by Erika Cannon, President
There are three traditional types of communication: verbal, non-verbal, written.
Ahhhh… If only it were that easy. Now consider how these influence your world of prospecting, and the options you have: phone, mail, email, trade shows, text, networking events and social media, which can include Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, LinkedIn, Instagram, Vine, YouTube, Vimeo, Vine, Snapchat, Yelp, Urbanspoon, reddit, Quora, Digg, Tumblr, Word Press, Blogger and Pinterest, just to name a few!
I’m exhausted just thinking about all the ways I can communicate with my prospects.
That’s why it’s important to use the right platforms that will find and develop the right prospects for your business. We’re not a restaurant, so Urbanspoon isn’t a fit for us. We have a blog (thanks for reading) so Word Press is helpful. Our work is a software platform, so Vine wouldn’t be helpful. We develop email databases, so email is definitely a must.
We recommend that our clients engage as many communication methods as they are able. You just never know what methodology is going to strike a chord with your prospect.
In the B2B sector, we urge clients to be active on LinkedIn; it remains the business gold standard of social media networking. Our friends at FrogDog, a Houston-based marketing firm, even studied it. They found that 75% of C-level executives at small- and medium-sized companies login to LinkedIn at least once a month, primarily for networking purposes.
LinkedIn allows your prospect to “look” at you in a safe environment, and to confirm that you could partner with them. It is, in essence, professional window-shopping. It’s just a matter of getting them to come in the store and buy.
