“Hi David – It’s good to hear from you and of the completion of your latest book.  After checking with my bosses I’m going to have to decline your request.  They don’t want me, or anyone else in the firm, endorsing others products including books. Best wishes on the release.”

That’s an email that you don’t expect to receive.  As many of you know, I’ve been working on the release of my 4th commercial book, Return on Impact – Leadership Strategies for the Age of Connected Relationships (ASAE, 2012).  As it’s customary, I’ve reached out to a dozen or so current and past clients with key insights about the book and have asked them for endorsements / testimonials of our work together.  Here are just two kind ones:

“In Relationship Economics, David Nour articulated the strategic value of business relationships.  In Return on Impact, he forces the reader to question what value they are really adding and how to measure the impact of social as a business enabler on those strategic relationships.”  – Randy Seidl, SVP & GM Americas – Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Servers, Storage, & Networking

“David Nour spoke to our leadership and board and without question, they chose to think and lead differently than our industry counterparts shortly after his session.  If you’re trying to help your organization get beyond reactive social media, Return On Impact is your roadmap to a more strategic approach to social.” – Barbara Springer, General Counsel & Vice President Administration – Delta Dental of Colorado

But the one at the top of this post, really disappointed me because I pride myself in my work and the impact I try to create for my clients.  So I start thinking about how or why had my “equity” declined from being “one of the best speakers we’ve ever had,” and “well done” by a senior executives after a consulting engagement to the comment above?

Here are some predictions that I hope you can apply in your relationships moving forward:

1. Relationship Currency® is like cash – it has immediate value; people will remember your impact from last week; they may or may not remember your efforts from 2 years ago!  In hindsight, my boat to ask for a testimonial or an endorsement from this client, sailed long ago!
2. Reputation Capital® is relative – even a great house on a bad street will have a hard time selling; one strong impact can easily be negated by other misperceptions, competing priorities, or much more visible impact from other individuals or initiatives.  Think of how close you were to your next door neighbors, until they moved!  Because the context of the relationship changed, the fact that they lent you every tool you ever needed, turned off the alarm at your house when you were traveling, or babysat your kids is no longer relevant or a priority.
3. Some lessons are expensive and detrimental to the relationship – with this particular client, I made a comment to one of their partners, which in hindsight, I regret and it created a mountain from a mole hill.  I don’t think I ever recovered from that as evident by the comment above.  We all say and do things that we regret later.  That’s what makes us human.  You have to learn from those lessons and grow through them in your professional relationship development maturity.

Finally, your Professional Net Worth® is developed over the years and through countless relationship currency exchanges and the accumulation of your reputation capital.  If you build an over abundance of relationship assets, they will negate the relationship liabilities we tend to create, regardless of how unintentional they may be.  So although it’s human to want to be liked, I’m learning that it may be more valuable in the long run to be respected.  And nothing creates and protects respect more than performance, execution and results.

As we approach the Thanksgiving Holidays, my goal and prayer for 2012 is that the good Lord keeps me humble, focused, willing and able to make promises I can keep, remain a student of business relationships, and continue to add value to those I’m lucky enough to meet.  The rest, I’m not sure I can control.

How is your reputation capital and how do you know?

Exclusively for RENetworks Members…

Think of the concept of a trust barometer. If I am one of your channel or distribution partners, for example, you are asking me to put my reputation on the line to walk you into my end customers. That is huge on the trust barometer. Components of that trust start in an organization, but often come down to trust between individuals. We all start out with a certain level of credibility and, over time, can choose to dilute it by incongruence and inconsistency between your thought, words, and actions.

Trust, as an outcome of your competency simply defined, is…

Sign Up on RENetworks to learn more, get this and other weekly Relationship Economics Tip of the Week, get notified of our upcoming webinars, and get access to other resources like articles and white papers.

To learn more about how to become a member, click on the logo below:

Exclusively for RENetworks Members…

Reputation Capital is a measure of how effective you are in promoting and delivering value. As the delivery of that value is recognized, you start to accumulate Reputation Capital. The two fundamental pillars of Reputation Capital are competency and trust. This week’s tip is about some insight into the first pillar, competency.

