Even though social media is bringing great tools for selling that make the sales process more effective and more meaningful, there are also risk and challenges related to it. The shift from traditional communication methods to social media communication tools is affecting to the way buyers and sellers communicate with each other. Interactions are more efficient when using social media because to-face interactions are decreasing. Although the reduction of face-to-face interaction brings efficiency, it may harm the quality of the relationship. (Marshall et al. 2012.) The disappearing traditional methods of communication lead to the fact that communication for example about customers’ needs is happening online, where everybody can see it, including competitors. Salespeople can collect information of the customers and prospects easily from social media but all the competitors are able to do the same. This should be considered in salespeople training that a salesperson is able to overcome these challenges.
Although competitors can see company’s social media behavior, salespeople can in contrast discover competitor’s communication with its customers online and track initiatives of the competitors in social media. Moreover, if the salespeople are following their competitors’
behaviors and interactions in social media, they can gain competitive intelligence. (Agnihotri et al. 2012.)
In addition, power of information is changing from sellers to buyers (Rollins, Nickell & Wei 2014). Results show that there can be even situations where the customers know more about the products of the company than the salespeople of the company do (Marshall et al. 2012).
One additional challenge is that salespeople feel that the selling processes are changing fast but
their firms are not keeping up with it (Fetherstonhaugh 2010). Also, firms are not utilizing social media part of their sales processes and performance enough (Gupta et al. 2011; ref.
Guesalaga 2016). In some companies, the social media is not considered to be a professional tool and its use can be forbidden (Fagard 2015; ref. Lacoste 2016) or there is no clear guidance to use it (Lacoste 2016). Some of the companies do not want to lose the control and have a risk for mistakes so they do not want their salespeople to use social media in sales even though their customers would buy from social media (Giamanco & Gregoire 2012). Futhermore, the privacy rules in social media are tightening all the time which creates challenges to data collection of the customers (Kumar & Mirchandani 2012). Companies are concerned for example wrong kind of posts that could affect to company’s image and cause even a PR crisis. E.g. ”false representations, unguarded disclosures and copyright violations that could bring legal exposure;
leaks of confidental company information; and the possibility that competitors will learn too much about client relationships and early-stage opportunities”. (Giamanco & Gregoire 2012, 92.) Also, social media can be mishandled or customers can have different kind of responses which can have a negative impact to outcomes (Agnihotri et al. 2012). If the company decides to not use social media in their sales, they will put their company and salespeople at a competitive disadvantage. Companies can avoid the risks by setting the right policies for social media usage and train their salespeople for the use of it. The importance of good judgement, respect towards others, obligation of confidentiality and giving the credit to whom it belongs should be highlighted. In training, company has to teach salespeople how they can use social media to network and create profitable relationships, do prospecting and find relevant information of the customers from social media. There should be clear guidelines what to do and what not. Sales managers can also connect with their salespeople in social media to supervise the use of social media. (Giamanco & Gregoire 2012, 93.)
Social media implementation to sales faces the same kind of challenges and difficulties than any other change in the company (Abhijit 2009). Employees can consider that it places their jobs at risk which can increase the resistance towards social media implementation (Andzulis et al. 2012). Some of the salespeople do not see clearly the benefits of using social media in sales (Curran & Meuter 2005) which makes them resist to change (Schultz et al. 2012).
Moreover, according to Gatignon and Robertson (1991), some of the salespeople see technology usage in sales more as a cost and not worth to use (Schultz et al. 2012). As in every change, employees should be taken part of the implementation process and communication should be enhanced during the change process. With the good communication, employees will
understand that they are not going to lose their jobs and social media can make company grow and move forward which makes the social media implementation easier because it is done with the employees and by listening to them (Andzulis et al. 2012).
One difficulty for companies when using social media in their selling functions is that salespeople can use social media differently. It has an impact whether the salesperson grew up with the social media or did they have to adapt to it. (Robinson, Marshall & Stamps 2005.) This will bring challenges to the sales managers that how they are going to manage different kind of salespeople. One important part of managing the salespeople in social media era is that managers have to know the trends in social media and also methods that salespeople can use in different markets with the different customers (Moncrief et al. 2015). Also, training should be offered to salespeople that are not that familiar with the social media usage.
Although social media’s personal usage should be engouraged, according to Guesalaga (2016) to increase the organizational competence and commitment, there was found a difficulty because increase of the personal social media usage can lead to a risk of lower productivity.
This can be enhanced if the use of social media is engouraged but it is through training lead to more to professional use which increases the effectiveness and efficiency in sales (Guesalaga 2016). It has been found that salespeople who are part of the social media and using social and professional networks have higher probability to succeed (Kim & Talbott 2018).
Connectivity explains the availability and connection of salespeople to customers. Salespeople feel that because of social media they do not have a place to hide anymore. Because of social media, customers expect that salespeople are available and accessible all the time. Some of the salespeople felt that customers think that they can contact them through social media, if the company is part of for example Facebook, but actually they are wasting a lot of salesperson’s time. Salespeople feel that they are “plugged in” all the time and they have to be available all day because customers are expecting total access. This means that there are high pressures towards salespeople. (Marshall et al. 2012). This can lead to salespeople’s burnout and decrease of motivation. This can be avoided through right kind of training and with a clear social selling strategy that considers workload of an individual salesperson.
Giamanco and Gregoire (2012, 90) concluded the risks of social selling well: “Social media selling has risks, but sitting on the sidelines is the greatest risk of all”.