Auto-qualify your leads using Prolinkd

We are excited to inform you that new version of Prolinkd is now available.  Prolinkd now integrates across tools like Blogs (Disqus), Surveys/forms (Wufoo), Email marketing (Mailchimp), CRM (Highrisehq). Lot of new tools will be added in next few weeks. Do you use a lead generation tool which you would like to see integrated, do let us know!


CRM (Highrisehq)

CRM is the most important part of sales process. It captures important data and helps your team in collaborating on deals. Right now almost no CRM tool provides a way to enrich data and provide you more intelligence about prospects. You can integrate your Prolinkd account and Highrise account, so that we will provide more information about prospective customers and decision makers and help you make informed decisions. Support of Salesforce, Zoho and SageCRM is in pipeline and should be available in next few weeks.


Suverys/Forms (Wufoo)

Targetted surveys and enquiry forms are important lead generation tools. Publishing free content like whitepapers, webinars, slideshows, videos with lead capture forms is one of the best ways to capture data about your target market. Using Prolinkd you get enriched information about target audience. We also pre-qualify leads based on criteria specified by you. 

 

Blogs (Disqus)

Disqus is one of the most widely used comments platform for business blogs. We now help you identify leads from audience of your blog. Integrate Disqus and Prolinkd accounts, to get more information about your readers and to find qualified leads.

 

Email campaigns (Mailchimp)

Do you already have a list of emails for outbound marketing? Before you send out your camapaigns, get more insights in your audience using Prolinkd. 


Twitter

Find qualified leads from users who engage with your Twitter content by following your id, Retweeting your content and conversing with your id. Or of your competitor for that matter :)

 

Custom HTML forms

If you are using custom HTML forms to capture leads, then we provide a Javascript which can be embedded on your website very easily. This is a secure Javascript which can be placed on page where you capture leads. 


Help and FAQs on new features
  • To use pre-qualification, configure your account by using "Configure link" on top bar (next to settings).
  • Please make sure that configurations are as detailed as possible, so that we can find most accurate leads for you.
  • Please use settings to integrate above mentioned tools with your Prolinkd account
  • The Javascript generated by Prolinkd to use in custom HTML forms is secure and collects only information which is relevant. 
  • Please place Javascript only where you capture leads. If you provide a demo account or a free trial account, it will be useful to place it on sign up page as well.
  • List of tools which are in pipeline - Salesforce, Zoho, Surveymonkey, Google forms, Posterous, Facebook comments, Hubspot Leads, Exacttarget

Sign in to use these features - Prolinkd

Please get in touch with us if you are having trouble in setting up these tools or need more information. 

Why social media is important for enterprise sales?

Google search is not the only entry path to your shop.

10-12 years ago Google took a quantum leap in search technology and changed how we find information. Everyone was using Google and only Google for finding services/products they are interested in. Decision makers were looking for partners using Google and going through your website to start a conversation with your business. Also you, as a marketer, were using Google to find your prospective customers and starting a sales pitch.

10 years on, people are now searching for services on social media sites like LinkedIn, Xing. Lot of customers are tweeting about what they are looking for and getting real time replies from vendors, service providers. Even though Google search and SEO are still important, but your presence and brand identity on sites such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook have become very important as well. These are the additional entry points into your website and into your business. These are the places where people will look for information and decide in few secs or a min or two whether your business qualifies for the requirement they have. Website is still important but identity on these social media sites is also important now.

Referrals have become super easy.

If you are providing a service, your best customers are the ones who come through referrals. Either from your network or from your existing customers. With social media, your entire network is now available as a social graph on networking sites. Who you are connected with, who you did business with, their recommendation and all other information is now available for your prospective customers. If I am looking for a service provider on LinkedIn, I will much rather start conversation with companies which are known to me via my extended network or are recommended by people I know.
 
This means maintaining your brand identity on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook is that much more important for your business. Once you have brought all this information online, it makes very easy for people you know and have worked with before to refer your services to their contacts. With proper management of your presence, you may not even require active referrals, as they will be replaced by passive referrals in terms of recommendations on LinkedIn, likes on Facebook and followers on Twitter and the conversations you are having with peers/experts in your domain.

Participation underlines expertise.

People understand you as a leader and expert in certain topics when they see you participating in discussions with in communities. Until a few years ago, only way to demonstrate your expertise was conferences, publishing in journals. Now with very less cost (only time cost, no monetary cost), you can participate in discussions with best and most knowledgeable experts from your areas of interest. Whether it is using LinkedIn groups or Quora or through Twitter. its important for your business and key people in the business to be actively participating in such groups. 

Emails and cold calls may not be dead but ROI is diminishing. 

Emails and cold calls were extraordinary marketing tools until a few years ago. But since last few years there value is constantly diminishing. Most important reason for that is - There is plenty of information available about the person and customers you are interested in starting a conversation with. But very few B2B marketers use this information to start a much richer conversation. For example - you can follow your prospective users on Twitter to interact with them, create a mutual trust level before trying to make a sale. Participate in interesting discussions with them on LinkedIn groups, provide your view point on Quora so your peers will understand your expertise levels.A great sale is the one which is started 3 months ahead of time and requires nothing special to be done besides having right conversation with right person at the right time. But to achieve that, you have to be continuously in-the-loop.

