LinkedIn Subgroup Followup Q&A

It appears that there is quite a bit of interest around the recent LinkedIn Subgroup announcement. As a webtool, it seems to provide an answer to many needs you have been asking for.   Two key questions have been coming up and the answers are here:

1)  How many subgroups can I join?
You may join up to 50 subgroups across all parent groups.  This total does not count against your parent group total of 50.

2)  How many subgroups can I create for my parent group?
Up to 20 subgroups can be created within a parent group, but any individual can only create up to 10 Subgroups across all groups.  This limit does not count against your parent-group limit of 10.

If you have additional questons, leave them below as a comment and I will get you the answers as soon as they are available.  The link to the original announcement and analyis of the impact is here.

LinkedIn Groups Adds New Subgroups Feature

Last evening everyone that manages and/or owns a Group on LinkedIn received (or should have) the following announcement.

“There are now over 300,000 groups on LinkedIn where professionals are discussing, sharing news and collaborating with each other. We sincerely appreciate your dedication to the LinkedIn group you manage. Your efforts are essential to the continued success of groups.

We’re happy to announce that later this week we are launching a long-requested feature for group managers: the ability to create subgroups. Subgroups are like a break-out session at a conference. They enable you to create more focused areas than in the main group.

Also, by creating and inviting members into subgroups, you can now send additional weekly Announcement emails to focused audiences.

To create and invite other professionals into a subgroup, visit your Groups and go to the group’s “Manage” tab today. Once you’ve created the subgroup, here are four easy ways to get it going quickly:

• Set the aims for the subgroup by posting a featured discussion in the subgroup
• Kindle the conversation by posting a news article with a brief comment every day for the first month of the group
• Provide an ongoing focus for members’ attention by adding 10 RSS feeds related to the focus of the subgroup
• Drive attention to the subgroup through your comments in the main group and in other groups where you participate”

Within the Groups that you manage or belong to, Subgroups has the potential to increase the value of the discussion and at the same time provides another reason to become even more active on LinkedIn.  Up until now, the Discussion tab had the tendency to be extremely cluttered with topics ranging over a tremendous number of topics.  The larger the group has become, the more unwieldy the value of the Discussion and News Tabs are.  In only the most actively managed groups has the owner/manager been able to keep the topics and posts in some type of order. It has grown into a task that has taken several hours a day to manage for the active groups.  One of the best managed groups that I have experienced is SalesBlogcast.com Group owned/managed by Doyle Slayton.  Doyle says that he has spent up to several hours a day to keep his Discussion tab in a readable and topic-worthy form.  He has strict rules and enforces them diligently.  Due to his efforts, his site now enjoys over 16,000 members.  If you are interested in Sales in any way, I recommend his group and his blog.

If you are a member of a group that is not taking advantage of Subgroups yet, be proactive and send a note to the Group owner with suggestions for Subgroups and how you would benefit from them.  If you are really interested in driving the success of the Subgroup, ask the owner if they would be willing to let you be an additional Manager for the group and focus specifically on the subgroup.  Some groups have grown extremely large, Linked-HR is currently the largest group with almost 147,000 members as of today.  Olivier Taupin is the Group Owner of Linked-HR Group and you can imagine the management activities that he and his team must invest to keep things focused.   Subgroups should create more focused discussions as well as save time for the Group owner/manager by allowing their members to place their comments and posts in an appropriate subgroup.

One of the new features within Subgroups is the Access methods for the Subgroup.  You have options that include:

• Open Access: Any member of the group may join this subgroup without requiring approval by a manager. The subgroup will appear in the Subgroups directory of the group.
• Request to Join: Users must request to join the subgroup and be approved by a manager. The subgroup will appear in the Subgroups directory of the group.
• Invite Only: Only members who receive an invitation from the group manager may join the group.

This opens up an entire new use for LinkedIn.  Think about how you might be able to benefit from this new feature.

As I wrote in an earlier post, Groups are where the action is on LinkedIn.  What are some creative and useful ways that you want to implement as a Group owner or member?

CLAIM YOUR NAME UPDATE

At midnight on June 12th, 2009 Facebook made it possible to have a customized URL for your account.  It works exactly like the LinkedIn personalized URL.

So…my new Facebook address is http://www.facebook.com/milesaustin

I have only a meager presence on Facebook at this time but as I wrote in an earlier post, claim your name or someone else will.

Let me know if you got the name you wanted.

