This blog post is about three things:

1. 5 Ways To WIN AT SOCIAL SELLING
2. Smarketing Strategy #6
3. Lead Nurturing Resources

Did you know it’s easier to sell today than it was 10 years ago?

Sales professionals who harness real-time data available via social media have an unfair advantage over those that don’t.

Learn the best mindset, strategies and tools to reach motivated decision makers before your competition.

Join experts David Meerman Scott and Craig Elias on Tuesday November 22^nd and learn:

• The best tools to use
• How to leverage real-time information
• How to make your solution more relevant right now
• How to create content that attracts the best prospects
• How to share content that gets decision makers to call you

This webinar will be moderated by Cliff Pollan the CEO of VisibleGains - His tool VisibleGains for sales is one of my favourite Social Selling tools.

Register even if you can’t make the live event because all registrants receive links to the recording and handout from the event.

Click the button below to sign up now!

http://bit.ly/WinAtSocialSelling

Learn more about the speakers below!
David Meerman Scott’s book The New Rules of Marketing & PR opened people’s eyes to the new realities of marketing and public relations on the Web.

David’s popular Web Ink Now blog and hundreds of speaking engagements around the world give him a singular perspective on how businesses are implementing new strategies to reach buyers.

Craig Elias is the creator of Trigger Event Selling™ and author of the Bronze Medal winner of the Top Sales Books of 2010 “SHiFT!“ His knowledge of Trigger Events has resulted in a 20 year track record as a top sales performer, winning a $1,000,000 prize in a global billion dollar idea competition and coverage on NBC, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal.

In my last blog post I shared Smarketing Strategy #5 : How to convert visitors to prospects.  If you did not have time to read it, below is a short video (1:50) that explains the three best questions ask when following up with those who access your digital marketing content.

Smarketing Strategy #6 – using the Situation, Target, Plan (STP) framework - is to nurture, score, notify sales at EXACTLY the right time.

Carlos Hidalgo – The Executive Director of the Marketing Automation Institute – has a Lead Management Framework that explains some of the benefits of effective lead nurturing are:

• Deals closed on nurtured leads have a 47% higher order value
• Nurture email have a 200% higher open rate
• Win rates are improved by up to 20%

My contribution to the lead nurturing conversation is understanding there are three key times you want to notify sales about a prospect’s activity:

1) They Reach a Scoring Threshold

In order to minimize prospect frustration and maximize sales productivity, sales 2.0 savvy organizations are implementing lead scoring systems that are an indicator of a decision makers likelihood of making a buying decision soon.

If you want to create a lead scoring system that includes key elements of Trigger Event Selling™ here is the link to download the Trigger Event Scoring™ worksheet.

When you complete the form you will receive an email with links to the Trigger Event Scoring™ (aka Trigger Event Qualifying™) worksheet, instructions on how to use it, and a sample of the completed worksheet.

2) Their Email Address Bounces

As you may have heard from me before a single bounce email is a Trigger Event that creates at least three different sales opportunities for a savvy sales professional to phone and follow-up on:

1. The person who left – where did they go?
2. The person who left – who took their place?
3. The person who took their place – where did they come from?

3) They Access Justification Resources

When the access justification resources it is highly they have experienced both the want event and the afford event now they need to justify their decision to their superiors, subordinates, or stakeholders.

Now is one of the key moments in making sure the purchase happens and you are the supplier who wins the deal.

Tom Pisello – the ‘ROI Guy’ – has an excellent infograph that talks about the need to help decision makers justify their decision based by providing:

• ROI calculators
• Third party validation of your claims
• Business cases on other customers who have benefited from your solution

One of the things that Tom’s company -Alinean - does is help organizations build ROI calculators. See their Social Media ROI calculator as an example of what they do.

Eloqua – My choice as the #2 Sales 2.0 Sales Tool - has some great resource on the process of lead nurturing:

1. A Best Practice Tool Kit on Nurturing
2. Blog posts and webinars on Nurturing
3. An infograph on which content is best used when

Have an eventful month!

Craig

P.S. Carlos Hidalgo is one of the speakers in my three part webinar series – How to Turn Webinars Into Your #1 LEAD GENERATION METHOD - with Citrix (GoToWebinar & GoToMeeting) that runs the 2^nd Tuesday of January, February, & March. Stay tuned for registration details.