Strategic business development involves a multitude of constituents and partners, and your success heavily depends on competency. Any alliance partner…

Sign Up on RENetworks to learn more, get this and other weekly Relationship Economics Tip of the Week, get notified of our upcoming webinars, and get access to other resources like articles and white papers.

To learn more about how to become a member, click on the logo below:

Exclusively for RENetworks Members…

There are two ways to think about strategy – the more common view is that companies should match current internal resources with external market opportunities. CK Prahalad’s , University of Michigan strategy professor, view was that companies should set their ambitions first and then expand the resource base to reach that ambition.

So what’s your strategic relationship intent?  What’s your huge ambition for the relationships you seek to develop? What resource base will you need to expand to reach that ambition?…

Sign Up on RENetworks to learn more, get this and other weekly Relationship Economics Tip of the Week, get notified of our upcoming webinars, and get access to other resources like articles and white papers.

To learn more about how to become a member, click on the logo below:

LinkedIn just launched a new feature where you can follow key developments in a company’s profile.

Are you following your current or prospective clients?

Who’s following your company and how can you engage them in a relationship?

I’m humbled by what I learn on various social networking platforms every day!

Best,

David

An Executive Briefing by Ian Savage, Exclusively for RENetworks (http://renetworks.intronetworks.com/) Members

Organizations are increasingly deploying “Account Managers” at the customer/vendor boundary. Research studies have shown that, even with a huge increase in the number of account managers, a majority of companies are still reporting ineffectiveness in building relationships with their strategic customers.

The rise in focus in the account management discipline is being fueled, in part, by the growth of shared service functions within organizations. Information Technology departments are an excellent example. These functions are deploying account managers to increase levels of customer intimacy, to gain mindshare with their internal business clients and to stave off external competition. But are these professionals being adequately equipped to manage their business client “accounts”?

Traditional sales organizations are also discovering that the path to sustainable growth in their existing accounts cannot be realized easily, in spite of the almost maniacal transactional focus many have exhibited since the turn of the millennium. But are these professionals really behaving differently to any other sales professional the organization may have?

Regardless of which boundary is the focus, a good account manager must manage both internal and external stakeholders with the same level of professionalism. The time to look beyond the latest deal or project has arrived and Account Management initiatives are growing as a consequence.

Ian Savage is a Sales Effectiveness Consultant and Principal of The Nour Group, an Atlanta-based strategic advisory firm focused on developing the “art” and “science” of building long-term, value-based relationships.

For the complete Executive Briefing, sign up on RENetworks (http://renetworks.intronetworks.com/) – our private, intelligent, enterprise social networking platform and join the Profitable Growth Group.  Our next Webinar in the series is on Friday, June 11, 2010 on Strategic Account Planning (http://www.relationshipeconomics.net/profitablegrowth.html)

To learn more about how to become a member, click on the logo below:

I read with particular interest the following excerpt:

About 15 percent of teens ages 12-17 say they’ve received sexually suggestive photos or videos of someone they know, according to a study by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.  Four percent admit they’ve sent photos of themselves to others.

Amanda Lenhart, senior research specialist and author of the report, said “sexting,” as it’s called, has become a form of “relationship currency.”

“These images are shared as a part of or instead of sexual activity,” she said, “or as a way of starting or maintaining a relationship with a significant other.”

Here is where the respected Pew Research and Ms. Lenhart are dead wrong! “Relationship Currency” – as a registered trademarked by our firm, is defined as a win-win investment in a valuable and prioritized relationship, one that has an immediate and quantifiable impact to enhance both party’s condition.  Ms. Lenhart’s comment is a gross misuse of the term, particularly given the troubling topic of teen sexting.  We believe Relationship Currency Deposits to be of great value in our society, highly instrumental to one’s personal and professional success in 2010 and beyond heightened by the current environment of low trust.  It is unfortunate that Ms. Lenhart has decided to use an otherwise positive and wholesome phrase, instrumental to the success of many hard-working professionals, and unjustly associate it with inappropriate and juvenile acts.

Another reminder that even the most astute of analysts can get careless and lazy with their word choice!

