The Salesby5 Blog

Business schools teach students to obsess over return on investment and executives want to know exact ROI and precise campaign by campaign spreadsheets. This trend is causing marketers to become too cautious and boring. While the information and tracking is useful it often means that marketers will not GO BIG with innovation, experimenting, being unique. David Meerman Scott says When CEOs and executives push back with an ROI excuse, I ask, “What’s the return on investment on the army of landscapers who are constantly at work on the plantings around your corporate headquarters?”  Consider Dell’s approach that says don’t be afraid to try something, just measure the results.

photo by phoenixdailyphoto

How many companies really use technology to save money or make money or build teams? Salesby5 has a very high standard for hiring, mostly based on individual strengths and capabilities. We look for people who believe in our core values and can represent our brand extremely well. After interviewing here, I (Sarah) felt honored to be chosen. I believe that every member of our team feels proud to be a part of such a special group.

About two months ago, some things in my life changed, and I decided to move away from San Antonio. Rather than fearing for my job, I went straight to Erik and told him about my situation. We chose to put our state of the art technology to the test! With the use of our BlackBerry devices, Dell laptops equipped with shared calendars and contacts by Microsoft Outlook, google talk, a Sprint Air Card during the move, and Foonz conference call service, I have managed to stay an important part of the team. What we do and how well we do it have not changed. Among other responsibilities, Erik and Nan rely on me for all of their scheduling from nearly 1,000 miles away. Great technology is one thing that our team could not afford to sacrifice. This is the future of the work environment. Are you investing in great technology? And if so, are you using it to better your team?

On Friday, I woke up to a Dell laptop that only showed beautiful lines, but left my computer useless.  I called Dell and the support technician wanted to go through the traditional troubleshooting.  I asked if he would allow me to email him with a youtube video that showed exactly what problem I was experiencing.  He said he could neither receive emails nor access youtube.  I was annoyed, so I sent out the following tweet on twitter:
“Dear Dell, I could show your support team EXACTLY what’s wrong with my XPS M1330 if they had youtube access. Apparently, it is a common prob.” – 10:22 AM

I then received this tweet from @chrisbatdell:
@nanpalmero What’s going on with your Dell XPS? Is there something I can assist with? – 10:32 AM

Within 10 minutes, one of Dell’s excellent staff followed up with me to make sure my issue was taken care of. Additionally, Chris followed up with me to let me know that he would take care of my issue at Dell and to please contact him with any problems. Similar to my Sandisk experience with Rachel, I was so pleased.

How do Dell, Sandisk, Sprint and other companies keep track of their brand?  The foundation is Twitter Search.  This allows you to search Twitter for a keyword or keywords.  Instead of hitting that website, you can try TweetDeck and Twhirl, two of the most popular applications for laptops and desktops.  Here you can use Twitter Search within the application, so you can keep an eye on your brand, yourself and even better, see where your competitor is dropping the ball.

Need more help?  Drop us a line, we can show you how to better monitor Twitter for your keywords.