This blog post is about three things:

1. Smarketing Strategy #5
2. Resistance Free Selling
3. Sales 2.0 and Social Media

In my last blog post I shared Smarketing Strategy #4 : How to put your content where the best prospects go. If you did not have time to read it, below is a short video (0:25) that explains this ‘Here vs. There’ problem and here is a visual that also explains it.

Smarketing Strategy #5 – using the Situation, Target, Plan (STP) framework - is to convert visitors to prospects and then connect with them.

I’m a big fan of using forms on a web site to convert visitors to prospect and I am a big believer of MIT’s lead follow up research - which demonstrates that you are 100X 100 times more likely to reach the person who filled in a form when you follow up in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes.

The report has some other enlightening information and can be downloaded from InsideSales.com. So if you are going to follow up on web leads do so as fast as possible.

I firmly believe that the statistics of those who fill in forms are similar to those who register for webinars. Patrick Cahill writes in an article “How to Pinpoint Real Sales Opportunities with Your Webinars”

People who register for events fall into four categories: immediate opportunities (5%) and short-term leads (20%), long-term leads (50%), and perfectly nice people who will never buy related services (25%).

The challenge is to ask questions that help you figure which group is which without pissing any of them off by being too aggressive.

So when I phone those who complete a form on my web site I always introduce myself (to make sure they know who I am) and the ask for permission to ask three quick questions   …  ”I’m Craig Elias, the Trigger Event Selling™ guy whose information you just filled in a form to download. Can I ask for two minutes of your time to ask three quick questions?”

What are the three best questions to ask?

The best way to answer that question is to start first by asking – What are the most important things to learn?

For me the three most important things I want to learn about those who fill in a form on my web site are:

1. Did they get the email, with the link to the resource the requested?
2. What made them fill in the form?
3. Is there a sales opportunity?

In today’s world of a million and one different spam filters you can never be sure that the email your systems automatically send out gets into the recipient’s inbox.

So, my first question is “Did you receive the email with the link to download the resource?”

Question #2
I am always curious what was it that they saw or heard that captured their attention and made them willing to provide their email address and phone number for in return for access to what is being offered.

So, my second question is “What resonated and made you say it was worth taking the time to complete the form ?”

Question #3
My last and perhaps most important questions is to learn which buying mode the person is in so I can learn if there is a pursuable sales opportunity. Knowing which buying mode someone is in is a key component to Trigger Event Qualifying™.

So my last questions is “What happened recently that made it more relevant or more important?”

If I learn they recently experienced a ‘Want’ Trigger Event and are in the Window of Dissatisfaction™ I ask permission to ask a few more questions so I can understand what problem they are trying to solve or what outcome they are trying to accomplish and then pursue the sale.

If I learn they recently experienced an ‘Afford’ Trigger Event and are already Searching For Alternatives  I ask permission to ask a few more questions so I can understand who they are already talking to and how I can position myself as the least risky alternative.

If I learn they have not recently experienced a Trigger Event and are in the buying mode of Status Quo  - and believe they have money, authority, and influence I start fostering a relationship while raising their expectations.

I use to ask the question where did you hear about this resource but I added that to my forms so I can focus on the what I think are the three most important questions when I get them on the phone.

Two weeks ago I had the pleasure of being one of the speakers on a webinar titled “4 Steps to RESISTANCE FREE SELLING” that was put on by iSellUK. Complete the form on the page to access the recording and download the handout.

One of the steps of Resistance Free Selling is selling to those who can afford your services so I went looking for list of companies that who were most likely to afford new services.

During  my search I learned that Silvia Quintanilla of Industry Gems had almost 80 lists of top companies who are highly likely to afford your services. The collection of lists includes:

• Top Banks
• Top Insurers
• Top Hospitals
• Top Manufacturers
• Top Private Companies
• Top Public Companies
• And many more….

Click here to get your copy of The Companies Most Likely to Afford Your Services.

The next Sales 2.0 Conference is about how to leverage Social Media in your sales and marketing efforts.

