I recently conducted another social media session for a group of executives that focused on using Twitter as an effective part of their sales strategy. As a big fan of Hootsuite, I also shared tips for using Hootsuite to manage and schedule their messages. During the discussion, one gal asked me, “What the heck does RT mean?”  I couldn’t help but laugh, and her question reminded me that the lingo of social media can be a little frustrating and intimidating to the newbie.

In no particular order, here’s a list of many of the common terms used in social media and in texting. There are probably loads more, so weigh in with any you feel that I’ve missed.

Peeps: Peeps started on Twitter, but I find myself using it as part of my language referring to the folks in my network. As in…”I’ll alert my peeps to the news.”

BTW: By the way.

FB: Facebook

FP: Fan Page. People are often confused about fan pages. Think of this as your business page. On Facebook, you have your personal profile and you can set up a fan page. I have a fan page for Talent Builders and for The New Handshake.

Blog: Web log. Think of it as a personal or professional diary on the web. You share your musings about things that interest you.

Tweets: Messages sent via Twitter

RT: Retweet. Think of this as “forwarding” a Twitter message on to others.  When your messages are being re-tweeted, you know people liked the information enough to share it with their network. Gives you more visibility too.

FWIW: For what it’s worth.

LOL: Laugh out loud.

LMAO: Laugh my a** off.

LMK: Let me know.

FF: Follow Friday. This has become a tradition on Twitter. Every Friday, people tweet about the people they like or follow using the hastag (we’ll get to that one in a second) #FF.

Hashtag: it is a fancy, schmancy term for putting a “#” symbol in front of a topic that you want to not only track but have your messages included in the hashtag stream. For example, I use #newhandshake in many of my Tweets. It is a term that supports the work I’m doing to get the word out about my book. It makes it easy for me to track conversations by searching on #newhandshake. The cool thing is that when people re-tweet or use your hashtag in their messages, you gain even more visibility. Conferences use this all the time.

LI: LinkedIn Also uses the hashtag #in on Twitter.

DM: Direct Message. Via Twitter people can send you direct messages. These are messages that only you see. By the way, you need to be following each other in order to use this function.

Auto DM: To take the DM thing a bit further, you will find that many people – I’m not one of them – have an automatic DM set to go out the moment that you follow them on Twitter. The reason that I don’t like it is because many folks use this as a way to send you a sales pitch with a link back to their website, fan page, blog, whatever. I don’t believe your first interaction with someone should be a sales pitch so this approach gets on my nerves.

SEO: Search Engine Optimization. Using keywords on your website, blog or social profiles garners you greater visibility and traction when people do searches. I mention social profiles, because you want to use keywords in your LinkedIn headline and throughout your summary also to increase the likelihood that your profile pops up when someone searches on those terms.

Sales executives are feeling the pressure to ensure that sales quotas are met and that pressure often leads to fear, desperation and a focus on short-term sales results.

Don’t get me wrong…achieving monthly sales objectives are important. If there are no sales then ultimately there is no business to run. I’ve been a sales professional for close to 30-years and a business owner for almost 10, so I get it. Consistent revenue flowing in the door month after month is a must. Here’s what worries me though. This short-term focus leads many sales reps to ignore some of the basic fundamentals of selling in a social sales world. I know this because of the steady stream of unsolicited sales pitches I receive on a daily basis.

Don’t Abuse the Medium

A phrase that I’m fond of using is “Just because you can, that doesn’t mean that you should.” As the world of sales continues to evolve and transform as a result of the widespread use of social media, many sales professionals need to take a crash course in online etiquette. Sending potential buyers a spam sales pitch is akin to a cold call only worse. With voice mail, your message leaving time is typically pretty short, but when you send email you can go on forever about how grand your product is service is and believe me…many do.

