By Jack Hubbard
In the October issue of ABA Bank Marketing and Sales magazine, we introduced some books that can improve your sales, marketing and leadership skills. In this article, we delve into three services on the World Wide Web that help bankers build trust and add value.
Best of all, each is free.
Smartbrief.com
Want to be one of the more than 5.8 million executives who cut through all the clutter and gain valuable information about vertical subjects each day? You can if you register for Smartbrief.com. Launched in 1999, Smartbrief adheres to the principle that there is too much data available to make key subject matter stand still. Smartbrief holds the Jell-O together by creating newsletters targeting vertical subjects such as small business, healthcare, CPAs, etc.
Smartbrief’s editors review articles from 10,000 major news sources and place them into a 200 concise, daily e-zines. Clicking on any article allows the reader to take in the content and use it for their own knowledge. It also facilitates information sharing via email, twitter LinkedIn and other means.
One bank I know utilizes Smartbrief.com in conjunction with their “3 before 8” concept (sending three daily emails of value out to clients and prospects to arrive before 8 a.m.). Upon hitting “enter,” they cease to be relationship managers and become resource managers.
Newsle
When colleagues, competitors and community leaders make the news, Newsle keeps you on top of it. Newsle accomplishes it through a daily email, an app called Connected or by directing you to their home page. A simple registration makes you part of the mix and allows everyone to see what you are accomplishing as well.
Information is found through articles and blogs and can be accessed seconds after being published. Birthdays and business anniversaries can also be found through LinkedIn connections. Newlse searches Facebook Friends, LinkedIn connections, public figures, journalists and e-mail contacts. Virtually everyone in your network becomes an open book and when they appear somewhere, you know about it. What you do with the information is up to you. One never knows the tipping point that turns a prospect to a client and a client to an advocate. Newsle.com, which is now owned by LinkedIn, can be a part of that process.
Charlie
You are going on a call and want to get up to speed on recent awards the company has won, articles
In which the CEO has been featured or other intel that lets the prospect know you have done your homework. Charlie helps you make that killer first impression. Charlie utilizes more than 100,000 sources from social media and other data bases and pushes that information to you. Think of Charlie as Google on steroids or a 24/7 assistant that you could never afford.
Complete the simple registration and connect Charlie to your connections and your Outlook calendar. Then, when you have a call scheduled on a particular day, Charlie finds those people you are meeting with and lets you know about key facts that can help you start the conversation with impact and insight.
The service is currently available on laptops, desktops and smart phones. Soon the app will be launched on tablets.
New perspectives continue to be paramount in the minds and hearts of clients, prospects and referral sources. There is no way to stay in front of the mounds of information that passes through your various portals on a daily basis. These three resources make big data useable data for the benefit of all.
Jack Hubbard is chairman and chief sales officer of St. Meyer & Hubbard, a sales performance consulting and training firm located in Elgin, Ill. He serves also as an instructor for the ABA Bank Marketing School. Email [email protected]
