It’s been a weird relationship, but Google Plus has snuck up on me. I’ve come to like it a lot.  What I like is it’s a full social network like Facebook, but doesn’t bind me to the “personal” nature. 

I use Facebook for my friends only. I don’t think about what I say or do on Facebook. It’s like being in my backyard on a summer day or on the slopes in the winter. I can say and do what I want.  Twitter and Linkedin have been great from a business perspective, however the social nature can be limiting at times.

I see Google Plus as a killer combination of all the social networks. I can share most of my personal self and only share it with my friends circle. It can be business and I’ll share with everyone or just my sales and business circles etc.  And of course, the search benefits are an added bonus.

Google Plus is just starting. I’m going starting to invest more time in my profile.  You should too.

If you’re on Google Plus let me know and I’ll add you to my circles.

My Google Plus page. See you there!

Christine Cacioppo over at Union Square Ventures wrote a great post yesterday called, What Comes Next?.  Christine is an analyst at USV and has seen over 160 start-up’s this year. She’s attended just about every tech start up incubator there is. Knowing this, I was very interested in her thoughts. Her post title was perfect. If anyone is going to know what’s coming next it’s going to be her. If we assume that start-ups are working on the next big “thing” or in the next big “space”, then Christine is right in the thick of it.

Christine noticed two specific trends; Software is developing its own component industry and work is shifting toward a peer-to-peer model. It’s the second one that got my attention and the one we all need to be paying attention to.  The future of our careers depends on it. Especially if you are younger than 40.

This excerpt says it all:

Workers who can’t differentiate themselves using their reputation will be commoditized.

Christine is absolutely right.

I started this blog 3 years ago.  I recognized, as an executive, it was becoming increasingly more difficult to move up the career ladder. Performance was no longer the sole determinant behind career growth. As I moved up the career ladder things such as politics, relationships, experience, brand, ability to play the game, etc. all played an increasing role in executive career advancement. To address these changes and increase my ability to move up the executive ranks I started to blog. My thought was to document my knowledge, my approaches, my ideas and by doing so I would create more opportunities for advancement.  It worked to a degree, but not exactly as expected. What I didn’t expect is what makes my blogging journey interesting and what makes Christines observations so germain.

Blogging increased my exposure. Blogging improved my reputation and it expanded my network.  However, blogging didn’t move me up the corporate ladder. It created ME as a corporation.

Companies didn’t start asking me to come work for them. Recruiters weren’t calling me to be some companies new EVP of Sales or Chief Sales Officer. Instead, companies started calling me to help them fix their organizations. They didn’t want me as an employee.  They wanted me to work with them, not for them. They wanted my knowledge and wisdom. They wanted me to help their sales executives. This outcome of blogging was not expected.

Here is the money quote from Christine’s post that supports what I experienced:

Between identified, liberated individuals and the nameless, faceless drones of Mechanical Turk lies identity: does it matter who performs the task at hand? If the worker’s background, skills, or experience matter, there’s likely to be higher variance in demand for a particular person’s services, and free agents will be sought after and chosen by reputation on services built for those purposes. Less-skilled people are likely better suited for tasks for which identity doesn’t matter, and other marketplaces that don’t include a concept of reputation will provide access to a global pool of workers.

This is spot on and is happening now.  Identity and reputation matter when the service can not be boxed or is not repeatable.  When a service varies based on who is performing it, and is impacted by the knowledge, experience, understanding and the creativity of that individual, reputation and identity become paramount. If companies can get the knowledge, experience, and information they need to achieve their goals without creating more employees, they will. Employees were necessary when information didn’t flow well.

One reason to create firms is the coordination and signaling problems of situations with imperfect information and transaction costs. As technology increases information flows and decreases transaction costs, individuals can leave their old employers and strike out on their own. Their livelihoods will still depend on providing valuable services in exchange for fees, but they’ll do so as freelancers – and on their own, they’ll capture more of the value generated by their work.

