Plenty of personal experience and anecdotal data over the years have planted the ideas I have as answers to those questions.  Gut feeling only, no empirical data to back that feeling up.  When you are preparing and planning my prospecting or cold-calling / FirstCalling activities, wouldn’t it be great to have some hard data to guide you in your efforts?  Thanks to a post by John Whattam, Regional Account Executive at Paradigm Learning, I came across a valuable report titled Lead Response Management Study from the Kellogg School of Management and presented by David Elkington, CEO of Insidesales.com and James Oldroyd, PHD Professor at M.I.T.

Here is the summary that John provided:

Wednesdays and Thursdays are the best days to call in order to contact (by 49.7% over the worst day) and qualify (by 24.9% over the worst day) leads. Thursday is the best day to contact a lead in order to qualify that lead (by 19.1% better than the worst day).

4 to 6pm is the best time to call to make contact with a lead (by 114% over the worst time block). 8-9am and 4-5pm are the best times to call to qualify a lead (by 164% better 1-2pm, the worst time of the day). 4-5pm is the best time to contact a lead to qualify over 11-12am by 109%).

The odds of calling to contact a lead decrease by over 10 times in the 1st hour. The odds of calling to qualify a lead decrease by over 6 times in the 1st hour. After 20 hours every additional dial your salespeople make actually hurts your ability to make contact to qualify a lead.

The odds of contacting a lead if called in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes drop 100 times. The odds of qualifying a lead if called in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes drop 21 times.

If you have an interest and/or responsibility to mazimize the results from leads, you will benefit greatly from this report.

Directly from the report here is an overview of their effort:

“Generally Speaking, the study was focused on identifying WHEN the best time was to efficiently contact web-generated leads, and HOW to generate web leads that qualify and close at optimal rates.”

If you are in sales or marketing, that has got to grab your attention.  Here is the link to read/download this report:  http://budurl.com/umd7

So, read the report and then come back and tell us if you have changed your strategy or approach to following up on leads.  Let us know if your experience matches the findings in the report.

Craig Rosenberg’s response is sounding better all the time (frequent occurrence)!

“Within a day or two of sending an initial email to someone, leaving a phonemail or posting an interesting blog article or tweet, I see they (or someone from their company) have clicked into and visited our site.

Now, how aggressively do I go after them? Do I pounce immediately? Do I pause and call shortly thereafter? Do I just nurture them? Do I wait a couple days then call?”

Does your answer change because it is via the Web?  Would your strategy change if it was a phone call?   From the sales experts that initially responded to Mike’s question, only Craig (Funnelholic.com) said Pounce!  Should I be concerned when reading his blog (which I do everytime he has a new post)?   Haven’t had a sales call yet.  Of course, Nigel Edelshain (Sales 2.0) being the diplomat that he is, selected all the answers except for Pounce.

What do you think?  Why would you utilize one response over another?  Share your comments here if you like, but I encourage you to visit Mike’s Smashmouth Marketing Blog and share your thoughts there for all to see.  I’ll be watching for your comments myself.

Now I’m off to find a lead to Pounce on!

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.

“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?

“How has selling changed in the last two years?“

The following is an excerpt from the interview regarding this question (emphasis is mine):

“Selling changed dramatically and no one told the salespeople. Most salespeople are still slogging along using the same old ideologies and techniques from the 80’s and 90’s that are based on ideas from the 60’s and 70’s. The result is a bunch of very frustrated salespeople and managers who are not making their numbers. Then, along comes an economic downturn and wholesale destruction of many industries and salespeople don’t know what to do or where to turn. What really changed was buyer mentality and buyer psychology. Consumers and prospects are overwhelmed with choices, markets commoditize faster than ever now and virtually all of them are over-communicated.”

Come on Dave.  No one told the salespeople?  I am not sure which salespeople you are referencing but I don’t buy it.  Salespeople already know this.  They knew it before all the smart people started writing about it.  The sensed it five years ago or more.

If your income depends on successfully selling a product or service, you know when changes are occurring.  Communication with our customers changes.  Decisions are being made by different people within the customer’s organization and the time frames begin to shift.  Expectations in frequency, responsiveness and attention are all in flux.  If you are in sales, you either know about these changes early on, or you are not selling much longer.

Successful SalesMakers don’t need to be told that selling has changed!  They are the first ones to know it .

What do you think?  Do you need to have someone tell you that selling has changed?

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.

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.

“Through observing what works, and what doesn’t, we’ve come up with six factors that determine whether a prospect will meet with you.  

