Goal: Sell my audience on the POWER OF SOCIAL

Plan: Tailor my message to the audience

So I had planned on talking about “Social Media” or “Social Intelligence” or “Social Data” or “Social Selling”…. to be honest I was just trying to figure out what term, buzzword or explanation to use to explain the value and power of social media to those that think social is only for posting pictures of your cats and videos of your kids!!

I can’t hammer home enough the value of have a strategy and plan that is unique to the type of audience you are pitching. When it comes to selling someone on the value or ROI of social media this strategy must agile and you should be prepared to adjust on the fly.

My focus today was on the #SocialSelling element & demonstrating how you can use social data to define and predict potential customers path to purchase. Yes I would be using…

#SocialData then analyzing it to make my best predication

#SocialMedia to engage and establish relationships with these customers

#SocialIntelligence to combine the data, influencers and other variables to outline the path of the customer..

But when it came down to my strategy for todays presentation… I went with #SOCIALSELLING… Why?

The easy answer is because the audience was mostly sales leadership but the honest truth is I used a skill I mastered at the poker table!

I framed my first slide of the presentation as an overview of #SocialMedia but it was much more than that… I used all of the buzzword above matched with an example and a story not only to set the baseline of knowledge but so that I could read the non-verbal cues of the crowd to shape which of my 5 plans I would use for the rest of the presentation.

How someone moved in their chair when I using a buzzword

If audience looked at me or the slide deck

If they nodded or sat back in their seat

I recommend following Joe Navarro on Twitter and reading his book “What Every Body is saying!”

These and many more non-verbal cues allowed my audience to dictate which social strategy I would use…

My pitch went over well & not only did my plan work but the “Right Hook” (+Gary Vaynerchuk #JJJRH) went off without a hitch and I got everything I wanted…

The moral of this story is that if I would have went in with any one strategy or plan ahead of time it would have prevented me from customizing my pitch based on the audiences interest!