Selling Geek 005-LinkedIn [24:20m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

One of the essential principles of good selling is: people buy from people. No matter how much we might like to live in a world where buyers make purchase decisions without human involvement – or on second thought, perhaps not – the fact of the matter is that person-to-person interaction is a requirement for most kinds of sales.

And as a result, for many sales professionals, success depends as much on who you know as it does on what you know. The best salespeople are expert social networkers – they develop relationships with customers and prospects, with suppliers and business partners, with anyone that might help them find new buyers. In the past, this was all done at industry conferences, trade shows, and business meetings, and also in civic organizations, social events, or on the golf course or tennis court.

But today, we live in a web-enabled world, and this provides sales pros with whole new ways to connect with people – ways that reach far beyond the physical limitations of the old network building standards. And one of the key web-based tools that has emerged to help foster interpersonal business connections is LinkedIn.

Today, more than 23 million registered users in more than 150 countries have joined the LinkedIn site. LinkedIn is arguably becoming the standard social network hub for business professionals all over the globe.

Why has LinkedIn become so popular with business people? And, more importantly, what value does this facility provide, if any, to sales professionals?

What is LinkedIn?

Basically, LinkedIn is an online facility for recording your connections with other people. It records those with whom you have developed trusted business relationships, and enables you to leverage the relationships with those to whom you are connected, thereby extending your network. Over time, through LinkedIn, you can develop an automated network of business contacts that enables you to reach out and interact with literally millions of people, all in a secure, well organized system.

This is a potential gold mine of interpersonal contacts for salespeople – but we’ll say more about that later.

Registering on LinkedIn is free, and after doing so, you can create a profile. Your profile is similar in structure to a typical business resume. Here you can put all of your professional credentials, background and experience. In fact, most LinkedIn profiles read exactly like their resume – my own included. Your profile is searchable, both to those in the LinkedIn network, and to those who aren’t members, too. This enables your profile to be found by current and former business colleagues, fellow employees, customers, and other industry contacts.

LinkedIn, in a word, is where you can build connections with other people. After establishing your profile, you can send invitations to record a connection on LinkedIn with other people. If the recipient of your invitation is a LinkedIn member, they just have to accept your invitation, and the system lists each of you on your respective profile as connected. If they are not a LinkedIn member, they are invited to register, and if they do, then your connection is forged. As people find your LinkedIn profile, they can likewise send you invitations to connect to their network.

You also have the option to upload your contacts from your personal information management system, if you wish – LinkedIn supports import of contacts from Windows Live Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Gmail and AOL. Or you can import contacts from Outlook, ACT!, Lotus Notes, Palm Desktop, or the Mac OS X Address Book, or from any contact file in the correct comma-separated or tab-separated format. LinkedIn will analyze these contacts and establish invitations for each.

You can also register to join Groups on LinkedIn, which gives you access to “networks within the network.” For example, I joined a couple Notre Dame fan groups (Go Irish!) and a few sales profession industry groups. Further, LinkedIn makes it easy to search for former colleagues or classmates, or for specific people inside the network, and you can then invite them to your list of connections. By importing my contact list, doing a few searches, and joining some relevant Groups, I expanded my immediate network to more than 500 people – through them, I have over 100,000 “friends of friends”– and through them, I can reach nearly 5 million professionals in LinkedIn.

Here is where the power of LinkedIn can be brought to useful purpose. Let’s say I want to make a sales call on… Xerox, for example. I may not know anyone that works there right now, but by going to the “Companies” tab in LinkedIn, I can search Xerox, and discover that 29 people who work there know someone that is in my direct network. I can then issue a request for an introduction to the appropriate contacts in my network, and they can forward my request to the person I want to reach. This is a great way to generate “warm” leads, instead of just cold calling.

Paying the LinkedIn Piper

Here is where we discover how LinkedIn makes money. In addition to some advertising displays in the LinkedIn system, which are presented in a fairly unobtrusive way, LinkedIn also charges for advanced access to their network. A free personal account allows only five network introductions at a time, and you can’t take advantage of some LinkedIn features, such as the ability to send mail messages directly to people in your network. A Business account costs US$19.95 per month or US $199.50 a year, and allows up to 15 introductions, and more in-network communication options. A Business Plus account costs $50 per month or $500 per year, and allows up to 25 introductions. And there is a variably priced Enterprise subscription as well, for large organizations. LinkedIn also charges other fees for services targeted mostly at corporate clients such as US$195 for a 30-day job posting.