Turn Contacts into Opportunity

Every successful SalesMaker I have ever known has built a substantial contact database.  It is protected and kept away from the eyes  of peers, bosses and company executives with a passion.  What used to be found in a Rolodex is now housed in LinkedIn, Jigsaw, Outlook and/or your favored sales CRM tool.  Wherever it is housed, those contacts are usually the most prized asset of a SalesMaker.  People are recruited and hired because of them, legal battles over non-compete agreements are fought over them, and they always hold promise for future business.  These contacts are most  often customers, but also contain business partners, manufacturers, fellow employees and even competitors.

I have been exploring an intriguing new Web Tool that combines the many advantages of social networking and the contacts that you have accumulated.  MyWay Interactive has announced the availability of Reach, a social network for sales professionals and small business owners.  Reach provides live secure connections between salespeople for the trading of qualified leads.  Reach provides a secure platform to “trade” leads  with other sales professionals that are in a non-competitive or complimentary role.

Using Reach, salespeople and small business owners are able to immediately generate greater sales revenues and expand their number of qualified leads while building collaboration networks with other sales and business professionals.  Sales people can now conduct business at new levels of productivity using the collective account knowledge of thousands of sales peers.

Here is a brief overview of how MyWayInteractive’s Reach works:

1. You have contacts within companies.
2. You would like to obtain new contacts within your target prospects and current customers.
3. There are many other non-competitive or complimentary SalesMakers engaged within the same account from other companies.
4. There are manufacturer reps engaged within the same accounts.
5. You can search the database for a contact within a specific company.
6. The name and contact information is NOT provided at this point
7. You initiate a trade of contact information with the owner of that contact for a contact that you have that they would like.

Examples:  If you are selling copiers into Company X, others are selling Computers, office supplies, recruiting services, and numerous other advisory services to them at the same time.  There are manufacturer reps from most of the major companies calling on the same company.  Would it be beneficial for all to share contacts with each other?  You are not competing with each other.  In many scenarios you are not even crossing paths.  How about the ability to create a private “network” of these same people to collaborate?

Another scenario that holds great promise is for a very large, multi-divisional sales organization.  The company will have various sales teams for printers, computers, servers, infrastructure, storage, software, services, leasing and even recycling.  How useful would it be to share information and contacts effortlessly with each other?

Reach is a hosted,  free service that includes:

• Personal web based contact manager
• Sales trading partner locator
• Exchange engine for anonymous trading
• Secure network for information exchange
• Easy integration of your LinkedIn contacts
• Fast, responsive customer support if you have a question

You can create an account easily by visiting MyWay Interactive and signing up for the free Beta account.

Create your account, load some of your contacts, search for some of your desired contacts and trade contacts with others.  Let me know what you think of the experience.

Claim Your Name

Claim your name from as many of the Web Tools and sites as you can.  Consider claiming both your personal name and your company name if appropriate.  Twitter would be an example of a Web Tool that you should create an account with your name and also your company name.

Don’t wait on this, add it to your to-do list now.  Claim your Name on every social media and web tool service you can think of.  In my last two corporate training workshops, “Web Tools for Business” and “LinkedIn Professional Profiles” the same topic has come up consistently.  Your name has already been taken. Even if you do not anticipate using the specific tools, claim your name anyway.  When you learn of a new Web Tool, go claim your space early.    I went so far as to buy .com domain names with my kids names many years ago.  At least they will have the control of their name in the future.

Using LinkedIn as the example, one of the first actions I recommend and one with immediate and practical benefit is to customize the URL for your profile.  Changing the default URL from http://www.linkedin.com/pub/7/234/3×7 to http://www.linkedIn/in/milesaustin will yield an address that is easy to understand, remember and provides the enhancement of additional search benefits and branding of your name.

Here is a list of the sites that should be high on your list:

1. .Com domain name
2. LinkedIn
3. Twitter
4. FaceBook
5. WordPress.com
6. Gmail
7. Yahoo
8. YouTube
9. Flicker

I am sure you can think of many more that should be claimed.  Add your recommendations on additional sites and services in the comment section for the rest of us to benefit from.

Web Tools for SalesMakers Webinar

Due to my active writing, speaking & training schedule, I am privileged to be introduced to some very exciting Web 2.o and Sales 2.0 tools & technologies each month, sometimes before the products are rolled out in beta form.  Since presenting on behalf of Xobni at Gerhard Gschwandtner’s Sales 2.0 Conference this past March in San Francisco, I have been testing and evaluating more than a dozen promising Web Tools.  As I am coming out of testing and review of these products, I will begin to post my experiences & results shortly.