Relationship First, Selling Second

If sales teams aren’t producing consistently, perhaps the answer isn’t in pushing them to “work harder”. Let’s face it folks… activity should never be confused with sales effectiveness. Insisting that your sales reps make 100 cold calls per day is activity, but is it truly effective? Though many old school sales folks will respond with a resounding – yes, cold calling works – the reality is that cold calling doesn’t work and adds expense to the sales cycle to boot. To me, it seems a bit delusional to think that calling 100 strangers whose business you know nothing about will lead to anything meaningful from a sales perspective. The same goes for sending your peeps out into the world telling them to “go bang on doors”. Seriously?

Social media provides a unique opportunity for today’s social sales professional. Instead of banging on doors, sending spam email or calling 100 strangers, why not put that time to better use? To improve your sales close ratio, what if..

• You created a target list of the top 50 companies that you want to do business with and you used tools like LinkedIn or InsideView to learn more about their people and their business BEFORE making that first connection.
• You looked for ways to do something of benefit for the prospects that you are targeting without asking for anything in return? Use LinkedIn to share industry presentations, articles, white papers or perhaps send a sales lead their way.
• You understood that you get ONE chance to make a solid connection and a great impression. Don’t blow it by sending people the same old boring sales spam email that you just sent to everyone else.

Fix the Right Thing

When sales are off, please avoid the temptation to insist that your sales people just “do more”. Doing more of what already isn’t working will not lead to different results. Einstein defined that as insanity.

If you want different results – do something differently!

For 34 days I’ve had writer’s block. There are so many interesting things happening around me that it isn’t that I lack for good topics to focus my attention on, but for some reason getting the words onto the page just didn’t happen. Maybe the learning for me (and maybe you) is that sometimes we need to slow down or jump off the daily business treadmill, in order to recharge, refocus and re-evaluate our priorities. Like every other busy business professional, I find it hard sometimes to keep the blogging momentum going, so I can totally relate to those of you who tell me you just “don’t have time” to do it. Believe me, I get it. And, frankly, I’m a little jealous sometimes that several of my blogging hero’s – Chris Brogan, Seth Godin and Paul Castain – manage to post pretty much daily despite the fact that they have heavily scheduled business days themselves.

Barb, what’s up with you, girl? That’s the question I have been asking myself off and on over the past several weeks. I finally think that I know why I’ve had writers block. What I realize is that it is all about choosing, sticking to, AND scheduling our priorities.

Ban the To Do List

Colleague Kent Gregoire, who heads up Responsibility Centered Leadership and The Alternative Board of Metro Atlanta is also the thought leader behind Living in the Now®: The Overwhelm Solution, and Kent has convinced me that “to do” lists are a waste of time, and more importantly, they often cause more problems than they solve…like adding stress to your life that is truly unnecessary. Kent advocates that we banish our “to do” lists forevermore in favor of a more effective way to get those important priorities completed.

Crazy notion, right? Banning the “to do” list. I can hear you now…”Are they nuts? If I don’t have a get it done list, how will I accomplish anything?” Believe me, I understand the reaction. We have been trained as a society to make “lists” of items to work on each day and check off as we complete them. But in my own experience, I find that often there are items on the list that just seem to get transferred from one daily list to another. Come on’ be honest…this happens to you too, doesn’t it? What Kent shared with me is an approach that is both simple and utterly powerful in what it can do for you mentally and emotionally when you apply the technique to daily life.

It Is About Completeness

If you need to accomplish a particular task…could be going to the grocery store, writing that blog post, following up sales calls or washing your car, you need to “schedule it”. In other words, don’t write it on a list. Immediately block the time on your calendar to complete the action and move on. When the scheduled time comes, complete whatever it is and move on knowing that you never have to worry about it again.

I’m starting to get in a groove with the approach, and I already feel calmer about my day. Mental traffic about what I haven’t gotten done or angst about pending things that must happen is not walking me up in the early hours of the morning. Everything that matters and is important is “scheduled in time”, as Kent says. As I get better at the process, I will schedule things in advance or at the same time that I’m scheduling another activity, perhaps a sales meeting. I already know there will be follow up, so why not schedule the follow up time on the calendar at the moment that I book my sales meeting?

