Get The Preliminaries Out Of The Way

I’m obviously a huge advocate of social technologies. But nothing can ever replace the value of a one on one, in the flesh business or personal meeting. That chance to shake hands or the power of a hug when reconnecting with a long missed friend. Not even good video conferencing can do that. In business, sometimes you just have to look them in the eye.

But what business social technologies do very well is get the preliminaries out of the way. The questions I ask as a CEO when a sales person comes calling are “Who are you? What’s your experience? What makes you who you are?” I’m sure you too ask similar questions in such situations.

The value of tools such as LinkedIn, Plaxo or FastPitch in business are that they provide “evidence” of your business and those who have used your company’s services and your personal reputation. Be honest here; if you’re looking at the LinkedIn profiles of two sales reps you’ve met and one has absolutely no recommendations from former co-workers, clients or supervisors and the other one does…well?

This is our personal “social capital” or perhaps “personality capital” that we build as we progress through our careers. Already recruiters and executive searchers are using LinkedIn and similar tools extensively to research and identify key candidates. We have reached the point where it looks odd if you aren’t engaged in some social media channel to some degree.

So it’s unlikely you’ll “close the deal” via LinkedIn or a blog, but you stand a better chance of speeding up the process a whole lot and getting closer to the deal win. And speeding up a sales process or business development initiative is worth money.

What about you? What do you think?

(Author: G. Crouch)