Information is flowing like the Colorado River and is only increasing. Transaction costs are decreasing. Firms/companies can perform and compete with fewer “employees” therefore reducing costs and increasing margins. At the very same time, those performing the service, the freelancers, will capture more value for their efforts.

What does all this mean?  It means reputation and identity matter and are going to matter even more in the future. It means jobs, once consider corporate ,will be outsourced or freelanced. It means measuring job experience and resumes to identify a workers value are diminishing and will eventually disappear. It means reputation will be a huge determinant in success or failure. It means those who are proactive and deliberate in managing their reputation their brand, and their service will out perform those who are not.

To put a fine point on this last paragraph. Sales is NOT and will NOT be the nameless and faceless. Identity and reputation will matter in sales.

I started this blog to move up the corporate ladder.  Instead, I’ve built a reputation. The reputation is giving me a lot more than I expected. The one thing I can say that it hasn’t given me is another rung on what appears to he a very wobbly corporate ladder.

It was taken by one of the Vail photographers that were scattered all over the hill.  In bright green jackets; they were everywhere. You couldn’t miss them.

They took the picture for free and with in an hour it was auto-posted to our EpicMix account. I’ve heard some people say it happens instantly. It was pretty frickin’ cool. If my EpicMIx account settings were set to auto-post photo’s to my Facebook Profile or Twitter account, the pictures would have been automatically posted to those accounts.  I’m going to turn those settings on too.

EpicMix was fun last year.  This year Vail Resorts has taken it up a notch. EpicMix Photo, as it’s called, lets guests have a digital photo collage of their entire vacation and share it with their friends and family.  If a guest wants a high-resolution photo for printing they can order it right from their EpicMix account as well.

Epic Mix still tracks your vertical feet skied, tracks the lifts you ride, let’s you connect with friends on the hill and earn digital badges or pins as you explore the mountain, but now you can capture photos too.  Right now you can only get photo’s from their photographes, however I’ve been told you will soon be able to take your own pictures and upload them to your EpicMix account. Combined, all these features make for a great skiing experience.

Vail Resorts is killing it from a social media perspective and EpicMix photo is just another example of this.

I’m looking forward to using this with my Ski School clients.  They are gonna love it.  My girls and I already do.

If you come to any of Vail Resorts properties, EpicMix with Photo is a MUST.

I love technology.

Think snow!!!!

Frost and Sullivan was one of the panelists and provided some interesting stats outlining sales leadership challenges and opportunities.

Challenges:

• 73% see changes in customer buying behavior as a challenge
• 77% are feeling commoditization pressures
• 50% see identifying and qualifying high-potential prospects
• 22% find it difficult to respond to clients changing business environment
• 40% want to accelerate the close
• 22% looking to improve sales reps productivity
• 22% need to align the sales process with the customers’ purchasing

The 6 Biggest Changes in Today’s Sales Environment

Customers are super busy and don’t have time for you:

Email, smartphones, texting, cloud computing, etc. are supposed to make us all more productive. In many respects however, they’ve just made us busier. Constantly connected, customers and prospects are buried. The have more work than time to get things done. Customers and prospect are in constant priority mode, continually determining what is important and what isn’t.  And guess what? Your email, cold call or text message isn’t important. Neither is your new solution. Customers and prospects are so busy, even when they know they have a problem and know it needs to be fixed, if they can band-aid it they will. The just don’t have the time to address it.

According to Jill Konrath and her new book, Snap Selling, buyers are crazy-busy and have too much to do. Jill says; “When people have too much to do and impossible deadlines, it changes how they make decisions. And, it changes their expectations of you too.”  Jill is right.

To sell in this super, fast past environment it is critical to do as much of the work for you customer as possible. It takes heroic like creativity to capture their attention and you have to consider yourself their sales sherpa, becoming an indispensable sales resource.

Customers and prospects are busier today than they have ever been.