It will be held in Santa Monica and features great thought leaders like Anneke Seley, Carlos Hidalgo, and Matt Heinz as well as sales and marketing executives from companies like IBM, Salesforce.com, RIM, and Frost & Sullivan.

I’ve had the luxury of attending and presenting at Sales 2.0 conferences in Boston and San Francisco and have always come away with new ways to make sales and marketing more effective and new relationships that help me stay informed of the latest sales and marketing ideas, resources, and success stories.

I would go but I’m travelling to London England to work with one of the world’s largest financial institutions.

Please let me know if you attend so I can call you the week after the event to talk about what you learned.

This blog post is about three things:

• Art – A webinar with Art Sobczak
• Action – The second of two podcasts about selling to the C-Suite
• Alignment – Seven strategies for sales and marketing alignment

Art Sobczak  (the Gold medal winner of the Top Sales Books of 2010 ), Steve Connolly (Senior Product Manager for OneSource (the Gold medal winner of the Top Sales 2.0 Solutions of 2010) and myself (Bronze medal winner of the Top Sales Books of 2010) join forces to share the “GOLDEN SALES STRATEGIES of Top Sales Performers”.

In this ‘real time selling’ event we will look at three Trigger Events that happen the day of the event and share how you can use them to sell a number of different solutions.

When you register be sure to select your industry. The three industries with the most registrants will be the ones we apply the ‘real-time’ Trigger Events to.

Date: Tuesday May 24^th at 11:00AM PST | 2:00PM EST

Speakers: Art Sobczak, Steve Connolly & Craig Elias

Registration: http://bit.ly/triggerwebinar

Register even if you can’t make the live event because all registrants will receive links to the recording and handout from the event.

Click the button below to sign up now!

http://bit.ly/triggerwebinar

Below is my 2nd podcast with Steve Bistritz the author of Selling to the C-Suite.

In this podcast we talk about value and what makes executives buy.

We also talk about the power of:

• Establishing rapport and a connection with executives
• Understanding an executives aspirations, value, and interests
• Working with those who will have money, authority, and influence not just those who have it now

In the past two years months I have created three different top 7 lists:

• Top 7 Sales 2.0 Tools
• Top 7 Social Media Tools
• Top 7 Sales Mistakes

For the next seven months I will write about sales and marketing alignment (aka smarketing).

On the last Tuesday of May and will focus on why sales and marketing alignment is so important.

My first post – the #7 Smarketing Strategy – will be published the first Tuesday of June.

I would like to include some success stories in that post so if you have a smarketing success story you would like to share with the 8,000+ readers of this blog post please contact me via phone (+1.403.874.2998 or 866.744.7904), Skype (Craig.Elias), email (Craig.Elias@ShiftSelling.com) or using this contact form.

This blog post is about three things:

1. The #3 Sales 2.0 tool – Survey Analytics
2. Next Two Webinars – Social media data & deal closing relationships
3. Trigger Buzz #8 – Tonight: Cold Calling

This blog post has three items:

1. The coolest use of social media I have ever experienced
2. The recording of the webinar 5 Ways to Close Deals Faster
3. My countdown of the top seven Sales 2.0 tools

Buzz: The Coolest use of Social Media

Back in July I had the chance to participate in the coolest use of social media I have ever experienced: Small Business Buzz.

Months ago I subscribed to their tweets SBBUZZ and I have watched their weekly events via my iPhone but I never participated in a conversation until July – when the topic was sales. Then I found myself contributing to the conversation and that got me thinking…

How can I do something similar so that so practitioners of Trigger Event Selling^â„¢ can have their questions answered by anyone who wants to participate and provide answers. It’s called TriggerBuzz. It will be held the first and last Tuesday of every month so you can learn new things to get a healthy start and have a strong close your month. So starting next Tuesday October 5th – from  9:00-9:30 Eastern – each month you have two opportunities to have your questions about Trigger Event Sellingâ„¢ answered.

If you have questions you would like to have answered you simply need to  follow TriggerBuzz and send a direct message to TriggerBuzz. I have SocialOoomph – the #5 way to sell more by using social media – set up to auto-follow those who follow TriggerBuzz so you should be able to send me a direct message as soon as you follow TriggerBuzz.

