Is ‘LinkedIn Contacts’ a sign of a full blown CRM?

Posted on May 11, 2013 by stayingaliveuk

Since the middle of 2012, LinkedIn have been rolling out new features, re-designed its user interface, upgraded the ability to include media on your profile and added more features to paid products for recruiters and sales organisations.

And now they are releasing ’Contacts’. The normal slow roll-out applies.

I predicted 4 months ago, without any prior knowledge that the natural extension of LinkedIn would be CRM (Customer Relationship Management).

I believe this is the start of it. It’s a logical and sensible extension of LinkedIn, it makes complete sense. The hardest thing for sales people and marketers alike, is keeping up to date records of prospects inside customer databases, spreadsheets and address books.

Often people are employed or huge money is spent on cleaning data. There are organisations who sell directories to the most sought after professionals, like buying and HR professionals.

With LinkedIn, most business professionals will keep their details up to date. This means you have a database of contacts and prospects that will NEVER get out of date.

Introducing the New LinkedIn Contacts from LinkedIn

This is a sales professional’s and marketer’s dream. Link with this, all email communication, contact details and records of calls and interaction and you’ve got your dream CRM.

So now sales organisations have the triad of contact information directly inside LinkedIn, a ’social profile’, ’sales navigator’ and ’contacts’.

I can well imagine how this will develop further and do I think it would be worth upgrading to a premium account for this? Oh yes indeed I would. I am already a premium member anyway and was doubting some of the benefits, but now I can see how a premium member will receive some additional benefits in this integrated LinkedIn world.

By the way I don’t think contacts is a charged product, but there are some features that are only available for premium members, what exactly I won’t know for sure until I see the release.

The way I see it at the moment is that LinkedIn are the ’Apple’ of social media/networks. Facebook is the ’Microsoft’ and Twitter is just a ’News Ticker’ feed.

LinkedIn has developed a higher quality user interface compared to the others and its continuing to enhance this on their website as well as mobile.

They don’t suffer from the volume of events and games invites either and now I know why they switched-off events last year. It’s all making sense to me.

Their vision is right and they are doing the right things.

I am quite impressed as you can tell and I don’t even work for the company!

If you want to learn how to create a great LinkedIn profile for FREE join me on my weekly surgery on google hangout.

http://stayingaliveuk.com/linkedinstinct/

If you want to swipe through hundreds of FREE insights and tips follow this link.

http://storify.com/stayingaliveuk/linkedinstinct/slideshow

Success with your LinkedIn journey, it will be worth it.

Are You Killing the Sale?

Posted on November 15, 2012 by stayingaliveuk

Guest blog by John Rees, sales and marketing consultant, mentor and creator of the Holistic Sale model of business development.

You’ve read the book, seen the video and maybe even have the T-shirt so you know how the story goes … “This is Sales 2.0. and we will build momentum by using Social Media, Sales Automation and CRM to reduce the cost of sale and improve sales productivity.” This sounds great in theory and some businesses think the technology can and should take over. I don’t.

This approach may work well when selling to consumers, but selling in the business (or B2B) space is different, because trust and credibility are even more important. The strength of a story and the way you tell it, plus an ability to build a relationship can best be achieved by direct human contact. This can, of course use technology called a telephone or a video conference call. Face to face is not always possible, but it is still the best way to connect with others.

We all know that automation is excellent at making mundane tasks more efficient, but some businesses have taken this to extremes. They have lost that human touch. And it’s getting more complicated as Sales Automation and CRM systems connect with Social Media platforms to build automatic sales engagement models. Maybe the aspiration is to do business without having to make a sales call, give a presentation or even shake someone’s hand!

Many businesses use systems to ‘process’ potential buyers. They send predetermined emails at certain stages based on the actions people take. They only actually make contact with those who jump over enough hurdles at the right time to warrant a call from a human being.

The real danger in all this is that while you wait for the buyer to reach a certain stage of ‘sales readiness’ the opportunity may have passed. Either they are fed up with receiving obviously system generated emails, or a competitor beats you to the punch and has already engaged them in conversation.