Are these premium subscriptions worth the money? Well, that depends on the value of your network. As you add more connections, the ability to reach more business contacts grows geometrically. I had a free account for several years, before I discovered that I was hitting the introduction limits consistently, and then I decided to upgrade. If you use the LinkedIn network a lot, you won’t mind paying the small fees required. If you don’t, there’s always the free option.

The Answer is… 42!

If you get a premium LinkedIn subscription, you can use the Answers feature, which I have found interesting, and sometimes very useful. You can post a question to your network, and collect responses. For example, I asked a selected group from my network if anyone was using LinkedIn as a sales prospecting tool. Within one day I received over 40 responses, including these:

I did have a LinkedIn connection contact me recently asking for a referral to a company on my list. I didn’t even realize I had a connection with the company. I was able to make an email introduction and the two of them are now doing business. It was as simple as this guy searching his LinkedIn connections to see if anyone had a connection to his targeted prospect.

You have to be careful about using LinkedIn as a sales tool. Someone that prospects blatantly will quickly ruin their reputation and destroy their own efforts. There was a group on LinkedIn that went into hard-core sales mode and they quickly got squashed with complaints.

I use Linkedin to look for specific people to see if they are connected to anyone within my network. Linkedin provides the ability to become connected to a potential prospect through a “warm call.”

I use LinkedIn for qualifying sales opportunity, but not to identify them. When I have a qualified lead, I will usually see who else is at the company. If I happen to know somebody in the account, I reach out to them for information and guidance. I get “inside” information on how the company runs, and the potential issues, etc. This way I am usually much more informed than my competitors.

If you have a question, LinkedIn Answers capability is an interesting way to get some diverse perspectives quickly. But you have to be careful – if you use it for questions like, “Hey, anyone wanna buy something?”, you can get in trouble quickly. People don’t like being harassed in any medium.

A Little Trouble in Network Paradise

Although LinkedIn can be very valuable to aspiring salespeople, it is not a perfect solution for all sales problems. There are a few blemishes on LinkedIn that take away from the beauty of the system.

First, building a good network on LinkedIn takes time and effort. And the more connections you add, the more work it takes to maintain. I must admit that after reviewing some of my 500+ connections recently, I had no recollection who some of these people were. I had to view their profile to remind myself why I had added them – and for a few of them, I decided to disconnect them because we no longer had a real relationship. I now mark my calendar to review my LinkedIn contacts, import new ones, and cull out some of the old, stale connections, every quarter. It takes a few hours, but I think it’s worth the investment to keep the network current.

Second, as a LinkedIn user, you will discover that there are two types of network builders: I call them conservatives and liberals. Conservatives, like me, keep their networks limited only to those people with whom they have a real relationship. This is important to me as a sales professional, because I use my network for introductions, and I want those introductions to be of high quality, for both me and for the person I want to meet. On the other end of the spectrum are the liberals, who want to be “friends” with everyone – or, more precisely, they think everybody should be connected to everyone. These people drive me insane, as they care nothing about the quality of connections. Rather, they think only about the number of people with whom they can connect.

Here is where LinkedIn users discover the positive and negative aspects of recruiters, who use LinkedIn extensively, and who are all ultra-liberal connectors. There isn’t a week that goes by before someone I’ve never heard of invites me to connect to their LinkedIn network. Invariably, they are recruiters. When I first joined LinkedIn, I thought, “What the heck? Why not?” What a mistake. I was immediately deluged with repeated requests to pass on introductions through my network. Total time consumed: considerable. Total value to me: zero. I’m in sales – time wasted is money lost. So, goodbye connections to recruiters. (snip) Ahhhh, welcome back, peaceful, productive network.

