New Blog Started

I'm in the process of launching an enhanced website and have started a New Business Development Blog on our own server.

This blog will extend topics covered on the Virtual Sales Team Blog, to offline networking, books, sales resources, and tips.

They'll also be a few anecdotes from the world of telemarketing, lead generation & new business development.

I look forward to your comments on our New Business Development Blog.

Being polite still counts

There's a poll running on Ecademy about "What's your major criterion to connect to someone on Linkedin?".

At the time of writing this blog, #1 is "Polite and customized request" with 28% of the votes. 2nd is "Introduced by a trusted referral" with 24%, which is interesting as that's the whole point of LinkedIn, isn't it?

For me, the key thing about this poll is it gives an insight into how people make these type of decisions. As someone who approaches people every day with business propositions, the poll seems to agree with my own observations.

If you take the time to make a personal approach, that is polite, relevant and tailored to the person you're contacting, and includes some reference to an individual or company that they know: the odds are good that you'll be successful. Not 100% of the time, but a good percentage.

It doesn't matter if it's a phone call, an email, or a LinkedIn request. If it's polite, relevant & tailored to them and credible (hence the reference) then you'll get good results.

There are so many people out there reeling off scripts over the phone, or just sending out junk emails, that you will stand-out just by following these simple rules.

David Regler
Maine Associates Ltd

Technorati Tags - social networking, Linkedin, Ecademy

Ziggs - an online profile tool

Thanks to Naina's Business Networking blog, I found out about Ziggs, a new online professional profile site.

They've already racked up an Index of 3,091,441 Professionals representing 92,642 Companies, most of which are in the US.

The site layout and features is very cool and the search facility works well (lots of my Linkedin contacts are already on there). You can setup a Ziggs profile (which I have done...take a look here) or you can direct the search result to click through to your own webpage.

I checked on a few big name corporations and they're all there. I think Ziggs is still in Beta and it will be interesting to see when it gathers an international coverage (at the moment you can only search by state, rather than country).

To me, it's a bit like ZoomInfo, in that you can manage your own profile on the web (although ZoomInfo also searches and collates other pages about you on the Web). They're offering a PPC type service where if anyone searches for your name on the major search engines you'll come up as a sponsored link. If you've already got a web presence, I'm not sure what the advantage is.

Overall, a good site and worth putting a profile up on...as it's free

David Regler
Maine Associates Ltd

Technorati Tags - social networking, Ziggs, ZoomInfo

Doostang - what a difference a server makes

Doostang's own blog explains the fun they've had over the last few days. The guys have invested in a dedicated server and the site is now running smoothly.

They're still adding features so expect it to evolve over the coming months. I'm keeping a watch on this one.

David Regler
Maine Associates Ltd

Technorati Tags - social networking, Doostang

The invite avalanche of Doostang.com

An amusing thing is happening around Doostang.com, a new entry in the online social networking space.

Setup recently by two guys, Mareza Larizadeh and Pavel Krapivin, the site has an invite only policy and seems to set itself the goal of being the best place to find or fill a job vacancy.

Now here's the thing: they make it so easy to invite the contacts you have from Linkedin, Plaxo, etc that within a few minutes on the site you can send out thousands of invitations.

Yesterday (I think they must have hit a tipping point in the last 48 hrs) I got about 50 invites coming through and so I thought it must be worth a look.

I had a peek, thought it looked professional and pretty low maintenance so I decided to invite my contacts on LinkedIn (3000+). I chose to do this as LinkedIn has become as much about jobs as it is about social networking nowadays so I thought it could be of interest to many of my contacts.

If you take a look at many of the LinkedIn Yahoo! groups at the moment there are a few complaints from people and the word "spam" is mentioned pretty frequently. Imagine if you're connected to 500+ people on Linkedin and they all decide, as I did, to share Doostang.com with their connections.

Some of the complaints are about multiple invites which I guess could be due to some Plaxo users have multiple email addresses, or someone inviting all their Plaxo and LinkedIn contacts at the same time.

I think the guys are having some fun holding the site together as it must be growing at a phenominal rate. There's a buzz in the recruiting world about this site. Maureen Sharib's recent blog gives you a bit more background on this. Or keep an eye on Doostang's own blog.

I know many of the people I invited have said they're experiencing problems logging in, etc.

I guess it'll settle down after a few days and then we can see if the site is actually worth being a member.

David Regler
Maine Associates Ltd

Technorati Tags - social networking, Doostang, LinkedIn, Plaxo