LinkedIn Clamps Down on Super-Connected Users

If you use LinkedIn to any extent, you should be aware of the recent restrictions on the number of connections any one person can have.  LinkedIn’s official policy for connecting to other members states that “LinkedIn members should only connect with people they know”. 

CIO Magazine just published a terrific piece on LinkedIn’s Super-Connected Users that I recommend you read here.

LinkedIn has quietly been putting limits into practice for some time now, as their membership is now over 34 million members in over 200 countries.  Three key limitations that you should be aware of are:

1. Maximum of 3,000 invitations to connect can be sent out from your account.  This is why you sometimes receive an email that asks you to invite them, they are out.
2. 30,000 connection limit
3. You can belong to no more than 50 LinkedIn Groups.

There are groups like Toplinked.com and GroupLinked.com that exist primarily to expand your connections. They provide weekly lists, rankings of the members with the highest connections and require that you accept any invitation from anyone that invites you.  You are required to identify that you are a member somewhere in the header of your profile.

For many LinkedIn participants, the perception of status is tied to the number of followers. The more connections, the more influential, successful and powerful you must be.

I have found the same thing on other social sites like Facebook and Twitter.  As I have become a more active participant of Twitter with a growing list of those that I follow, I have been amazed at the amount of time Twitter users spend talking about the number of followers and the number of re-tweets they get obtain. There is consistent requests to ” help push me over 3,000 followers” pr please te-tweet my tweets.  There are sites that rate you based a magic algorithm of followers, followings and updates.

I believe strongly in the capabilities of these services.  They can be powerful web tools that can foster dramatic new connections and relationships in your life, both professional and personal.  My recommendation is to keep your purpose for participating in clear view.  I am using this tool to____________(answer here).  Without a clear focus on your reason to participate in these social activities, it is very easy to allow them to become a major time-drain.  Know your purpose, and incorporate tools like LinkedIn and Twitter into your daily routine, and follow that routine.  If you really start to enjoy the social part of these tools, create personal accounts and keep your activities in the proper area.

How do you manage your LinkedIn connections?  Does the number of connections influence your view of the person in the profile?

Remember Everything?

One of the challenges that is only going to get worse over time is the ability to capture all of the information that you come across and would like to remember.  Sometimes I am at my desk, sometimes with a client on-site, and usually mobile somewhere.  How do you capture all the important information that is coming at you from these various locations, sources and formats?  More importantly, how will you be able to get access to this information when you need it.  How can you remember everything?

Many of you know that WebTools for SalesMakers is the title of my upcoming book.  Web Tools are an important part of my professional life.  I am always searching for ways to incorporate technology into my work-flow to enhance, speed up and increase the value of my efforts.    One of those Web Tools is  EVERNOTE .

EVERNOTE allows you to easily capture information in any environment using whatever device or platform you find most convenient, and makes this information accessible and search-able at any time, from anywhere.  No matter whether you are at your desktop, cell phone or on your laptop at Starbucks, just capture what you feel is important to you. Mac, PC, Linux are all supported along with your cell phone camera.

Here is how it works:

1. You capture the things you want to remember using what you already use—your Windows or Mac computer, the web, and your mobile phone.
2. EVERNOTE runs everything through their recognition technology, and then synchronize it across your devices. You can then organize and tag the notes, if you wish.
3. When you want to find something, just search or filter and there it is just like you remember it.

This tool works simply and elegantly and is free for most of you.  If you really get going with this tool, you can upgrade to provides 500 mb of storage and additional security and support for a small fee.    It is a great tool to add to your toolbox.  Give it a try and tell me how you are using EVERNOTE.

Links:  

EVERNOTE Website - http://www.evernote.com/

EVERNOTE Blog - http://blog.evernote.com/

Note:  It was announced recently that Google Notebook is going away.  EVERNOTE provides the same functionality as Google Notebook did plus a whole lot more.  Convert and you will be glad that you did.

Favorite Firefox Add-ons

Browsers tend to be personal decisions for each of us.  Some of you probably have never given it much thought.  Whatever came on your computer is what you have always used.  I actually use Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome consistently.  Which one I use is based on what I am going to be doing in the browser window.  Most of the time I find myself using Firefox during my typical work activities.  Firefox has this amazing ability to utilize “add-ons” to customize what you are able to do from your browser.  Add-ons are installable enhancements you can select from the extensive list located at  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/ (for US users).   Add-ons allow the user to add or augment application features, use themes to his or her liking, and handle new types of content.  They variety of these tools runs the gamut from generalized to very specialized.  

1. Dictionary Search-Looks up a user selected word in an on-line dictionary.
2. Tiny URL Creator-lets you shrink any long URL in your address bar or link on the page to something you can easily email or Twitter with a single click.
3. Forecast Fox-Get international weather forecasts from AccuWeather.com, and display it in any toolbar or statusbar with this highly customizable extension.
4. LinkedIn Companion-brings all the functionality of your LinkedIn account to an icon in the toolbar.
5. Zotero-[zoh-TAIR-oh]  helps you collect, manage, and cite your research sources. It lives right where you do your work — in the web browser itself. (http://www.zotero.org/)

Zotero is my new personal favorite.  It seems to have been primarily designed as a research tool in an academic setting.  I have found that it is an extremely useful tool to use during the preparation and assembly of detailed RFP responses.  It has enhanced my efforts in writing and completing  my upcoming book.

