Social Networking | Barbara Giamanco

What’s Your Social Voice?

May 19, 2010 By Barbara Giamanco Leave a Comment

I so love LinkedIn! This amazing business networking site boasts an impressive 65M+ user base and climbing. Roughly 65% of LinkedIn’s users are tagged as key decision makers, which is sales code for…they can buy from you! That, in and of itself, is a HUGE reason for you to use LinkedIn as a sales relationship tool that becomes a part of your natural sales/networking process. Decision makers, with money to spend, are using LinkedIn to check out your capabilities (and that of your competitor), polling colleagues for recommendations and doing research into what is available. They are talking about their like’s, dislike’s and sharing their current business frustrations and challenges. Are you listening? For sales people, LinkedIn should be the #1 place they go to prepare for their sales meeting. The amount of real-time information to be leveraged is…well…just plain staggering.

Speaking of leveraging conversation and information…I want to tell you about a really great question that was posed recently by Dana Detrick-Clark in one of my LinkedIn groups. She’s curious about the approach that others are taking in determining their blogging voice. And because the question is so applicable to “What approach do I take/voice do I use when answering group questions in a social community?”, I wanted to share Dana’s question and a part of my response.

Dana asks…Which is more important in a blog: speaking to a particular kind of reader, or speaking in your own ‘voice’? I’m curious as to what other business owners prefer, especially in business and/or marketing related blogs. Do you like the more journalistic approach, where you get “just the facts” for the information you’re after, or would you rather read a blog that’s more personal (even if that means at times it can be irreverent or reveal more personally about the author than what you normally find in a biz blog)?

Here was a portion of my answer…

You asked a great question that comes up a lot with clients. How much is too much information? Of course, like all such questions, the answer invariably is “it depends”.:)

Given that I own my business, I have more latitude with the approach I choose to take. So to be fair, I have a little more freedom when it comes to the information that I share in my blog posts. Each company has to decide what supports their core values and customer loyalty statement. But I urge companies to move away from their fear of “what could happen if someone says the wrong thing” and embrace the opportunity for building brand loyalty through media like blogs. There are a number of great stories about how companies were humanized in the eyes of their buyers and all because they “got real” on a blog. Sure, guidelines need to be established so that people know what’s cool and what isn’t (had to do it with email, remember?). From there, give employees training and then hold them accountable to be responsible when having conversations in the social space.

So what’s your take? Real in the blogosphere or not?

Filed Under: Sales, Social Media Tagged With: linkedin, Networking, Sales, Social Networking, social voice

Follow Companies on LinkedIn – New!

May 5, 2010 By Barbara Giamanco 1 Comment

LinkedIn has made the Company section more robust. It is now even easier to research companies and keep up with the people changes happening with those companies.

The Improvement

You can now “follow” companies. Okay, STOP right there! Before you close your mind to it, because images of nonsensical conversation on Twitter just popped into your head, please hear me when I say that “the concept” is similar, but definitely different. This is the kind of follow that you want to engage in, because…

Sales Benefit

You will hear about key developments such as who’s joined, left or been promoted at the companies you follow, business opportunities and job openings. This moves your ability to research target companies you want to work with to another level.

Once you elect to follow a company… when you log into the Company Home Page on LinkedIn, you will see a list of updates for the companies that you follow. You will also see a “company updates” section now showing up on your LinkedIn Home Page.

This is so much easier than tracking the individual movements of people within in a company. LinkedIn aggregates the list of changes for you. You can easily scan the list to keep up with what’s changed. Here’s a quick screen shot of the company I set up to follow today to check out how this works.

How To

Find Companies under the “More” menu. Click on Companies. Search companies you want to track. Once you’ve pulled up their company page…look to the upper right and click on “follow company”. Scan the updates once a day or once a week.

Definitely check it out! Share your success stories.

Filed Under: Lead Generation, Marketing, Networking, Popular, Sales, Social Media Tagged With: linkedin, Marketing, Networking, Sales, Social Media, Social Networking

Questions Sales Needs to Ask

March 4, 2010 By Barbara Giamanco 1 Comment

I wrote in my last post about ways to gain executive buy-in for the integration of social media into a sound sales strategy. Rather than replace the tried and true, social tools can augment great sales efforts today. Used effectively they can also help your sales folks reduce sales cycle time by building relationships early and quickly through social communities. Yes, you can still attend in-person networking functions and you should – provided you are attending the right ones. Easy enough to burn hours of time that get you nowhere for the right events, much less attending the wrong ones. Instead invest some of your sales time each day to participate in online spaces, like LikedIn to connect, source business opportunities and prepare for your sales calls. Welcome to the world of social selling.

As I’ve observed companies considering how social media applies to them, I’ve also seen a tendency to want to short-cut the process. This is a big change and you need to prepare yourself up front for success. Asking and answering these types of questions should be the first step.

Are your sales leaders prepared to adopt new sales communication approaches and tools?
Will your current processes support a smooth integration to using new technologies?
Have you established sales communication guidelines and social usage policies?
What kind of training will your sales people need to make the shift?
How will you hold people accountable to using new media as part of their sales day?
Is your IT organization prepared to assist you in integrating the right social tools with your sales goals?
Do you use customer data, survey’s and focus group feedback to update services, policies and processes on the fly?
How well is your team “listening” to online conversations happening on the various social sites?
How ready is your sales team to respond to negative commentary?
What does your competition’s social media presence look like?

Don’t be seduced by the promise of number of followers = sales. Twitter isn’t for everyone and neither is Facebook for that matter. Think carefully about your strategy. It will make the difference between floundering around and achieving sales results.

Filed Under: Featured, Sales, Social Media Tagged With: pipeline, Sales, sales management, Social Networking, social selling

Cold Calling 2.0?

February 6, 2010 By Barbara Giamanco 1 Comment

Since the early days of John Patterson and his NCR sales playbook, “cold calling” seems to be ingrained in the collective sales consciousness as an expected part of the sales process. I still wonder why. Come on. Cold calling doesn’t work (it never has, and I don’t care what that last sales trainer told you).

This ridiculous notion of “dialing for dollars” is so yesterday. Sales people resist cold calling like the plague and with good reason. At some level, they know it doesn’t make any sense to call a stranger and expect them to buy within seconds of receiving their call no matter how charming they may be. Old school sales thinking is that you just call enough numbers and eventually somebody buys. What a waste of time and energy! Not to mention how potential buyers detest this approach. They don’t appreciate your rambling, inarticulate, blathering feature dumps and the evident randomness of the call. As a business owner, I can relate. Maybe I’ll create an audio book one of these days with the “best of the worst” phone calls that I’ve ever received. I save them. Hilarious and painfully sad at the same time. Hint: if you have to cold call then at least do some remedial homework. Make sure I’m in the market for what you sell. Everyone is NOT your customer!

Get over the notion of cold calling. Nobody likes it, it doesn’t work. Instead, what about using social media/social networks, email, Twitter, Facebook, referrals and the like to start paving the way for a great relationship? There is just NO excuse anymore for sales management to think that “dialing for dollars” has much chance at success. Instead, invest time in learning to use social media to augment and extend your sales reach. Insist that your sales people use social tools and social networks to begin conversations that will lead to finding common ground and getting to know each other. Then, when you do reach out to secure that sales appointment there will be nothing cold about it!

Filed Under: Featured, Lead Generation, Networking, Sales, Social Media, Technology Tagged With: cold calling, Networking, Sales, Social Networking, social sales

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