Have you ever been to a horse race where you place a trifecta bet--and won? The satisfaction of figuring out the future and being perfectly correct feels better than all of that cash you get for being right. Okay, I like getting a thousand bucks back for a five dollar bet, but being in the right place at the right time is a bigger thrill. (Briefly, for those who wonder what trifecta is all about. A trifecta is a particular type of bet that is very difficult to win, but it yields very high returns. To successfully win a trifecta bet, you need to specify the horses that finish in the top three spots in the exact order in which they finish. So if the horse you selected to show (3rd) actually places (2nd), you don't win anything.)
Three years ago, this Customer Counts visionary thought LinkedIn was going to be the way customers found what they are actively seeking. It was new and strange. Only the geeks and unemployeed with time to surf the Internet seemed to be joining LinkedIn and building up their profiles and business information sheets. Then they introduced something special for those who applied and made the cut--LinkedIn for Groups. That was a "gated community" just for your alumni association or national organization. As leader of one of these organizations, the Certification Network Group, I set it up and worked hard to get everyone to participate.
About half did and we wondered if this was a trendy thing or if half of the people were getting ready to go the way of the dinosaurs? We stuck with it and then we discovered Cerado's Haystack. That took social networking to the level of almost perfect. Who in our group wouldn't be wild about this?
We are rolling it out, big time, this month at our quarterly meeting Dec. 6th and if you are anywhere in the Washington, DC area on that day, you have to shoot me an email by Friday, Dec. 1st to say you want in. There's no admission fee, just a group of guards with guns at the security desk, and that's why you have to RSVP in advance.
Business 2.0 December issue hits my desk this morning and the feature story is The Missing Link. "Social networking has been of much use to business--until now. With Reid Hoffman's My Space-for-grown-ups at a tipping point, these days you are either LinkedIn or left out." What a great story! It just screams--you just won the trifecta of figuring out what's really working these days in helping the right people (best customers and best prospects) find you and connect quickly with your services, products and reasons for being in business.
Traditional and older methods of marketing are dead. They don't work. Running after people doesn't work. Shouting at them doesn't work. You have to figure out how to help customer find you and then reward them generously for their trek, their exploration through the search engines and social networks, to find you. Even if you are just down the street from a customer, they are in their office searching the Internet for the best deal and comparing your to others not in your neighborhood.
It's a Haystack Networked world. It's a LinkedIn world now. This is no fluke. It's where you'll find your customers and capitalize on referrals.
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