These six factors are:

1. Your product
2. Your message
3. Repetition of your message
4. Talking to the right people
5. Using changes in your buyer’s environment
6. Establishing relationships

I will cover eash of these factors briefly in this ebook but will focus on the last three most heavily as they are the most important ones and also the ones we can change the most in our favor using Sales 2.0 tools and techniques.”

The quote above is an excerpt from a new ebook just released from one of the thought leaders in the Sales 2.0 field that I follow closely. Nigel Edelshain is CEO of Sales 2.0 LLC.  The company is dedicated to taking the sales profession to another level. Sales 2.0 provides companies with a range of services and products to enable them to make their sales forces wildly more effective.  It is one of my “must-read” blogs and sites for Sales 2.0.

Nigel has just released his newest eBook entitled Don’t Cold Call. Social Call.  Packed into it’s 24 pages is information that you will be able to reference over and over.  I found myself printing this out because I kept reaching for my highlighter when I was reading it on the screen. Nigel is currently providing this at no cost – FREE.  Click here to download this book.  While on his site at www.sales2.com, dig around a bit.  If you are a sales professional you will find a wealth of information that will help you earn your living and grow professionally.

What do you think of Nigel’s ideas and his six factors?  Did he miss any?  Share your comments below and let us in on what your experience is teaching you.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

At lunch with a customer earlier this week, she asked me my thoughts about Crowdsourcing? I smiled and asked what she knew about it, and she said that she was just learning about it, and that she had noticed I was reading the book Crowdsourcing while reviewing my LinkedIn Profile under my Readingt List. That took me by surprise, first because a customer is looking at my profile for preparation, and second that anyone would look at the Reading List in the profile.

Several  key learning points from this experience were:

1. You never know who is reading your profile, so put some effort into it.
2. The Reading List is a terrific window into the interests and thoughts of your prospects.  

WebTools Tip:  You can elect to follow someone’s Reading List.  Track the lists not only for those that you might have as a prospect, but also those that you respect.  Might be a good idea to connect to the reading list of your executive team.  Tremendous window into the interests of those that matter to you.  

Give it at try and let me know what you discover in comments below.

If that headline doesn’t get your attention, you need read no further.  

For the rest of us, the possibililty of accelerating sales this year is clearly a goal.  If you are involved in sales and  want to learn from the thought leaders and visionaries  leading the way with Sales 2.0 tools and thinking, I encourage you to take the time to attend this event being held March 4th and 5th in San Francisco.  To learn more and register for this event, click Sales 2.0 Conference. 

Agenda topics include:

• How to Accelerate Sales in a 2.0 World
• Sales Lead Management 2.0
• Customer Engagement Strategies
• Analytics and Compensation Management
• Accelerating Productivity – New Sales 2.0 Tools
• The Foundation of a Sales 2.0 Business

The event is produced by SalesDotTwo, Inc and is co-hosted by Genius.com’s Co-Founder David Thompson and Selling Power’s publisher Gerhard Gschwandtner.  

A sampling of the many companies attending:

I will be presenting on March 5th at 9:30 on Accelerating Productivity – new Sales 2.0 tools sharing my experience with Xobni and the benefits it provides to SalesMakers.  Stop by the Xobni booth afterwards and introduce yourself.  I’d love to say meet you.

To find a group that interests you, the Groups Directory  allows you to easily find the right group. Click on the “Category” drop-down to sort by different group types (Alumni, Corporate, Non-Profit, Corporate, etc). Once you have found a group you are interested in joining, click on the “Join Group” link to request to join the group. Clicking the Share button lets you invite your connections to join the group as well.

If you do not find a Group for the topic of your interest, LinkedIn makes it easy for you to start one yourself.  I have started several groups and have established numerous new connections that are of great value to me professionally and personally.  

WebToolsTip:  Belonging to a group is one of the easiest and most comfortable ways to invite someone to connect that you do not otherwise know.  When you click on the link to Add to Your Network, you are asked how you know the person.  One of the choices is Groups & Associations.  After selecting that option, you are presented a list of Groups that you share.  By selecting a group that you both share, and refering to that group in the text of your invitation, the likelihood of an invitation acceptance goes way up.  

In my opinion, LinkedIn should be required for anyone participating in our Web 2.0 world .  If you want to break through to the real power of this, or any tool, you need to go deeper into its capabilities.  Utilizing the power of Groups in LinkedIn will enhance your experience. 