A list of to do items that remain separated from your calendar means there is a really good chance that lots of other daily, mindless, non-critical stuff will impede your ability to finish what you had intended. I had blogging on my list each day, but I didn’t make a formal commitment to block the time on my calendar each day to get it done. So guess what…it just didn’t happen.

Give it a try.

The next time you say to yourself, I need to get XYZ done, stop what you are doing, and evaluate your priorities, your currently scheduled activities and then “schedule” the appointment on your calendar to complete the action instead of writing it on a list.

The end result from taking this approach is that you’ll feel less stressed. You will also be living your life in the present – living now – instead of worrying about what you should have done or still need to do. I hope you’ll give it a go, and if you do, I’d love to hear from you.

Recently, colleague Scott Williford of My Interview Link helped me to create a series of video clips that talks about our business services. Scott offers a great service for the job seeker and/or the business professional looking for a professional way to showcase what they offer. When I showed up that morning to film my segments, I was impressed with the professional set up. Brent filmed the segments and did a nice job making me look good:). Check out the 5 vignettes here. At the end of the shoot, Scott asked me to film a couple of blog clips talking about social media. Enjoy the clip posted here.

On a recent webinar with Renee Walkup, we were discussing ways to get people to return our telephone calls. The answer is pretty simple really. Consistently get back on the telephone. Yet, surprisingly, many people will often give up after just one or two calls. I’ve met countless people who complain that they never receive a call back and when I dig deeper, I discover they called their prospect just once. Really? Frankly, it can take as many as 7, 10 or 15 calls just to connect with someone. Given how pressured people are in business these days, that makes sense. What doesn’t make sense to me is why people give up so easily.

Using the telephone as a component of your social sales process is often forgotten these days. In my opinion, too many people with something to sell are hiding behind email. Just this morning, I received a sales pitch from someone that I don’t know. We happen to share a LinkedIn group, but beyond that I have no idea who they are. Still, I’m receiving their sales pitch as the very first connection with me, not to mention that their message was all about them. So what? What’s in it for me? This spam approach is a surefire way to lose a sales opportunity before it even begins. I’m not sure if “phone phobia” is about fear of rejection or because someone thinks that sending a mass email is easier than picking up the phone. But in my experience, once you have a qualified lead (I emphasize qualified) in hand, using the telephone is a great way to move the sales process forward more quickly.

Let’s face it, sales success is about follow up and follow up is tough. As I write this post, I’m staring at a stack of business cards that are screaming at me to connect with the people I’ve met this last week who expressed interest in my services. So, I get it, especially if you are a smaller business where most of the hats are being worn by you.

Here are 3 things that you need to accept about the sales process; otherwise, you’ll drive yourself crazy.

1. People are busy. Your prospect has their own work to tend to. It’s not personal, and it is your job to stick with it. Follow up and remaining visible are critical.
2. You aren’t the only game in town. Hate to put it so bluntly, but all of us have competition and they are just as hungry for the deal as you are. Remember that you need to find ways to stand out – be memorable. By the way, your competitors are probably giving up pretty quickly themselves. If you don’t – you have the edge!
3. A sale rarely happens immediately after a first meeting. People buy from people that they know, like and trust. Building a relationship takes some time.

Let me put it into perspective…

In Dan McDade’s book, The Truth About Leads, he points out that 45% of “qualified” leads will close within a year. He goes on to say that:

• 10% will close in 3 months
• another 16% in 6 months
• another 19% within the year

That suggests a big sales problem if you are giving up after a couple of phone calls. I find that it’s a delicate balance between closing business now and nurturing the sales potential that won’t close until later down the road.

Look at it this way…if you give up too quickly, you are guaranteed not to close the sale. What have you got to lose by continuing to stay in touch?