Relationships matter less:

Relationships matter less than they did before. According to the Sales Executive Council, sales reps fall into five distinct profiles; hard-workers, lone-wolves, reactive problem solvers, relationship builders and challengers.  According to the study relationship builders represent only 7% of high-performers. Traditional relationship builder characteristics of being generous, agreeable, supportive, available and service oriented prohibits the discovery of new, unique and transformative solutions. Relationship building is a circuitous route to the sale. It makes it difficult for problems to be identified and solved. Customers don’t have the time nor inclination to take a circuitous route. The want ideas now.

The days of “friendship” buying are dead.  All sales are becoming more complex. Customers are super busy, (see #1.) Achieving results as quickly as possible drives everything. Dinners, golf, lunches, boondoggles, and casual conversations are nice, but they don’t get the customer any closer to their goals.  Relationships only matter now if they allow you to teach and get customers to their goals.

Customers want to be taught, they want experts:

I had a customer explicitly tell me this a few years back and I never forgot it.  Customers want experts. They want their sales people to educate them on what is happening in the space. They want guidance in how to execute their strategy and how your products and services can help with that strategy.  Customers and prospects are too busy (see #1, again) to do it all themselves.  There is too much information coming at them to try, even if they weren’t. Today’s best sales people need to be “trusted filters” helping customers and prospects cut through the noise and provide them with the relevant information they need to achieve their goals. Today’s sales environments require sales people come to the table WITH ideas, ideas the customer may never have thought of. Sales reps need to lead their customers and the sale. This is done by being the expert and having information and knowledge customers and prospects don’t have.

The customer no longer leads the sale, the sales people do:

Once upon a time the customer or prospect led the sale.  Sales people built a strong relationship, pitched their wares, provided support, and the customer made choices. Today customers and prospects are too busy the don’t have the time do all the work.  They expect sales people to come the table with new ideas, approaches and techniques to solve their problems. Leadership is a critical skill for today’s sales people. They must be comfortable making customers uncomfortable. Sales reps need to be provocative. They need to take control of the sale for the customer. Today’s sale is led by the sales team. The customer is expecting it. Customers want and expect their sales people to lead the sale.

Social media matters:

Any sales person who, when asked if they’re on Twitter replies with; “I don’t care what someone had for lunch.” doesn’t get it.  Social media is not a toy, it’s a tool that is here to stay. Sales people need to understand the value of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Linkedin, Gist, Yammer, blogging and more as real selling tools. Social media is about information, collaboration, and engagement.  Social media is a must in today’s selling world.  For today’s sales people, social media is a prospecting tool, a selling tool, a cold calling tool, a sharing tool, a research tool, etc.

If you’re looking for proof social media makes a difference, check this out. This poor cat is about to lose a client thanks to Twitter.

Today’s sales people need to learn how to use social media to drive their business. Embracing social media is no longer a nice to have, it’s a must in selling.

Technology matters: 

Don’t confuse technology with social media.  The applications and tools available to sales people today is massive. The days of the sales person’s rolodex and a client based CRM as the tools of the trade are far from over. Technology is absolutely reshaping the sales landscape. Cloud computing, the Internet, browser plugins, CRM applications, and mobile applications are giving sales people more tools to accelerate the sale, connect with customers, and prospects than ever before.

Technology is touching every aspect of the selling process, from prospecting emails with yesware, to customer and prospect research with Gist and Rapportive, to demonstration tools like Glance Networks and iMeet, to commission management systems like xactly.  The list of sales, sales enablement, and sales productivity technologies is immense. How many of these technologies are you familiar with; Echosign, KnowledgeVision, Lattice-Engines, Qvidian, WhiteBoard Selling, IntroMojo?

There is more technology designed to make selling more effective and efficient than ever before.  The key now, is to know what the technologies are and how to use them.

Sales is changing. We have to lead. What once worked, works no longer. Relationships are no longer enough. Social media matters. The tools of the past are no longer efficient. Our customers and prospects worlds are different and they expect more from us.

Do you see the change?

