Category: Sales

Ever stop to think about rain and how it works? Probably not until you’re in a drought and wondering where the rain is.

Here’s the short version: rain is water. It evaporates from the ground. The tiniest little drops of water in the air float around and by chance bump into each other. Every time they do, they get a little bigger, eventually forming clouds. At a certain point, the water has coalesced so much that it’s too heavy to remain floating in the air and it falls to the ground as a raindrop.

In sales and marketing, we often talk about high performing salespeople as rainmakers, people who are exceptionally skilled at bringing in new business. They are the water droplet bumping into all the other droplets, bringing rain out of the sky. In the past, the bumping into other droplets part was exceptionally difficult, requiring a lot of cold calling, a lot of door to door and face to face time.

The social web changes all of that. It’s never been a better time to be a rainmaker. You have the chance to bump into people all the time now in the social web. The air is literally swollen with droplets ready to become rain, and plenty that are still too small to fall out of the sky with a bump. For those that are ready, they just need that bump from you to fall out of the cloud. That means, however, you can’t be sitting on the ground, waiting for rain to fall on you by chance. You have to be out there in the cloud with the droplets to find them, bump into them, and bring them to the farms and fields that need the rain – your company.

For those that are not ready, they will be eventually. They need to bump and grow more first, but if you forget about them, then when they’re ready, they’ll bump and fall to the ground with someone else.

Want to make your business grow? Want more rain on your fields? Use the social web and the relationships you build to stay in touch with all the droplets you encounter. Stay present of mind by offering legitimate value to them consistently, and when they’ve grown enough and are just ready to fall out of the sky, you’ll be ready to bring them to your fields.

In part 2, we’ll talk about what to do when there aren’t enough water droplets in the air that are ready to make rain. There’s a social answer for that as well.

Get this and other great articles from the source at www.ChristopherSPenn.com! Want to take your conference or event to the next level? Book me to speak and get the same quality information on stage as you do on this blog.

Ever notice the giant pile of social media “experts” who don’t have two nickels to rub together? Ever wonder why?

They spend a hell of a lot more time talking than listening.

They labor under the mistaken belief that the more you talk, the more money you’ll make as a social media expert, and I suppose as long as you’re good at duping the gullible, that’s true until the market is tapped out. Once the suckers have been skimmed, though, they have to move on to find the next big thing to latch onto. (just wait for the Google Buzz experts!)

For the rest of us, for the folks who actually want to do a sustainable business in social media, the secret is listening. Not a big secret in and of itself, but the bigger, less-asked question is “What do you listen for?”

A lot of companies are doing defensive listening. They listen for things like “XYZ Company SUCKS” and other brand mentions. This is a good start, a good entry point for retention and reputation protection. However, this is only a start.

The second tier of folks, the community engagement folks, listen for things like industry jargon. In financial aid, for example, the word FAFSA is a buzzword of the industry. No one goes to a bar on Friday night and chats up the attractive person of their choice with, “Hey, have you seen my FAFSA results?”. That never happens. Community engagers build reputation and presence of mind by participating in conversations, honing in on the right conversations to participate in using the buzzwords and inside jargon of the industry.

The third tier of folks, the folks who want to do business and make money in social media listen for intent.

Sound familiar? That’s what made search marketing so revolutionary a decade ago. Search was a red flag of intent – when someone searches for, say, email marketing, they’re exhibiting at least a casual interest in the subject matter. Focused, targeted questions asked to search engines belie even more intent. Searching for email marketing is one thing. Searching for “what is the best email marketing company in Reno, Nevada” displays clear intent, and search marketers have learned to make the most of these long-tail, deep, obscure queries. (they convert like crazy, too)

So how do you detect intent in social media? Let’s use Twitter as an example. What questions belie intent? Think about your own use of language and then start playing mix and match with these keywords:

• recommend
• suggest
• anyone
• [your keyword]

Try it. Try it in Twitter search with your industry keywords and vertical.

Look at a couple of results for “anyone recommend social media”:

• ianrbruce: anyone recommend a good book on social media metrics & measurement?
• splashrafting: anyone recommend free social media measuring tools? Looking at some at present need to start to use more
• hellaPR: Can anyone recommend any good cases or articles on hotels using social media, on a large scale preferably.

Each of these are home runs for a book publisher, a listening company like Radian6, and a socially-engaged hospitality chain. It would take mere seconds to respond and likely convert better than any cold call.

How do you listen? Take your top SEO keyword list (you have one, right?) and combine your top keywords with recommend, suggest, and anyone in various combinations. You’ll be amazed at the number of people blatantly flagging intent to buy your products or services, if only someone were listening.

Get this and other great articles from the source at www.ChristopherSPenn.com! Want to take your conference or event to the next level? Book me to speak and get the same quality information on stage as you do on this blog.