Nancy Hendrickson

I had the opportunity yesterday to sit in on a 90-minute presentation by Sandy Carter, an IBM VP who spoke about social media marketing.  I wanted to share some of my take-away gems (hint, the biggie is at the bottom):

• Marketing 2.0 is a combination of social media and traditional marketing channels
• The “secret sauce” is the right mix of of marketing venues, all dependent on your goals
• In a poor economy, you can move customers through the buying cycle faster
• It’s critical to monitor and respond to buzz about you or your business
• Look for opportunities to provide a human face to your brand
• Look for opportunities to interact with your audience
• Companies need to focus on loyalty to customers
• You statisticians this is huge for you: track what’s valuable, not what’s measurable

All valuable – - but what really hit home for me was the same thing I’ve been telling you for months – - it’s all about relationship building.  Ms. Carter said we’re moving away from the concept of B2B and B2C.  What’s really happening is P2P . . . . . PERSON TO PERSON.  (was nice to get validation from a Big Blue VP!)

Michael Port, author of Booked Solid and Beyond Booked Solid, is out with yet another winner – The Contrarian Effect – Why It Pays Big to Take Typical Sales Advice and Do the Opposite.

The premise of Port’s newest book (written with Elizabeth Marshall) is that old sales tactics (cold calls, high pressure sales, door-to-door sales) no longer work. What does? Person-to-person interactions. Sound more early 19th century in philosophy than 21st? You’re right . . . and it works.

In my many years online (I got hooked back in 1986 with DOS-based Compuserve) – I’ve witnessed the evolution of business on the Internet: the dotcom boom to bust, the crunch of big business finally getting into online sales, mass e-mails, spam . . . basically, doing business as usual.

With the advent of social networks, the Internet is returning to more people-to-people interactions – - and this trend is reflected is how people want to be “sold”. Instead of “big business” pushiness, consumers want businesses to recognize that they are real people with real needs, who want to be treated as individuals, not part of a mass spam, high pressure, pushy sales techniques.

If your business sales are on the downslide, pick up a copy of The Contrarian Effect – and see if you can shake your sales out of the doldrums.