Business Insight Zone

Great comment today from Nancy Bailey on my May 2009 post, “Twitter follow-backs: the 5-step lightning approach.” Here’s what she said:

I am fairly new to twitter so I apologize if this is a lame question. I have a company account where my staff posts job openings, news etc. We really don’t want to follow anyone but ourselves but gain lots of followers. Each of my staff has a personal account where they can follow Ashton [Kutcher] and whomever they please. Every week I go on there and find that my company account is following all sorts fo random people. Is this some sort of auto-follow? How can I stop this? Is this is even a wise approach? What would the downside be of having a company follow random people?

Lots of things to chew on there, which is why I’m discussing this in its own post rather than in the original comment thread. Let’s take them in order.

I am fairly new to twitter so I apologize if this is a lame question.

Hey, when it comes to the business use of social media, we’re all fairly new. So, no worries.

I have a company account where my staff posts job openings, news etc.

Great . . . but from looking at the Hire Profile Twitter account, I immediately wonder whether you wouldn’t get more out of Twitter by using it more interactively. You have only a handful of posts that reference other Twitter users, but in my experience (which, if I say so myself, is considerable) interacting with others on Twitter is the royal road to gaining traction there.

We really don’t want to follow anyone but ourselves but gain lots of followers.

Big Question #1: Why? Twitter is of some — but limited — use as a pure broadcast medium. Most people use it for both exposure to interesting content and interaction. If you don’t follow anyone and don’t interact, you’re missing out on a big part of the appeal — and, potentially, a big part of the benefit for your business.

Big Question #2: How? The accounts that follow few but attract many tend to be in the vein of Mashable, Conan O’Brien, and The New York Times. In other words, they have a big footprint before they ever get to Twitter. For the rest of us, following a fair number of people is one of the key ingredients in the recipe for drawing lots of followers. (By the way, this doesn’t mean you need to follow everyone who follows you — I don’t.)

Each of my staff has a personal account where they can follow Ashton and whomever they please.

You’re way ahead of some employers, who blindly prohibit employees from accessing social networks despite the value (including business value) that can be derived from them.

Every week I go on there and find that my company account is following all sorts of random people. Is this some sort of auto-follow? How can I stop this?

It does sound like you got signed on to an auto-follow program at some point, because Twitter won’t follow anyone for you automatically.

As for how to fix: go into your Twitter account — via the Twitter site — click on “Settings,” and then click on “Connections.” It will show you which applications have access to your Twitter account. From there, it’s easy to revoke access for any or all of those apps.

Is this is even a wise approach? What would the downside be of having a company follow random people?

The two big downsides would be:

1. Twitter spam, where malicious (or just obnoxious) followers send you Twitter direct messages you don’t want.
2. Wasted time. If you’re using Twitter to promote your business, it makes sense to interact with business pros who share interests with your firm.

So, Nancy, does this help? What other questions do you have?

And to the rest of you in the audience — what advice would you add for Nancy? How can she get the most out of Twitter without making it her full-time job?

After talking about how I follow up with new acquaintances when I get home from attending a conference, I got feedback from a friend of mine who manages the neat perfecta of being (a) a nifty human being, and (b) a stone-cold sales pro. She elaborated on a practice of hers that I also follow, but that I didn’t mention in the post.

Here’s what we both do:

1. As we’re talking to the new acquaintance, or shortly thereafter, we jot down something about them that’s not related to business. My friend called this “some non-business rapport-building topic I’ve discussed with the person.” I might call it “common ground.”
2. When we follow up with them later, we include some reference to this shared interest. My own follow-ups have included things like “Next time you’re in Austin, I’ll be sure to take you out for some REAL Texas barbecue” and “It’s always great to find someone who shares my affection for the Blue Ridge Mountains.”

As my friend points out — and as I’ve experienced myself — this kind of contact makes the other person feel special, and that we’ve connected on a personal level, whether or not any business arises from that connection.

I like doing business, and I like connecting with people — so why not operate in a way that satisfies both impulses at once?

So how do you make personal connections with business acquaintances?

~

Image by Victor Bezrukov.

Sorry to shout, but I want to make sure the emphasis is clear:

• CUSTOMERS
• CUSTOMERS
• CUSTOMERS

It’s one of my fundamental tenets of all business, whether you’re running IBM or a taco truck: if you’re finding the right customers, and putting your best efforts into serving customers, and aligning all of your business practices so that you provide maximum value to customers at costs you can live with and prices they can live with . . . you’ll be fine.

Now for a very simple lesson that’s too often overlooked — or undercooked — in companies large and small:

How you collect, organize, and use business information should reinforce your emphasis on CUSTOMERS.