Evidence shows that this automated approach is becoming less effective. According to recent findings, trust in online content including blogs and tweets is plummeting fast. Marketing-speak is widely used and most platforms have now become bloated advertising channels. It’s easier than ever to build a following of thousands on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, but what does this prove? Is this an endorsement of the quality of your brand, or evidence that you know how to use Social Media to maximise your exposure?

I’m not a Luddite though because I’ve spent all my working life in the technology space, so I know how it helps people become more efficient. The problem arises when it’s used as a replacement for human interaction and this is happening more and more.

During my career, I’ve used various sales processes that were far too complicated and convoluted. The emphasis was on ‘strategic selling’ by building power maps, identifying buying personas and preference grids and looking for blind spots and red flags. Many processes have now been automated and systems tell salespeople when they should actually call someone. It sounds crazy and it would be funny if it wasn’t true.

I’m not saying you don’t need a sales strategy because you do, but it should be as simple as possible. While some businesses spend far too much time strategising and waiting for the system to tell them the time is right, others are seizing the initiative and actually talking with people.

Let’s be very clear here, the ability to build trust, inspire confidence and develop deep and meaningful relationships can never be achieved by a sales process or a piece of software. People will always make the difference.

Social Media and automation definitely does have a place in business because it enables us to connect with many people at the same time. It’s excellent at building a profile and sharing ideas, but don’t rely on it as your primary means of sales communication. Don’t allow it to dictate how and when you engage with people. Use it to share your big ideas and attract attention and when someone shows interest, call them and start a conversation. That’s where you make a connection and that’s where the selling starts.

John Rees is a sales and marketing consultant and mentor, who specialises in helping businesses who either want to bring a new idea to market or build momentum with an existing one.

During his career he had sales and marketing roles in the Information Technology sector across Europe, India and North America. He worked with global technology leaders and start-ups who defined new market sectors.

He sold mainframes and minicomputers and witnessed the explosion of new markets created by the development of software application packages.

During recent years he worked with fast growth companies, start-ups and spin-outs and established businesses in many industry sectors. He learned a lot about how to succeed in business, and that’s why he created the Holistic Sale model of business development. This defines world-class ideas that can be used to simplify processes, create a compelling sales story, build a vibrant network of sales opportunities and improve sales performance.

Are you spending enough time on LinkedIn?

Posted on August 15, 2012 by stayingaliveuk

LinkedIn, is getting more exposure, more prominence for business, headhunters and jobseekers. It’s been the dark horse in the race for popularity and it’s not there yet and has its issues. Company profiles, are still quite basic, but that will change in the future for sure. Network statistics appears not to be working and hasn’t been for quite some months or maybe even years when you see the posts on google.

But they are catching up on all other aspects. Their Facebook style newsfeed, is looking better, the fact that they stopped you from posting via twitter into LinkedIn, means they are driving you to post in LinkedIn first and allowing those to go to Twitter instead.

Initially I balked at this change, but now I can see the potential of it being one way only.

For most business people having a business type relationship, means they prefer to stay away from Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and other such personal consumer type sites.

By posting your updates via LinkedIn, means they can still go to your twitter account if you wish. The great thing is all your personal comments won’t now pollute your LinkedIn account.

The trick now is to plan what you wish to post on LinkedIn. The best marketeers have an editorial calendar, planning what they are going to post and when. Allowing for seasonal effects, major events and company announcements, blogs and testimonials.

The recommendation is to post at least once per day, and these posts can be via your business page on LinkedIn or your personal profile. Oh yes the morning is the best time, as you will catch the commuters who are looking at content on their mobile devices.

The beauty of the business page, means you can assign admin rights to colleagues, which means you’re not the only one posting content.

Content remains ‘King’, so be careful on choosing what you post.
some guidelines on content type:
Your own unique content; blogs, video, interviews, webinars, events, white papers
3rd Party content; industry news, expert third party research, news coverage of your company
Sourced; customers, strategic partners, guest posts, linkedin polls, cross posts from linkedin groups, product tests, testimonials

Success with your LinkedIn journey and oh yes, please, please, please put a decent photograph of you on your profile!

Is Facebook the new Apple?

