Sales Lead Management Today

RANT: Are you really visiting, or is that just your feed I see?

As tools and feeds become more sophisticated, time becomes more fleeting, social media demands become daunting, the temptation to put your networking on auto-pilot is too tempting for a larger percentage of professionals and companies. 

In the past, you would receive an email, view a post, and it was almost like shaking hands with that person, or at least being in the same room with them.  As I make the tour around my various LinkedIn groups and Twitter news feed (I don't have time for much more than those two venues), I notice the bulk are automated posts linking to that person's "stuff" or content. There is no engagement, no conversation, no collaboration. "BUY MY STUFF!" "LOOK AT ME, LOOK AT ME!" LinkedIn groups have become a joke filled with avatars pushing transparent content and pitches, as well as automated posts that turn groups into another RSS reader. I spend more time moderating and deleting than reading true content.

Where are the real converstations happening? Some of us value video conferencing, teleconferncing, personal emails and in person lunches. I am bombarded with piles of automated crap every day. Not one person realizes I received it, until they check the stats from their marketing automation program and monthly reports. That is becoming the extent of their networking, growth, and relationship nurturing. 

Remember when MTV had MUSIC and videos? This is seeming quite familiar. Useless waste of bandwidth, time and resources.

A wish for LinkedIn:

All automated pushes from feeds, aggregators and the like BLOCKED from all groups. Put what you want on your own profile. Google+, Twitter, Facebook - same thing. If what you have to say is really of value and you sincerely want to open a conversation rather than just shooting buckshot into the universe - or more like a good dose of AquaNet for all of us to choke and gag on - Take the time to actually WRITE IT YOURSELF - TYPE IT, tailor it for the venue, audience or group. Invite the conversation. Try it without linking to your stuff once in a while. You may be shocked at the results.

How do you feel about this topic? Are you experiencing the same clutter in all of your feeds of the same things from the same people, knowing full well they don't even visit these venues 1/10 of the time the spent automatically pushing their crap down our throats.

Susan Finch, Chief Ranter

Who's Numbers do you trust? The problem of skewed ad impressions.

AdAge Digital posted an article:

Fake Pageviews Cost Online Advertisers More Than $6 Million Per Month

Hijacked Computers Generating Billion of Fake Ad Impressions Monthly

By: John McDermott

London-based startup Spider.io, which helps publishers and advertisers identify legitimate web traffic, has discovered a ring of more than 120,000 hijacked computers that have been flooding websites with fake traffic and in turn costing advertisers more than $6 million per month, the company said in post on its blog. Called the Chameleon botnet, this cluster of computers typically generates more than nine billion illegitimate ad impressions across 202 websites monthly.

Spider.io, which said it has been tracking the Chameleon botnet since December 2012, found that 95% of the machines involved access the internet from residential IP addresses in the United States. Each bot within the network of computers resembles a group of web users concurrently visiting one the 202 implicated websites. In a typical month, the botnet accounts for at least seven million ad-exchange cookies.

You can read the full article here.

Granted, we are only talking about 202 websites, but how many ads are on those sites and who is behind those ads and their placement? Hope it isn't one of YOUR ads. That would be awful. You'd be paying for more fake results, goes with our post about fake and automated networking on LinkedIn.  Feels different when you may be the victim and have to pay, doesn't it? How is it very different from automatically posting status updates without engaging? Shoe is just on the other foot. Think of your advertising dollars as minutes. Would you want to waste precious minutes every day thinking you are engaging your target audience, sincere prospects, etc.? Of coruse not.

If you run advertising campaigns, be they over mobile devices, print ads in publications, direct mail, direct email - check out the numbers. How do they arrive at the number of delivered "impressions." We receive three yellow pages each year - 3. If I get outside quick enough, before the children come home from school, I toss them right into the recycle bin. They have been delivered, the company has an automated call asking me to push 1 it was delivered and 2 if it was not. If I push 2 because I tossed it, I receive another set. If I push 1, that number is reported to the advertisers to prove value. If I don't make it out to the trash in time and my children find the books, they become sleds down the stairs due to the slick cover.

You need to understand the numbers claimed BEFORE YOU pay or commit to another season or advertising period.

Susan Finch, Chief Ranter

What good is helpful information if you keep it locked up?

How many of you are over the fact that when you click on a helpful or interesting headline the first thing you need to do is fill out a form to view it? This is typical on Twitter and LinkedIn.  Time to practice combatting what we rant about regularly.  The SLMA.com website has had a wonderful library of articles for members to read. They were required to login and then they had access.

This doesn't help everyone who just doesn't feel like remembering one more password. Our article authors take a lot of time to write these articles. We want to share their information with everyone - member or non-member. So we have gone through and made EVERY article on SLMA.com public.

Members wll be required to login in order to nominate and vote for the 50 Most Influential in Sales Lead Management each year. Members will be required to login to nominate for the 20 Women to Watch in Sales Lead Management, as well. We may have one or two items like that requiring login, but information, articles and whitepapers are available to all as of this week!

Visit: http://salesleadmgmtassn.com/b2b-articles.htm to see what we mean! Oh, and don't miss the more recently added b2c page: http://salesleadmgmtassn.com/b2c-articles.htm.

There is a wealth of information sorted by topic. If you haven't logged in lately, or just never bothered, this is a great time to read some of our articles, including these topics:

Please select a topic below to preview titles
Alignment: Sales & Marketing	Branding & Personal Image	Business Intelligence
Case Studies	Check Lists & Job Descriptions	Common Mistakes
CRM	E-Books	E-Marketing
Fulfillment/Fulfillment Operations	Lead Generation	Lead Management
Lead Nurturing	Lead Qualification	Lead Scoring
Leadership & Motivational	Research	ROI Reporting
Sales 2.0/Marketing Automation	Sales Channel Lead Management	Sales Management
SEO	Social Media/Networking	Telemarketing/Telesales
Trade Show Lead Acquisition & Management	Video: Lead Generation and Lead Management	White Papers

By: +Susan Finch

Nominations are Closing for 20 Women to Watch in Sales Lead Management for 2013.

ONLY 7 DAYS LEFT TO NOMINATE

SLMA MEMBERS NOMINATE A WOMAN WHO IS A LEADER OR INFLUENTIAL IN SALES AND MARKETING. 

NON-MEMBERS - MEMERSHIP IS FREE - join then NOMINATE!

That's all I had to say for the moment. See the current nominees here.