I must admit, however, that my ultra-conservative stance on network purity made things a little too quiet. I found that without a few liberal connectors in my network, it was difficult to get introductions to some prospects without having to go through several degrees of people, and that made for some awkward introductions. So, I carefully reviewed some of the super-liberal recruiter connectors, and invited two of them to connect – they both immediately accepted, of course. Those two connections increased my network size by almost one-third, so I actively cultivate those relationships, helping them with their occasional recruiting requests, in exchange for introductions to key people. Indeed, I’ve learned that a little diversity goes a long way, when it comes to LinkedIn: a couple liberal friends I can tolerate – but more than that, and I start to get a headache. I leave it to your own sensibilities to determine how open you choose to be with your own LinkedIn connections. For me, a moderate conservative model works best.

I also discovered one of the problems with having a substantial network: poachers. You can, if you wish, leave your list of connections open on your public profile. This allows anyone that finds you to review all of your connections at their leisure. I figured that was the right thing to do, since the purpose of LinkedIn is to help grow business networks. But I didn’t take into consideration that some of my competitors are also LinkedIn users, and one of the brighter ones found my list of connections to be very, very interesting indeed. I suddenly found that my clients were getting calls from one of the “bad guys.” It took me a while to see the pattern, before I realized that he was trolling through my LinkedIn connections. I toyed with the idea of setting up a dummy connection and creating my own “sting” operation, but that seemed like too much work for dubious results – and besides, that is a violation of the LinkedIn user agreement, and I’ve found LinkedIn too useful to risk getting banned. Instead, I simply turned the visibility of my network off. People can still request introductions through my network, but they can’t browse it on my profile. That stopped the bad guys cold. So, learn two lessons from my experience, please: first, if you are a sales professional, guard your network, and second, if you know who your competitors are, check out their profile – you never know what you might find there, if you know what I’m saying. (nudge, nudge, wink, wink)

Sales Pro Value Score

Earlier, I asked why LinkedIn is so popular. The answer is clear – it’s darned useful, especially for sales pros who want to develop their network of valuable business connections. Is it the perfect social network for salespeople? No – it takes time and effort to become truly useful, and it has a few non-fatal but potentially annoying flaws. But if you are willing to make the effort, and if you are aware of the possible trouble spots, LinkedIn is fertile ground for development into an invaluable sales tool.

So, for it’s widespread user base, invaluable potential as a sales research and prospecting tool, a fair value-based pricing model, and interesting group networking features, despite a few minor flaws, Selling Geek gives LinkedIn a Sales Pro Value Score of 4 out of a possible 5.

UPDATE: LinkedIn starts new targeted advertising program.

UPDATE: LinkedIn and Moo form alliance to print business cards.

UPDATE: LinkedIn updates groups features, and breaks them

Some useful resources about LinkedIn and business networking

• Dave Stein gives a good example of what business networking is really all about on his blog…
  
• …and Dave also makes a good point about what salespeople should have on their LinkedIn profile
• Jill Konrath wrote a great post and a white paper on how LinkedIn can be used to sell better
• Jason Alba wrote a terrific  book on how to use LinkedIn, and has a very good related blog
• Sales Team Tools blog asks: “What does your LinkedIn profile tell others about you?”
• Blogger extraordinaire Chris Brogan advises: “Write your LinkedIn Profile for Your Future“

Tags: business network, LinkedIn, LinkedIn as a sales tool, Podcast, Review, selling geek, social networks

Nokia, the world’s largest producer of mobile phones, announced this week plans to fully acquire Symbian, the developer of the very widely-used S60 smartphone operating system, before the end of 2008. Further, Nokia announced plans to make Symbian an open source platform under the control of a non-profit organization, to be called the Symbian Foundation. Motorola, Sony Ericsson and NTT DoCoMo, all of whom also make Symbian-based phones, will also contribute technical assets. Other Symbian Foundation members will include AT&T, LG, Samsung, Texas Instruments and Vodafone.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported that only T-Mobile expects to release a new mobile phone using Google’s Android open source mobile operating system before the end of 2008.  Sprint Nextel, China Mobile and AT&T, who all intended to release Android phones of their own this year, will most likely have to push their Android offerings into 2009, as a result of unexpected development delays.

Why should salespeople care about Symbian?