A thousand questions cascade from this one idea, including many that are rather abstract:

• If you’re collecting information by hand — how will you organize it for use in finding and serving customers?
• If you get information from a service like us (and, ahem, we happen to have the most and best business information you can find anywhere), what will you do with it that will help you find or serve customers?
• Do you know all the uses of the information ahead of time?
• Do you have a process for discovering and adopting new uses as you go?
• . . .

And then there are pragmatic questions galore:

• Does everybody in your outfit who needs to know the answers to the questions above know them? (Researchers? Marketers? Salespeople? Your CIO? Your CFO? All the big bosses?)
• Does what they understand mesh with the IT department’s ability to package and deliver the information, whether it’s through a complex data warehouse, a CRM, or simply a set of spreadsheets?
• Does the technological capacity mesh with the ability of your sales ops, fulfillment, and finance teams to track the right account information back to the right customer? Every time?
• . . .

You can fill in the blanks with more questions like these depending on your own situation. (And please feel free to share these questions in the comments.)

Remember that some of the answers to these questions need not be overly complex or expensive. For instance, if you and I decide to open a business together, just the two of us, we might be able to run our whole book of business from a few shared spreadsheets.

Easy, right? Sure — but even then, you and I would need to get some discipline around what information comes in, how we collect it, where we store it, and what we do with it. Even if you run a solo business, you need to answer these questions, because otherwise customers — business! cash money! — falls through the cracks.

Sum it all up, and the real core discipline lies in answering this question:

Which piece of information triggers which action toward which customer?

Until you know that, you can spend all the money you want on a CRM system . . . we could give you the keys to Hoover’s and you could drown yourself in company and industry information . . . you could store terabytes of data . . . and it still won’t drive the performance that your business — and its CUSTOMERS — deserve.

Don’t you agree?

~

Related posts:

• Customer ANYTHING.
• Get on the phone!

~

Image by Oran Viriyincy, used under a CC-Share Alike license.

Recently, Aberdeen Group researched the performance of 476 corporate sales teams. It published the results of this research in its December 2009 Benchmark Report, Inside Sales Enablement: “Let Them Drink Coffee!”

Below, you’ll find a copy of Aberdeen’s follow-up report focused on Hoover’s customers — who

“outperform[ed] other companies in both [financial] performance and the adoption of Best-In-Class practices.”

You can access this PDF and download a copy for yourself by clicking on the image below or on this link.

Among other highlights, Hoover’s customers outperformed in terms of:

• Revenue
• Lead response time
• Lead conversion rate

All in all,

“Hoover’s customers have out-performed those that do not use their service, in terms of the percent of companies improving their year-over-year sales metrics, by an average of 25%.”

Take a look at the report, which contains other analysis about the performance of sales teams across the board, as well as a mini-case study that explains how Staples uses our Access Hoover’s product to integrate Hoover’s data into its Salesforce.com CRM.

Here at Hoover’s, we’ve always believed that great business information empowers sales teams to do their best. We’re pleased to share this Aberdeen Group report so that you can see the hard numbers that back up our belief.

Feel free to ask questions in the comments, or to drop us a line so we can help you figure out how Hoover’s can empower your sales teams.

If you’re a fan of informative business webinars, or you just want to get the inside scoop from two of Hoover’s finest, register now for these great upcoming events:

• Wednesday, Feb. 24th — Top 5 Ways to Get Your Sales Team to LOVE Your CRM — Hoover’s VP of Business Development Heidi Tucker knows all the pitfalls that can derail companies’ CRM use — and will teach you how to avoid them. In this session, you’ll learn how to use your CRM system to identify fresh, targeted leads, shorten your sales cycle, and increase customer satisfaction for better retention.
• Thursday, Feb. 25th — Start 2010 Strong: See What’s New at Hoover’s — Hoover’s Director of Marketing Communications Adam Hanin will walk you through the comprehensive upgrades to the content, tools, and functionality that we’ve made to help Hoover’s subscribers build their businesses. Adam will show you how to build targeted marketing campaigns, organize and track the companies that are important to you, and much more!

We hope you’ll make time to join us for one or both of these sessions!

In The Shawshank Redemption, the Tim Robbins character petitions the Maine Board of Corrections (or whatever it’s called) to start a library in the prison where he’s incarcerated. He writes two letters each week, over and over and over, until finally the powers-that-be send several cases of books to the prison with a plea that he stop writing all those letters.

The joke is that he increases the frequency of the letters, to three per week, until finally the authorities break down and build a proper library for the inmates.

Some sellers are like that. In fact, many very successful sellers are like that. They don’t take “No” for an answer. But when does it go too far?

