The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

The recent lighting up of the Twitterverse following the rather intemperate remarks of a Cleveland job-bank executive gave many of us one of those cringing laughs. Or was it a laughing cringe? We cringed at how mean she was to a young job seeker, but we laughed at many of the comments made as the event proved again that bad news travels faster than good, that ugly behavior often makes for more interesting copy than does good behavior.

But let’s take this opportunity to look at what that woman was trying to accomplish—to respond appropriately to a LinkedIn connection request. She failed miserably, but you can succeed if you follow these best practices.

3 things to remember when you're networking on LinkedIn:

1. You don’t have to accept every LinkedIn request that you receive.

Recently, someone sent me an article about the new features within LinkedIn that are designed to help companies publish on the web. In the subject line of the email was this statement:

“Everyone's doing it!” 

Didn’t your mom and dad talk with you about peer pressure when you were in high school, or even earlier? Sure, they were probably talking about illicit activities like drinking, drugs, or promiscuity, but the point applies to blogging and other forms of content marketing: just because everyone else is doing it doesn’t mean you should. 

“Everyone is doing it” is not a reason you should get into content marketing. It’s the reason you should take it very seriously, and do it really well.

Let me be blunt about this. Because so many companies are publishing, it is impossible for all that content to be consumed. Picture a room filled with dozens of people who are talking, while only a handful of people are listening. The folks who are pumping information out (publishing) are literally overwhelming the poor folks who are taking information in (listening). 

There can only be one result: A good number of the people who are talking are being ignored. To avoid that fate, consider these six immutable rules of communication in the age of content marketing:

1. Don’t just talk. Listen.

Today, we're enjoying April showers, and working on many behind-the scenes projects. This week, we tried something different, and published a timeley piece on Sunday. What did you think? We'll be adding a weekend post here and there, especially if there's something newsworthy that just can't wait.

The Center for Sales Strategy Weekly Wrap-Up

In Never Send an Email When You’re Angry: Otherwise, This Might Happen to You, Brian Hasenbauer described how there really is such a thing as bad press, and how an angry email sent in the heat of the moment caused a PR disaster for one professional.

In How to Increase Engagement on Your Company Blog, I wrote about how to look beyond comments to see which posts are really resonating with your target personas and write more content that appeals to them.

Surprise! Twitter just announced the rollout of their new profiles. New users will have the new profile from the beginning and the rest of us will start getting it over the next few weeks. 

If you have been on LinkedIn recently, you might have seen this response to a LinkedIn connection request circulating. It’s an email exchange where a young 25-year old asks to connect with a senior level executive in charge of a local job board on LinkedIn. The request was denied with a tirade about how the young woman behaved badly. Perhaps the younger woman was in the wrong, but the response the executive gave was exceptionally mean-spirited.

After seeing how this one executive responded to a LinkedIn connection request, I thought this might be a good time to remind everyone about LinkedIn etiquette.

But before we get into that, let’s talk about email. Email is, among other things, a revolutionary way to keep in touch with people you rarely see. You can convey a lot of information, share ideas, keep people on task, send cat pictures, and more. But there’s one thing you absolutely, positively, 100% need to remember: 

Email is forever.

Today, we're still laughing about all the pranks that we fell for this week (even though we told ourselves we wouldn't believe anything we were told, we fell for all the same silly lines just the same). We also can hardly believe that we're past the first quarter of 2014! Time flies when you're having fun, right?

The Center for Sales Strategy Weekly Wrap-Up

• Matt Sunshine got a terrible email, which prompted him to write How Not to Send a Follow-Up Email, and in it he noted, "Never forget that your potential customer owes you nothing."

• Mike Anderson, when he told us about the five things our sales collateral should include to ensure it doesn't get tossed wrote, "At the very least, your sales collateral should not send a message that’s in conflict with the tone and texture of the conversation you have begun."

Today, we're thinking about our brackets, and wondering why college basketball is so hard to predict. How's your tournament going?

The Center for Sales Strategy Weekly Wrap-Up:

Below are some takeaways found within this week's blog posts:

Sales Hunters, Sales Farmers, and… Sales Trappers?:

"Trappers do it differently; they entice the prey—er, prospects—to come to them. They set out the honeypot that brings the bears, the cheese that attracts the mice, the information and advice that pulls prospects in and prompts them to make the first move toward doing business.  In the epic battle between the Sales Hunters and the Sales Farmers, it just may be the Sales Trappers who win."

Today, we're celebrating the official beginning of Spring! We hope wherever you are, you see flowers blooming instead of a snow pack.

This Week at The Center for Sales Strategy

As the global celebration of St. Patrick’s Day approached, I started to think about how lucky we are as a society to be able to put aside our differences and come together in celebration for one day. It’s ironic that I first thought of the word lucky to describe this phenomenon, as the phrase luck of the Irish is so common, and even more so around St. Patrick’s Day.

Luck of the Irish?

We're bringing back a popular feature -- our weekly wrap-up along with the best posts we've read around from around the web this week. Today is pi day (get it, 3.14?) and we're celebrating by eating pi(e) -- how will you celebrate?

This Week at The Center for Sales Strategy

Below are some key pieces of wisdom found within this week's blog posts:

• From The Remediation Myth: Why You Can't fix Weaknesses:
  "We can get ten times better in an area of natural talent, but only ten percent better when we try to improve in area not supported by natural talent."