My main takeaway from Nicky Kriel's Social selling talk at the B2B marketing expo, is that sales people should spend more time on the little gestures. Nothing is more powerful than human to human (H2H) contact. Instead of sending impersonal sales pitches on LinkedIn and Twitter, personalize your contact.

Her suggestions include sending video messages to your prospects, and sharing valuable content with them. To be successful at this, you need to research your customer first, and luckily both LinkedIn and Twitter have powerful search tools that should be taken advantage of.

78% of sales people using social media outperform their colleagues, so it's a technique they'd be foolish to ignore, not only because it can help you reduce the sales process.