Thankless Sales Leads

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Thankless Sales Leads

So I bust my behind, network meetings, relationship building, lunches, Starbucks, etc., maybe even pay some bucks, to get a qualified lead for my sales team. “Keep me in the loop” is the only prerequisite I ask in order for them to receive this lead. Simple right?

Not only do they not keep me in the loop… they act like they found the lead later and had some sort of prior “relationship”. What is up with that!

Lead Etiquette – 3 Rules of Thankful Lead Success

Rule #1: When someone gives you a lead internally, or externally, keep them in the loop. Why is this so important? Other than just simple manners and respect… It just makes good business sense. If I had a business contact give me a lead and met them later… I would not want to find out that we did not follow up on this opportunity from them. Obviously this would be embarrassing and most likely I would never get a lead from them again. Not good for business. Now don’t get me wrong… this might have not actually been the situation but it was their perception that ruled here… as they and I had not been kept in the loop.

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Is Crowdsourcing Right for Your Small Business?

Years before it was penned “crowdsourcing” by Jeff Howe in Wired Magazine I was involved with this concept and watched it work quite well. A friend’s small car dealership was looking for a new jingle for their radio ads. Instead of hiring a marketing company (or using an internal employee) they put the word out that anyone in Austin could submit a jingle and the winner would receive $1000 bucks! The response was incredible and the jingle is still being used 20+ years later. A key ingredient to this success was the location as Austin TX was/is packed full of singer songwriters. We’ll talk more about that later.

As you can see crowdsourcing worked out extremely well for this dealership which was a small business. As a matter of fact it became a real win-win for them and the artist. Not only did they get their jingle economically… they became a media phenomenon because of all the activity around the offer. Television stations, radio talk shows, and newspaper articles blossomed. The day of the award they were all there. You just can’t afford this kind of attention normally and here it was being offered free (gratis) to both parties. Powerful!

“…the world is becoming too fast, too complex and too networked for any company to have all the answers inside.” – Yochai Benkler. Yale University from The Wealth of Networks

So what is crowdsourcing?
Simply… “crowdsourcing is the act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, to an undefined, large group of people or community (a “crowd”), through an open call.” – Wikipedia

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I almost choked on my lunch the other day when a friend of mine randomly blurted out what he had learned recently from a so-called social media “guru”. This guru had explained on national television that LinkedIn was simply a place to look for a job. It was full of recruiters and a waste of time for most typically. I was actually taken aback for a moment. Recovering from his comment, and swallowing my food properly, I said… “Maybe I should introduce “groups” to this supposed “guru”. He looked puzzled.

The Power of Groups
LinkedIn is a lot of different things to a lot of different users. It has over 90 million “connections” and is growing exponentially. LinkedIn is definitely a place where you can show off your abilities and make contacts with recruiters, human resource personnel, and the like. Statistics range from 25% to 50% of the fortune 100 companies are hiring through LinkedIn. With that said…

LinkedIn also has over half a million user groups. Groups that can be intellectually stimulating and tremendous resources. Groups that are most likely not focused on hiring. So what is a LinkedIn user group?