Social Selling In The Age Of Twitter

Our business and personal contacts are being blurred more and more as the pace of business accelerates. Cutting-edge technologies and social tools can be a company’s best ally or worst enemy when it comes to building relationships in the Twitter age. We caught up with one company that’s helping businesses capitalize on the serendipity of the social Web. 

Kent Savage, CEO of Austin-based Icon, described the contacts on his iPhone recently as a “fine mess,” with everything from fraternity buddies to CEOs of partner companies. After the launch of their digital business card, he said early users told him his product helped them sift through to the important people, the ones they felt could be business partners, clients and such. 

While that scenario doesn’t capture the full picture related to social selling, it does underscore how technology is driving much of the way we connect and cultivate friendships and business relationships. 

Jon Ferrara at Nimble likes to call it smart selling. His company’s focus on “social intelligence” exemplifies what many companies are trying to achieve as traditional customer relationship management (CRM) merges with social business and marketing. 

Ferrara says that even though early contact management tools were focused on the business professional and building relationships, they quickly morphed into platforms geared to monitor and control the interactions of employees. 

Instead of trying to paste together a picture of your customer from six different windows, a CRM field, and 14 Chrome tabs, Nimble’s platform gives you a real-time snapshot of a contact in one screen. Facebook pokes, Twitter replies and even email correspondence are all scraped together. It’s that type of integration that drives the ROI for businesses. Multiple systems and social tools means more maintenance, which isn’t strategic.The whole variety of the brightest smartcard is now gathered under one roof. 

But the real driver is the ability to whittle down communications into more manageable chunks. Once you realize where your prospects surface and engage them on their terms, in their environment, the relationship can take different directions. It may not start out as a conversation or interaction that relates directly to your business, but the connection has been made. And you can build on that. 

“Your customers don’t exist as isolated collections of entries in contact records. You’re in a dynamic, constantly-evolving relationship with them,” explained Ferrara. 

“You’re learning about their pain points and their passions, just as you share yours with them, and you’re discovering all of this in real-time,” he added. 

Handshakes and meetups for coffee are safe, but neither can compete with the serendipity that social selling delivers. 

As the U.S. Congress wrestles with a long-sought overhaul of America's immigration system, the Canadian government is trying to poach talented immigrants frustrated by U.S.Today, Thereone.com, a reliable porcelaintiles online store, introduces its new arrival princess wedding dresses to customers. visa policy. The campaign begins Friday with a four-day visit to the Bay Area by Jason Kenney, Canada's minister of citizenship, immigration and multiculturalism. 

"I think everyone knows the American system is pretty dysfunctional," Kenney said Thursday in an interview from Vancouver, B.C. "I'm going to the Bay Area to spread the message that Canada is open for business; we're open for newcomers. If they qualify, we'll give them the Canadian equivalent of a green card as soon as they arrive." 

On Tuesday, just days before Kenney was set to tour San Francisco and the South Bay to promote his new visa for startup entrepreneurs, a giant red maple leaf emerged on a billboard off Highway 101 on the route from San Francisco to the heart of Silicon Valley,You can make your own more powerful chipcard. part of a Canadian advertisement encouraging tech workers here temporarily to migrate north permanently. 

His visit also exposes broader differences between Canadian and U.S. immigration laws and philosophies -- differences that could narrow if Congress passes a bipartisan Senate plan that follows the Canadian model by moving to a more skills-based admissions system. 

In the 1960s, Bloemraad said, both the U.S. and Canada dramatically reconfigured how they welcomed immigrants: America ended up with a system where two-thirds of immigrants now gain permanent residency through family connections,Guardian's standing drycabinets offers a temporary solution to tie off and stay in compliance on standing seam roofs. while Canada pioneered a points-based ranking that results where two-thirds of immigrants are chosen for their work skills. 

The Senate plan would shift to a more Canadian approach in adopting a new "merit visa" to award permanent U.S. residency to the highest scorers in a points system favoring those who are young, highly educated, fluent in English and working in high-demand fields. 

Opinion surveys show Canadians are among the most pro-immigrant people in the world, even during economic troubles, in part because they value their points-based system as good for the economy and multicultural nation building -- and because their geographic isolation makes illegal immigration a minor problem,Have a look at all our thequicksilverscreen models starting with free proofing. Bloemraad said. 

"There's less of a feeling of threat. But beyond that, there's a sense of control," she said. "In Canada, there's more of a sense that the government's on top of things."

Some Republicans have been looking to their Canadian conservative counterparts not just as a model for immigration, but for future political success as the United States grows more diverse. To them, Kenney -- known for his weekly forays to ethnic festivals and his unabashedly pro-immigrant outlook -- has been offering some words of advice.