What does “relationship currency” mean to you?

By David Nour, Founder – Relationship Economics
@davidnour

In advance of my upcoming Social Networking Technology Best Practices Book & DVD on Twitter for Business (with co-authors Michelle Cullison and Nhat Pham) my team and I have researched well over 1200 Twitter tools.  Many are candidly silly and useless – you could say the same for 50% of Twitter users!  Many were unique ideas, which became interesting products – but unfortunately, as we’ve seen too often, interesting products will not make a profitable and thus sustainable company.  In fact, many are developed by individuals and only a few weeks after their launch, are found to be broken or no longer available.

As Twitter continues to become an incredible tool for building and nurturing online relationships, so will the Twitter business model, its security infrastructure (given the recent Russia vs. Georgia cyber attacks and Twitter shutdown for two days – an eternity for social networking sites), and third party applications. Millions more will use it to expand their social circle, promote their business, keep their coursework organized, and more.

If you’ve heard me speak, attended one of our webinar, or read any of my books, you know that I talk about Relationship-Centric goals: business goals you can not achieve without building and nurturing great relationships with others.  Some of these tools will help you get there; others will simply enhance your Twitter user experience; most will undoubtedly raise the bar on your efficiency and effectiveness in the manner in which you use Twitter – not as a destination, but as a platform.  And that’s the real power and promise of social networking applications.  Just imagine…

For a complete list, see the booklet and DVD coming out next month.  Until then, here is an abbreviated version:

Personal Branding

Chapter Two – Top 20 Best Practices for Personal & Professional Branding.  Your name is your biggest brand, so what are you doing to package, market and sell “the brand called YOU?” (so famously asked by Tom Peters back in the 1990s)

1. SumtnSumtn: bring Twitter-conversation directly onto websites – for everyone – on every page. It opens up as a sidebar and people can login via Twitter and leave messages. You can also see what messages others have left for the page/site.

2. TweetMeUp: a simple way to organize tweetups (Twitter events/meetings). You can specify the location and mark it on a Google Map.

3. Twinester: lets you create or join groups and communities for Twitter. These groups are called Nests.  There are various categories to choose from. The landing page displays the hottest nests.

4. KeymanWeb: allows you to tweet in over 200 languages!  You don’t need to download or install anything. Just login to Twitter and select your preferred language. A virtual keyboard pops up and you can type away in your favorite language. You can tweet in over 15 Indian languages!!

5. Twitroduce: allows you to make an introduction, suggest a user, and receive user suggestions based on your unique interests. Think of Twitroduce as a more effective way to do #FollowFriday

6. Autopilot Tweet : provides full Twitter automation software for Twitter marketing. This includes a Twitter Friend Adder / Follower Adder, auto follow, follow by keywords, follow your followers, auto unfollow, and schedule tweets.  Autopilot Tweet costs $40.

7. TwitterFeed: Announce your blog post on Twitter with a customized message using TwitterFeed.

Information Gathering

Chapter Three: Tweeting with Value-Add.  Beyond the gimmicky manners in which some will try to build their superfluous list of followers, I’m a strong believer of expert first – speaker, presenter, author, writer, or consultant second!  With these tools, you and gather information for market research, blog posts, and your own simple curiosity…

8. search.tearn.com: Unique, social network for viewing photos and videos on any topic and chatting with Twitter users interested in the same subject. Search on any topic.

9. @myflightinfo: Use @myflightinfo to stay updated on your flight’s status

10. Twitscoop: Twitscoop shares what’s hot on Twitter at any given moment

11. Incoming!: a Twitter search client that lets you cut through the noise and find the tweets that matter to you most — so you can follow your favorite topics or keep track of what users are saying about your company’s products.

12. TipTop: semantic analysis of natural language which looks at data as a source of tips that help people solve problems. A problem that is at the top of someone’s mind can often be solved satisfactorily with a good set of tips.

13. TweetMixx: provides the latest trends across Twitter by showing the hottest content based on the number of times a link is being tweeted.

14. Tweeps.Info: helps you keep track of interesting stats about Twitter users, including average tweets per day, commonly tweeted keywords, social participation ratio and more.