Image via Wikipedia

I think Foursquare should add a new feature to their application called “Tag.”

Whenever you check in on Foursquare a list of the others who have recently checked in is prominently displayed. It’s on that locations check-in page. Tag would work by giving people extra points by finding and meeting the people who are checked in at the same place.

I see it working like this: when you check in, you look at the avatars of the people who are also checked in and try to find them. Once you find and meet them you both “tag” each other with a “tag” button on the app. By tagging each other you both are awarded extra points and are given the option to add your new friend as a foursquare friend. I can see Foursquare even creating a “tag” leader board ranking those who tag the most. (Jim Keenan is #2 and has tagged 30 people)

What I love about this feature is it increases offline interaction. I think there is tremendous value for social applications that combine both an online and offline experience. A feature like this on Foursquare has the potential to get more people using it, as there is another reason for people to check-in. It would work best for bars and restaurants, where meeting people is already part of the experience. I can imagine users taking a feature like this and creating a whole new set of games, extending the intentional use.

There is a lot of room for applications that bring people together offline and Foursquare is positioned well to make this happen in a fun, creative and exciting way.

This would be a killer feature. In the end you don’t need FourSquare to play Foursquare Tag, so I won’t wait. If you check-in Foursquare and I’m there, come find (Tag) me. I’ll tweet I’ve been tagged by you and, if appropriate, buy you a beer. Anyone else want to play?

Hey Foursquare, @dens you want to play tag?

The power of the Internet is its ability to share information and knowledge rapidly and effortlessly. It’s also its ability to connect people. Distance doesn’t exist on the Internet. Sharing and connecting are the core of teaching and learning and why I think we’ve only begun to scratch the surface when it comes to using the Internet for teaching and learning.

I really like what Skillshare is doing. They are creating a marketplace for offline learning. They are bringing those with skills together with those who want to learn the skills. It’s a great idea.

I’m a sales consultant. I like to think that is a form of teaching. I like to think this blog is a form of teaching. I like to teach and I like to learn. That’s one of the reasons I enjoy the Internet so much.

I can’t even begin to imagine how much more the web is going to influence how we learn and how we teach. I literally mean how. Traditional thoughts and ideas on teaching and learning are going to be redefined. Learning and teaching are going to look very different to my kids than they do to us today and the web is going to be smack dab in the middle of it all. I like what Skillshare is doing. It’s a play on the traditional, but it’s still a move in a different direction and I think that is cool.

How do you learn from the web? Are there any cool teaching or learning sites you like? How do you think the web is going to change learning and teaching?

Related articles

• Skillshare (usv.com)
• Skillshare: Learn Anything from Anyone (thedenveregotist.com)

Think about this for a minute. There is now a company who offers a service to scour you social media background for your future boss. I’m not surprised in the least bit. If anything I’m surprised it’s taken this long.

Social Intelligence scours your social media and Internet presence to see how stupid you are.  Do you use, talk about or promote drugs. Are you some sex freak, posting nude or graphic pictures of yourself or others?  Are you a fan of Hitler, the KKK or the Swastika?  If you are that stupid, you won’t pass the test.

What I thought was refreshing about this service is it doesn’t share the keg stand(s) you did every Friday while you were in college, or even the lame one you attempted at the your college homecoming when you were 35.  Social Intelligence doesn’t share your age, race, religious orientation etc.  They only focus on the stupid stuff.  I like how Gizmodo broke down the benefit of a future employer using this rather than the company doing it themselves:

