offer a suggestion or even educate, educate, and inform on maybe the right solution or give them a couple of ideas that they could think about. But what's gonna really drive the interest or facilitate, you know, a solution to that need or that pain point? I think, oftentimes, you know, that's kind of overlooked. But if we can on the front end, proactively be a part of that conversation and educate in the areas where, you know, we really want to shape the conversation, then it's important to kind of bring in maybe other things that are not as specific to your company, but maybe more in line with some of the industry trends or maybe the way competitors are moving and kind of offering other suggestions or recommendations as that advisor thought leader. Mm hmm. One other aspect that I think is interesting with regards to social media and social selling when we I'm also talking about the the sales cycle that especially in b2b, but I guess it's the same in b2c by talking about b2c. To get a customer to eventually buy from you, or a prospect to eventually buy from you, you typically have a fairly large amount of touch points depending on you know, whatever you're selling how long your sales cycles are, and with regards to social selling, because on social media, because it's such a fast moving medium, and the interactions just happen much quicker and with also more people on each side of the organization. We often talk about the acceleration of the sales cycle, or you just multiply your touch points across the sales process. So how how in how do you see that? And why does that matter in terms of building the customer experience? Well, I think the more touch points where you can proactively control you know, that customer experience or offer a, an alternative, or even suggestions on how your solution really meets their needs, but you're doing that across the board and from various operational areas. If you're kind of consistently bringing that same message, it's just gonna build that brand authenticity, it's going to add so much credibility throughout the customer journey, because when you can, you can add, okay, go ahead. Hold on, I want to start over. So Marcy, one thing that I find so interesting about social media and social selling, that it multiplies the touchpoints that you have, as a company with your clients. And if we look at b2b, you know, and looking at, you know, for instance, interacting with the decision making unit on the other side, you normally need a lot of touch points until you get to the decision, ultimately. So I think that social has a really interesting part to play with regards to, with regards to generating all these touch points across the sales cycle, and in the end, also accelerating the sales cycle, because social is just such a fast moving channel, and you just have these quick paced interactions with your clients. I totally agree with you, Monica. And I'd like to dig a little deeper regarding multiple touch points. Why do multiple touch points matter? And building strong bonds with your audience, Marcy? And why should each salesperson have their unique voice on social? Well, I think it's so important for a brand to build that authenticity and credibility throughout the customer journey. And so when you can set your sales team up, where they can anticipate some of those market triggers and opportunities, it's going to heighten sales ability to really resonate on a deeper level, they're considered more of an expert or that leading advisor in the field, and they're going to be able to speed up activity in the market, and in turn, speeds up that sales cycle timeframe. And so it's really a way to amplify your network reach, but also speed up that activity in the market. Get people talking and thinking about the things that you can offer and provide meaningful commentary. One of the things that I find interesting about the unique, unique voice of the salespeople is that you also create a somewhat different depths of the relationship with your clients. Because as a company, of course, yes, you show your brand voice on social media and your sales team amplifies that in a way but then the salespeople go out there with their unique personality and sometimes sharing things like they participated in some sort of charity run or they do certain things in their free time as it's sometimes also more and more shared on social media and I often hear from from people Will that build a deeper connection with somebody on the client side because they both laugh, motorcycles, and I know why those are very surrended serendipitous encounters, oftentimes, you can't really plan for them. But I think if you look at the overall scheme of things, you you build multiple touchpoints, you create an acceleration, but I think you also create a certain depth of the relationship that goes beyond what you have without the social channel. Absolutely. And I think as you dive deeper, as that expert or advisor, then you can really take things wherever you would want at that point, whether it's going to be and so having them be able to go at such a deeper level on social as an expert, and an advisor only kind of sets the stage for even more personalization down the road, if you will, because as that relationship, and that sales expert is kind of recognized as the, you know, thought leader in the area, that's gonna just gonna build trust and resonate even further with your audience. And so then you can start to really personalize different messages, or maybe if it's even generating interest around what they like to do in their spare time, or getting to know them on a different level. But yeah, that goes back to knowing your audience and understanding your customers needs. And however you can connect those value dots, you really want to hone in on that. And, you know, that's really what's going to set you up for success. Yeah. And last thought on that, and the by this, actually, you just looped aspect nicely through our opening of the conversation, how do you learn about your customers, you really understand your customers. And I think 111 aspect of this whole social media and social selling piece when it comes to the customer experience is that you really need to stay on top of listening to your clients like you, you need to know certain things about your clients that you can probably only get from the social channel, like if you go into an important customer meeting, and they have just chat on LinkedIn or on Twitter or wherever about a big event that they had, or the C level person that you're interacting with, talked about some of their pain points on social media, it's almost like you need to know these things. You cannot go into a meeting and ask these questions, because it's expected that you take this interest in your clients. I think that's another important element just to add that to what we started with. And what we ended with as social with regards to the customer experience is so important from so many aspects, including the really listening and understanding what motivates and what drives your audience beyond the pure commercial interaction that you have around your products and services. Absolutely. I think it's imperative for that social listening and building that knowledge base, if you will, just around your customer, the profile, what pain points they experience, but really just knowing where they stand and listening to what they're saying on social or what they expect to come from the brand or from you. You can get a lot out of reading and listening and doing analysis on what your audience is doing today on social media. There you have it, guys, listen to your audience, be yourself, be authentic, be honest and trustworthy on social, it really makes a difference. Thank you so much for taking the time and sharing your knowledge with us and our listeners, Marcy. And you guys at home. Don't forget to connect with Marcy on social media. I'll put all of her links into today's show notes. Thanks again for being part of the show Marcy, and thank you guys at home for listening to the straight to business podcast. Thank you. Thank you so much, Marcy, for joining us today. Thank you guys so much for the invitation. It was really my pleasure. Happy to be a part of it.