If you have any questions or suggestions for TriggerBuzz you can contact me by phone (North America: 866.744.7904 | International: +1.403.313.0412) text (+1403.874.2998) Skype (Craig.Elias), email (Craig.Elias@ShiftSelling.com) or this contact form.

Biz: Recording of 5 Ways to Close Deals Faster

The recording of the recent webinar “5 Ways To Close Deals Faster by Using Industry and Market Triggers” is now available. In this webinar Tibor Shanto and I share information on the industry and market triggers that shorten sales cycles and five ways you can harness them to close deals faster.

Best: Countdown of the top 7 Sales 2.0 tools

Next Tuesday I will continue my series of Top 7 countdowns – Top 7 Sales Mistakes & Top 7 Social Media Tools – and list what I think are the top 7 Sales 2.0 tools. This is done David Letterman style – starting with number seven and working my way up to number 1.

The first Tuesday of every month I will share the next tool in the list and offer a $1,500 prize to the person who submits a creative way to use the tool and gets the most votes for their answer.

Contact me if you know of a tool you think should be considered.

Have an eventful week!

Craig

Here are the names of the lucky winners of the eight tickets to The Art of Marketing – coming to Calgary on Monday June 14^th:

• Volker Mendritzki
• Kashif Choudhry
• Chuck Warnica
• Nora Bouz
• Kae Shummoogum
• Berta Gomez

I took the names of all those who entered and created a random number generator, in Excel, to come up with the six winners above.

I then created a second random number generator to choose two of the six people from the list above as winners of a pair of tickets. The winners of  a pair of tickets were Volker Mendritzki and Kae Shummoogum. Everyone else won a single ticket.

Winners can contact me by phone (+1.403.874.2998), Skype (Craig.Elias), email (Craig.Elias@ShiftSelling.com) or by using the contact form found at http://ShiftSelling.com/Contact

So that’s eight tickets I’ve given away but I have one extra pair. Thursday morning I will send out a message via Twitter (CraigElias is my Twitter name) saying that I have two more tickets to give away and the first two people to phone my cell phone (+1.403.874.2998) and mention my favorite two words that are in that tweet will win those tickets.

If you don’t win it’s well worth the money to attend. Save $50 off the ticket price by registering here,

Here is a list of the speakers and a brief bio on each of them:

Chip Heath — Strat­egy and Communications
Chip Heath is the Thrive Foun­da­tion of Youth Pro­fes­sor of Orga­ni­za­tional Behav­ior in the Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness at Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity. He is the co-author of the New York Times best­seller book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Sur­vive and Oth­ers Die. Chip’s lat­est book, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, writ­ten with his brother Dan, was released in Feb­ru­ary 2010 and is already a NY Times and Wall Street Jour­nal best seller.

Sally Hogshead — Per­sua­sion and Influence
Nine sec­onds. That’s the length of the aver­age atten­tion span today. Just nine sec­onds! Peo­ple become dis­tracted by the next prod­uct, the next ad, the next option. How can you pos­si­bly hold your cus­tomers’ inter­est long enough shape their opin­ion? How can you break through the clut­ter to nail your next sales call, or moti­vate your inter­nal team? For that mat­ter, how can you influ­ence any decisions?

Sir Ken Robin­son — Inno­va­tion and Cre­ativ­ity
Last month I fea­tured Sir Ken’s inspir­ing TED Talk in the blog. Sir Ken Robin­son, PhD is an inter­na­tion­ally rec­og­nized leader in the devel­op­ment of cre­ativ­ity, inno­va­tion and human resources. He has worked with gov­ern­ments in Europe, Asia and the USA, with inter­na­tional agen­cies, For­tune 500 com­pa­nies, and some of the world’s lead­ing cul­tural orga­ni­za­tions. In 1998, he led a national com­mis­sion on cre­ativ­ity, edu­ca­tion and the econ­omy for the UK Gov­ern­ment. ‘All Our Futures: Cre­ativ­ity, Cul­ture and Edu­ca­tion’ (The Robin­son Report) was pub­lished to wide acclaim in 1999.