In conjunction with Jigsaw.com, I have been asked to share some of the more interesting and productive Web Tools that I use in my daily sales activity.  I encourage you to register for this event being held on April 22nd at 10:00 am (Pacific).  If you have friends and associates that you think would benefit from this information, please pass this link along to them.  I promise a fast-moving 30 minutes that will increase your sales and your effectiveness.  Here is the link to register:  http://budurl.com/fc7r   Don’t delay as these events are capped at 1,000 attendees and they have hit capacity the last two times out.  Here is the overview below:

Web Tools for SalesMakers – How to Sell More Using Sales 2.0 Technology

Explore Sales 2.0 tools and techniques and produce stronger and more predictable results. Whether you are in sales, marketing, business development or recruiting  these innovative web tools will allow you leverage its capabilities and improve sales results. No need to wait and move a step ahead of your competition. 

Attend this webinar to learn how you can: 

1. Come to work every morning with fresh prospects.
2. Combine all of your emails, attachments, and meetings for a prospect onto one screen.
3. Track how often your prospects/clients click on the web links you send them. 
4. Have everything you need to know about your customer/prospect on one screen.
5. Convert your incoming voicemails into text emails.
6. Fill out your call reports in Salesforce over the phone before you leave the parking lot.
7. Access all of your important files from any computer – anytime and anywhere.

Miles Austin is the author of the rapidly-growing FilltheFunnel.com blog and is anticipating the release of his first book entitled “Web Tools for SalesMakers” in late spring of 2009. He is a nationally recognized speaker and trainer on Sales 2.0 technologies. He has been responsible for sales quotas up to 2.2 billion dollars and sales teams of 300 plus team members.

Xobni Moves Out of Beta-Rolls New Features

As of 9:00 pm (pacific) tonight Xobni has made available their newest release of their ultra-hot Microsoft Outlook enhancement tool.  This is a big announcement from Xobni as they have removed the beta label from this newest release V1.7.  The team has been working hard for the past few months to improve the speed and performance of Xobni and the latest version offers users:

1. Reduced Outlook Startup Time – Xobni now loads much faster inside Outlook
2. Faster Message Loading – Xobni profile data is now cached, reducing delays between loading messages
3. Indexing Controls – users can now control how often and how much of their mail is indexed
4. Sidebar Controls – users can now choose for Xobni to open automatically with Outlook or only open when they need it.

The download is available now from http://www.xobni.com

Xobni is also announced tonight an investment from the Blackberry Partners Fund (http://www.blackberrypartnersfund.com/) as part of their B round which was lead by Cisco.  This most recent round of investment will enable Xobni to scale the user base and deliver several premium offerings.  There are exciting things to come from the team at Xobni.

Congratulations to the entire Xobni team for this milestone event and for making one of the coolest products in the Sales 2.0 world. All of us at Fill The Funnel and fillthefunnel.com Blog rate Xobni as one of our “Productivity Super Stars” and a must have tool in your Sales 2.0 toolbox.

Let us know your experience with the new release in the comments section.

“SuperSize Me” iPhone Storage Application

ZumoDrive has released today their online storage solution for iPhone users.   The  iPhone app is called “Supersize Me” and is available starting Wednesday February 25th in the Utilities and Music categories of the Apple App Store. Now it really doesn’t matter if your iPhone has just 8 or 16 GB – you’ll never again have to choose which content to put on it.  Just like ZumoDrive supersizes your PC or Mac, the Supersize Me iPhone app lets you put ALL your music, photos and documents on your iPhone and delivers a fantastic experience whether you’re connected via WiFi, 3G or EDGE. Browse through your entire music library and play anything as if it were stored on your phone. See your entire updated photo archive as it grows. View all your files including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF at any time.

The regular price of Supersize Me is $4.99, but we’re giving the application away free to early users like you for a limited time – so go grab it now!

Additional good news:  Lower ZumoDrive Pricing - They’ve dropped their prices to make ZumoDrive more affordable for you and everyone else. You can still get 1-GB of ZumoDrive storage for free, and their 10-GB starter plan runs $2.99 per month. But as of Wednesday February 25th, you’ll get 25-GB for $6.99, 50-GB for $11.99 and 100-GB for $19.99 per month.