Posted on May 21, 2012 by stayingaliveuk

Well Facebook have done it. They have silenced the naysayers, the doubters, the fund managers who are still smarting about the dotcom collapse, the users who curse Facebook every day for making changes to the user interface without any regard for them, and the app creators who rely on their business fortunes and hoping for the continued growth of Facebook.

Facebook went public and made billions. Yes indeed someone wrote a cheque to buy loads of shares to make the owners very very rich indeed. (and Priscilla Chan is a very happy girl too!)

If you are reading this then it’s an 85% certainty that you have a Facebook account. You may only have one to spy on your kids and then again, you may well be using it to stay in touch with “friends”.

How many “friends” do you have? The average suggests you have somewhere in between 100 to 190 based on Facebooks’s own research back in November 2011. http://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-data-team/anatomy-of-facebook/10150388519243859

And of those you probably only interact with a maximum of 6 and of those there are probably only 3 that you have a regular conversation with.

Facebook’s growth has been phenomenal and unprecedented and there is no sign of it letting up. The power of personal recommendation has just got a ‘whole lot’ more important with their IPO.

The other day I was reading my newsfeed when I spotted this amazing image of cookies. Yes cookies! And someone had posted a thank you to the ‘Campervan Cookies Co.’ (http://www.facebook.com/CampervanCookiesCo) for making a great box of cookies for their client. And I loved them (well the look of them), the only thing was the company who had posted the thank you had actually forgotten to put their Facebook business page, so I had to ask for it and of course they obliged, so that I was able to find their page and like them.

So within in the space of a few seconds I was able to connect with a company I had never heard of, didn’t even know existed, was so impressed with the recommendation that I was motivated to go and like their page, actually without even having tried the product!

So what do you think? Are you a business owner, consumer, student, charity or parent? Does the fact that Facebook went public affect the way that you will use the service?

Do you feel that you are going to be bombarded by adverts some time soon and will that turn you off?

Are you fed up of the amount of changes they make to the user interface every 6 months?

I would love to hear your views. So feel free to post them in the comments or if you fancy doing this inside Facebook, please go to http://www.facebook.com/stayingaliveuk

I look forward to hearing from you soon!

Raise your glasses to Facebook and say Cheers!!

Have you Embraced ‘Social Learning’?

Posted on April 16, 2012 by stayingaliveuk

The term ‘Social Learning’ in current days, doesn’t mean the same as it did when Bandura
did his experiments in the 60′s. It encompasses a theory that individuals enjoy learning in a social context, when our learning is discussed and debated.

Albert Bandura

After all ‘everyone has an opinion’, and this means that we actually learn more about a topic, news story, event, training intervention, when we can reflect on it and interact with it.

Learning & Development (or training) at school and at work has and will continue to be the holy grail for all education professionals. We’re always looking for better ways to engage students and drive a change in human behaviour.

Trouble is millions of $’s & £’s are spent every year to achieve these objectives. And it’s so painful to see when the results don’t match the spend.

Think about it. The world is at War somewhere in the world and always has been. Consider the economic conditions in most countries currently. If education, training and development works, we would not be in this state of flux. But really think about it. We as humans haven’t evolved as much as we like to think. Our nature is closer to animal instinct then we give ourselves credit for.

Human Development?

If we are truly sophisticated and used more of our frontal lobe, which is the part that separates us from animals, then surely we wouldn’t be carrying out wars, we wouldn’t have an issue with CO2 emissions and global warming, the economies would be running smoothly.

Surely it would? Am I mad? I don’t think so, I believe I am quite a rational kind of person, who can usually see both sides of the argument and yes I do see the best in most humans, because after all they should be educated, rational, intelligent and loving beings. And you also know that this isn’t always true, but we have to start somewhere and I start with everyone’s good until proven otherwise.

Anyway where is this leading us towards?

Oh yes, ‘Social Learning’.

Consider the success of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and the latest kid on the block Pinterest.

What do they all have in common? Any idea?

Humans connecting with humans, that’s the common thread through all of it. So why is this so important at this time in the world? It has allowed millions of us to have a voice, to discuss, comment and debate on news stories on major world events and on individual stories and their life events.

My theory and its only my theory and it makes perfect sense to me is as follows.