Nokia’s move is clearly meant to counter Google’s attempt to standardize the interface of mobile handsets under their open source platform — one that they control.  Nokia, as the largest producer of phones, can’t afford to let Google eventually dictate how phones should operate — even if it means taking a short-term financial hit to start it’s own open source mobile operating system initiative.  And the Symbian Foundation, with its impressive list of initial members, certainly has enough clout to compete effectively with the emerging Android platform, even if a revamped, standardized Symbian operating system isn’t available until 2010, if all goes as expected.

Google is finding that working with large mobile carriers can be challenging, as they each require significant support with integrating Android into their systems and devices.  Meanwhile, many software developers are creating some pretty cool applications for the Android platform, but without compatible phones in the market, no one will be able to run them.  This will not make the application developers happy — not at all.

These two latest developments are just the most recent maneuvers of behemoth competitors in the quickly escalating War of the Phones.  What this means is that sales professionals should consider several factors in their all-important mobile communications and computing platform choices, as follows:

• If you must buy a mobile phone before the end of 2008, consider an iPhone 3G.  If you can’t switch to an iPhone carrier, such as AT&T in the U.S., you might want to stick with a reliable Blackberry (such as the 8830 on Sprint and Verizon), and get as short a contract term as possible.
• If you plan to buy a mobile device in the next year, try to hold out until the first half of 2009, and look at the (hopefully) new Android phones, which will (hopefully) be available from several carriers.  If they perform as well as the initial demonstrations indicate, and if they are priced competitively, they may be the best alternative to an iPhone as an integrated mobile communication and computing platform.
• If you plan to hold on to your current mobile phone at least until 2010, either because you don’t care about the advanced features of the new generation of mobile devices, or because you are locked in with a long-term contract to your current carrier, don’t sweat it — new Symbian-based devices should be starting to appear, or at least start to be demonstrated.  Then you can select the platform you feel is the best value: iPhone, Android, Symbian or Blackberry.
• Meanwhile, don’t commit to any long-term phone contracts through 2011, if you can, so you can have the most flexibility as the next generation of new devices emerge into the market.

In the long view, all of this is excellent news for salespeople, as it means lots of competition for advanced features and functionality in mobile communications and computing.  And that should translate into more productivity at cheaper prices — good news for sales pros, for sure.  Meanwhile, don’t make any rash decisions, and keep your options open — and don’t let the clashes of the mobile phone titans scare you.

UPDATE: for an excellent quick analysis of the major mobile phone operating systems, check out this overview at TechCrunch.

Tags: Android, Google, Nokia, phones for sales professionals, Symbian, Symbian Foundation, War of the Phones, What phone should salespeople buy?

This week, American Airlines tested an in-flight WiFi 802.11a/b/g system on a single plane flying round-trip between Los Angeles and New York City, with a promise that if the test goes well, the rest of the airline’s 15 Boeing 767’s would be similarly outfitted in short order. Projected pricing for WiFi access: $13 for flights over 3 hours, and just under $10 for shorter flights.

JetBlue is also testing in-flight WiFi, as is Virgin America. None of the testing airlines have announced official roll-out dates to their fleets, as yet.

Note that these tests are for WiFi access only — not for cellular phone calls. But there should be no reason why you couldn’t make voice-over-IP calls, using a service like Skype — if you really wanted to be annoying to your fellow passengers, that is.

UPDATE: American rolling out WiFi to 15 more jets

Tags: american airlines wifi, in-flight wifi

If you are tied to the Sprint mobile network in the US, either by contract or by some weirdly unexplainable emotional bond, and you have iPhone envy bad, then you owe it to yourself to look at Samsung’s new Instinct, released this week at a bargain price of US$129.99 with a 2-year contract and a US$100 mail-in rebate - or get some professional counseling, although that’s probably more expensive. (Just think of the phone as a form of therapy, and save some money.)

