This means social media is not about promoting a specific marketing agenda, or directly converting leads or sales. An executive that expects that type of return will be disappointed and frustrated, and might insist this “social media stuff” doesn’t work.

It takes time to build the resources, skills and enthusiasm for new tools and tactics. The last one—enthusiasm—may be a particular stickler in B2B because of the leap of faith required to understand one of the top business benefits of social media: something called “likeability.”

The Benefits of Social Media

Social media offers businesses an opportunity to connect with individuals, rather than just promote product or services. A face in a video or an opinion in a blog entry provides useful and relevant information beyond what a standard website can offer.

These softer, social touches can go a long way when potential customers with many choices, are deciding which company they want to do business with.

Another benefit of social media is that you become a part of the “conversation,” and being a good conversationalist means being a good listener, not just a good talker. You will be able to hear what others are saying about your company—both the good and the bad—and use that feedback to improve your company image, products, policies and more.

When to Adopt

It is likely the use of social media in B2B will continue to grow at a rapid rate. Remember, some companies needed to be convinced that a website made good business sense.

It was difficult to measure the ROI of a website in the pioneering phase. Now no company can be in business without one.Once companies understood the need to have a website, they had to understand the value of subsequent phases before adopting them.

Carrying the analogy to social media, if you accept the conclusion that social media can help raise your brand visibility, stature within the industry and your “likeability,” then the time to get started is now.

Businesses operating at warp speed can create the ideal environment and opportunity to cultivate dynamic business leaders — and vastly upgrade overall leadership. In successful ones, functional silos have been smart-bombed by the one weapon giving them the ability to exploit change and stay ahead of the pack.

It’s executive collaboration. And now is the best time to see your organization follow suit.

When we learn together how to better share new information and knowledge, we are collaborating — and quickly adopting a single, unified vision of business strategy and success. Melding functional business perspectives offers competitive advantages too.

Companies that embrace executive collaboration are renowned for executive teams that:

• Share similar priorities
• Jointly understand what’s critical that needs to be accomplished
• Move as one and in the same direction
• Mutually gain a broader, more comprehensive view of the needs of their customers
• Better position their organizations for growth and speed, despite a shifting marketplace
• Develop bigger breakthrough innovations.

There’s little doubt that a true collaborative spirit among your executive group must include all areas of the business: sales, marketing, IT, customer service, human resources, operations, finance and more.

So exactly how do you achieve superior executive collaboration?

From my experience, here are eight rules to help your leaders understand a successful model:

1. Get grounded on a singular point of view: that your team’s focus must be meeting the needs of the customer and helping each one of them attain stated goals. No “yes, but” people are allowed. No personal or hidden agendas. No compromises.
2. Seize executive ownership. For example, guarantee that what marketing learns about customer needs is intelligence that’s known and used by everyone in the business to create a better customer experience.
3. Anticipate customer needs lying beyond your ordinary response to their expressed need. The executive team must focus on “what’s possible” before customers do.
4. Agree that there’s no playbook to follow. Your group must invent it and re-invent it as you go. Collaborating on key priorities will drive business success no matter how fast the marketplace is changing.
5. Be fast. In communicating. In responding. In achieving improvements. In measuring.
6. Be fluid. Cross-communication is the key to better collaboration. Remember that silos are for barnyards not businesses.
7. Be flexible. If one or more of your executives has a better idea to improve collaboration than is being practiced, forget egos. Build the better mousetrap.
8. Be focused. Consider creating cross-functional teams with responsibility to carry executive collaboration into the organization – on a focused track.

One more point: If yours is a small company wanting to accelerate growth or a larger one struggling with staying agile, taking a more collaborative approach to executive leadership creates a whole that’s much greater than the sum of its parts.

Bring your organization’s best talents and experiences to bear. Doing so, you will enjoy an unmatched level of collaboration and stay on the right track to success in today’s rapidly changing business environment.