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From a sales point of view Linkedin might well be renamed 'Way in'. It's one of those things that everyone seems to have heard of but not everyone is embracing into their sales process. I have no ulterior motive to promote Linkedin (I don't have shares in them if that's what you're thinking) but I can't recommend it enough as a fantastic tool to exploit when prospecting.
On the train last night a usually quiet carriage was filling with laughter as a fairly loud woman shouted down her mobile phone about a relationship issue she was currently having. The relationship issue, to put it politely, was not something that should've been shared with an entire carriage of people, or for that matter, anyone but her nearest and dearest and the public declaration of her issues were causing quite a stir.
Even the most stubborn of doubters are now having to accept that at the very least, social media is not going away. A few years ago, like a British sun bather caught in a rain storm, you had people confidently predicting that it'd 'all blow over shortly'. But the fact is, it hasn't, and isn't going to leave the forefront of people's thoughts for a long time to come. And it's good to see Companies accepting this now with the recent Center for Marketing research study highlighting the fact that 70% of Fortune 500 companies on Twitter are engaging with followers using the @ and retweet features.
I know Friday tends to be my day of sharing but I've come across a couple of things to do with social media in the last couple of days which probably deserve to be highlighted sooner rather than later.
The Artesian blog takes a look at some of the top sales tips and blog posts from around the web this week:
The perfect example of buzz monitoring lit up my day yesterday and highlighted the benefits of using the system. Caped crusader Batman was years ahead of his time on this when he created the batsignal to alert him to big news long before the days of email, but besides the nuisance of sliding down a pole and donning an irritaintgly tight superhero outfit, the buzz of my alert felt, I imagine much the same.
One of my favorite books of all time is 'Yes Man', which to cut a long story short, sees a man change his life by saying yes to every opportunity he's presented with. I've often thought it'd be brilliant for a business to try the same tactic, throwing caution to the wind and saying yes to every supplier email, every contract opportunity and every conference invitation. In that scenario though, something would confuse the hell out of the participating business...What to do with social media?
There's a reason why everybody hates cold calling. Because it's more awkward than yelling out an expletive at a family wedding. You don't 'cold call' outside of business hours. For example, you wouldn't call up a restaurant to NOT book a table. 'Hi, just phoning to see how things were with you?' probably wouldn't go down to well with the waiter who picked up the phone...