Mitch Joel — Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing and Social Media
When Google wanted to explain online mar­ket­ing to the top brands in the world, they brought Mitch Joel to the Google­plex in Moun­tain View, Cal­i­for­nia. Mar­ket­ing Mag­a­zine dubbed him the “Rock Star of Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing” and called him, “one of North America’s lead­ing dig­i­tal vision­ar­ies.” In 2006 he was named one of the most influ­en­tial author­i­ties on Blog Mar­ket­ing in the world. Mitch Joel is Pres­i­dent of Twist Image — Canada’s best Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions agency (Mar­ket­ing Magazine).

Gary Vayn­er­chuk — Per­sonal Brand­ing in the New Media Land­scape
Online mar­ket­ing trail­blazer Gary Vayn­er­chuk is a 33-year-old entre­pre­neur whose dual iden­tity as both busi­ness guru and wine guy has made him known as the “Social Media Som­me­lier.” A self-trained wine expert, he rev­o­lu­tion­ized the wine indus­try with his video blog, Wine Library TV (affec­tion­ately known as The Thun­der Show), and grew his fam­ily wine busi­ness from $4 mil­lion to $60 mil­lion in five years. What raised Vaynerchuk’s noto­ri­ety even more than his busi­ness acu­men was his fore­sight com­bined with his pio­neer­ing, multi-faceted approach to per­sonal brand­ing and business.

Max Len­der­man — Brand­ing and Expe­ri­en­tial Mar­ket­ing
Max Len­der­man is Exec­u­tive Cre­ative Direc­tor at GMR Mar­ket­ing, the largest expe­ri­en­tial mar­ket­ing com­pany in North Amer­ica, where his work has won numer­ous indus­try recog­ni­tions, the lat­est includ­ing the 2009 Effie Award and the 2007, 2008 and 2009 Ex Awards. He pre­vi­ously founded and ran Gear­w­erx Expe­ri­en­tial Mar­ket­ing, Canada’s pre­mière expe­ri­en­tial mar­ket­ing agency, with offices in Mon­tréal and Toronto.

Have an EVENTFUL week!

Craig

This is my last post in a series on the Top Seven Ways to Sell More by Using Social Media. Remember, the person with the most popular answer to my question at the bottom of this blog post wins $1,500 in Trigger Event Selling services

The #1 way to sell more by using social media is to learn of opportunities just after a decision maker has experienced a Trigger Event, that makes them realize what they have is not longer sufficient, but before they notice, or worse yet call, your competition – This powerful selling window is called the Window of Dissatisfaction.

My experience is that the single most powerful Trigger Event is a change in a decision maker at an organization.

You know this scenario. You have an account you want to get into, but the competition is entrenched in the account and no matter how often or how hard you try, you can’t get in. Then, one day, the decision maker at the account changes. Suddenly, resistance disappears and, before you know it, you have yourself a new customer.

The opposite is also quite common. You have a relationship with a decision maker, and that relationship allows you to enjoy the benefits of having the “inside track” on a lot of new projects. Then, one day your reliable contact leaves and you lose the business to someone else!

Just like MIT’s Lead Response Study shows the odds of contacting a lead if called in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes drop 100 times. The ideal moment to cold call a decision maker is as soon as possible after the Trigger Event has happened and the best solution I have found to learn of these events as soon as possible is TweetDeck.

Now for all you Twitter fanatics out there, yeah I get that Twitter is the power behind TweetDeck but who has the time to sit around on Twitter waiting for a decent Tweet – like this one about a new CFO being hired – to show up.

My preference is to set up a column inside TweetDeck with a search for lets’ say VP of Sales and then every now and again include a filter that allows me to make the search results relevant to my sales targets. In this case finding more customers in Boston.

So this month’s question is how else can you use TweetDeck or something similar to harness a change in decision makers to sell more. Win $1,500 worth of Trigger Event services by submitting either a great example of, or great idea on, how to use TweetDeck or a similar service to sell more. To win the $1,500 prize you must get the most votes for your answer.

Answers are submitted by commenting on this blog post. Answers are voted on by clicking on the button that appears at the end of each answer/comment.

Winners are announced the last Tuesday of the month – April 27^rh – so voting ends at Midnight (MST) on Monday April 26^th.

