Crowdsourcing: Fast Track to Sales Information

Jeff Howe is a contributing editor at Wired Magazine, where he covers the media and entertainment industry. I saw his video on YouYube and thought I would share it on my blog today. Crowdsourcing, as Jeff describes it, is when “a company takes a job that was once performed by employees and outsources it in the form of an open call to a large undefined group of people”

Mmm…  I remember working for various companies were we had employees responsible for competitive intelligence, lead generation, territory help and basically attempting to enable the sales organization to be more effective and efficient. I also remember how rarely that information actually helped me close a deal! For years, smart sales people have “crowdsourced” the important information they needed – and it was this information that made them successful in their sales execution. I’m really pleased that Jeff has written this book. You can check it out at Amazon.

Connectize is a form of crowdsourcing, enabling a sales person to reach out to an undefined group of people and to connect with these people based on shared interests. Every sales and sales related person either needs or has information on an account, territory or industry – yet all to often there is no easy and fast way to get to the right person. Sales people have various crowds they can access; prospect, current customers, past customers, fellow employees, partners, school, social, etc… and yet there remains an undefined “crowd” (the people you would never normally meet) that possess vast amounts of untapped information and expertise. It is that crowd that we hope to connect you with. The person you don’t know, haven’t met before but based on shared interests, could play an instrumental role in your sales success and career.

This week’s feature is

  • Connection Referral

As a way to help build the Connectize Sales 2.0 community and extend the “crowd” we’ve added the ability to refer someone. By simply referring a profile need, it is really easy to share with other users or anyone that might not yet be aware of Connectize, an opportunity to help someone and get paid in the process.  Referral activity generates an in application meassage for all parties involved – so you will always know when someone might be looking outside the crowd to help you.