I have been using ZumoDrive for some time now, and have already downloaded “SuperSize Me” to my iPhone.  It works immediately and you will be amazed how many nagging little problems that this service eliminates.

Leave your comments and tell us what you think.

ZumoDrive-Storage Made Simple

Do you need to have access to all of your files, everywhere and on every device you have.  Unlimited storage that feels local.  ZumoDrive delivers on that need.

ZumoDrive is currently in beta mode and you will be put on the waiting list to gain access.  However as a faithful FilltheFunnel.com reader, David Zhao, founder of ZumoDrive has made available a special link that will allow the first 250 readers instant access.  Click here to gain access to one of these 250 slots.

If you are a typical SalesMaker, you have multiple devices that you use to work your magic.  Laptop, desktop, iPhone, Blackberry and maybe even one of the new netbooks that many of you are now travelling with.  Each has information stored on it.  Some of the basic data like email and contacts can be synchronized easily.  There is also a large amount of data that is NOT available across all devices.  Whether it is due to file size, type of file or simply that you just haven’t taken the time to move the files to your other devices, you haven’t had a simple, fast and effective way to make all your data available to any device  you use, and even to a device that is not yours.  An external USB drive is just not practical and you never have it when you need it.

ZumoDrive provides an effective solution to this problem.  ZumoDrive appears as a local drive on your device.  There is a drive letter assigned and you save, copy, paste and manage your files  as with any other drive on your device.  What you are actually doing is storing these files in the “cloud” or Internet in a secure environment, accessible by you or those that you give access to.

With ZumoDrive  your documents can be available on each of your devices without having to move files or synchronize content.  Your files are safe and protected as soon as you save them.  Like other files, your documents are accessible either locally or from the web and it’s really simple to share and collaborate with others.  Unlike sync, ZumoDrive doesn’t copy your stuff everywhere. it’s always in one place.  No version control to worry about. It works even when you are low on space.  Hard drive crashes on the road, not a problem because all your stored files are available via the internet.  It is important to note that this is not a back-up service with encrypted and compressed files.  Your work is stored in it’s native format.  You could and probably should use some of your ZumoDrive space to store your backup files as well, as best practices recommend that your backup files are stored off-site. 

You can have the files on local storage and on the ZumoDrive at the same time.  Even have all your photos and music files on your ZumoDrive providing access anywhere and on any device.

The folks at ZumoDrive have made it easy for you to use their service by offering 1 GB of storage for free.  Additional space is available for a reasonable fee when you get comfortable. 

WebTools Tip:  Keep all of your customer presentations on your Z: drive so that you can always be prepared to present your product or service.

I have been using ZumoDrive for about a month now and have taken advantage of these advantages many times.   I am currently using 60 GB of storage and have moved my entire Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF files to ZumoDrive. Easy, fast and secure access available anytime from any device!  Get your account and start benefitting from your ZumoDrive.  

Be one of the first to sign up, it really is limited to 250 registrations. Let me know how you use yours, and share how your productivity has improved.

Sales 2.0 Conference Special Offer

Now is the time to step on the gas while your competitors are back-pedaling and re-trenching.  By utilizing Sales 2.0 technologies, sales organizations win more deals by:

1. Improving lead management
2. Accelerating the sales process,
3. Decreasing costs,
4. Automating much of the sales process
5. Improving the customers experience

If you are responsible for delivering sales success in 2009, attending the Sales 2.0 Conference will provide the information you require including: 

• Practical solutions that your sales team will benefit from immediately
• Learning how to deploy Sales 2.0 to drastically accelerate your sales in 2009
• Insight on how to evaluate Sales 2.0 solutions for your business
• Best practices and collaborative sessions featuring sales experts and Sales VP’s
• Networking with your peers, and establish connections that will help your sales explode

Here is the Deal:

Register by Friday, February 20th at the reduced rate of $625 (savings of $150) – and attend the Post-Conference Workshop on March 5 – How to Use TQM Strategies to Dramatically Improve Bottom-line Sales Performance, a $295 – value Free !

To take advantage of this special offer, register online.  Select ‘attendee’ as the registration type and enter discount code “funnel09″ when prompted.  Once the Sales 2.0 Conference registration is complete, we will add the Post-Conference workshop and attendees will receive a second confirmation email.

This offer expires on Friday, February 20th so act now.  I hope to see you at the conference.