Rick’s program, “By Referral Only” will be offered on Wednesday December 30th, 2009 from noon to 1:30pm US ET. You have two options of attending – you can be there in-person in Westboro, MA, USA or participate via webinar.
But act fast, as the first 24 people who register for each event using “RR1230” as the discount code will receive a $50 discount when they register.
I had an amazing Blog Talk Radio with Jon Hansen of PI Window on Business last week. We spoke over our allotted time, almost an hour, on the emergence of reputation networks such as Inquisix. With it being so easy to make connections on the web and trade recommendations, how can people who don’t know you really trust what they read about you?
Topics we discussed included:
Value of References
Giving vs Getting
Political Patronage and References
Verifying References
Integrity of Referral/Reference Process
Does Social Media Help or Hurt
Extending Your Reference Base with Integrity
Emergence of Reputation Networks with Social/Business Networking
If BTR podcast doesn’t show above, please go to Jon’s site to listen to it.
On a side note, talking with Jon was one of the easiest and most enjoyable online discussions I’ve had. Jon prepared me for the call by sending me some topics to think about prior to our interview. He was calm when we had a few technical difficulties to iron out before we went on the air. And his engaging demeanor and conversation made the conversation lively, interesting and valuable. I was certainly surprised to learn later that Jon’s only been a BTR host for a short time. Jon has written a book, “Your Show Will Go Live in 5 Seconds” about his experiences as a Blog Talk Radio Host. If you’re thinking of becoming a BTR host or are thinking of your personal branding via Social Media, you owe it to yourself to read this book. An excerpt is available at no charge at Jon’s site. Not surprising, his book reads as breezy and well as listening to him online.
Jon Hansen hosts a Talk Radio Show, “PI Window on Business” that reaches an estimated 300,000 syndicated subscribers worldwide every month. The PI Social Media Network is internationally recognized for its ability to identify, structure and disseminate the ideas and visions that are reshaping the emerging global enterprise.
He’s talking with Michael Kreppein, Chief Sales Officer of Inquisix, to examine more closely the emergence of “reputation networks” and their effects on personal branding in the Web 2.0 world. Reputation networks, like Inquisix, are gaining ground to combat the growing problem within the realms of social networking, where references or testimonials are bartered by an ever-expanding network of interloping relationships between name collectors versus relationship builders.
As mentioned in a previous post, Pat Weber runs an online networking group called the Consummate Networkers and she invited me to speak to her group last week.
Pat has three key areas of consummate networking:
* Show Up
* Dive In
* Follow up
Pat asked me to talk about the Dive-In area so I presented to over 30 attendees on, “The Morning After….Attending the Networking Event.” We used the BlitzTime solution so that everyone could see & hear the presentation and then do one-on-one networking afterwards. All from the comfort of their home, office or car.
Pat Weber runs an online networking group called the Consummate Networkers and she’s invited me to speak to her group this week. The event is phone-based and anyone can join the call via BlitzTime.
Date: Thursday, July 23rd at 7pm ET
Topic: The Day After the Networking Event – What Do I Do Now?
Why not join us and participate by signing up here? The event is free and you’ll have a chance to meet other professionals interested in networking.
From Adrian Miller, author of “The Blatant Truth”, 10 Ways to Suck at Networking. I was at the New England Networkers event last night and am going to the Cambridge Business Development Group event tonight so a quick referesher on what NOT to do was timely.
Barry Moltz has a radio show where he will, “… talk about all the craziness of small business.” Last week’s theme was sales & marketing networking thru social media and he invited me to talk with him. You can listen to my portion of the show below.
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Barry had a few guests on his show along with me, including Alyssa Dver from my last post. His show was also the inspiration for my post on why the cold calling process is like, “putting lipstick on a pig” which generated quite a few comments. If you’d like to listen to the whole 30 minute talk, go to Barry’s website here and listen to episode #40. You’ll find a wealth of information on his site so enjoy.
She said that “Happy Ears” is her term for confusing prospect enthusiasm with purchase authority.
What a great quote! It should be one of your top concerns when submitting your forecast to management. And management should be filtering forecasts with same consideration.
What about your forecast, does it have too many opportunities in it based on Happy Ears?
I worked with Trish Bertuzzi of The Bridge Group on a few inside sales consulting engagements when I ran PeakSales Consulting in the late ’90′s.
Her company specializes in improving the Insides Sales department, especially when the group is involved in the full sales cycle till close. So they’re well qualified to publish reports on Inside Sales Best Practices. Trish’s latest offering is the “Periodic Table of Insides Sales Metrics” which I think is a really neat way to summarize the important data relevant for building a top-tier Inside Sales Group. Best of all, the table is free to download from The Bridge Group website.
If you’re local to Boston and would like to hear Trish speak, why not print out the table and get her to autograph it at the Sales 2.0 Conference on May 21, 2009? I’m first in line!
We’ve recently released a new version of Inquisix. Members won’t notice much change but new visitors to our site will. Until now, Inquisix has been an invite-only controlled beta because we wanted to correctly capture the process of giving and getting referrals confidentially online. It’s harder than you think! What’s natural in the real world often doesn’t translate well in the virtual world, where all the edge cases have to be considered and implemented. Kudos to our development team, run by Dave Dupre, for making the complex seem easy. And to our current members who’ve provided feedback on making the process better.
Now that we think we’ve got it, we’re opening Inquisix up to anyone who wants to join. We’ll still be in beta for a bit longer as membership continues to grow and we tweak here and there. There will always be a free version of Inquisix while we offer some premium features, too. More on that later.
So if you’re new to Inquisix and want to join, come on in. We’re using a common solution for ensuring only people try to join – Captcha. What’s really interesting about the implementation Dave and his team chose was what the reCaptcha system is doing while you decipher those images into text. As quoted from our Marketing VP’s other blog, “ReCaptcha is helping digitize newspapers, books and old-time radio shows, by putting this wasted time to actual good use. Every reCaptcha solved adds to the world’s library of digital books.”
