Applying The 80/20 Rule To Social CRM – Final Chapter

I’m beginning to think that I should convert this into an e-book or something (smile). When we left off on the last post we had successfully loaded all of our email and social media contacts into Gist in order to create a centralized CRM database. If we have not already done so, our next step would be to create a tag or tags for each contact that we have. Doing this from scratch could be challenging based on the number of contact records that we have but, it is necessary. Doing this as new contacts are added should painless.

Adding tags to Gist is pretty self-explanatory. You will, however, want to make sure that your tags are consistent. Let’s say we create tags for “A Client”, “B Client” and “C Client” (these tags are created on the fly and are free-typed). I have good news and I have bad news (smile). In order for you to make a decision regarding how you are going to classify a contact, you will probably want to go to each contacts record and evaluate the information found there in order to make an informed decision. Mind you, you do not have to do this as you can open up your “People” tab in Gist and go down the list and check boxes and then do a bulk tagging for all those who you have selected.

Why then, would I want to look at these records individually?

1. Maybe you would like to get to know these people better? LOL
2. You will be able to properly discern just how important they are as it pertains to your efforts.
3. Gist does give you the ability to add notes to each record and that can become invaluable.
4. Your record review will also allow you, through Gist, to request missing or additional contact information.  While Gist is great at mining most information, there will be occasions where you will want to manually add things like links, addresses, personal information, etc.

Once we have everyone classified, the magic can begin. Now when we open our “People” tab on Gist you will see each of your tags listed up top and you will now be able to click on any tag and see just those people who are associated with this designation. Sweet!

Finally, if it were me, I would want to establish some sort of reminder system that could be as simple as setting a reoccurring task in my calendar. Something like a monthly reminder to contact your “A” clients, bi-monthly for “B”, and quarterly for “C”. You will need to decide what that schedule needs to be and what is appropriate. Through the use of the Gist “note” field, you can keep track of what methods of contact you have used with that particular contact although Gist will automatically register emails etc. However, Gist does only hold these email records for 90 days (they will still remain within your actual email client after that as long as they have not been deleted).

Retaining good clients and developing them into better clients is largely based on showing them some love. Moving second tier contacts to first tier is based on the same principle. I would strongly suggest you view this slide show from one of our NetWorks! Boise members, Tom Gay with The Alternative Board – Boise, on this subject.

Happy hunting and thanks for staying tuned!!

Craig

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Applying The 80/20 Rule To Social CRM – Part III

Please note:  We are going to suggest a workable solution to the quandary posed by having multiple lists generated from your social media & email accounts. It’s not particularly pretty but it is the best that I can offer based on the applications that I have found and have worked with. If you have a better solution, please share!

When we left off at the end of Part II, we had created lists of our “A”, “B”, and “C” accounts from each of our major social media networks (Twitter, FaceBook, and LinkedIn) as well as from our email accounts. The question we were left with was .. “How can we aggregate these lists into a central database?”. If you have read Part II, and I suggest you do, you will recognize this as being an extremely complex task.

I posed this question on LinkedIn Answers and did receive some replies although that number was less than I had expected. I do believe that this is reflective of the fact that, right now, there is no great answer. At this stage, everything is so fragmented that nobody has yet figured a cost-effective way to pull all of this together (at least that I am aware of). There is only one tool that I have in my arsenal that is at least partially up to the task and that tool is Gist.

Why Gist? While Gist may not be a true CRM, it is very Social. It becomes the basis for our social media and email aggregation. Nothing that I have encountered is as powerful at mining contact data and social media information as is Gist. What this means is …

