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Are You An Employee or a Person?

September 12, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Business social media is not just an opportunity. It’s also an obstacle. Many businesses have rules, regulations, policies, and barriers that may preclude you from using any and all forms of social media that include their business name.

ACTION: Continue as an employee, but divorce yourself from the company as a person. There are no rules that preclude you from participating in any of the social media as a human being.

If you’re in banking, insurance, pharmaceuticals, or any other business that has a legal department that begins with the word no and ends with the word no, then take the business name out of everything you do.

You can tweet about, and you can blog about, and you can Facebook about aspects of your relationship that customers and prospects deem significant, never mentioning the name of your company, or your affiliation with it.

There is no rule against telling people the best place to take a weekend vacation, how to keep your front yard safe, how to reduce costs of heating and air conditioning in your home, or your personal philosophies and insights about life.

NOTE WELL: Leave out offers to buy.

Rather, create opportunities that will allow you to connect and opportunities to get together and meet. A seminar, a networking event, even a party.

Make the information valuable, and I guarantee it will get forwarded. Business social media is an opportunity for you to build your personal brand, build personal awareness, build your personal network, and build your personal reputation.

Yes, it takes a little chutzpah, but it will save you the embarrassment, and loss of ground, of not doing it at all.

CONSIDER THIS: Suppose you left your job tomorrow, or get laid off, or get fired. The first thing your prospective new employer is going to do when considering you for a position is check your online status and your Google ranking.

In today’s employment world, you don’t even need a resume because your Google rank, your social media presence, and your overall online presence speaks way louder than what your high school gym teacher (from 20 years ago) thinks of you.

There is a big difference between reference and reputation.

And if you’re in sales, the only people I’m going to call for a reference are your prior customers.

FINAL PIECE OF ADVICE: If you’re frustrated by what you can’t do, start doing what you can do.

Filed Under: business, customers, sales, Social BOOM!, social media Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Send These Videos To Your Boss (Who Just Doesn’t Get It)

September 9, 2012 By 2 Comments

All bosses that are against social media are the ones who don’t know how to use it.

The next time your boss tries to fight you on using social media, send him or her one (or all) of these videos:

For even more ammo, click here.

Filed Under: business, customers, General, sales, Social BOOM!, social media Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Social Revolution and Your Evolution

August 7, 2012 By Leave a Comment

The social revolution has changed the way you sell forever. Only problem is, most salespeople have no idea of that – YET!

As business social media evolves and matures, all salespeople, executives, and entrepreneurs will expose themselves for who they are and who they aren’t WAY BEFORE a sales call or sales meeting of any kind takes place.

Think about the impact of that.

I’m gonna Google YOU.
I’m gonna Facebook YOU.
I’m gonna find you on LinkedIn.
I’m gonna look you up on Twitter.
I’m gonna search you on YouTube.

And you can’t stop me.

I’m gonna find out EXACTLY who you are – the same way you’re trying to find out stuff about me.

Two years ago, it would not have happened that way. At least on the social media side. Maybe five years ago for Google.

Today, ALL systems of selling are preceded, and even precluded, by your online reputation. Before I ever call you, before you ever call me, before you ever meet with me – I already know everything I need to about you. Or, I can look you up in ten seconds WHILE you are on the phone.

Here are the NEW standards by which you’ll be evaluated, granted appointment time, decided upon, measured, branded, and talked about (whew!):

Your Google presence and ranking.
Your online reputation.
Your business social media presence.
Your personal website (present or absent).
Your blog (present or absent).
Your Facebook presence.
Your LinkedIn connections and recommendations.
Your Twitter followers.
Your tweets.
Your YouTube channel.

Feel a little overwhelmed? That’s because you’ve been asleep at the wheel waiting for the economy to “rebound.” Or you think the internet is about your company, not you. Or you’re waiting for your attorneys to figure out a “corporate plan” for social media, while your competition KICKS YOUR ASS.

Wake up and smell the Internet, Sparky!