Remember the war? Which one you will say, because there have been so many.

Well let’s just talk about World War II.

The War brought people closer, they looked out for each other and they knew more about each other’s lives compared to any time in history. Well it’s nearly 70 years since the ending of that major war and ever since then we as humans have drifted apart and have become more unconnected.

Social Networking is not an accident or a happy coincidence, it isn’t either the creation of a Harvard University graduate or silicon valley’s entrepreneurs. Their invention would never have worked if there wasn’t the appetite for it.

The old saying ’people buy people first’ applies in social networks too, not just in business. We like to connect to like minded individuals or people that interest us and maybe we can learn something from them!

And yes we do like to learn, we are always learning, the brain collects millions of impressions every day, without us even realising it. If we don’t learn we will die. As humans we have an inherent need to grow. But when we think about learning we think about, classrooms, teachers, exams, pressure, stress and recall many unpleasant memories.

We don’t perceive consciously that reading tweets, Facebook posts, articles, blogs, watching YouTube videos as learning and of course it is, you are learning all the time.

The learning methodology of 70-20-10, is showing us that actually we learn 70% on the job or in our daily lives, 20% from our colleagues or family members or friends and 10% formally, so that’s when we sit in a classroom, either at school or in the workplace.

The development of social networks, will and is changing the world of learning forever. Millions of teachers and trainers are having to adopt these new technologies as part of their delivery methods.

This requires the teacher / trainer to become proficient in these new tools and get their own knowledge of these networks up to scratch. After all their students are using these to learn, so now we better embrace these too and make use of it.

Those that do, will succeed in helping to change the landscape of learning for themselves and students alike. A more engaged student will mean a more connected world and a more connected world will mean a world with more compassion and understanding for our fellow human.

Success!

Interested in the Secret Garden of LinkedIn?

Posted on February 22, 2012 by stayingaliveuk

There is a manual, but nobody reads it, which means most of you just dive in, try and get away with the minimum and then feel overwhelmed because you haven’t taken a few minutes to do some studying.

I am of course talking about myself (own up if you thought it was you) and even though I have done my studying, I still find nuggets of short cuts in social media platforms, that nobody has ever told me about.

Numero Uno. If you are using the LinkedIn app on your phone, I am discussing the iPhone app as I don’t know about Android, then you are able to view your contacts, search for new connections make new connections. Very useful.

Secret no. 1. You can invite anyone via this app, unless they have set some privacy settings, which most people do not know how to do, or haven’t bothered with. I believe in openness which is how social media works best. For example if you want to connect to Barack Obama, do it inside the app. Normally If you searched for Barack via the LinkedIn website and click connect you get the box below to complete. I don’t know about you but I don’t have Barack’s email address, so this where the journey normally ends.

But if you search for him via the app, you get this.

Click invite to connect and providing he hasn’t activated his privacy settings you should get the following message. Note the blue confirmation at the bottom, saying invite sent.

Secret no. 2. You can also achieve this through the LinkedIn website, however you need to have someone connected to you, who has Barack Obama as their 1st connection.

First you need to go Barack Obama’s profile and confirm that he is in your 2nd level down, As shown below. If it says 3rd or higher, then it’s a much tougher task.

Then you can view who of your connections is directly connected to them.

Then check each of your connections to see if their contacts are openly shared or not. I was able to find one of them who had their connections open. Then click on them and via their profile click on their connections. It takes a while to find him, because there is no search facility as such, but all contacts are sorted alphabetically, so it doesn’t take that long.

Once you have found him, you will see a small + sign plus the word ‘connect’, as shown below.

Click on it and you will get the following popup box.

You can now add a personal message and click send invitation. No need to have his email address as shown earlier.

Note: Of course I am using Barack Obama as an example here, this will work for anyone that you are trying to connect to. This is where having more connections to people who also have large connections allows you to find the right people you wish to be connected to. And by the way this is free of charge as well!

Note of caution: Only us this method if you know the person. People can mark your invites as ‘unknown’ and you could be banned from LinkedIn after collecting too many ‘unknowns’.