I’m thinking of this because of an e-mail that landed in my inbox the other day. It was short and sweet — just 32 words, one link, and the seller’s signature. It was also polite: the sender opened with a nice greeting wishing me well, and remembered to say “please.”

But it also asked that I tell the salesperson a convenient time when I have a few minutes to talk, and then told me to take a minute to follow the link and read a press release.

Okay, fair enough, I get it — everybody’s got to make a living. This seller couldn’t know how I loathe talking on the phone when I can avoid it, and maybe doesn’t realize just how overrun I am with press releases every day. Fine.

But the seller could know, and should know, what I said in response to their last solicitation e-mail a few months back. Here’s the whole thing:

Hi, [Salesperson]–

In hopes of saving time for us both, I’m going to beg off. Two reasons:

(1) We have a [Company X's stock-in-trade] solution in place, and there’s zero chance that we’ll be changing from it.

(2) We have no budget for bringing on new [Company X's other product line] tools, and this will be the case for at least several quarters.

I appreciate your time and attention to us, but we’re just not a prospect for [Company X] for 2009 or 2010.

Best regards,

Tim

I have a ton of respect for sellers. It takes a special skill set and a lot of tenacity, and in fact a big pool of Hoover’s own customers are salespeople. I go out of my way to emphasize this because I don’t mind being contacted by salespeople in general, and my experiences with this particular seller have been cordial.

But now I’m not feeling so cordial. I’m feeling like my earlier message was ignored. When I wrote it, I genuinely was trying to save time for us both. Why string the seller along, much less waste my own time doing it, when we’re simply not in the market?

So, salespeople in the audience, you tell me: am I just being a curmudgeon, or is this seller making a mistake by contacting me now?

I really don’t know.

~

Image source.

That is the question. Please let us know by answering our poll below:

(If the poll doesn’t render correctly, you can answer via this link.)

My friend Tyson Goodridge, who runs his own social media firm, has assembled a cast of social media marketing worthies (plus — full disclosure — yours truly) to answer a set of seven questions about their work practices.

Here are the seven questions:

1. What one trait or habit got you to where you are today?
2. Your work day just started, what’s the FIRST thing you do?
3. What makes you efficient with your day?
4. Your Favorite Business book of all time?
5. 3 things on your desk right now/ 3 things you can’t live without
6. Habit you want to kick in 2009
7. Habit you’d like to form for 2010

You can read Tyson’s explanation of the project — and see the full list of participants — in this post:

7 Habits of Highly Effective Social Marketers

So far, he has interviewed Powered CMO Aaron Strout (a good friend of mine whom you may remember from several of my previous posts) and Kate Brodock (whom I know slightly via Twitter).

If you’re interested in knowing how some very savvy people* in social marketing think about their work and organize their days, you’ll be well-served to check in regularly as Tyson posts more “7 Habits” interviews.

* Plus, and I repeat this just for the sake of fair warning, me.

~

(I’m warming up for my March 16 South by Southwest Interactive session by trying out various metaphors that bridge sports and business — and especially the use of social media in business. Feel free to chime in with your own metaphors in the comments!)

The sports concept: Julius Erving didn’t have the world’s best jump-shot, and he didn’t have great range as a shooter. Yes, he was a dunk artist, but there’s only so many chances to dunk in a game — even for Dr. J — and a lot of dunks aren’t enough to generate 30,026 points in a pro career.

The Doctor had, more than anything, “a nose for the basket.” He would take a jump shot, drive for a dunk, or do any of a thousand things in-between . . . but somehow the ball found the net more for him than it did for almost everybody else.

The business analogy: Surely you’ve known someone like this — call her Linda — in your career? Linda got a solid education, but not from the fanciest schools. Maybe she doesn’t have an MBA. Linda would never claim to be the smartest person on the team, much less in the company. She’s not necessarily the first to arrive in the morning or the last to leave at night. She’s not the fastest at completing individual tasks.

And yet Linda gets the most done. She has that sense (is it innate? learned? honed from years of practice?) for getting things DONE. You put the ball in her hands, she puts the ball in the basket. Period.

What separates Linda from the rest of us? What makes her a Dr. J. of business? Or, to put it another way, . . .

What attributes do you think give some people
“a nose for the basket” in business?

~

Related posts:

• A little sports retrospective.
• Sports metaphor: “a captain’s innings.”
• Enter the arena . . . of sports metaphors.

~

Image source.

My friend Jason Peck, who manages social media for online marketing firm eWayDirect, invited me to contribute my best predictions for what will happen with online marketing in 2010.

My thoughts — alongside those of 13 other social media and marketing pros — are found in this free e-book:

Online Marketing Predictions for 2010

I’d love to hear any feedback you have about my predictions.

And, by the way . . . Happy New Year!