Here are a few things you should do, and can do – that if you don’t do, you’ll be “doo doo”:

  • Look at your competition and their people. Study their online presence and their social media presence.
  • Talk to your customers IN DEPTH. Find out what they would consider valuable to know, and make a plan to deliver that information, whether it pertains to your sales or not. HINT: If you provide valuable information, it directly pertains to your relationship, and their loyalty to you.
  • Allocate more of your time to learning what you don’t know about “online.” At least an hour a day. If you’re behind by your competition’s standards, that’s one issue; but if you’re behind by your customer’s needs, that’s THE issue. If you don’t know what to do, start studying, and start getting involved.
  • Set achievable goals and measure your results. Start with LinkedIn. Get 200 connections and expand your network from there. Create a few videos on YouTube that feature your customers talking about how great you are.
  • Communicate value messages, not product offerings. The purpose of your presence online is not just to sell, it’s also to attract people who want to buy. Especially on social media.
  • Seek professional help, BUT BEWARE. Get personal one-on-one references BEFORE you spend a dime. There are a lot of people who can help you, but many more who CLAIM they can, but cannot.
  • Waiting is more expensive than starting. Whatever you budget for online and/or social media presence, it’s cheap compared to doing nothing while others pass you by.

Social media is not going away. My bet is that your business social media presence is lacking. And there is not one good reason for it, other than your foresight is limited by your insight.

Hopefully this will help you kick-start what you’re doing online – especially your social media participation – so you’ll have no regrets (also known as hindsight).

Filed Under: business, Social BOOM!, social media, twitter Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

A Quick Reminder [VIDEO]

July 24, 2012 By 2 Comments

Here’s a quick reminder for you:

Filed Under: business, Social BOOM!, social media Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Business Social Media Self-Test

July 4, 2012 By Leave a Comment

BUSINESS SOCIAL MEDIA SELF-TEST:

  • Make a list of your last 10 Facebook postings. How many people like your page? Do you even have a business page?
  • List the last 10 actions you took, or messages you sent, on LinkedIn: Anyone join you or want to link as a result of them?
  • Make a list of your last 10 tweets. Are they relevant to your business success? Did they help others in any way? How many got retweeted?
  • List the last 10 videos that you posted on your YouTube channel. Are you posting value messages that your customers and prospects would watch, learn from, and think of you as a resource? Any video testimonials posted on your YouTube channel? (Short testimonial videos will help prospective customers buy and reinforce your own belief system.)

How did you do? Keep in mind:

There are all kinds of books and seminars available on social media and business social media. I recommend reading as much as you can and attending as many as you can. And my biggest recommendation is: START NOW.

Filed Under: business, Social BOOM!, social media Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Your (Personal) Business Social Media Game Plan

June 25, 2012 By 2 Comments

Regardless of where you are in the construction or operation of your business social media outreach, I’m asking you to relook at and rethink about the process because the odds are you started it with the wrong motive: money and sales.

In regard to your business Facebook page, your Twitter account, your LinkedIn connections, and your YouTube channel — ask yourself these questions (for each of the four individually):

  • What am I hoping to achieve?
  • Who am I wanting to attract, engage, and connect with?
  • Who will help me design?
  • Who will help me launch?
  • Who will help me post?
  • Who will be in charge of this process short term?
  • Who will be in charge of this process long term?
  • Do I need professional help?
  • How much time am I willing to allocate each day?
  • How often am I committing to update?
  • What type of value messaging am I going to offer?

The answers to these questions (written down) will create both structure and architecture for your entire business social media game plan. It will also determine your strategy for attracting, engaging, and connecting.

Luckily for you, most people started a Facebook page because their neighbor did or one of their friends did. Don’t do that. Start (or restart) your business social media outreach with purpose, plan, and design. And start (or restart) it with an understanding of what you want to achieve. Not just a goal to launch, but also a goal to attract, a goal to engage, a goal to connect, and a goal for what you want the OUTCOME to be.

Whatever you do, do not follow the ill-fated “Begin with the end in mind.” A more bogus, meaningless statement has never been written to the world business population.

It should say “Begin with the outcome defined.”

If you don’t begin knowing what you want to achieve, and how you intend to achieve it, then don’t begin.

Business social media is far different from, and far more powerful than, social media. Business social media will allow you to keep existing customers loyal, attract new customers, build your reputation, and create more brand awareness than you could ever do with a full page ad every week in Time magazine, or a full page ad every Sunday in The New York Times.

MATH: Those ads will cost you millions of dollars a year, and guarantee you NOTHING. Business social media is free, and a million times more powerful, more authentic, and more valuable.