As a wonderful side effect, not only you will be able to do more effective sales pitch when the time comes, but you will network and participate in discussion with experts from across the globe.

Keep things human.

When conversation were started using website contact forms or cold calls to switchboards, they were started as if both sender and receiver are business. Now since conversations are started through Twitter, LinkedIn, Groups, Quora and more, it has become very important to put your face with your name. And to create conversation which are between to humans and not just between two businesses. Its not a surprise that all of a sudden lot of companies are underlining this part in their support emails - "Your emails will be responded by a real human". With reach of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn entire web has suddenly become web of interconnected humans and the information they are sharing with each other. It is extremely important for your business to make sure you understand this and project the right image.

Summary 

Like any good sales person you have to be where your customers are looking for you and you have to present an image which they expect you to.

New version with improved UI

Last one week has been very exciting as well as hectic. 

We talked to lot of users and found out few things that needed lot of improvements.

Biggest issue across users has been accessibility of features, information on how to use those features. 

With this new release which available now, we have addressed lot of concerns. Features are more accessible now, there is bit more information on how to use Prolinkd, few features which were far too complicated have been made much more easier to use.

Do check out the new version and let us know how you like it!

Notable changes - 

  • Cookies supported - No need to login again and again. We remember your session based on cookies
  • Discoverer - Features are made accessible. Better messages. Tuned backend to find more and suitable data.
  • Organizer - Few usability changes.
  • Public links to LinkedIn profiles, company pages and all other external links such as blogs, twitter.

Also if you are interested in numbers, then here are some numbers which might interest you -

Total connections  - 98902 
Unique company data - 86953
Total opportunities found - 39491 (1)
Total profiles - 44599
Total updates - 183528
Tweets - 218689
Twitter profiles  - 3893 
Twitter friends - 181730 
Twitter followers - 108714 

1 - These are total opportunities found. Only few of the opportunities are usually useful, but number posted here includes all. 

How to discover better leads for your business

Now that 40+ users are using Prolinkd, let me walk you through on how to discover better leads for your business.

Story

Rahul is a Pune based entrepreneur providing recruitment solutions to software companies. His typical clients are from Pune, with whom is connected through local entrepreneurship communities, events. Now he is looking to expand his business and acquire clients from other parts of India. Its difficult for Rahul to travel across India to acquire clients, while managing his operations. Also its always better he thinks, to get at least list of prospective clients, arrange few meetings before he plans travel, maximizing return on investment in client acquisition.

His typical clients are - Small 0-50 people, software companies who are looking to hire programmers. Decision makers in these clients are generally owners/founder or CXOs directly. 
   
How Rahul can use Prolinkd to find leads?

Prolinkd Discoverer, is designed to help entrepreneurs, like Rahul. Once he has setup his account and all existing data from his social and professional network is imported, he can create lenses as follows.

A. Geographic segmentation

First step Rahul needs to do is segment his target market based on geographic location. Instead of doing a pan India search, its much better to create multiple lenses based on individual areas. 

So lets say Rahul has decided he wants to focus on Mumbai and Surat in first phase of business development process.

B. Industry segmentation -

Once geographic segmentation is completed, he then decides to focus only on Information technology and services companies, as these companies generally have more demand for talent.

C. Decision makers -

Since Rahul is targeting small sized companies, decision makers in those companies are either owner/founders or CXOs. 

D. Keywords -

If Rahul is providing only Java/JEE related recruitment solutions, then he can input those as keywords. Lets assume he is providing generic recruitment solutions which are useful for all IT companies.

Rahul then creates multiple lenses in Prolinkd as follows -

Mumbai_IT
  • Size - small
  • Industry - Information technology and services
  • Seniority - CXO, Owners/Founders
  • Country - India
  • Area - Mumbai
Surat_IT
  • Size - small
  • Industry - Information technology and services
  • Seniority - CXO, Owners/Founders
  • Country - India
  • Area - Surat
Once he has created these lenses, Discoverer keeps mining the data from Rahul's extended network on daily basis.

As couple of days pass by, Rahul has more information about his target markets than ever. He also has information about who his prospective clients are, decision makers in those organizations and profile of decision makers. Based on all this Rahul can make much better strategic decisions.

Notes and best pracices -
  • Create lenses for such smaller segment of the market you are targeting
  • After generally a week, almost all data available for that lense is processed, so you can safely stop the lense.
  • Once you have explored couple of such markets, then you can create lenses for other market segments.
Limitations -
  • We have hard API limits from third party data sources such as Linkedin and Twitter. Because of that, amount of data we can process per day is limited.
  • Number of lenses we process per user with out degrading quality of leads is generally 2-3 depending on market size
  • We will support more complex lenses and take care of segments internally in future, but for now its best to create very focused lenses
  • Use keywords only when you are sure about it. Otherwise try to avoid using too many keywords. We are working on how to make it much more user friendly
Future -
  • We are always working on improving the algorithms and process to find most useful information. Some of these improvements will be rolled out in next one week
  • We are also integrating with more data sources, to find further information
  • Exporter will be available in May, using which you can then feed these opportunities to your CRM tool such as 37signals.com, Zoho.com or salesforce.com
  • We have talked with 10 customers so far and taken lot of notes on how to improve user experience. We will have a new release available for all beta users by first week of March with these improvements.
Many thanks to all users who took time to talk with us and given their valuable feedback. Keep your feedback coming. 

