{"id":3611,"date":"2012-07-04T16:43:53","date_gmt":"2012-07-04T15:43:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/visionarymarketing.wordpress.com\/?p=2911"},"modified":"2024-04-11T07:39:34","modified_gmt":"2024-04-11T05:39:34","slug":"sap-convincing-the-cfo-that-b2b-social-media-can-be-a-benefit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/visionarymarketing.com\/en\/2012\/07\/04\/sap-convincing-the-cfo-that-b2b-social-media-can-be-a-benefit\/","title":{"rendered":"SAP: convincing the CFO that B2B social media can be a benefit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week I had the chance to bump into Sarah Goodall from SAP<\/a>; I was very pleased to see her at the usefulsocialmedia conference in London one year after being acquainted with her at a marketing conference in London. Sarah is one of our best social media practitioners in the B2B world and I was lucky enough to sneak out of the B2C session and switch rooms to listen to her. Her presentation was about how to convince your CFO about the benefit of social media<\/strong>. Not an easy task, but Sarah knows how to circumvent the issue; here is how:<\/span><\/em>
\nSarah Goodall looks after social media for EMEA and she presented on June 26th at the usefulsocialmedia conference in London. \u201cHow can social media generate value? I haven\u2019t got all the answers!\u201d Sarah said as an introduction, but she has a few clues which she wanted to share with us.<\/span>
\nSarah has worked for small and large companies and knows \u201chow to make things work on a tight budget\u201d. SAP sells software and services to businesses; it is forty years old and it comes from \u201ca traditional marketing background\u201d Sarah said, and moving into social business \u201cis a true cultural shift\u201d. Hence, social media \u201ccame as a shock\u201d to SAP according to her and \u201cit helped [them] turnaround the sales cycle\u201d Sarah went on. What it means is that there has been more emphasis on posting content on where customers are getting it rather than push that content over to them. Therefore, the transition is to inbound Marketing \u201ceven though we are not there yet\u201d Sarah said, very honestly. \u201cOutbound still represents twice the budget which is spent on inbound marketing\u201d she added.
\nHow to attribute social influence to revenue?<\/strong>
\nAt the very heart of the business, there is the owned SAP community, using Jive internally and an external community with customers. On top of that, there are channels which aren\u2019t owned by SAP such as LinkedIn, Slideshare, Facebook, Twitter etc. The SAP community network<\/strong> is fairly known outside of SAP, and is 3 million big nowadays. \u201cA lot of bloggers are contributing in this community, most of them aren\u2019t part of SAP by the way\u201d Sarah added.
\nOn external platforms, SAP have enough fans to fill in football stadiums several times \u201cbut this is still not sufficient for CFOs!\u201d she said. Hard facts are required, more arguments needed. So what will it take to drive the point home? \u201cWhat the CFO is interested in is the impact on customer value, and the bottom line and it\u2019s tough, I\u2019m not going to lie\u201d Sarah said.
\nsecret sauce<\/strong>
\nSo here are a few of Sarah\u2019s secret recipes for getting CFOs to buy in to social media:<\/p>\n