And if done correctly, business social media puts you in direct one-to-one contact with paying customers. That’s a game plan you can take to the bank.

Filed Under: business, customers, lead generation, sales, Social BOOM!, social media Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

HOW TO: Start Your Own Business Facebook Page

June 22, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Here is a 5.5-part success formula:

1. Gather the email address of each one of your customer contacts. There may be three or four connections at one place. Then gather all your prospective customers whether you have spoken to them or not (email addresses and names). Then gather all your vendors, prime connections, and the CEO of every vendor you have. If there are end users involved in your sales chain, gather as many of them as well. How many names and email addresses do you have? Never think, “I don’t have enough names.” Even if you have only 50, and those people are loyal advocates of yours, you can begin to create your own business Facebook page.

2. Begin gathering valuable content that your customers would perceive as usable and profitable. Information that they would consider so valuable that they might forward it to somebody else. Gather lots of it. Think of it this way: Every paragraph that you have can be one day’s post. Don’t start your business page without at least 30 days of postings.

3. Have your business page designed graphically and strategically. Sometimes it pays to pay. If you seek out and hire credible, professional help in design AND strategy, you will get incredible results. Although the ability for graphic alteration within Facebook is limited, that doesn’t mean you can’t use what’s available to its maximum power. How your page looks to others, and the value of what you post, created the attraction power. How you link to other ports of “you” builds your following, your reputation, and your limelight.

4. Your Facebook page has to be a door that swings both ways. People attracted in from value and people that can immediately click out to find out more about you.

5. Use my page as a guideline. It’s designed to make certain that I have a linkage to all other business social media and all other forms of attraction. It even has a welcome video that describes what the page does so that people have no hesitancy to “Like” me.

5.5 Sign up for Ace of Sales to create the coolest emails on the planet. And then construct a short email that invites people to join you on your business Facebook Page.

Just remember: All business social media in interconnected. You have to do ALL of them consistently to gain effective results. And you have to do all of them well if you expect to monetize your efforts.

Filed Under: business, customers, lead generation, sales, Social BOOM!, social media Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

The sales world is changing. Are you changing?

June 15, 2012 By Leave a Comment

The sales world is changing. Are you changing? Been in sales for more than five years? Notice any changes? Of course you have – but probably not the ones I’m going to talk about. I’m NOT talking about the economy, or customers in financial trouble, or slow sales, or price pressures from competition, or pressures from your boss to “sell more now.” Oh and, by the way, how about YOUR changes? Still cold calling? Still learning “how to close?” Still “finding the pain?” Still trying to figure out social media? Still a bit behind technology? That’s your problem.

I AM talking about changes that have taken place over the past five years that will affect sales into the next decade. Your sales. Here are the major changes that have taken place, and how you must take advantage of them and master them to sell and succeed:

Connect with me on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube today.

Filed Under: business, customers, lead generation, sales, Social BOOM!, social media Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Who’s afraid of social media and social networking? You are!

June 6, 2012 By 1 Comment

You’re a chicken.

Let me correct that. You’re a dumb chicken. You’re out in the middle of the road, pecking for scraps of food, and an 18-wheeler is about to run you over.

Let me explain: Business social media has created the biggest chicken farm in the history of mankind.

But you’re chicken to get involved with, or participate in, what will prove to be the biggest boom to business and sales since the creation of the Internet. The chicken farm is also known as “Corporate America.”

Since a very small percentage of salespeople and businesspeople in the country are taking total advantage of business social media, I’m assuming you fall into the chicken category. And I’m not just talking corporations and lawyers here. I’m talking you, the salesperson, are a chicken.

Here are the elements that may be holding you back from participating in Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube to build your connections, your reputation, your business and (of course) your sales:

1. You’re technologically challenged. You may feel overwhelmed at the thought of creating your own business Facebook page, your own LinkedIn account, your own Twitter account and certainly your own YouTube channel. Relax: Each one of these social media programs has easy-to-follow tutorials that will allow you to get started and establish your base. It will require an investment of time — about two to three hours total. Or, in that same period of time, you could make 20 cold calls and receive 20 rejections. Think about it.