1. Gist connects to your Twitter and FaceBook accounts and automatically pulls followers and friends into the Gist database and establishes an account record for that individual. It also automatically updates changes to those contact records.
2. It does the same for your Gmail, Google Contacts, Yahoo, and AOL accounts
3. New followers and friends are automatically added to Gist as a new contact record.
4. You will need to do a manual upload of your Outlook and LinkedIn accounts however, we will also discuss a way that you can have Gist do this for you automatically.
5. Once Gist has some information on a contact, it voraciously scours the internet for more. Things like news feeds, blogs, websites, addresses, whatever it can find on that individual.
6. Providing the contact name is consistent, it is incredibly adept at merging data into one contact record and avoiding duplicates. Where you will create duplicates is when you have names like “Craig Jamieson” and “Craig M. Jamieson”. Still, there is a record merge utility that works very well.
7. Your new combined contact record will include a listing of emails, files and links exchanged with this contact in addition to streams from Twitter, FaceBook, and other “news” feeds. You can even reply, retweet, and comment within these streams allowing you to interact with others directly through Gist.
8. Gist will also rank your contacts by their importance to you based on your interaction with that individual and tells you when that last interaction occurred. Hello! Can you say “A”, “B”, “C”?

I think it is critical that I make sure that one key element is clearly understood. I am not entering links etc. into Gist in order to establish my contact’s social media profiles. Gist is doing all of this for me without any need for my interaction. None! That’s powerful.

As was stated, Gist will require you to manually export files from Outlook and LinkedIn and then import them into Gist. When doing so, Gist does a great job of merging that data into existing records if they are present. However, there is a way to circumvent manual imports for both. You will need to install two add-ons for your Outlook: The LinkedIn Toolbar for Outlook and the Gist Plug-In for Outlook (this link is an actual file upload of that utility). You are going to love this!

1. The Gist plug-in, among other things, will connect Gist directly to your Outlook contact records and that will allow Gist to pull those records directly into Gist. Sweet!
2. The LinkedIn Toolbar for Outlook works bi-directionally. It looks at your Outlook contact list and watches for when any of those contacts sign up for a LinkedIn account and, when they do, it notifies you of the new opportunity to connect. It also takes your LinkedIn connections and creates contact records for them in Outlook.
3. Since my LinkedIn connections are now also contact records in Outlook, and since the Gist plug-in for Outlook grabs contact records from Outlook …  Voila! My LinkedIn contacts are also auto-loaded to Gist. Double sweet!
4. If you do not use Outlook, you will need to perform regular manual export/imports from LinkedIn.
5. Technically, providing I have exported files from Twitter and FaceBook, I could import these into Outlook but there is really little or no benefit that I can derive from that primarily as there would be no direct connection to keep these Outlook records updated without regularly doing a re-import with the latest data.
6. For those of you who may be familiar with Xobni for Outlook, which is a great tool, and are thinking that it will do the same thing …..you would be incorrect. We are speaking of apples and oranges in this application. Xobni does not create or maintain records of its own.

In this scenario, Gist now becomes my central CRM database. I can also classify each contact as “A”. “B”, or “C” through the use of tags which eliminates the need to do that at the individual social media network level. Still, I have bad news people. I am afraid that there is going to need to be a Part IV where we can recap this and talk about practical application (smile). In this next post I would also like to bring some tools to your attention that may be of interest dependent upon your specific needs.

Thanks for visiting and please stay tuned!

Craig

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Applying The 80/20 Rule To Social CRM – Part II

Please note: Before we get started on Part II of this three-part series, I did want to state that we will be discussing free solutions. I have no doubt that enterprise and customized solutions are available. Names that have been mentioned to me include: Microsoft CRM, vTiger, Sugar CRM paired with Pluck and others. Me, I’m on a budget and that budget is pretty slim (smile).

When we left off on the previous post we were discussing the need to classify our contacts as either being “A”, “B”, “C”, or “D”. You may wish to get rid of “D” (delete) from the get go which means that massive amounts of blood must be spilled. Don’t worry, you will thank me later (smile). However, social media does present its own unique twists in the classification process. If I communicate with somebody via email there is some evidence that I have probably engaged with that individual directly. Looking at my email and my CRM, it should also be fairly easy to identify who invests what dollars with me annually. On the other hand, with social media …

1. How many people do I really know and how many of those have I engaged with directly? Be honest. For me, that is not too damn many.
2. Social media connections make it more difficult to assess value. As an example, a lot of the folks that I follow on Twitter provide me with real value in terms of information that I want and need. Should this also be considered? I would think so. If I am an internet marketer or have 10,000′s of followers, this task may prove to be insurmountable, unnecessary, and maybe even undesirable.
3. The same could be said for FaceBook and LinkedIn.
4. What about each contact’s potential to connect me with others. Still another factor.
5. How about distance? Is it important, even necessary, that your best connections be local? That is something that you will need to decide.