  . . . ultimately the bottom line, and my takeaway, is that these kind of services actually make a lot of sense. Employers would have to be stupid not to Google job candidates. Yet it’s better for both the employer and the candidate to have a disinterested third-party do full-scrape background checks.  We now routinely bandy about the kind of information online that employers are legally prohibited from asking. Your average Facebook profile can reveal an entire litany of details like your race, sexual orientation, national origin, or religious affiliation that are off-limits in the hiring process.  As an employee, you don’t want potential employers knowing certain things about you that might make you a less attractive candidate due to their personal biases. As an employer, even if none of those things matter, just accidentally finding them out can be a problem.  For example, consider the following scenario. Let’s say you’re a California-based employer and you do a basic background check on a job candidate. In scouring the Web, you discover a brand new Tumblr update that says “I’m pregnant!” Holy impending mandatory paid time off! But you’re good a corporate citizen. That doesn’t matter to you. Yet for unrelated reasons, you hire a different candidate. Meanwhile, the rejected candidate sees your company’s IP address in her analytics program. She assumes you didn’t hire her because she’s pregnant. She sues. Now what?  If Social Intelligence finds out you’re pregnant, or gay, or a Muslim, or newly married, or newly gay married to a pregnant Muslim, it leaves that out of its report. All an employer sees is, basically, that you passed or failed. And it won’t flunk you for getting drunk or knocked up.

Our lives our increasingly under scrutiny. Not because of some Orwellian shift in our society. But, simply because there is more information.  Information WE share. Our social media background is controlled by us.   To think it’s not fair game is silly. Be smart!  There is no such thing as sharing with ONLY the people you want. Sharing on the Internet is like a secret.  It’s never shared with just one person.

Related articles

• Employers Look More Closely at Social Media Activity (news.dice.com)
• Jennifer Waters’s Consumer Confidential: Could you pass a Facebook background check? (marketwatch.com)

Christopher has given up cold calling completely.  As the owner of a small film company, he has found new ways to generate, revenue and customers.  I like Christopher’s story. I like his passion just as much. Christopher is an Interfriend.  (someone I met on the Internet, Twitter, like but have never met in person) Enjoy his story and add your two cents. There is some good comment fodder in this post.  Could you build your business as Christopher did and never make another cold call?

————————————————–

I want to thank Jim for giving me the opportunity to write here.  I appreciate his take on things – especially because he does all day what I hate to do: Sales.

When I read his recent post My Secret To Cold Calling (http://asalesguy.com/2011/02/22/my-secrets-to-cold-calling/) I kind of chuckled to myself.

Here’s why:

I’ve stopped cold calling over the last two years.  And, I gotta tell you in the past two years I’ve had more new business than in my entire career.  I think there are a couple of reasons.

One, we have moved out the recession and there are new people in new positions who want the product my company, Wheelhouse Communications, creates.  We make high-end customized video marketing and training films.

Two, we do good work.

Three, a couple of years ago I started blogging at http://bit.ly/thewaywewatch.  I’m not an everyday blogger, but I’ve amassed enough blog posts (100+) that when you look at my site in its entirety the take way message is, “Hey, this guy sounds like he knows his stuff.  Giving him a call on a small new job would not be going out on a limb.”

That’s really important.  No one wants to make a mistake when you’re talking about video communications because the cost can be higher than other forms of communications.  And, usually video is one of those things where everybody sees it.  If it fails, the person who hires the video vendor will be blamed.

Once you have the small job that goes well – it takes a little follow up and perseverance to get that next re-peat job.

Here’s how the blog has created new work:

1) People Have A Reason To Get Back In Touch. Old contacts want to get in touch with me – without me hassling them. Sometimes they are piqued at an interesting blog post like this that talks about a special piece of equipment.

I had an old boss of mine from 1993 give me a call when he saw my blog on LinkedIn.  He didn’t have a job right then, but we started emailing and talking and after about a year – one thing led to another.  I got the call to do a fairly big job for him.

LinkedIn is an obvious place to show off your blog but your email signature is another.  I’ve even custom tailored a bitly link to someone I’m writing that tells them about a specific post that I wrote that I thought would be of interest to them. I put it down near my contact info.  To do: Advertise your blog in likely and unlikely places.