2. You don’t know where to begin. Begin by calling your top 25 customers to find out what they consider valuable in their marketplace and in their business, and inform them you’re about to create a value-based business social media presence, and you’ll be sending them an email asking them to join you.

3. You don’t know which program to start with. Start with Facebook. Currently the third-largest country in the world, Facebook has now interconnected more than 600 million people, many of whom are your customers and your prospects. You may already have a personal Facebook account. Now start a Facebook “business” page.

4. You don’t know what to say. When you call your customers and find out what they want to hear, what they want to read and what they want to learn about, you’ll know exactly what to say. Business social media is not complex. It’s not a course in calculus or physics. The secret basically revolves around common sense and providing value. Those are the core elements.

5. You don’t understand how it applies to business. Business social media provides a first-ever open forum where customers can connect with you and share their feelings, and you have an opportunity to respond back. If you don’t see how it applies to business, perhaps you should search your competitors, who are at this moment making some feeble attempt to get involved. Your job is to create a better, more open, more truthful forum on Facebook, on Twitter and on YouTube.

6. You’re afraid your customers will post something bad. Wake up and smell the Internet. Just because you don’t give customers an opportunity to post bad news, doesn’t mean they’re not going to post it. If you give them an opportunity to post, it will give you an opportunity to respond and fix the problem or at least address it, thereby giving your other customers assurance that you’re paying attention.

This is also a huge opportunity for your business to discover your own weaknesses and make certain they don’t reoccur. I believe a negative post on your business Facebook page is one of the most positive opportunities you could have. And the only people against it are C-level chickens and marketing chickens. Oh, wait, I left out lawyer chickens.

7. You’re afraid the boss will fire you. If you’re posting positive comments about customer interactions and customers themselves are posting their comments about how much they love you, your fears might turn into a raise. Most of the time, bosses are afraid of business social media because they are technologically challenged themselves. (Note well: All bosses and all sales managers are chickens. That’s why they put a noncompete clause in your contract in the first place.)

8. You’re afraid you will break the rules arbitrarily set by your corporate attorneys. The easiest way to ensure that you stay away from rules is to stay away from your company name. Your business Facebook page should be about the product or the service, not the company. Keep in mind, you’re branding yourself, and you’re branding your expertise. This is all about communicating and helping customers, not selling products.

9. You’re afraid no one will follow you. If you set up a page and use the “Field of Dreams” strategy — “If you build it, they will come” — you are correct, no one will follow you. If you create a game plan as outlined above, post valuable information and invite your customers to follow you, you’ll have more followers than you can say grace over.

10. You’re afraid to make the personal commitment. Time fears and time commitments are one of the biggest barriers of life, not just business social media. I recommend that you list the hours of a day that you’re awake — maybe 16, maybe 18, whatever it is — and allocate them to the projects you consider most important, saving at least two hours for business social media. One hour in the morning and an hour in the evening.

Note well: If your boss is stupid enough to forbid Facebook at work, start the morning at Starbucks. Make 25 connections, post five great events and cruise into work an hour late. After a week, the boss will ask what you’re up to. Show ’em. You might be able to get a rule changed.

10.5. Your bosses and lawyers are not just afraid of business social media; they’re afraid of everything.

The simple answer to involvement and achieving business social media success is: seek professional help. I did. One Social Media (http://www.onesocialmedia.com) advises me how to cross-link, keyword and other Googleable actions. It’s working.

Reallocate time. Two hours a day to start. Get into the 21st century.

It’s measurable, and it’s pleasurable.

Filed Under: business, customers, lead generation, sales, Social BOOM!, social media Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

I’m Gonna Google You, And You Can’t Stop Me

May 24, 2012 By 3 Comments

As business social media evolved and matures, all salespeople, executives, and entrepreneurs will expose themselves for who they are and who they aren’t…WAY BEFORE a sales call or sales meeting of any kind takes place.

Think about the impact of that…

  • I’m gonna Google YOU.
  • I’m gonna Facebook YOU.
  • I’m gonna find you on LinkedIn.
  • I’m gonna look you up on Twitter.
  • I’m gonna search you on YouTube.

And you can’t stop me.

Here are the NEW standards by which you’ll  be evaluated, granted appointment time, decided upon, measured, branded, and talked about:

Are you ready to be found?

Filed Under: business, customers, lead generation, sales, Social BOOM!, social media Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
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