Though it’s not quite the “iPhone killer” it was originally touted to be, the Instinct is a darned nice unit, with some useful features for sales pros, including:

• Touch-screen interface — although it’s not multi-touch like the Apple iPhone, and therefore, less cool, it definitely is easy to operate — just point and touch the screen
• Real-time GPS navigation and routing - Unlike the iPhone 3G, the Instinct includes spoken and graphical real-time, turn-by-turn driving directions, and location searches direct from the handset
• Tons of e-mail connectivity options - synchronize mail delivery to your handset from AOL, Yahoo!, Gmail, MSN/Windows Live Hotmail, Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes Domino
• SMS Text Messaging - an absolute requirement for sales teams
• Web browsing - although it’s theoretically not as fast as the new iPhone 3G, it’s definitely faster than the old AT&T EDGE network, which makes the Instinct fast enough for most web search tasks
• 2.0 megapixel camera and video camcorder - ever need to record that flip-chart or whiteboard after a sales meeting? Just snap a picture or a quick video with this high resolution camera. (Also, the iPhone doesn’t record video - I’m just sayin’…)
• Speakerphone - but you probably won’t use it much, because it is…
• Bluetooth® enabled - Including Stereo BT profile, another feature also not available on the iPhone
• Bluetooth spoken caller ID - When connected to a Bluetooth device, caller information for incoming calls is spoken through the Bluetooth device, so you don’t have to look at the handset display
• MicroSD Memory - a 2 gigabyte card is included, and can be upgraded to 8GB

Tags: reasons for salespeople to look at the Samsung Instinct, Samsung Instinct for Sprint

A beta release of a new version (4.0) for Skype, the voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VOIP) software application, which enables clear PC-to-PC or PC-to/from-POTS (plain old telephone service) voice communications over the Internet, became available for free download this week — for Windows operating system users only, at this time.

This new version emphasizes peer-to-peer video as well as voice communications, and now covers the entire screen — the previous version focused primarily on voice, and only took up a strip of screen real estate. However, this larger screen format makes the interface easier to use, as there is more room for big friendly user controls, as well as ample space for video chat, as well as the old text messaging and voice call functionality.

What Skype 4.0 beta means for sales professionals

Sales pros will find many potential uses for Skype, including:

• Improved, free communications for geographically distributed virtual sales teams — quick Skype conference calls, now also possible with video — are a breeze to establish, and are free, even for international team members.
• Improved communications with customers — a picture speaks a thousand words, and if your client can see you as well as hear you, it will help develop a closer relationship (assuming you are well groomed, of course).
• Private message chat, which is easy to use in Skype, is an invaluable tool for use during conference calls with prospects or customers. When multiple sales team members dial in from different locations for a conference call with a prospect or customer, the entire sales team can keep a running Skype chat going, making sure that the entire team is coordinated in what and how they communicate to the customer.

If you work in virtual sales teams, Skype is a great addition to your sales toolkit. And the new Skype 4.0 beta, with strong video support, may also be worth your while to investigate, if you have the equipment to take advantage of it.

Skype will wait for the conclusion of the beta release testing before announcing an official release date, later this year.

Meanwhile, Skype appears to be on solid financial footing, and should be around for a long time. Owned by eBay, and with more than 300 million registered users, the company generated over $125 million in revenue last quarter alone.

For more information about the Skype 4.0 beta, check this link: Skype 4.0 beta download.

(Portions of this post were summarized from excellent TechCrunch reports — definitely worth reading if you want all the details on the Skype 4.0 beta version.)

Tags: Skype 4.0 beta, Skype value to sales professionals

Microsoft’s official policy is to end retail sales of their Windows XP operating system on June 30th, 2008. The software company plans to focus support and enhancement on Vista, the latest version of Windows, and to continue development of their next generation operating system, Windows 7, expected in 2010.

But is this really the end of the good old reliable, now very stable XP? As much as Microsoft would prefer computer users to think otherwise, XP will continue to be very much alive for some time to come, in several ways:

• There is an exception granted for XP Home Edition, which shall find a new home in the emerging ultraportable market, which need light, fast versions of stable operating systems to support web browsing and light applications. On the Microsoft Life-Cycle Policy site, it says:“As of April 2008, Microsoft is extending availability of Windows XP Home Edition for OEMs to install on Ultra Low-Cost PCs. The new OEM end date will be the later of either June 30, 2010, or one year after the general availability of the next version of Windows.”The real reason that Microsoft has allowed XP to flourish in this new market? Vista won’t run on these small, light machines — and without XP, the only other viable choice is Linux — and Microsoft doesn’t want Linux to gain a substantial share of any part of the personal computer operating system market.
• Dell is exploiting a loophole in the Microsoft license agreement, allowing them to offer XP Professional to customers, if they buy certain versions of Vista but exercise a “downgrade right“. According to Dell:“Customers may continue to get Windows XP Professional by exercising Downgrade Rights that come with Windows Vista Business or Windows Vista Ultimate licenses. Dell has the ability to exercise “Windows Vista downgrade rights” on your behalf in the factory if your business is still reliant upon Windows XP and you’d prefer to have Windows XP Professional preinstalled on your PCs.” To qualify, Dell customers must select either “Genuine Windows® Vista Business BONUS” or “Genuine Windows® Vista Ultimate BONUS”. Dell will then install Windows XP Professional, and ship the computer with a backup media disc for Windows XP Professional, as well as the media for Windows Vista for upgrade purposes.
• Lenovo will also provide XP on their popular ThinkPad and other PC lines, but in a slightly different way than Dell. Until January 31st, 2009, they will ship Windows XP recovery CDs with Windows Vista Business or Windows Vista Ultimate systems, allowing customers to downgrade to XP Professional themselves.

Other original PC equipment manufacturers with Microsoft operating system license agreements could conceivably offer the same deal, and probably will, if Dell and Lenovo experience strong demand.

Why XP is important to sales pros

Sales professionals have come to rely on XP, which has been very stable since being upgraded over five years ago. Although Vista is actually selling well, especially on new PCs, instability problems and a bewildering array of different versions have put off many potential buyers. Many of Vista’s initial instability issues have been addressed in the recently release SP1 upgrade, but it requires relatively advanced hardware to run properly. Since most salespeople use portable laptop PCs, they often don’t have the hardware power to run Vista effectively, and therefore, as a group, have withstood more Vista problems than many other segments of the Microsoft user community.

So, an XP option will still be around, at least for a while — providing a solid bridge for those salespeople that have developed Vista-phobia — a bridge to hold onto until Windows 7 comes out.

UPDATE: Microsoft vows to support XP until 2014

UPDATE: Windows XP a hot item on Amazon

Tags: Dell, Lenovo, Microsoft June 30 Windows XP end, ultraportable, XP Home Edition, XP Professional

Tags: airline check-in via mobile phone, Continental wireless paperless check-in, Delta wireless paperless check-in

 

 Selling Geek 004-Twitter [19:40m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Let’s take a critical look at what is arguably becoming the biggest “Web 2.0” fad. Since it’s inception in 2007, Twitter now serves over 1.7 million users, and that number is growing by over 2,000 new users every day, and accelerating.

What is Twitter? Why is it generating so much buzz? And most importantly, does it have anything to offer salespeople? In this review, we hope to answer all things a-Twitter for the curious sales professional.

What is Twitter?

Twitter is a very simple idea – so simple, it sounds trivial when you try to explain it. Imagine you have your own private billboard, but anyone can see it, if they care to look. You can put anything on your billboard, as long as it’s text, and as long as each addition is no more than 140 characters. Any time you add something to your billboard, anyone that is interested will see a copy of what you posted, instantly.

And that’s all Twitter is, really. Except that your billboard is a web page on the Internet, and it is called a Twitter feed.

Twitter users can update their Twitter feeds by browsing their page on the Twitter site, or by using their mobile phones to post through SMS text messages. Likewise, users can view the Twitter feeds of others with their computers or their phones, at their option. And there are a large number of independently developed Twitter applications that make it easy to post to your feed, or monitor other people’s feeds.

In order to get notification of updates from someone else’s Twitter feed, you have to become a “follower”. You do this by looking up their Twitter name in the search bar, going to their Twitter page, and clicking the “follow” button. Some Twitter users actively recruit large legions of followers. For example, as of June 2008, tech guru Leo Laporte had over 42,000 followers, all reading his 140-character posts about his observations on technology trends, people, and life in general.

UPDATE: As of July 8, 2008, Leo Laporte had garnered 46,473 followers on Twitter.

Twitter is Like Love, Gone Wrong

As a social networking phenomenon, Twitter sounds like a neat idea. What’s wrong with trying to bring people together, after all?

