I remember joining a company that was starting to use a tool that would forever change the way that sales was managed: a CRM that some of you might remember called Goldmine. The goal in using such a CRM was that the potential gold was in the data, and I, like countless salespeople before and after me, made sure that I made Goldmine part of my daily routine to both discover new opportunities as well as monitor the progress of my own pipeline. Back then, salespeople controlled the sales cycle and customers literally had to call or e-mail us to get access to critical business information they would need in order to decide whether or not they wanted to pursue a relationship with our company.

Fast forward to 2014, where one study suggests that 57% of the buying process is already completed by the time a potential customer contacts you. People are not only savvier at searching Google for information, but more and more professionals and decision makers are also spending more and more time in social media, digging around for information and asking questions from their network about who they should do business with. Engaging with and making business sense out of these social media profiles and conversations is becoming a challenging task for sales professionals.

This is the reality we see in 2014. However, some things have not changed. Just as this book is a no-fluff approach to what some perceive as a potentially abstract subject that could be a waste of time with no business ROI, I want to point out that social media replaces nothing yet complements everything. Business has always been—and will continue to be—about relationships. I like to say that social media and tools like Social CRM are an example of New Tools, Old Rules. Yet, with so many people spending so much time in social media, and becoming reliant on it for trustworthy information, social media becomes a place where we can both build and nourish a relationship while also uncovering business opportunities.

If you've never developed business in social media, ask your salespeople (or if you don't have any salespeople, ask sales professionals in your network) if LinkedIn (or any other social network) has contributed either directly or indirectly to business. You might be surprised by how many people will say there has been a contribution, and we already know that 78% of salespeople who use social media outsell those who don't.

I have personally developed business just by maintaining a regular presence on Twitter (inbound lead generation) as well as engaging in a timely and relevant manner on LinkedIn (outbound lead generation). We all know that conversations can lead to a very many different number of directions, but sometimes those seemingly random conversations and questions that we spot in social media can provide us with business opportunities.

On the other hand, there is no better way to keep in touch with clients and nourish customer relationships than with social media. Instead of relying on a monthly phone call or quarterly face-to-face meeting, we can literally be engaging with our client database on a daily basis wherever we might be in the world.

The challenge, though, is that time is a finite resource while Social Big Data (Big Data generated from social media) is seemingly infinite. When salespeople spot a conversation in social media, they need to quickly tie that conversation together to a user profile, gauge the relevance and context of the conversation, and quickly decide what their next step would be and execute. Traditional CRMs simply cannot, and were not designed to, monitor real-time conversations and engagement. On the other hand, it is simply inefficient to have your salespeople (or yourself) trying to piece data together among different tabs open in a browser and make business sense of what they are seeing.

Like Craig, I am also a Nimble user, and as a sample of what a Social CRM can deliver, you can quickly see not only the efficiency of having all of this information together in one dashboard, but also the tremendously relevant data about people that would simply be missed if you couldn't see all of the information in one place. I always say that navigating to a decision maker's LinkedIn profile is like virtually visiting their office in that it reveals a great deal about that person, the journey they have walked from a professional perspective, and common professional connections you might have with them. That information, however, is only one part of the picture: supplementing that data with input from other social networks such as Facebook and Twitter give us a more complete picture of that individual. Finally, mapping all of this information together with our own customer database gives you a sense of the power of utilizing a Social CRM as your primary business dashboard. I didn't even mention that a Social CRM will also allow you to engage with said individual on the right platform at the right time.

We already have data that indicates that 80% of salespeople who had access to LinkedIn profiles inside their Salesforce.com dashboard through the LinkedIn Sales Navigator product were able to find information that they would not have known otherwise. Apply this to also having access to other social networks in your dashboard and being able to engage with your clients or prospects wherever they are in social and you can feel the potential power that a Social CRM can have for your business.

Craig Jamieson, an expert for whom I have deep respect, will guide you through the process of choosing, implementing, and optimizing your Social CRM in a no-nonsense, ROI-driven manner. As you embark on utilizing a Social CRM, please don't forget how the concept New Tools, Old Rules will help you truly maximize your social presence and use a Social CRM for what it was intended: relationships. After all, social media was made for people, not businesses, right?

Neal Schaffer

Author of Maximize Your Social, Wiley

Founder of Maximize Social Business