So, how do we need to go about the actual physical classification process with each of our four services?

1. Email – with something like Gmail you can do groups. With Outlook, choose an open field that you would normally not use. Even something like “IM address”. Something that you can search and sort by.
2. Twitter – create lists
3. FaceBook – create lists
4. LinkedIn – if you have a premium account, you can create profile folders. Otherwise use tags.

Now, and this assuming I have only one email account, I have four separate lists. And, if I wish, I can work all four of these lists separately based on the 80/20 rule where we will devoting the majority of our time and efforts toward the 20%. Having four sets of contacts sucks so this now gets even more complex. While all of these services are very adept at allowing you to import your contact lists to them, they are not so friendly about exporting contact information out so that you can import that into a central database. Most email and contact management programs would be the exception (easy to import/export) but, look at …

1. FaceBook – I found some utilities that will go around FaceBook and get you some contact information but email addresses are totally blocked from any export.
2. Twitter – Twitter does not even use email addresses per se. There are some utilities that will backup and allow you to export what Twitter does have. Click here to read an article with some great links to some options although I have tried none of them. For the sake of this example, let’s ass/u/me that they will work as described.
3. LinkedIn – at least they have relented and will allow you to export which was not always the case.

Now I have four export files. That is also ass/u/ming that I was able to export my classification data along with everything else so that I can sort later. Otherwise, I could potentially be looking at export files for “A”, “B”, and “C” and for all four databases. That’s 12 files. Yikes! Are we having fun yet (smile)? What should I do with them? I’d like to have them all in one place but where would that place be?

Ideally, we would now import each of these files into a CRM and then we are off to the races. For purposes of demonstration we will use Outlook. Outlook is not much of a CRM (even with Business Contact Manager) but at least it is something that most of us are familiar with and can relate to. However, there are at least five glaring obstacles to this being a truly viable solution …

1. The duplicates that will likely be generated by each database are huge. Remember, for a lot of these folks you are likely connected via more than one service. A massive amount of cleanup is going to be required.
2. This same cleanup process is going to render the entire database useless from a Social CRM standpoint unless you can effectively merge records vs. delete duplicates.
3. What you will end up with but will the final contact record reflect all of their social networks? If you are using Outlook, the simple answer is that it “will not”. There are no fields in Outlook dedicated to social networks. At least not in 2007. Perhaps in 2010? You are only allowed one web address so that is out. I suppose you could put them in “notes”.
4. Will your choice of CRM monitor your contact’s ongoing social media activity?
5. What happens when new contacts are added to one or more of your social media networks? Remember classification, export, import like we just completed? Do it all again. Repeatedly.

One of the most basic of sales principles is to “make them sick then make them well”. If at this point I don’t have you at least on all fours and praying at the porcelain altar, I haven’t done my job. My next post will, hopefully, dispense a little Pepto Bismol (smile).

Thanks for visiting! Watch for Part III!

Craig

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Applying The 80/20 Rule To Social CRM – Part I

This will be Part I of a three-part post. It’s also the easy part. Part II is going to be a bitch (smile). Part III will discuss execution.

You’ve heard it all before … 20% of the people do 80% of the work. 20% of my efforts will yield 80% of my results. No matter what you do and where you are, there is an 80/20 rule in play. Being in sales, my axiom is that “80% of my business will be generated by 20% of my clients” and, it’s all true!