15. TwitCam: enables you to stream live video which is connected to your Twitter account.

Relationship Building & Management

Chapter Four: Follow and Build Followers Intently.  Building and nurturing online relationships must start with the central theme of commonality – something which we can utilize to spark a conversation, a dialogue, a sharing opportunity.  Find more relevant Twitter users with the help of these tools….

16. Twitter Local: Using Twitter’s location-based search API, based on the Adobe AIR based application, you can see tweets from Twitter users in a specific location

17. Who Should I Follow?: Using this site, you can get good recommendations for Tweeps to follow

18. Twellow: Find Twitter users in a specific industry using this service

19. Mr. Tweet: Mr. Tweet is a personal networking assistant for Twitter, helping you find relevant followers

20. twiggit: Use this automated service to share the articles you digg on Twitter.

21. TweeTube: TweeTube makes it easy to share videos on Twitter.

Getting Productive

Chapter Five – Twitter for Personal and Professional Productivity.  Twitter for Business is as much focused on what NOT to do, as it is intended to share best practices in this evolutionary medium.  One fundamental challenge is creating a balanced approach between being online and engaged, and not having to live online.  Here is a culmination of tools to save time and optimize your Twitter list with some efficiency and effectiveness…

22. Ping.fm: Update your status on 40 different social networking sites from one location!

23. Summize: Retrieve information on Twitter quickly to search Twitter in real time

24. Twalala: Helps you control what you see (and more importantly what you don’t see) in your twitter stream.

25. Just Signal: Set up a filter using Just Signal to get only the tweets that discuss the keywords you’d like to read about

26. TweepSearch: Put your Twitter network to good use and search your followers for specific parameters

Analyze to Improve

Chapter Six – Twitter Experience Enhancers.  You can’t improve anything you don’t measure – that includes your return on relationships, influence and impact.  Here are some analysis tools to explore…

27. Twitter Grader: Learn your Twitter grade, your local Twitter Elite, and find new people to follow through Twitter Grader.

28. TweetStats: TweetStats offers a graphical analysis of your Twitter stats.

29. Twitter Friends: Carefully measure your Twitter conversations using Twitter Friends

30. Twinfluence: Twinfluence will measure your Twitter influence based on reach, velocity, and social capital

31. Tweet-Rank: Learn about the quality of your tweets by finding out which ones won or lost followers

32. Acamin: makes it easy to share files on Twitter with your followers.

33. Trendrr: Tracks the popularity and awareness of trends across a variety of inputs, ranging from social networks ( like Twitter), to blog buzz and video views downloads, all in real time.

Ubiquitous Computing – anywhere, anytime, on any device…

Chapter Nine – Twitter Mobile.  The social web, the interactive web, the engaging web knows no geographic boundaries.  It cares very little for devices of access and the immediate nature of it creates the need or more so, the interest to get online and join the conversation from anywhere.  Here are some mobile applications to consider:

34. Twitpic: Twitpic makes it easy to take mobile phone photos and share them using your Twitter account.

35. MyMileMarker: Keep track of your mileage with info sent via Twitter every time you fill up.

36. Jott: Jott makes it easy for you to tweet without ever having to type, transcribing your voice message to Twitter.

37. TwitterBerry: mobile client for posting updates to Twitter using your BlackBerry device. It works over the data network, so you don’t need to use SMS. Besides posting new Tweets, you can view your friend’s timeline, or the public timeline.

38. Pocket Tweets: This iPhone compatible application helps you get the lates tweets from your contacts, update your status remotely, or see what is happening around the world by viewing the public timeline.

39. fring: a mobile internet service & community that enables users to talk, chat & interact with others and their online communities, from their mobile phones. fring allows the freedom to communicate with all popular communities’ members (Skype, MSN Messenger, Google Talk, ICQ, SIP, Twitter, Yahoo!, AIM) without boundaries, and regardless of device, network operator, platform or the community(ies) to which they belong.