Perhaps the best way to summarize my evaluation of Twitter is to share a personal story, from many years ago…

Back in my single days, long ago – well, perhaps long, long, long ago – I dated a nice girl in college. She was great – still is great, as far as I know. She was attractive, and very popular. I felt I was definitely in the “in crowd” when we were together – there was always a party at her place, with lots of interesting, entertaining people around. But something was missing. I never felt like I really knew my girlfriend very well. There just wasn’t a lot of depth to our relationship. And those parties – while fun – always felt superficial and shallow. I never had a conversation there that lasted more than a few minutes.

At first I thought it must be me – perhaps I was the one that was odd. After all, she seemed to be extraordinarily popular – there had to be good reason, right?

Eventually, I came to realize that we just didn’t have much in common, really, and she didn’t have the means or desire to build anything deeper. So, we broke up. She took it well – in fact, I’m sure she didn’t really miss me at all.

I tell you this personal tale of love gone wrong because it echoes all my feelings about Twitter perfectly. It’s a very popular platform, and it has a lot of initial appeal. But there just isn’t a lot of depth there, and ultimately, it’s unsatisfying, especially when the suitor in this technological courtship is a sales professional. After trying to use Twitter for a while, I think that most salespeople will wonder what the fuss is all about, and go find something more productive to do.

If that sounds equivocal, you understand me perfectly. I want to like Twitter – after all, so many people do, there must be something good in it – but the more I use it, the more mystified I become as to why so many people are attracted to it. Sort of like Paris Hilton – I can’t figure out the popular appeal there, either.

Twitter Problems Galore

Although Twitter is admittedly trendy and fashionable, it has a number of critical flaws.

Too Much Information

First, Twitter is just too darn open. Just because you can put anything in your Twitter posts doesn’t mean that you should. But, unfortunately, some do. For example, I started following one Twitter feed from a well-known sales best practices expert, hoping he might have some interesting insights to share. Instead, I received a steady stream of messages like this:

• “Got up this morning, feeling good!”
• “Sitting on the back porch, enjoying life!”
• “Just realized what a lucky guy I am!”

I am all for having an optimistic outlook on life. However, I am not a fan of having that optimism forced upon me in an endless stream of greeting card platitudes. Every time I read one of these little gems of anti-depressant inspired wisdom, I thought, “Thanks for stealing another five seconds of my life, pal.” It adds up, after a while.

I stopped following this fellow, when I realized that he never really said anything important. Sort of like Paris Hilton, come to think of it.

As bad as this example is, there are other Twitter feeds that are worse. Does anyone really think that the entire world needs to know when they are heading for the bathroom, and what they do when they get there? Apparently, some Twitter users are so narcissistic that they feel compelled to share every aspect of their life with the world, in real time, no matter how mundane.

To these people, I say only this: no one wants to know you that well. Trust me.

A House Built on Sand

Second, Twitter’s infrastructure just doesn’t work very well. It goes offline, inexplicably, at frequent but random intervals. It stops working so often that there are websites dedicated to the frequent downtime of Twitter. When people start memorializing your failures, it’s not a good thing. During my evaluation, I observed that Twitter went down an average of at least once every other day, for intervals lasting between twenty minutes and more than two hours. It wouldn’t be so bad if it went down at scheduled times – Twitter’s outages are generally unpredictable.

Tech analysts speculate that Twitter’s unreliability is due to the underlying technology, which was never intended to support so many users. Also, no one predicted that nearly two million people would be running up the Twitter curve this quickly, further compounding the performance problem. Which means, most likely, that Twitter outages are going to get a lot worse until the system gets a complete overhaul. And Twitter isn’t saying when or if that might happen.

Who Are You, Really?

Third, Twitter is wide open to spoofing (and so is Jott, which we recently reviewed). Spoofing, for the uninitiated, is when other people masquerade as you by falsifying data. As Twitter is set up today, anyone that knows a Twitter user’s authorized cell phone number can update that person’s Twitter page, with relative ease. Imagine, for a moment, that one of your unscrupulous competitors gets your mobile number, goes to your Twitter page, and posts obscenities about your prospect or customer, and then directs them there. This is why I have not connected my mobile phone to my Twitter feed – I don’t want anyone else to put words in my mouth, especially in a public forum.