Our website will include all this documentation, help, tips and tricks to boost your experience of using Prolinkd, but till then, please feel free to drop me a line on sushrut@prolinkd.com

Business intelligence, Socially!

Thats right. With great participation from you (81 total votes), we have decided that "Business intelligence, Socially" conveys very accurately what we are doing.

It has been overwhelming to see the participation and support we received from you. 

35% votes were for Business intelligence, Socially!

25% for Social lead generation.

Other option were far too behind.

In other news - Prolinkd Discoverer is ready for you! We are closing the beta signs up tomorrow. Everyone who signs up will get access to product in structured manner with 15-20 users everyday being added user base. So if you have not yet signed up for beta, please do so on here. 

We will have a brand new website with all information necessary by Monday morning and first 15 users will get access. Everyday we will give access to more and more users as we keep close watch on performance, security and infrastructure.

Please keep your support, suggestions and feedback coming. We have some other exciting news to share, but at the right time!

Get a magnet to find needle in haystack

Needle-haystack

Enterprise sales is all about finding needles in haystack. This is particularly difficult in todays competitive world which is getting flatter and flatter everyday. 

Irrespective of the quality of your service, your marketing and sales is often focused on going through haystack to find few needles ie clients. This makes sales and business development a very resource and cost intensive. 

So how you can use your professional network on Linkedin or similar to reduce cost of business development, yet getting better deal flow?

1. Reduce size of the haystack

Organize your network in focus areas based on industry, location and size of the companies. This will enable you to focus on most important business opportunities in sectors which matters most to you. We are Prolinkd, provide a feature, called as folder which does exactly this. It enables you to reduce mess of your network and organize them into defined folders. You can create folders based on combination of attributes like industry, seniority, location, company, skills and many more. 

Once you have defined such folders, then you quickly reduce noise in your network and focus on only important updates, information and data.

2. Use a magnet!

Best tool to find those needles in haystack is to get a magnet. So what we have created is a magnet, we call it as discoverer. Similar to folders, you can create a discoverer based on various parameters. What kind of clients you are looking for? Size of company, location, department. Decision makers you need to connect with in that organization like CIO/CFO/CMO/CEO/CTO and so on.

You can of course create many discoverer each catering different set of requirements and focus areas. Once you create them, they just keep working day in day out and keep on finding you hot leads.

Sounds interesting? Then just sign up for beta and see the magic yourself!

PS- We will highly appreciate if you can participate in our poll to choose a tagline. Thanks!

Help us choose a tagline!

We all at Prolinkd are looking for help. So please help us in choosing tagline for our product.

Prolinkd, is a enterprise/b2b sales tool. It helps you in identify key markets, prospective clients and decision makers.

If you want to suggest a better tagline which is not included in the poll, please feel free!

If you want you can leave a comment about why you liked a particular tagline better.

Thanks!

What is lacking is social network?

There is a various interesting thread going on Quora with same title.

I will like to point out the answer by Gil Silberman. In his answer, his points at the biggest features which are lacking in social network - Direction, Weight and Context for a connection a between two individuals. To extend for professional network - direction, weight and context for a connection between two individual and companies they represent. (extension by me)

Linkedin does try to solve this problem to some extent. When you recommend some one on linkedin, it asks you to provide context for recommendation. But given the spammy nature of recommendation which mostly are you-scratch-my-back-I-will-scratch yours, this context becomes useless most of the times.

We at Prolinkd are looking to solve some of these problems in context of our business goals. Our algorithms use various concepts to assign weight to your connection based on certain data sets like shared connections. But what is more important is - our algorithms are designed to consider relative weight of relationships and does not depend on absolute number of data sets. 

For example - I might be connected to two individuals and have exact same number of shared connections with both. But weight of my connection with both of them can still vary based who exactly are our shared connections. To explain further - Lets assume I am connected to my colleague (A) from previous job and since we worked in a big team in a large company, we have lot of people in shared connections. Other individual (B) is an entrepreneur I know from POCC and we also have same number of shared connections. But since each of these connections from POCC bring in richer network weight of B in my social graph is much higher than weight of A. Since kind of people I am looking to network with will have more similarities to B, this explain accurately represent perceived value of having B in my network. 

We use similar algorithms to understand other aspects of the connection, which is direction, context and depth. All these properties together represent true value of your connections and network.

Summary - Even though its important to have a large network, but its far more important to have insights into individual connections and leverage them to expand your network further.

PS - If you do not have invite for quora, please drop me a line on bidwai dot sushrut at gmail, will be more than happy to provide you one, as Quora is a very useful service.