2) Your World Opens Up. There is a camaraderie among bloggers.  About two years ago, I met the seasoned marketing professional, Paul Dunay on a job at BearingPoint and at the end of the taping he asked for my card.  Two days later his newsletter comes into my mailbox unannounced which was created by his last 6 or 7 blog posts.  Two days later I shared my blog with him.  From there we developed a nice and easy relationship — shout outs on twitter and I’ve asked his opinion on stuff.  Months later a referral from Paul showed up in my email box.  The secret here: Bloggers are some of the world’s best networkers.

3) People Know You Before You Meet Them. Recently, I was being evaluated for a new job with a new client. As a matter of course with new clients I put a link to my “About page” from my blog along with my other contact info in my signature line.  My posts about the video industry gave an immediate comfort level but more important it was a great window to who I am.  After the evaluation and I solidified the job, the client remarked about how much she enjoyed reading my posts.

I think she felt very validated that she got the “right guy” for the job.

When I got the job and we met for the first time at an out of town location, I could tell she had a built in level of comfort. That’s really helpful for new jobs and clients. Again, the best way to get follow up jobs is to do a great job on the first assignment.   Sidebar: Put some personality into your posts and show people who you are.

4) Staying front and center without an intrusive email or call. I try to send a newsletter every now and then based on new posts and it becomes a nice emailable calling card that old clients can send to colleagues, friends and relatives.  It’s also a nice way to stay in front of old contacts and jog their memory.  People are just too busy to answer voice mails and my emails had been dismissed.  But the newsletter is different.  In the newsletter there’s relevant information that is aimed at being helpful.  If they are too busy they can archive for the future – or wait three months when I ping them again.  My take: Voice mails are deleted. Email newsletters are archived.

5) It’s a huge positive to show you know something about Social Media. I have a very networked friend who is just terrific about sending out my name to anyone with a possible video need.  Sure his referral is gold, but that he can add that I know something about social media, blogging, and twitter makes me seem very relevant.  It’s amazing that these tools have been around for years but are now firmly in the sediment for any marketing or advertising to internal or external audiences.  Follow up: Blogging with an original voice and with relevant information — thereby having an audience of followers — puts you steps ahead in front of your competition.

So for the rest of the year, I’m committed to not make a single cold call.  But I will keep writing and writing.

Christopher Ming Ryan is a partner at Wheelhouse Communications.  He produces, directs and writes marketing video for a variety of Fortune 500 clients.  He can be reached at @chrismingryan and his blog can be found at http://bit.ly/thewaywewatch.

Just a few years ago there were very few opportunities for B2B sales people in start-up land. With the exception of ad sales, many of the “hot” start-ups were consumer oriented. Unless you had ad sales experience or wanted to sell ad space, there weren’t many opportunities to play in start-up land.  Google, Myspace, Facebook, Yahoo, Ebay, Twitter, etc. are all consumer oriented.  They didn’t offer many opportunities for the B2B guy.

This is changing and changing pretty fast. B2B is quickly growing in startup land.  More and more Internet, Social, Mobile and Cloud startup companies are targeting business and this is good for B2B sales people.  I am a mentor at TechStars Boulder and there are more startups selling B2B in this years group than there were last year.  What is even more telling is a number of this years group came IN targeting consumers and have now pivoted to businesses.  Foursquare just announced their B round and talked about improving their sales engine, which is B2B. Twilio, Groupon, Living Social, Foursquare, Gowalla, Yammer, Socialcast, etc. are just a few of the “hot” new start-up properties that sell B2B.

This trend is only going to continue as more and more mobile, Internet and social applications are developed for businesses. This is good for B2B sales people. We will now have a chance to play at the start-up table.  Most start-ups are started by techies/developers.  Many lack the expertise and knowledge of navigating and selling to businesses.  Start-ups selling B2B can benefit big time from those who know how to build and execute against robust sales processes, know how to prospect, navigate the buying process, build relationships, etc. All this is new in the start-up world.  It’s an opportunity for B2B sales people.

If you felt you missed the first round of start-up mania, that’s OK.  The next round needs B2B sales and it’s going to be big.