Which brings us to Social Media. Social Media is no different in terms of the formula. Where it does differ is in the huge size of the overall variables. Due to its incredible reach via the accompanying degrees of separation, the numbers are monstrous! If your directly connected numbers are huge, what are those numbers potentially? They are …. GINORMOUS.

My direct connects are not large by any comparison when it comes to Social Media. I have about 1,500 followers on Twitter, about 200 connections on LinkedIn and a little over 125 on FaceBook. Still, that is over 1,800 connections. God only knows what I would do with more. The numbers I have are totally unmanageable as it is. I also have approximately 1,500 contacts in my email database so this potentially brings the total to more like 3,300.

Now let’s apply the 80/20 rule. Can I find 660 folks in this mix who are my go-to people? If these 20% are going to help me to produce 80% of my revenue, does it not make sense that they should be receiving the lion’s share of my attention? Yes, it does. The following concepts are nothing new…

I already have the database(s) and presumably have those sorted. The next step is classification and this also involves qualification. We can use an “A”, “B”, “C”, “D” method with “A” being our best connections and with “D” being … well with “D” being “delete”. Dump them. Don’t need them. Give them to your competitors along with your compliments (smile). You are going to need to devote some time to first deciding what qualifies a connection as an “A” vs. “B” etc. I would say that an “A” connection is someone who …..

1. Consistently invests large dollars toward your services
2. Has the potential to maintain or increase their investment
3. Knows you on a first name basis
4. Is a huge supporter of you, your business, and your services
5. Always takes your calls
6. Actively refers others to you
7. Speaks to you regularly about areas that are not business related
8. Likes to pick up the check even though he or she is buying from you (smile)

Perhaps your “B” contact, while still very important today, is somebody who more so has a huge potential to be groomed into becoming an “A” client. The “C’s”? Let’s just say that they help pay the bills. They comprise the 20% of your volume and the 80% of your contacts. The fact is, you “A” category may only contain 5% of your total contact base which, in my case would be 165. Still, these 165 may contribute 65% of my total volume or more.

Here is where this all becomes very complicated. I may be connected with multiple contacts on multiple services. For example, I am connected to “Mr. Smith” via email, FaceBook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. If I use multiple email accounts, he may be listed on all of those. Therefore, my 3,300 contacts is quite likely a much smaller number in actuality. For me, all of this is true. I think that maybe I should just “gut” myself and get it over (smile).

It gets even worse. My four or more databases (email, Twitter, FaceBook, and LinkedIn) are all separate databases. Please also remember that several of these contacts will appear in more than one of these lists. Do I classify each database separately? How do I keep them updated and all in sync? If all of this sounds easy to do … please leave a comment and hopefully the answer! Hell, I might even ask you to write Part II and Part III. LOL. Part II will be posted likely this coming weekend and will include my suggested solution to help mitigate this challenge.

Thanks for visiting!

Craig

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Outlook and Gist – This Baby May Have Legs

I have written a number of articles in the past about Gist which is a social media aggregator with some very cool features. In fact, from an information gathering standpoint, it compiles probably the most complete dossier on any of your contacts that I have yet encountered. This would include your email correspondence, social networks, news feeds, the works. However, while Gist is very good about collecting information, as a standalone product it is not so good at creating it. By that I mean, I’m not going to use it to generate emails. I don’t know that you cannot do that from within Gist but, looking at it, I don’t think that you would want to anyway. To me, email has to be an integral piece of any product that is going to pass muster as a Social CRM. In my mind, you flat cannot get away from that critical need.

I have also integrated Gist with SalesForce.com and it does make that well-recognized CRM a  much more social media friendly product. Unfortunately, I don’t much care for SalesForce’s email capabilities either, at least when you try to combine it with Gmail. This brings us to Outlook. As much as it pains me to say this, from the standpoint of a pure email client and contact manager (note that I did not say CRM), Outlook is pretty tough to beat and it may be getting tougher.