Numero Twoo. I love business networking, but the biggest challenge always is those business cards. What do you do with them? I bet you have them in a neat pile on your desk or shelves, close by. But guess what you never go back to them. That’s why LinkedIn is brilliant.

Here is my routine. As soon as I get back to the office from networking and I might have a stack of business cards, I find them on LinkedIn, send a nice message out to them and hopefully they will connect. For those that are not on Linkedin, unfortunately, you will be forgotten forever, because I don’t stand a chance to remember you, sorry. Better get yourself on there.

But how do I get these contacts into my address book? I have tried typing them in manually, takes forever. I have used scanners, they work but too much editing. I have now got an app on my iPhone to scan them, so they go direct into my phone address book and sync with my computer, that worked really well also.

However now here comes the gift for you!

You can download them all direct from LinkedIn directly into your address book on your iPhone, (sorry don’t know about Android) and it pulls in all their details, email, phone if they have listed and their picture (providing they have a picture on LinkedIn!). So now when you look at your address book, you can link the name with the picture and no more embarrassing moments when you meet them next. It’s very easy to do and it does work very well.

Go to your profile inside the app, click on connections, you will see a small icon top right above your connections as below.

Click on it and then you will get the next page, where you can download your contacts directly to your iPhone.

And if you have iCloud enabled those contacts will sync on all your devices.

This is the best discovery I have made for ages and will save me loads of time!

Happy gardening!

Are you afraid of LinkedIn?

Posted on January 26, 2012 by stayingaliveuk

(135 million+ LinkedIn professionals around the world as of November 3, 2011)

I attended a recent networking event and chatted with business people, who were there because like me they would like more business. I was taken aback a little when 2 people that I spoke to out of the 5 that I met, who shared with me that they were “afraid” of LinkedIn.

I use the term “afraid” on purpose because, when I asked them whether they were on LinkedIn, which is a standard question I ask every business person I meet, their faces filled with horror and then they shared with me the reasons why they either weren’t there or why they were very very careful who they connected to.

Maybe I am the naive one, but my philosophy with Social Media is to either be active in it and play full out or stay out of the game, you can’t be half in and choose when to come out and play and when to stay at home.

But it got me thinking, maybe there are more of you out there, who are “afraid” also, so I wanted to write this article to appeal to your more liberal side, the part of you that has courage and is willing to take a few risks, because you know you’ve got that part inside of yourself, don’t you?

Here are the “fears” that were raised with me today:

People who I have never met or spoken to, ask to be connected to me on LinkedIn, why?
They tell me that they are wishing to grow their networks; well they are pulling me into the same mindset and I do not wish to be part of it!
I am very choosey who I connect to, because I only wish to be connected to people, who I have met and I have got to know them and what they are about
What if they start calling my contacts and telling them that they know me, when really they do not?

And I am sure there could have been more. The real reason for the “fear” is actually ignorance and I don’t mean that in a negative way, I actually believe it is really positive, because there is a fantastic opportunity to educate people.

I consider LinkedIn as my virtual business networking database. LinkedIn is actually very ethical, it is run with the same principles as face to face networking and yes of course it is ideally best to have met that person or at least to have spoken to them. However business is a numbers game and in order to have some influence in your business community you do need to connect with people who can be in your circle of influence.

It is good to build a relationship with people who you have not yet met face to face and yes try and do that even if you are only connected virtually. Actually LinkedIn is so transparent, they can learn about you, your history, your experience, your business goals and learn so much more, which you would never be able to share at a face to face networking event.

We all need to do more with less, so LinkedIn is the perfect vehicle to network, without the expense of attending networking events, breakfasts, lunches etc. It is becoming more acceptable to do things virtually and of course I appreciate it’s not everyone’s “cup of tea”.

We need you all to start getting into the game and changing your mindset, because this is only going to continue to grow and we would like you to be there with us and be part of the journey.

There is a huge amount to know about LinkedIn and I have witnessed the massive changes it has undergone in the past few years, which I promise you will continue, especially as they have gone public now.