Twitter Next

Chapter Ten – Twitter Next?  From your health, to life tools, sharing tools, and even greater productivity, Twitter is becoming a 21st century platform versus a simple destination.  Here are some interesting ones in the journey ahead:

40. FoodFeed: This Twitter-based food log makes it easy for you to track what you’re eating.

41. gtFtr: Use the gtFtr tool to record your exercise activity on Twittr.

42. Xpenser: You can Twitter your expenses to Xpenser and they will be recorded for you.

43. Twittertise: Schedule your tweets and track their clickthroughs with this app designed for Twitter advertising.

44. TwtQpon: Create simple Twitter coupons for your business with TwtQpon.

45. Tweeteorology: Find tweets about the weather in any location through Tweeteorology.

46. Glue: Post links to books, movies, restaurants and more on Twitter through Glue.

47. TwitterNotes: Organize your notes using Twitter with TwitterNotes.

48. TwitWants: buy and sell items on Twitter. You need to tag your tweets appropriately for it to show up on TwitWants.  To post to TwitWants just tweet about something you want to buy, sell or give away and include #twitwants or @twitwantsdotcom

© 2009 The Nour Group, Inc.  All Right Reserved.

David Nour is a social networking strategist and one of the foremost thought leaders on the quantifiable value of business relationships.  A native of Iran, David came to the U.S. with a suitcase, $100 cash, limited family ties and no fluency in English! Fast forward 25 years and he has built an impressive career of entrepreneurial success, both within large corporations and early stage ventures. David is the author of Relationship Economics, The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Raising Capital, and The Social Networking Best Practices series.

He is a senior management advisor, and a featured speaker for corporate, association and academic forums, where he shares his knowledge and experience as a leading change agent and visionary for Relationship Economics® – the art and science of relationships. To learn more, please visit: www.relationshipeconomics.NET or call 1-888-339-1333.

As a mentor of mine often says, “If you’re not tooting your own horn there is no music!” Those whose livelihoods depend on externally focused relationships such as business development professionals, all understand the power of reference selling.  In any economy there is an enormous level of comfort in a buyer’s journey when they get unsolicited recommendations from other satisfied buyers – it’s simply called “credibility by association.”

When I work with professional service providers, I often ask about their current or perspective client reference selling efforts. Recently, a consultant at a client complained that although she had extensive industry experience and subject matter expertise, she was seldom tapped into for possible client engagements. So naturally, I asked her “what are you doing to package, market, sale, and proactively reference her value add, within the firm?”  When she gave me a blank stare, I offered what I consider five best practices to reference selling and a way to effectively “toot your own horn.”

The Five Best Practices of How to Most Effectively Reference Sell Within Your Organization:

1. Document your STAR success:  What was the Scenario you found yourself in that was challenging, what Tactics did you apply, what Actions did you take, and what Results did you create? Keep it poignant and capture this information from the “buyer’s” perspective.
2. Make it visually appealing: Although the content is critical, turn raw text into an elegantly designed and visually appealing one-sheet presentation that connects your actions with your audience.
3. Target your distribution: Email the electronic version and physically mail professionally printed hard-copies to your most valuable relationships within the firm as well as external to the organization.
4. Mass appeal: After you discretely target, send your document out to a broader base for more widespread visibility. Be sure to use discretion with this dissemination, take caution with ensuring you have appropriate permissions. Everyone likes to hear success stories; send it to industry publications, and place in the organizational blog, speak at the local university, present a paper of your findings at a conference. Simply put, repurpose this success into multiple visibility avenues.
5. Specificity drives credibility: To the extent possible share how you accomplished the desired results, provide uncommon wisdom, and follow on access to resources. Give them web sites that support your findings or your contact information for them to learn more. Ideally, include a supporting quote from the customers which specifically addresses their experience and recognized results or outcomes from your efforts.

Nour Bonus Tip: Very few people will read reference letters; almost everyone will read reference snippets – short one or two sentences which extract the essence or the highlights of the reference letter. “Sam made the impossible possible.”

When done well, internal reference selling will create a stronger personal brand and also appropriately deserved recognition for meritocracy.  Most importantly, it will give others the ammunition to engage and invite you to other similar opportunities to deliver exceptional experiences and results for others.

How are you reference selling your core strengths?