Answers/comments need to be approved – to avoid spam – which typically takes just a few minutes. Contact me by phone (+1.403.874.2998), Skype (Craig.Elias), or this contact form, if you don’t see your comment approved within a few minutes of posting it.

Use the button below to Tweet , Stumble!, Digg, and email your friends so you get the most votes, because the voting system I use does not allow you to vote for your own answers.

Good luck & have an eventful week!

Craig

In my last post, The #2 Way to Sell More by Using Social Media, I shared three ways to sell more by using LinkedIn. Jos Willard added a fourth way and received the most votes for his answer to my question “How else can you use LinkedIn to create or harness relationships to sell more?” For his efforts Jos won $2,000 worth of Trigger Event coaching, training, or advice.

For a while now I have been sharing, with my customers, ways to generate leads by using Trigger Events in their marketing efforts – aka Trigger Event Marketingâ„¢. Doing so allows them to harness the Selective Perception that is created when people experience the Trigger Events that turn them into highly motivated buyers.

Here is an excellent example of Trigger Event Marketingâ„¢, that I recently noticed on the home page for TD Canada Trust. It is based on the knowledge that getting pregnant triggers couples to want a house, which leads to needing a mortgage. The event of getting pregnant typically triggers a number other purchases besides houses and mortgages – Cars, life insurance, and finally getting around to doing a will.

If you want to do the same thing for your own business all you have to do is conduct a Won Sales Analysisâ„¢ the next few times you win a new customer. Doing so will allow you to identify the Trigger Events that motivate buyers to want what you sell. Once you know what the best Trigger Events are for your product or service, all you need to do is apply what you learn to your marketing efforts. When you do, your marketing will jump off the page because it’s resonates with the reader and you are highly likely to generate leads that result in core, loyal, customers, who will represent 80% of your profit and only 20% of your headaches.

If you want to learn more about Trigger Event Marketing I have a Facebook page that shares the resources and examples I come across. I invite you to become a fan of the page and post any examples you come across. I also invite you to call me (+1.403.874.2998) or Skype me (Craig.Elias) if you want to spend 15-20 minutes brainstorming ideas on how to make Trigger Event Marketing work for you.

Next Tuesday I’ll post the #1 way to sell more by using social media. Take a look at numbers 2 through 7 and see if you can guess what it is.

Have an eventful week!

Craig

The #2 way to sell more by using social media is to harness the power of people and relationships to get things done and the single most powerful relationship building and relationship harnessing social media resource is LinkedIn.

Now a lot of readers will say it should be #1 and for the longest time I would have agreed with you. I do agree it is the social media tool with the biggest number of different ways it can be used to sell more but in the last year I have found a social media tool that provides users with the most powerful information to sell more.

There are so many different ways to use LinkedIn to sell more that Amazon lists over 200 books on how to use LinkedIn.

Here are my three favourite ways to use LinkedIn to sell more:

1. Company Search: A search on a company lets you know who to target and the best way to get to them. The #2 most powerful Trigger Event is when there has been a change in decision makers at a prospect. These people who recently experienced the Trigger Event of being hired or promoted are the ones most likely to have interest in your products or services. When you do a company search you can see who recently got hired and who recently got promoted. A company search also lets you see who in your network works there now and who use to work there. Those in your network who use to work there can give you some valuable insight or context for your sales pitch and those  in your network who work there now are the ones likely to make the most valuable introductions.
2. Contact Information: Someone who was a customer in their last job is likely to become a customer in their new job. Being connected via LinkedIn give you access to their latest contact information and with this contact information you can reach out to congratulate them on their new position and see if and when they will have a need for your products or services in their new position.
3. Profile Organizer: Keep track of all your interactions with your connections – I have a personal plus account which allows me to use LinkedIn’s new profile organizer. This allows me to organize contacts and even keep notes on my activities with each person. The best part is you don’t have to be connected with someone to add them to a folder or make notes. It’s like a mini Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. Sometimes it’s not worth the time and effort to add every prospect’s contact and company information into your CRM tool until there is enough activity or interested in becoming your customer. Now there is a quick way to keep track of the early interactions without having to take the time and effort required to enter all that company and contact information into a CRM tool first.

