The Socializers

Social Business Intelligence Advance #3

admin August 14, 2013 No Comments

It is not enough to have a web intelligence solution that shows us where our own internal CRM is connected to important conversations and trends. We must also have a solution that shows us where our competitors’ CRM is connected to these same conversations and trends. In addition, we must have a solution that automatically delivers a set of individuals exactly like our best customers, complete with First Name, Last Name, Current Phone, Current Email, Current Social Links and cited examples of participation in these important conversations and trends. That’s the solution yet to be achieved in the social business intelligence world.

Social Business Intelligence Advance #1 and #2

admin August 9, 2013 No Comments

When social business intelligence solutions provide a “Create Prospects CRM” button, the social analytics industry will have leapt one more notch forward. What it looks like is this: a series of 10,000 individuals have commented on a specific brand/issue over 1 month AND this CRM button collects Name, Current Address, Current Phone, Current Email, Current social links for each individual. Instantly. Downloadable in a CSV format or a colorful PDF “dossier-style” format. The social media monitoring solution that offers this button will become a global leader in prospect generation.

Advance number two is when this service is fully applicable across global borders, delivering such info for residents of all nations.

The Sweet Spot in Social Business Intelligence for Weaving Marcoms and Sales: The Machine & Marketing/Sales Process

admin July 3, 2013 No Comments

CONTEXT:
A fierce debate still rages between marketing and sales in most organizations as the enterprise seeks to understand how to use social data for both silos. With exceptional software and smart cross-silo relations, marketing and sales can collaborate on nurturing and closing ideal prospects. This blog post has outlined the type of software needed to do this AND a sample sales approach for teams to consider.

WHAT THIS POST COVERS
This post covers three specific topics:

1. The exact description of an ideal social business intelligence “machine” that would serve both marcoms and sales.

2. The functionality this social business intelligence machine would possess.

3. A set of potent actions that combine a bit of marketing and bit of sales, thus demonstrating how one can progress from market research (using social data) to a closed sales deal.

THE IDEAL SOCIAL BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE MACHINE: The sweet spot for social business software is between the marcoms & sales silos, between pools of potential fans & fresh prospect data. The social business software of tomorrow will bring understanding between marcoms and sales, will create an easy funnel for “smart” fans/followers to become customers. Deriving prospects from social data has never been easier with the combination of solutions now avail to the marcoms & sales silos. Now these solutions need to be “merged” into one single machine. I describe this machine below.

THE EXACT FUNCTIONS OF THE IDEAL SOCIAL BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE MACHINE (as desired by Marketing and Sales silos):
In the coming powerful social business intelligence software (the “ideal machine”), we will see the following features:

1. Dials to find the exact people fitting prospect profiles. Imagine being able to pull every profile from every major social network AND THEN have dials to hone results down to exactly the customer profiles your business seeks.

2. Get suggestions from the software (from “the machine”) of other “pools of prospects” and prospect types BASED UPON your initial search.

3. Then, imagine pushing a “button” and getting current phone, email, physical address, add’l social links appended on-the-fly to the social profiles discovered thus far in the process above.

4. Now, mix in Topics of Influence & Volume of activity by each profile relative to the themes in your marketing & sales campaigns.

A SET OF POTENT ACTIONS FOR MARKETING & SALES AFTER EXTRACTING IDEAL PROFILES FROM THE SBI MACHINE:

1. STUDY THE LAST FEW DAYS OF TWEETS/SOCIAL MESSAGING: See what the individual is talking about. What is important to him/her? Jot down one or two specific points about these tweets/social posts/forum comments that you can compliment him/her on.

2. STUDY THE WEBSITE OF THE INDIVIDUAL: See how the individual presents himself/herself to the world. Find one to two items on the website to compliment the person about. This will make the call warmer and open an opportunity to collaborate.

3. SEND AN EMAIL TO THE PROSPECT FIRST: A powerful way to invite the person is to send a personal email wherein you introduce yourself briefly, lace in the compliments you discovered through Twitter, other social properties, blog comments, and his/her website, and then invite the individual into a collaboration.

See below sample of an email to send:

Dear Tom,

I am a Client Partner at BrandX, an FMCG group based in Los Angeles, California. Your materials online and, in particular, your steady stream of tweets chronicling your typical business process have impressed me. Would you have some time during the coming week to discuss what you are up to, what we are doing, and a possible collaboration with us?

Kind regards,

Client Partner
BrandX

4. SCHEDULE A PHONE CALL: When you get a reply to your email, schedule a call with the person. The call will involve listening to the Prospect, letting him/her know what we appreciate about him/her, what we saw in his/her materials and then working on an idea to collaborate on. It is a good plan to come to the call with some options that are personalized.