I have been using Outlook for the past several years as my email for a company that I am winding down my association with. As such, I am more inclined these days to use it experimentally. I have also had it loaded with Outlook’s Business Contact Manager add-on which supposedly turns it into a CRM. Personally, I would dispute that claim. About a year ago I did discover Xobni for Outlook and this is a superior add-on that originally just made Outlook better and now it not only makes it better, it has also added social network capabilities. Xobni has also issued a beta invite for their BlackBerry app. While I have both a BlackBerry and an invitation, I am not ready to go there quite yet. I also recently looked at the LinkedIn add-on for Outlook using Microsoft’s new “Social Connector”. Not ready for prime time and, at least for now, it connects with LinkedIn only. On top of that, it slowed down my performance fairly dramatically so that app only lasted about 3 days.

I became aware that Gist had a plug-in for Outlook some months back but decided against installing it as it apparently looks at Outlook’s “Contacts” folder vs. it’s “Business Contact’s” folder. Using Business Contact Manager (BCM), that created a problem. So yesterday. I exported all of my Business Contacts out of BCM as a .csv file and then imported them back into the Outlook “contacts” folder. I was then able to uninstall BCM completely and start fresh. Loading the Outlook plug-in from Gist was a painless affair, actually it is very well done, and it then went right to work cataloging my contacts and it did this very quickly while working entirely in the background.

Before we get into the details, if you have been to this site before you will know that I make no claims in regard to being the expert on anything. Rather, I have a robust curiosity of all things networking related. I also have the attention span of a 3-year-old, rarely find something that maintains my fascination for an extended period of time, and I have yet to find anything (at least in this field … CRM’s) that I really and truly love. Rather, I like to bring worthy products to your attention and then let you figure them out (smile).

Having installed Gist, I took a look at my screen and found that I now had two sidebars that were right next to each other, Xobni and Gist. They did not seem to conflict but the visual was killing me. So, in order to give Gist the best look, I uninstalled Xobni. During that process I completed a survey about what I thought of the product and why I mas deleting it. One of the last questions it asked was “Are you aware that you can use Xobni without the sidebar?”. Roh? I have since put it back on and will keep it in reserve (smile).

There is a lot to like about Gist and you know what? I think that I like this Outlook interface even better than going to the actual Gist site. The reason is probably pretty simple. Gist automatically identifies the contact I am working with in Outlook and the pulls up that contact profile only. What follows are some of the things that I have instantly found to be attractive (some of these may be available on Outlook 2007 only which is what I have):

• Not only do Gist profiles pop up when I am looking at my inbox, they all pop up when looking at my contact records.
• When I am writing an email, Gist recognizes who that is going to and conveniently pops up that person’s profile.
• If there are multiple people mentioned in the “to” or “from” fields it pops them all up.
• The profile is very complete including a Google map if an address is detected.
• It seemed to work well in displaying someone’s Twitter stream and it does tell me if we are connected on Twitter, FaceBook, or LinkedIn.
• It appears to display email conversations from both my Gmail and Outlook accounts and that is pretty sweet in itself.

What I have either not figured out or find lacking:

• It will show me that we are connected on Twitter, FaceBook, and LinkedIn but unless it has also identified a link, it will not allow me to go to those sites. And, it does not always find a link. How can it know that we are connected yet not know the link? Hmmm.
• The Twitter stream works well but I have yet to see anything in anybody’s FaceBook stream. Hmmm.
• There is no stream for LinkedIn updates.
• You can not retweet or reply on items in their Twitter stream while you can do this with Xobni.

Some final thoughts… I have been using Gist for sometime now and I do want to comment on the people behind the product itself. They have proven themselves to be consistently outstanding in the following areas:

1. Do you have a  customer service question or a problem? They will be right on it and they do follow through.
2. They are very good at keeping their customer base informed of new enhancements and new uses for their product.
3. They are very active on Twitter, monitor their brand closely, and seek to engage directly with folks who have a demonstrated interest in their application.

The bottom line is that the folks at Gist …. get it. The other bottom line is that they have been pretty upfront that they will be looking to monetize this service. I wonder how, when, and how much that will entail?

That will do it for today. Thanks for visiting!

Craig

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