Social media is profoundly changing how customers make decisions. Influence is shifting from sellers to peers. Unless businesses find alternatives to traditional sales and marketing processes, they will be relegated to order-takers and purveyors of commodities.

How Influence in the Buyer-Seller Relationship has Changed

Influence – the capacity or power of persons or things to be a compelling force on or produce effects on the actions, behavior, opinions, etc., of others.

A recent white paper, Distributed Influence: Quantifying the Impact of Social Media by the Edelman organization raises very interesting issues. It offers up some ways to think about influence but doesn’t come to definitive conclusions. This is not a criticism, the paper serves a valuable function—it is provocative, it challenges status quo thinking, and, after discussion the issues, concludes that business people typically take the wrong perspective. Rather than focus on who to influence, businesses should spend more energy figuring out how customers are influenced and then act accordingly. This, of course, caught our attention because it is a major premise of John's book, Addicted Customers: How to Get Them Hooked on Your Company.

We are going to look at some of the issues and add our perspective.

Here are four caveats:

1. In business, influence is most important if you are trying to get someone to change. If you are happy selling a commodity this discussion will have less relevance. However, if you want to de-commoditize your product that takes influence.
   
   
2. Change, means giving up the predictability and control that comes from doing things in an established way with established products. However, customers will be motivated to change when the world is changing around them and the old rules and perspectives no longer work effectively.
   
   
3. When change is forced upon them, customers are pushed out of their psychological comfort zone. The external world no longer seems as safe and orderly, where meaningfulness and value can be obscured. Under these circumstances businesses have an opportunity to influence customers in a new way. This influence comes from helping customers see how you can add meaning or value to their lives. The genesis of this influence is simplifying things in a fast-changing and increasingly complex world.
   
   
4. Influence depends on trust. The norm is for customers to be suspicious or distrustful of businesses. They trust peers, even anonymous ones on the Internet, more than most businesses. Unless businesses takes deliberate action to change this, their influence will continue to diminish.

Issues Raised by Edelman and Our Comments

Edelman: What matters is who we are talking to… not how many…

These days "talking to…" is out and "talking with…" is in. It is important to have a dialog, a conversation that helps both parties get in sync and to establish that they have some common ground and a win-win agenda for a better future.

Due to information overload, most mass communication efforts don't actually get through to customers. These days, customers signal receptivity by actively searching the Internet. Even retired people are likely to do research online before buying. It is now estimated that 75% of BtoB purchases are initiated by the buyers after they have done online research. This means companies need to rethink their emphasis on the "selling process" and focus on the customers' "buying process."

Edelman: Influence and attention are different. Influence is fiscal and long-term whereas attention is momentary and short-term.

You can get someone's attention by banging on the table—holding their attention and getting them to mentally engage is another thing. Gimmicks can get the attention of a lot of people. The first incarnation of Office Depot's elfyourself website was forwarded to 36 million people. It was fun but what's next? It did not last and did not increase Office Depot influence with customers or customer loyalty.

Edelman: Should marketers target influencers or the easily influenced?

The Edelman paper brings into question the attention paid to the number of eye-balls a site attracts. Bloggers with high traffic sites, lots of RSS feeders, and lots of links may attract attention but what about their influence? The Edelman paper suggests that without intermediaries, they do not have a big influence on buyers.

We think there is something to this position. High profile influencers are, by definition, distant from any given individual's view of the world and the unique problems they face. The guru might raise a profound point, but unless individuals can see how it has meaning to them, little influence takes place.

However, the person who puts this profound point into context for the individual has significant influence. An essential element in this process is trust. One way to earn trust and credibility is to show customers how new products or ideas have value and lead to opportunities. Peers are powerful advocates because they are in the same context and don't have a hidden agenda. Businesses need to achieve the same status if they want to have influence with customers.

How can a business become part of the influence process? Here is an example of how Xeequa did it on a low budget.

• They used the online social networking site, meetup.com, to reach people interested in a common topic, "How businesses will change with social media." and invited them to participate in a roundtable discussion.
  
  
• How did I find out about the meeting and get invited?  I have a Google Alert for the term social media and their message came into my email inbox.
  
  
• Why did I choose to go? Well, first the topic was of interest. Second, the meetup.com platform let me see the profile of the other people who planned to attend. I quickly determined that most were senior executive and therefore felt the meeting would produce some interesting insights.
  
  
• I willingly paid $35 to spend three hours with these people. During the course of the roundtable discussion I learned what their issues were, how they articulated them and so on. I learned about their context.
  
  
• What about Xeequa? Axel Schultze, Xeequa's CEO chaired discussion but hardly mentioned his company. However, the notepads in front of each participant said: Xeequa: The Business Networking Company. Immediately after the roundtable discussion, Axel and his staff were sought out. Almost everyone wanted to know what they did and how Xeequa could address the issues raised. I personally initiated a follow-up meeting and want to build and ongoing relationship with them. I have since learned that several companies in attendance are now seriously considering the Xeequa platform.
  
  
• Xeequa influenced the thinking of over 20 senior executives who are now armed to elevate the importance of social media and business to their peers. And, yes, they are likely to evangelize Xeequa. Humm' no sales call.

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For insights into how Social Media impact the customer experience check out our two new flash videos:

Web 2.0/Social Media: Why All the Hoopla? (05:43) and Social Media and Business Relationships (02:43)

and two white papers:

Why Online Communities Matter and Social Networks and Online Communities Create Elastic Ties and Surprisingly Powerful Pay-offs

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For additional information on trust and customer relationships, check out John's book, Addicted Customers: How to Get Them Hooked on Your Company. www.AddictedCustomers.com.

This newsletter is brought to you by The Whetstone Edge, LLC (www.TheWhetstoneEdge.com).

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