For SalesMakers, here is a short list of some of the Sales Groups that I belong to and recommend exploring and joining if you are so inclined:

1. Sales Blogcast.com
2. The Sales 2.0 Network
3. Jigsaw User Group
4. Selling to Big Companies
5. Inside Sales Experts
6. Friends of the Funnel

Join one of more of these groups, start one of your own, and most importantly jump in and contribute ideas, answer questions and share experiences.  You will get out of this what you put into it.

Click here to go to the special link for your 20 contacts (otherwise you receive only 2 contacts)

Complete the registration form.  Once you have completed your registration, Jigsaw will provide the ability to obtain 20 contacts  for free with your account.  Upon completion of your account setup form, you will receive an email that will activate your account.  Once you have clicked the Activate button, you are ready to search for and obtain your contacts.

For this example, I will be looking for Materials Managers in Healthcare in California and Arizona.

Follow the steps below to obtain the desired contacts:

1. Browse to http://www.jigsaw.com
2. Upper right hand corner, click on Sign In.
3. Enter your email address and password that you provided when registering.
4. Click on Advanced Search in the blue header toward the top of the screen, then select Find Contacts from the pull-down menu.
5. In the Title area enter the title of the contacts you desire (Material Manager in this example).
6. I recommend you leave the Company, Last Name and First Name fields for this type of broad search.
7. In the Levels area, select the level that your prospect would most likely hold (in this example I would select VP-Level and Director Level).
8. In Departments, you select the department that this position would typically reside in (for this example I would select Finance &Administration, Operations and IT).
9. For Country, I will select USA. 
10. For State, select the appropriate state(s).  Hint=hold the CTRL key down and you can select multiple states at once. (for this example, I will select CA and AZ).
11. Enter appropriate info in Metro Area, Area Code and Zip Code if you would like (for this example they are left blank).
12. With Industry I will select Health-care, which then populates the Sub-Industry area, where I will select Hospitals.
13. Employees area I will select ALL categories and then de-select the 0-25, 25-100 and 100-250 boxes ( I am looking for hospitals with at least 250 employees or more).
14. For this example I am leaving Revenue, Ownership, Website and Fortune Rank all untouched.  For your searches, select those that are appropriate.
15. I typically leave Actions as Added or Updated.
16. I most always leave By blank.
17. Now click Search button in the bottom right of the screen.  If you followed the example search for Materials Manager above, your search will return over 22 contacts that meet your criteria.  WebToolsTip: Once you have reached this point, the column headers for your search are all underlined.  One of my best practices is to click on the Updated column, which results in the list being re-sorted from the most recent information to the least recent information.  The odds are that the most recent information is the best information.  However, don’t shy away from the older leads, but just don’t go there first, especially if your search yielded more contacts than you are looking for or have points for.  One of the many great features of Jigsaw is that if you “buy” a contact and discover that the information is invalid, you can report it as such with a few mouse clicks, and get your points back for another contact.  At the same time you are cleaning the database that will benefit you and other Jigsaw users in the future.  There are many Jigsaw users that have accumulated large point totals by doing nothing other than correcting and cleaning the existing Jigsaw database.
18. The next step is to click the Boxes of those contacts that you would like to purchase with your points, and select Get Contacts button, then Get Selected Now.
19. You will then see a screen that shows the Number of Paid Contacts you have selected, Points Required and Your Points (total points you have in your account).
20. Select the Get Contacts button.  You will then see a list of your selections from earlier, and those that you have “bought” with points now have a green money symbol to the left of the title.  You will notice that there is also now a name showing in the Name column.
21. Click on the Name and you will be taken to the business card for your new contact.  
22. By selecting the arrow to the right of the blue Export button, you will be given three options:  vCard, Export as Lead to CRM or Export as Contact to CRM. If you use one of the CRM tools supported by Jigsaw (Salesforce.com or Oracle on Demand) you can import it right into the tool.  If not, you should select vCard and you will be able to use it with Outlook.

There is much more to Jigsaw than what I have presented here.  I will be hosting a series of web events and workshops on Jigsaw for SalesMakers in the coming months. Click on the RSS feed button on the top right of the blog and you will receive information on how to sign up for these events.  If you are a member of  LinkedIn, there is a Jigsaw User Group that you can join to learn from some of the Jigsaw users as well as many of the Jigsaw staff.  Click here to join the Jigsaw User Group.

If you would like to learn more about Jigsaw and several other companies that I use on a regular basis, read about them in some of my earlier posts here.

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?