A Selling Time Vampire

Finally, Twitter offers almost nothing of value to sales professionals. Let’s walk through some essential elements of a salesperson’s job, and see if Twitter provides any utility:

• Can Twitter help us to find new prospects? Maybe, if you have a lot of followers, they might be able to refer you – but that sounds like a bit of stretch – and frankly, there are other services far better suited to build referrals than Twitter.
• Can Twitter help us to research accounts? Highly unlikely – and there are many other much better resources designed for account research, too.
• Can Twitter help us to qualify opportunities, provide proof of concept, justify our offering’s value, negotiate or close new business? No.
• Can Twitter help us to manage and improve account relationships? Well, maybe, if your customer follows your Twitter feed – but remember that most of the interaction on Twitter is public. Do you really want customer inquiries to you to be broadcast to anyone who cares to read them? That doesn’t sound like a good idea to me.
• Can Twitter reduce administration or help salespeople to be more efficient? No – in fact, it will consume precious selling time.

One Good Use for Twitter

You may notice that I maintain a Twitter account, and in fact show it on the SellingGeek.com website. That’s because I use my Twitter feed only to share updates from the Selling Geek blog, using a handy RSS-to-Twitter utility called Twitterfeed. You’ll find no posts on my Twitter page about my personal life – ever – I promise. So, if you use Twitter, feel free to follow me – my Twitter name is TimothySullivan.

Sales Pro Value Score

As a tool for sales professionals, the pretty, popular, and lightweight Twitter doesn’t have much to offer. So, because of its low sales utility, lack of identity security, annoying user practices, and yet, a significant “cool factor”, Selling Geek gives Twitter a Sales Pro Value Score of 1.5, out of a possible 5.

UPDATE: Twitter to get “fixed” by John Adams (the technologist, not the patriot…)

UPDATE: Twitter to abandon its unscalable architecture?

UPDATE: Open source Twitter competitor Identi.ca emerges

UPDATE: FriendFeed catching up to Twitter

UPDATE: Twitter to buy Summize for search

UPDATE: Apparently, people don’t care about Twitter downtime

UPDATE: Twitter testing new design

UPDATE: The case of the missing Twitter followers

UPDATE: Tweet your files with Drop.io

UPDATE: Twitter usage not as high as expected

Tags: Podcast, selling geek, Twitter as a sales tool, Twitter review, Twitterfeed

Seeing the high level of market interest in Apple’s MacBook Air, as well as in other ultra-thin, ultra-light, ultra-portable computers such as the Asus Eee PC, Dell is about to release a new line of competitive devices at very low prices. In materials acquired by the tech blog Engadget, the new “Dell E” series is described at prices starting at US$299. The E series will come in several versions, including three (”E Classic”, “E Video” and “E Video+”) at just under 9 inches wide, and an “E Slim” notebook with a display just over 12 inches wide — all will be just 8/10th of an inch thick, and will be available in an array of colors for the fashion conscious.

The E Classic will have 4GB of flash-based storage and 512MB of RAM. The E Video will include 8GB storage and 1GB RAM, and the E Video+ will have 12GB of storage - both Video units also include a webcam, while the “+” apparently refers to the addition of Bluetooth connectivity. All will include a flavor of the Linux operating system, and apparently Windows XP, too, although it’s not entirely clear how the OS options will boot up on their Intel 1.6 GHz CPUs.

The slightly larger E Slim will come in two versions. The basic E Slim will run on a 1.3GHz processor, with 1GB of RAM and a 40GB hard disk drive. The E Slim+ will sport a 1.6GHz CPU, and includes 2GB of RAM, 60GB of storage, and Bluetooth wireless connectivity.

If you want a small, light computer for Internet browsing and e-mail, this might be one device you might want to examine, if it becomes available as expected in late summer - early fall.

UPDATE: August release likely for new Dell E-Series ultraportable

UPDATE: New photos and release date set for what will probably be called the Dell Inspiron 910

UPDATE: Dell reshuffles laptop line-up

Tags: Dell E series, Dell Inspiron 910, Dell ultralight PC, Dell ultraportable PC