In the same issue of KM World as Dave Weinberger’s column described above, there is a concise and clear introduction to the use of Social Networking Applications for Sales. It covers Visible Path, Spoke, and Contact Network Corporation.
I will not repeat the content here as the writer, John Harney, did a nice job. Conspiracy theorists will have a field day with these tools. I tend to be old fashioned and look for more manual and personal ways to make contacts. But then I was a late adapter to cell phones because I did not want the intrusion and now I am semi-reliant on them.
In fairness to these tools, I know that when I was in a “buyer” position for alliance partnerships in a large corporation, I was much more likely to listen to, and positively respond to, someone who had a mutual acquaintance that provided a recommendation and I think most people are this way. So when used with integrity, which I am sure is the goal of the software providers, they should add value. In fact, Visible Path discusses the “Science of Trust” on its home page.
This is something I have posted on before. I certainly want to explore the tools in more depth and will offer some future posts on them.
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