So this month’s question is how else can you use Linkedin to create or harness relationships to sell more.Win $2,000 worth of Trigger Event services by submitting either a great example of, or great idea on, how to use LinkedIn to sell more. To win the $2,000 prize you must get the most votes for your answer. This month there is also a second prize of $1,000 worth of Trigger Event Selling services to the person who gets the second most votes for their answer.

Answers are submitted by commenting on this blog post. Answers are voted on by clicking on the button that appears at the end of each answer/comment.

Winners are announced the last Tuesday of the month – March 30^rh – so voting ends at Midnight (MST) on Monday March 29^th.

Answers/comments need to be approved – to avoid spam – which typically takes just a few minutes. Contact me by phone (+1.403.874.2998), Skype (Craig.Elias), or this contact form, if you don’t see your comment approved within a few minutes of posting it.

Use the button below to Tweet , Stumble!, Digg, and email your friends so you get the most votes, because the voting system I use does not allow you to vote for your own answers.

Good luck & have an eventful week!

Craig

I had to take a hiatus from blogging in order to finish the manuscript to my upcoming book “SHiFT! Harness The Trigger Events That TURN PROSPECTS INTO CUSTOMERS,” in time in for the publisher keep his May 15^th release date. Now that it’s finished let’s get back to the Top Seven Ways to Sell More by Using Social Media. Remember, the person with the most popular answer to my question at the bottom of this blog post wins $3,000 in Trigger Event Selling services. The #3 way to sell more by using social media is to harness word of mouth by using a content sharing tool like AddThis or ShareThis. The reason you want to use one of these tools is because your content is more likely to be shared when you give readers the convenience of sharing without having to leave your web site. The more convenient you make it for people to take action, right now, the more likely they are to, not get distracted by something else and, finish what they started doing. I started out using ShareThis but readers had to click on the button in order to activate it and my experience with e-Commerce in the late 90′s told me that requiring people to take just that one extra mouse click reduced the likelihood of action – The statistic was that you lose people at the rate of 50% for every click you force them to make. I moved to AddThis when the Trigger Event of noticing a competitor using something that did not require the initial mouse click caught my attention. I moved to AddThis right away and in my first week I had twice as many people use the AddThis functionality – via mouse over – than I had with ShareThis. About a week later I received an email from ShareThis validating my perceptions and my experience. The email said “After conducting extensive tests with select partners, the findings indicate that allowing the button to open on-hover increases sharing activity by 50% per page view compared to the current no-hover option” Once I started using AddThis I went through the process of customizing the button so the most important sharing options (email, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Digg, and Facebook) were shown on the left – in order of importance – putting the next most important ones (Favorites, WordPress, Delicious, Reddit, and PDF Online) on the right side, and customized the header. I selected the order based up on a report on how people share content and what Active Conversion (my marketing automation and sales optimization service provider) told me about which sites generated the most inbound traffic. The interesting thing is that a few weeks after I switched to Add This, ShareThis came out with the same functionality. But at that point I had already switched and had made the investment of customizing the AddThis button and I was no longer motivated to spend time on the problem. So this month’s question is what other sharing tools can be used, or how can they be used, to maximize social word of mouth? Win $3,000 worth of Trigger Event services by submitting either a great example of, or great idea on, how to use a word or mouth tool like AddThis or ShareThis to maximize the sharing of web site content. To win the $3,000 prize you must get the most votes for your answer. This month there is also a second prize of $1,500 to the person who gets the second most votes for their answer. Answers are submitted by commenting on this blog post. Answers are voted on by clicking on the button that appears at the end of each answer/comment. Winners are announced the last Tuesday of the month – February 23^rd – so voting ends at Midnight (MST) on Monday February 22^nd. Answers/comments need to be approved – to avoid spam – which typically takes just a few minutes. Contact me by phone (+1.403.874.2998), Skype (Craig.Elias), or this contact form, if you don’t see your comment approved within a few minutes of posting it. Use the AddThis button below to Tweet , Stumble!, Digg, and email your friends so you get the most votes, because the voting system I use does not allow you to vote for your own answers. Good luck & have an EVENTFUL week! Craig