Shamus Brown (pictured left) over at The Shameless Sales Blog posted a strategy on how you can get customers to call you back.

I loved it and decided I would try it out on an event organizer. This event organizer has punked me off twice. He has a radio show and an organization where he holds monthly seminars.

Back in November, this event organizer double booked me on his Internet radio program. I’ll never forget it because it was a lousy day to drive as it was the first snowfall of the season in Toronto. People seem to lose their minds and all sense the Creator has given them when snow falls in Toronto for the first time in the winter season.

But, I digress…

So, I had to leave my home west of Toronto and drive 30 minutes into downtown Toronto just to find out that he “forgot” that he booked me as he climbed comfortably into his host chair with his guest, another author.

Fine, things happen.

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Although I don’t sell to big companies, I enjoy reading Jill Konrath’s blog called Selling to Big Companies. She recently posted a question on her blog about LinkedIn, a social networking tool. Jill’s question:

“As a seller, how do you use LinkedIn to increase your sales?”

One of the people she interviewed to answer this question is Scott Allen, co-author of The Virtual Handshake. I’ve known Scott for 4 years now and he’s a speaker at the Social Media Telesummit. He will lead a session at the Telesummit on how to price, promote and position your social media services.

While Scott said that LinkedIn is great for generating leads and finding partners, he said that LinkedIn is best used to accelerate sales. In fact, Scott says:

“Search for people in your prospect’s company who are not closely involved in your deal - preferably 2nd degree contacts, not 3rd degree. Ask for an informational interview. Ask your interview subject about the priorities that are going on at the company — what are the high-level factors that might be influencing the buying process. Be completely open/transparent.”

This is a great way to eliminate the cold call. Well, you are calling, but because you’re linked to a friend or colleague to that person in LinkedIn, he or she will more readily be open to speaking with you.

How are you using LinkedIn? If you’re not, why not? Share your comments below.

I’m organizing an event for February. Part of this is preparing the speakers’ bios for the sales page in bullet form.

There are 25 speakers and as I visit each page one by one to copy and paste their bio, each of the speakers are doing amazing things. I’m honoured to be associated with a smart bunch of people.

There’s only one problem. Some of the bios are so boring. Some just list what the expert has done and where they were featured. They’re president of this and have been featured in that magazine and teach at this university.

What these bios are missing are the results, the numbers that show what has been done and for whom. Bios should be results oriented where you quantify what you did while you were president of this or featured in that magazine or teach at this university.

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I was reading an article in today’s Globe & Mail about Microsoft’s plans to become the #2 online advertiser (currently, Microsoft is #3).

This is truly fascinating.

In sales, we want to be #1, but here’s a company - a really big and profitable company - who’s aiming to be #2. Microsoft’s 5 year goal is to edge out Yahoo (who’s currently #2) and trail Google (who dominates #1) using its 10, 20, 30, 40 Plan.

More on What’s Your 10, 20, 30, 40 Plan?