“Zotero is an easy-to-use yet powerful research tool that helps you gather, organize, and analyze sources (citations, full texts, web pages, images, and other objects), and lets you share the results of your research in a variety of ways. Zotero includes the best parts of older reference manager software (like EndNote)—the ability to store author, title, and publication fields and to export that information as formatted references—and the best parts of modern software and web applications (like iTunes and del.icio.us), such as the ability to interact, tag, and search in advanced ways. Zotero integrates tightly with online resources; it can sense when users are viewing a book, article, or other object on the web, and—on many major research and library sites—find and automatically save the full reference information for the item in the correct fields. Since it lives in the web browser, it can effortlessly transmit information to, and receive information from, other web services and applications; since it runs on one’s personal computer, it can also communicate with software running there (such as Microsoft Word). And it can be used offline as well (e.g., on a plane, in an archive without WiFi).”

FEATURES

 Automatic capture of citation information from web pages

 Storage of PDFs, files, images, links, and whole web pages

 Flexible notetaking with autosave

 Fast, as-you-type search through your materials

 Playlist-like library organization, including saved searches (smart collections) and tags

 Platform for new forms of digital research that can be extended with other web tools and services

 Runs right in your web browser

 Formatted citation export (style list to grow rapidly)

 Free and open source

 Integration with Microsoft Word and OpenOffice

SHARE YOUR FAVORITE  Explore the hundreds of add-on’s available and share your favorite Firefox add-ons with us in the comments area below.

Gartner Report on Social Software

If you are interested at all in all the Web 2.0, Sales 2.0 and/or Social Media activity to Fill the Funnel, I recommend that you carve out some time to read this recent report from Gartner titled: Magic Quadrant for Social Software.  After reading it myself, I realized that even Gartner doesn’t completely “get it”.  It was surprising to find that there are no companies listed in the desired Magic Quadrant. If no one has earned that position as of yet, think about how much there is still to be discovered in this topic area. The potential for significant impact with these tools is very exciting as a user of the tools, as well as for those that are developing these tools for us.

Take some time to read the report and then let our readers know your thoughts in the comments area.  Who did they miss? What do you agree with?  What did they get wrong?  It is your homework for the weekend, and you need to turn it in by Monday.  

Click here to read this valuable report.

Are Your Leads Being Followed Up?

The respected Aberdeen Group released the results of an informative survey of 226 B2B organizations in November of 2008 entitled Lead Nurturing: The Secret to Successful Lead Generation that included this disappointing statistic:

“… upwards of 60 percent to 70 percent of leads are never followed up by sales.”

Are you spending a significant amount of money to generate your leads only to have them be ignored by salesmakers?   In the opinion of Ian Michiels, Practice Leader-Customer Management Technology Group at Aberdeen Group,  The most effective way to combat this fact is to focus on and implement a Lead Nurturing program.

Here is how Michiels defines Lead Nurturing:

“Lead nurturing is a relationship-building approach utilizing multiple media (e-mail, whitepapers, telecommunication, seminars, webinars, blogs, collateral, speaking engagements, third-party articles) to support the prospects buying cycle with relevant information and engage in an ongoing dialog until qualified prospects are deemed “sales-ready”  A “sales-ready” lead is ultimately defined by the unique definition of a qualified lead within the organization.  Sales-ready prospects are educated, informed and prepared to make a decision; thus they need to be actively engaged with sales or engaged by call to action marketing messages.  The goal of a lead nurturing program is to support and nurture long-term opportunities with the hope that these prospects may represent future sales.  Ultimately, this requires marketing to take ownership and accountability for nurturing prospects that are not ready to purchase, but may have a defined need, authority, budget or a long-term timeline.”

I have found very few organizations where marketing is accountable for the nurturing of prospects, while only the “sales-ready” leads are fed to the salesmakers.  It is typically, “here are 100 prospect names, go sell them something.”

Do you segment your Leads into “sales-ready” and prospects?  Do you have different processes built for each?  Have do you handle this in your company?

Xobni On The Move

You have read about my support of Xobni in the past and the benefits that you will enjoy immediately after download.  With this announcement that they received an additional 7million from a group of investors including Cisco, you will start to see Xobni really take off.  There is much more to come, but they are already delivering a terrific productivity web tool today.  If you have not downloaded this tool yet, you better get after it.  It is that good.  Here is the post on TechCrunch this evening with comments from others.

Xobni has also posted this on their own blog so you can get their take directly.  Remember, you can still download this web tool for free by clicking here.

New Year Crossroad

The first of every year is a combination of the best time and worst time in a salesmaker’s existence.  You are at a crossroad.  You are looking ahead to the opportunities and activities that you know are out there with optimism, while at the same time you look at your revenue report and see zero’s across the board.  Hopefully you ended 2008 above quota or goals.  The result of  last year’s success will dictate higher goals this year.  Ouch.  Add to that the state of the economy in the US and around the world and those goals seem pretty lofty.

Everyone agrees that you will need to work smarter and more creatively in 2009 to continue to grow your sales.  Not much possibility of running on auto-pilot this year.  Now is the time to open your mind to new approaches, new techniques and new tools that, if utilized properly will provide that extra surge of activity that will provide the momentum to continue your on your path to success in 2009.  Try out the tools and techniques the we share here on Fill the Funnel.  Follow the links to other authorities that we will be incorporating into Fill the Funnel.  Social media in it’s many variables contains the solutions that can get you to your sales goals.  Experiment with the process we are defining in our FirstCall posts.

It is time to get this party started; so jump in. Take the road straight ahead to success.  What will you be doing to deliver sales success in 2009?

Back At The Keyboard

Sorry for my absence from Fill the Funnel for the last many days.  Spent some time in the care of a great surgeon and nurses at Evergreen Hospital and am now getting back to work.  With the ugly weather, snow challenges and frozen pipes here in the Seattle area it turned out to be a good time to be unplugged if there ever is such a thing.