Below I have shared my own network stats on LinkedIn and you can see the reach you can have with only a few connections. They say that the level below your direct contacts are where your real business opportunities lie. You can see that I have 365,000 connections that are 2 degrees away from me. That’s just unbelievable and I could never imagine that I would be connected to so many people. However if you notice carefully Linkedin, presents a small box to you every time you log in, which says “people you may know”. And when you click through you will see a list of page after page with people that are 2 degrees away from you. Well the same is presented to everyone that goes on LinkedIn and is active on there and that’s how you get noticed, that’s when people view your profile.

I hope you take on board what I am trying to convey, but just in case you don’t, I would be happy to explain some other finer points to you at any time, just post a comment or question on here.

Success!

Are you making enough use of Video?

Posted on January 24, 2012 by stayingaliveuk

With the majestic rise of YouTube, there really is no excuse for any of us not to be making more use of video in our communications with clients, training of our employees and using it to get our marketing message out.

The images are from an infographic commissioned with research data from the following 3 companies; smallbiztrends.com | getresponse.com | emailmarketingreports.com and gives us an idea about how important video is in email marketing.

It reports that around 80% of small businesses see videos as a vital medium through which to communicate to their audience. With around 88% of companies considering video most effective in training courses (29%), product demos (22%), product promotions (19%) and customer testimonials (18%).

I have certainly started focussing more on video, whether it is to explain a concept in social media or assist people in getting their marketing message out to prospects.

I have also learned from Fusion Universal, that presentations never need to be dull any longer. Instead of the usual death by PowerPoint it’s more effective to create a 2-3 minute video, which you play at the presentation, and gives the client the essence of your proposal. Then you can spend most of the meeting discussing it, rather then taking up most of the meeting discussing your presentation or demo.

You can literally see the delight on people’s faces, when they have just watch a short video and “get it”. It solves a massive problem and that is “attention-span”. Most of us struggle to concentrate for more than 5 minutes sitting through a presentation. Our mind is always thinking and even when someone is talking to you, you are thinking. Even when you are reading this you are thinking and our thinking wanders from thinking about the subject being discussed or presented to our personal thoughts, back and forth.

What we do a lot is deciding whether we agree with something or not and we get ready with our critical questions and objections in the first place. This I believe comes from our primeval survival response to believing that this may be threatening to us in some way. Therefore I have to ask some challenging questions, to make sure that I will be safe. Does that make sense?

Anyway enough of the “Philosophy”.

My recommendation to you is to investigate the use of video more in your endeavours on the web and with your marketing activities. It will continue to grow and it’s time to become more active with it.

Success!

How effective is your “SoMe” Marketing?

Posted on January 23, 2012 by stayingaliveuk

Most of us are now involved with Social Media, whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube or something else. And if you’re not, well you can’t be having as much fun as most of us!

But…how do you know whether you are making progress, there are plenty of “SoMe” gurus, (me included), who will charge you for education and may even do all the hard work for your business with an even heavier fee.

So when I found SplashCube, I was delighted to find something that would help me, guide me, direct me and most of all track me on how well I was doing with my “SoMe” marketing.

They use a clever method, which is now known as gamification, basically a clever algorithm that calculates what you are doing and then produces the results in a clever graphical representation, allowing you to adjust your performance. Thinks of it as a game that you are playing and every time you need to get better at the game you are told where you need to improve.

After you have connected your accounts to SplashCube, it will analyse what you need to be doing in order to maximise your “SoMe” marketing.

I have not seen anything better as yet, but let me know if you have found something better.

See the example below for my Twitter account. To be honest (and I always am), you don’t need to get an account with them to understand what you required to do, basically just adopt what I am showing you in these images.

In the image at the top of this post, there are some great suggestions on what you need to do for your various “SoMe” accounts as well, and just to expand on one of them;

Facebook Fan Page | Ask 2 questions in 6 days | Means that you need to post a question on your Facebook fan page every 6 days as minimum in order to get better exposure and engagement with your fans and grow your fan base. Get the general idea?

Have a look at the image with Twitter suggestions, just copy these down somewhere and start acting upon them.

What SplashCube does, you can do for yourself, as long as you are disciplined and if you are not, then go ahead and open account with them. (By the way I am not affiliated to them in anyway, I just thought it was a “cool tool”, which I felt I should share with you).

Success!

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