Social media generates 14% of all sales leads and 13% of all customers, according to the latest research from HubSpot. Facebook and LinkedIn are the most popular channels for acquiring customers; in 2012, 52% of B2B and B2C companies acquired a customer via Facebook and 43% via LinkedIn.

Is your business leveraging the power of social media for sales – or is your business stuck with a handful of “likes” and “followers” but no real change to your bottom line? From lead to deal, understanding how social media can generate sales leads is essential to working smarter. Yes, social media really can help your business generate more sales with less effort than traditional cold calling. Below, we share the new rules for generating sales via social media.

3 Rules for Using Social Media to Generate Sales Leads for Your Business

1. No Pain, No Gain

In the technology business, selling a solution to a problem means that timing is everything. You can’t sell a solution when your prospects are happy with the status quo; your prospects need to be experiencing real problems right now. So how can you find out if a prospective client is “in pain” and needs an immediate solution? Use social media monitoring tools to monitor industry trends and check-in on prospective. HootSuite, for example, is a social media dashboard that lets users keep track of multiple social networks, track brand mentions and analyze traffic. HubSpot just released an update to its internet marketing software called Social Inbox that provides a wide variety of monitoring tools. Use HootSuite, HubSpot or another social media monitoring tool to set up alerts for keywords related to industry problems that your business solves.

2. Be Part of the Community

Joining social media communities, such as a LinkedIn Answers, beats hours spent cold calling prospective clients. Look for problems in LinkedIn Answers that your business knows how to solve. Establish yourself as an industry thought leader by “giving away” your knowledge. Rather than cold calling companies in search of a prospective contact, use LinkedIn Answers to learn the names of buyers within organizations. Your conversations with these buyers should always add value – never blatantly market your product or service. By establishing a connection and monitoring your prospect’s social media activity, when a problem happens, not only will you be ready with the solution, but your prospect will also be open to learning more about your services.

3. Solve, Don’t Pitch

Social media is best used to build relationships with customers, not deluge would-be clients with marketing messages. That doesn’t mean, of course, that your business cannot pitch potential clients – you just need to take the relationship from social media back to more formal channels for sales. For example, if your social media monitoring tools alert you to a prospect that’s experiencing a real-time problem – and your company offers the solution – first reach out to the prospect via their preferred social network. Initiate a conversation with friendly tweet like “Sorry to hear about your server problems, we deal with those all the time”. Follow up with a direct message that you’ll be sending an email with more details. Finally, send a formal email referencing the initial tweet and introducing your services.

Summary

Fundamentally, social media is about relationship building and management; your business can’t do either if it’s on the wrong network. For example, the visual content revolution is making networks like Instagram and Pinterest more influential than ever before. That’s no reason, however, for your marketing department to spend hours updating Pinterest if your clients are all active on LinkedIn. Understand your clients’ needs and social media preferences; pick one or two channels (e.g. Facebook and LinkedIn) and focus your efforts here. By integrating your social media strategy into your company’s existing marketing program, your business can best identify qualified prospects and successfully close the deal.