SUMMARY:
A fierce debate still rages between marketing and sales in most organizations as the enterprise seeks to understand how to use social data for both silos. With exceptional software and smart cross-silo relations, marketing and sales can collaborate on nurturing and closing ideal prospects. This blog post has outlined the type of software needed to do this AND a sample sales approach for teams to consider.

Weaving Humanity Into a Golden Chord For the Seventh Generation

admin June 25, 2013 No Comments

Nowadays, the depth of avail data provides a foundation for putting the “7th-generation” puzzle together accurately. #SeventhGeneration

SEVENTH GENERATION THINKING: Customers can now be matched with products/services that truly serve a need every single second of every single day. The data is that rich now. ALSO, there is enough positive intent nowadays to make this a nurturing process…for the planet, for humanity and for the “seventh generation”. The throw-away culture of two generations ago is being replaced with “seventh-generation” oriented action-takers. AND, the depth of available data actually provides a foundation for putting this “seventh-generation” puzzle together accurately. #SeventhGeneration #ForwardThinking #WiseData

WARP-SPEED MANIFESTATION: Since the Internet is not a hierarchy, all images, text, movies and songs have the opportunity to grow very large and swallow preceding “giants”. As a collective entity, perhaps the Internet is like a serpent swallowing its own tail. Being within this multi-dimensional eco-system is a transformative experience for individuals and the collective. Humanity is undergoing an extremely rapid phase of evolution presently. Extremely rapid and deep. Humans are realizing how malleable time can be…particularly since ideas become flesh at light-speed now. What would have once taken an entire generation to unfold occurs within minutes in today’s world.

Each person has the innate ability to take a dream and make the images in his/her mind into a tangible, concrete physical experience.

WEAVE YOUR REALITY: An innate talent taken from humans long ago is the ability to create tangible physical realities out of intangibles. Slices of humanity do this for a living: artists, writers, inventors, business founders. But each person has the innate ability to take a dream and make the images in his/her mind into a tangible, concrete physical experience. Try this today. Draw something simple on a piece of paper, such as you walking to the fridge and getting a glass of juice. Then stand up and do it. Now add complexity to this and watch the most “impossible” images turn into physical experience. #PracticalMagic #FictionIntoReality #Here2There

Each person has the innate ability to take a dream and make the images in his/her mind into a tangible, concrete physical experience. Each person can quite easily go from “here” to “there” nowadays.

The Relationship between Marketing Communications and Sales

admin June 17, 2013 No Comments

The Ideal:

The key to long term success is to have Imagination, Persistence, Compassion.

Fostering a deep, real and fruitful conversation between marketing communications AND sales is one of the most important tasks for senior managers nowadays. The marketing department is working with product development on a lovely garden. And sales is out there hunting, hunting, hunting to bring “eaters” to the garden. Market researchers see who the potential “eaters” are from a distance and, ideally, marcoms aids sales with extremely accurate messaging to lure the “eaters” into a rich and beautiful experience.

Joan Damico writes, “Marcom (Marketing communications) tends to operate from a longer term visionary / brand perspective. This often leads to a content clash with sales, which must meet monthly and quarterly revenue targets. There’s opportunity for marcom and sales to reach a happy medium between content that is visionary, such as thought leadership, and tactical content that is more immediately useable, such as ROI calculators and product comparisons.” (SOURCE: http://www.business2community.com/content-marketing/will-content-marketing-end-contentious-b2b-marketing-and-sales-relationship-0504728)

Damico’s excellent observation pinpoints the need for accuracy within the marcoms-sales relationship. Ideally, the two silos come to an understanding and are able to work together. The process of market research, content development and “message tweaking” can seem endless to the Sales silo. Salespeople want it “right now”. This is why it is wise of senior managers to start specific marketing programs six-twelve months PRIOR to attached sales initiatives. In fact, a deep market audit can inform a far more accurate sales process and marcoms can provide the sales teams with incredibly accurate and effective messaging due to the research. Likewise, sales can communicate their on-the-ground experience with customers to marcoms. That’s a very rich conversation and planning approach!

Seth Godin writes, “Valuable marketing campaigns are the result of time and user experience, not media and more media. Social media is a marathon, a gradual process in which you build a reputation. The best time to start was a while ago. The second best time to start is today. But turning it up to 11 isn’t going to get you there faster.” (SOURCE: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2013/06/the-thermostat-and-the-frying-pan.html)

When a marcoms team has been given a realistic lead time, their contribution to the sales silo will be very valuable. More managers have to realize the differing pace of marcoms and sales. And need to plan accordingly.