The big SOBCon is happening as I type and, while I was unable to attend this year (forthcoming Spin Sucks Pro launch, cough), I did manage to make it over to the opening night party, hosted by Social Media Club, on Thursday night.
I tell you this because I quite unexpectedly, and very pleasantly, had the opportunity to meet Cindy King from Social Media Examiner.
Notwithstanding her brilliant accent, she was a complete delight to meet. We talked about how “feisty” the Spin Sucks community is, but (and, finally, my point) we also discussed some of the cool new tools that are forthcoming or have just begun to hit the early adopter crowds.
One of the things we discussed is Inside View (as well as Instagram, which we can talk about next week, if you’re not already using it), which allows you to
Make the “social sale” by extracting valuable company information about a person or prospect prior to making a sale. You can get market cap, the org structure, list of key employees and the social sites they belong to, relevant company news, addresses and phone numbers and more; all from your Salesforce “lead” view. You can then sync all of this information with your Salesforce account so that it actually fills in the information for you.
Although their pro and team versions are most useful within Salesforce, it is not required. If you’re not working with a company that uses Salesforce or your business is too small for the customer relationship management software, you can use the free version to test it out.
I did a search on Starbucks, just so you can see how it works. So say I’m going over to their Chicago office to meet with someone and I want to see their online activity. It gives me an overview, how many people are on LinkedIn, their main contact information, where I can find employees on Facebook, and what people are saying about them on Twitter.
When I flip through the tabs, I begin to get even more information. I can look at the people who are there and connect with them on LinkedIn, directly from the site. I have access to their stock information, any tweets, and most recent blogs that mention them. I can get news, SEC filings, and more.
Obviously every company you type into here won’t have the same amount of information, but it allows you to make those new business meetings much more productive because you go to the meeting with a ton of information you didn’t previously have.
Check it out. Do some searches. See what you think. And report back. And also let me know, in the comments, if you’d like a review on Instagram or if that’s old news.