Elevating your CRM Experience with SOCIAL!

As  a CRM advisor and an Inbound Marketing Professional, I see all kinds of cases where companies are striving to get an edge on their marketing by just being able to get a handle on listening.  Listening to their prospects and customers across all platforms in relevant ways, can be the determining factor in success or failure.  Listening is key, and here are some new ways to do it that won't have you running in every direction: #SOCIALCRM

Here are three very important ways Social CRM can enhance your CRM experience:
 ~ A 360 view of all your social platforms in one place can be a time saver, and key benefit to understanding your audience, and a way to help you offer a timely response to inquiries without being superman, or needing ESP! Many of your customers and prospects probably have a preferable mode of communication they prefer to use, and have an insight on this can be a real benefit to great customer service. Being quick to respond, and engaging in Social Circles can also build the kind of rapport you need to close that deal, or keep that client retention.
~ You can see in full what you previously only saw in part!  Let's face it, Social Media can offer us personal insight into places that mean the most to our audience.  Where previously we only saw sides to our customers that were professional and impersonal, SocialCRM allows us to hear their true voice. It allows us to follow what gives them passion, and what fills their values. At the end of the day, understanding what drives a person or a business can ultimately be the difference between helping them succeed, or missing the mark.
~ Reputation is Gold: SocialCRM can help you build it, maintain it, and develop your image among the audiences you are trying to attract.  It gives you sophistication, brand recognition, and credibility among other thought leaders.  It increases your visibility, awareness, and persona before those who need to hear your message, or use your services.  Being engaged is only ever a win.  It is what we all long for when we place every one of those cold calls to the receptionists that never relay our messages.  If you know they are listening, get in front of them!  You cannot close if you don't have an audience.

Traditional CRM's do so many things well for some many sectors, but with emerging new media technologies, it is time to get SOCIAL and lead the charge!  Only the courageous will win!

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Drip Marketing... The Power of Perpetual Touch

I think that in most areas of life, we underestimate the power of touch.  With Valentine's Day on the horizon, it has never been more on the forefront of my mind.  Little things we do; physical, spiritual, intellectual. Our initiation makes a mark; it leaves and impression.  How much of an impression, we never know.  But we do know, don't we.

Drip Marketing is applying this principal to business. It is allowing the importance of touch, wanted and sometimes unwanted, to leave an impression.  Your strategy can be the difference in the impression you make.  It can make you or break you.  Some people say that it doesn't matter what people remember, as long as they remember.  I don't believe this to be true.  I think silence is golden, if the noise you make turns someone away.  This is where cultivating a strategy will serve you well. 

What is a Drip Marketing Strategy you ask?  It is simple.  It is the process of touching your audience by different methods for the purpose of building a solid and favorable impression.  It is the planning and organizing of the ways and means by which you touch them.  It is the understanding and recognition of their desired methods of touch, by means of studying and learning your pursuant.  It is the method by which you consistently seek relationship, friendship, engagement. 

Just like in all relationships, faithfulness, loyalty and perseverance is valued and savored in real authentic friendship.  Business is the cultivation of friendship for the benefit of commerce.  Apply principals of friendship to business and you will manifest loyalty every time.
Drip Marketing is a requirement for success.  If you are not doing it, you are surviving by luck.  Luck will only take you so far.  Strategic Relationship Cultivation will take you the rest of the way... Trust it...

Lessons from THE LORAX

I have never been much of a writer... but I love watching movies with the three year old... I love to listen to him hum the tune of each show he has watched 200 times.  There is no better sound to me...

This weekend we watched THE LORAX and as I watched my little guy enthralled by every moment in this movie, I found myself very intrigued by the lesson we can learn in life and business that I took from this movie... As I said, I am not much of a blogger, so I thought I would make this short and sweet:

1. Preserve the SACRED by not using more than you need for personal gain!  Don't cut down the trees translates across many platforms.  Things that are sacred in our environment can extend to things that are sacred in life: TIME is of great value when at home or at work.  We should be careful not to overindulge others who mean to misuse it or discount it.  We should carefully value our time, and the time that belongs to another.  We should show them that in everything we do.  VALUES are another example we can attribute to  SACRED.  Ask yourself what you regard as SACRED in your life and business.  Can you identify those things?

2. Love is a motivator!  We will do all kinds of crazy and wonderful things for love.  That should be an important motivator in life and at work. The Golden Rule can move us to make major moves toward another in various ways.  Even though some of the things we do will not serve us well over time, most of the time LOVE Wins. Pursue all the things you desire that are motivated by love.

3. Let it Grow!  NO matter what it turns into, to grow is better than to die.  Death symbolizes the end of something, sometimes good and sometimes bad.  But to Grow something is the essence of a seed that has taken root. In life and in business the fruit of these seeds should be analyzed by the first two lessons listed: Does this fruit look like love, and does this fruit have attributes of the sacred.  That's how we can foster good fruit, deciphering between the weeds that seek to steal the sacred and remove the love. You cannot, however, examine the fruit without them taking root.  Don't be afraid to let them do that.  There is truth and power in learning from weeds.

I love the LORAX. I love the time that I get to cherish with the three year old, but I also love how these things transcend into all areas of life.  Does your business preserve the SACRED, and is it motivated by LOVE.  These will determine how it GROWS... I want to encourage you to think on these things... Use them to Turn your relationships into Gold...