Research on high-performing marketers released just today by Salesforce has 75% of them saying they’re tracking ROI from their social selling efforts. Only 28%, by way of contrast, said the same last year. No surprise, then, that the social media marketing platform Hootsuite has announced the acquisition of the mobile app Sales Prodigy.
“There’s a big gap in the market for social selling solutions,” says Matt Switzer, VP of partnerships and corporate development for Hootsuite. “Social has for years been the domain of small teams within marketing. Getting sales reps directly involved in social selling requires different kinds of tools.”
Sales Prodigy, which had already been included in Hootsuite’s App Directory, supports more than 200 business integrations and applications to help salespeople consolidate social networks, listen for opportunities, filter out “noise,” and measure results.
“Imagine a sales rep in a large B2B organization who’s responsible for thousands of potential accounts. Then imagine that there’s up to five relevant contacts at each of those companies,” Switzer says. “Sales Prodigy synchs with the reps’ CRM system, pulls in all the contacts, looks for them on social media, and reacts to pertinent keywords. Ideally, the rep can then send targeted messaging to each one individually.”
Switzer says the product is applicable to companies large and small, and Hootsuite has plenty of both. The platform claims to have 12 million users worldwide, including folks working at more than 800 of the Fortune 1,000.
