I’ve been a sales consultant and trainer for a long time, 27 years in fact, and when I started my business there was nothing called social media marketing (Mmmm, there was no social media!), and branding was something that you did on the hind quarters of livestock.

Make no mistake about it, back then companies engaged in some sort of advertising, PR, direct marketing and other customer acquisition strategies. As a sales trainer hired by many of these companies we carefully developed highly integrated programs designed to generate the maximum results. But lately it seems like sales has taken a sorry back seat to all of the new and much sexier tactics.

Take social media marketing. No I’m not a Luddite and definitely see the need to include social media as part of our sales and marketing endeavors but to do so at the exclusion of creating a highly defined sales process, lead generation follow-up strategies and training on old fashioned sales competencies is simply wrong. It seems to me that all the social media in the world won’t substitute for “real” selling.

Visibility, credibility and brand awareness are all necessary to win business but if you don’t know how to stay on the grid during a lengthy sales cycle, present core benefits, probe intelligently, overcome objections persuasively and close the sale, then all of those catchy Facebook updates and all of the engagement in the world won’t do squat for your bottom-line.

But of course there is a solution! Make certain to marry marketing and sales and work with a team that knows how to integrate the two successfully. Social media engagement is great, booked business is better. Make them work together.