For any salesperson, regardless of what they are selling, there’s a fine line that must be walked between being overly aggressive and annoying, and out-of-sight, out-of-mind. With new technologies out there to give salespeople more access to potential customers and insight into what their potential customers are doing it should be easier to walk this line right? Not necessarily.  Here are a few examples of how technology, used incorrectly, can actually work against a salesperson and turn off a potential client faster than ever before.

Social Networks

Social networks can be a salespersons best friend, when used correctly. Following clients on Twitter can give you insight into what is going on in your prospective client’s professional and personal lives and can help you mold your sales pitch or follow-up meeting appropriately. LinkedIn is also a great site where you can reach out directly to potential clients who may share a common contact, group, company or interest with you, turning a cold call, lukewarm.

Social networks can also quickly kill any chance you might have a landing a deal with a potential client. Trying to add a prospect as a friend on Facebook or MySpace, two sites that are known more for networking between friends and family and are used for personal rather than professional interaction, can been seen as an invasion of privacy almost as bad as a salesperson showing up at your home during dinner.  Also, using the information you find on social networks is another fine line that must be walked. Commented to your potential client on a Twitter post they made 15 minutes ago and how they changed their profile picture on LinkedIn can come across as “stalkerish”.

Analytics

Analytics can be a great tool to give you insight into where you potential client is going on your website or where they are clicking on your email messages and if they are opening them. Knowing that they checked out a particular link, service line or spent significant time looking at a client case study can give you the 1-2 punch to mold your messaging to fit exactly what your prospect is looking for to land a deal. Adversely, letting your potential client know that YOU KNOW that they spent 10 minutes looking at that case study, clicked 3 links in your email, and checked out your pricing and services lines can give them that “big brother is watching…” feeling and contacting them minutes after they do these actions can quickly scare them away, especially if they are just doing some preliminary research and aren’t ready for the heavy selling just yet.

Access

Salespeople today have unprecedented access to their potential clients. We can send a fax, letter, email, text message, instant message, call their office, call their cell phone, leave voicemails and send messages on LinkedIn and other social networks. Using this prospect access with responsibility is yet another fine line that a salesperson must walk.  Maybe your prospect was stuck in an all day meeting and missed your call. Once they finally return to their desk and see that not only did you call and leave a voicemail, and thanks to caller ID saw that you called 7 times, but you also sent 2 emails and an instant message can quickly turn your relationship sour.

So to wrap things up, no matter what new technologies may come, salespeople will still have to continue using good judgment and walking that very fine line to be successful.  With every potential client responding differently to your outreach messaging and methods, that line is getting narrower every day.

Times are tough and many employers are asking their employees to do more.  For some, the job responsibilities seem to be piling higher than ever along with the feeling of working harder than ever.  While working hard can eventually take its toll, working smarter can greatly reduce the load to make it all more bearable and, more importantly, help you maintain your sanity.  Here are some quick tips to help you work smarter:  Read the rest of this entry »

I went to Starbucks today because I was out of coffee at home and had to stand in a line that started outside of the store!!  I was so surprised that in a recession people were lining up for $4.00 cups of java and $2.00 scones.  Maybe everyone is out of coffee like me?  I raise my frothy cardboard cup to the recession and hope that patrons are lining up at Starbucks everywhere stimulating the economy.  I wonder if this is what Regan meant by “Trickle Down” economics - one cup of coffee at a time!

Hello everyone, my name is Jayson, and I am one of the newest additions here on the EMG team.  I am extremely honored and excited to have joined this team to work with some of the most creative minds that I’ve ever met.  The thing that excites me most about working at EMG is that we are a full service agency that focuses on technology, and anyone that knows me knows that I LOVE technology.

In my role here at EMG, I will oversee Entertainment marketing as well as offer consultative support for developing high-impact social media campaigns, because after all, based on my background, I would consider myself an expert in these fields as well as all aspects of social networking from products, widgets, UGC, but most importantly, marketing for social media (now known as “New Marketing”). Why do I consider myself an expert you ask? Well, I used to work at one of the largest social networking companies out there, and I have been intimately involved with the many facets of Entertainment marketing and social media on a daily basis. I am exposed to everything from advertising and media campaigns, marketing and promotional campaigns, new products and technology, social media strategies, widgets, and elaborate UGC contests.

The purpose of this blog is so that I can highlight all things cool in Entertainment and Social Media, while providing insight into best practices for marketing on social networking platforms, as well as provide tips for advertisers and brands on media allocation, products, and all things UGC.  In addition, I’m sure you’ll be catching me blogging about the newest and greatest technologies out there.

Let me set one thing straight, though…I absolutely will not be leaking any sensitive company strategies, unreleased products, or any other privileged information that would jeopardize my company’s or our client’s strategies in the marketplace, but if you stick around and read some of the topics here that I’ll be covering, you may gain some valuable knowledge and insight on social media that could result in new ideas, successful advertising strategies, or even to learn exactly how a certain product or technology works.

Best,

Jayson

There’s been a lot of talk lately on the value of social networking tools, sites, blogs, blah, blah, blah… and it starts me wondering, “How do you build community?” Seriously. So, the social scientist in me takes over and I begin to digg into this deli.icio.us question and see what the rest of the oncomm has to say about it. I’m sure if the information is out there, by now I must have reddit.

This concept of building community sounds great, especially to marketing types who see this as a way to generate traffic “for free” but kind of breaks down when it comes to actually starting to build. Lets consider for a moment the reasons why we might “build community” purely for marketing reasons and then we’ll dive into perhaps the factors that actually drive community which might give us some insight into how community actually gets built.

• TRAFFIC-> Interesting content means interested visitors, right?
• KNOWLEDGE -> Sharing or obtaining. If you write it, they will come.

Now, let’s think about what these factors mean to community.

First, we should probably establish the difference between traffic and community. Amazon.com gets a ton of traffic and plenty of comments and feedback on products. Does it have “community” or “web2.0″ features? Is it a “social networking” site? Hardly. It’s pretty clear that traffic isn’t community. Next let’s consider knowledge sharing and community. For this let me use the example of, well… how about Micro$oft. Like many other software vendors, the redmond elite have used their online presence to produce a great deal of “knowledge” to be shared with the world. This certainly generates a certain amount of “traffic” and “content” but again, hardly creates “community.”

Read the rest of this entry »