A special note to let you know that today is the launch day of an intriguing book written by my friend Razi Imam. The book is called Driven.

I recommend you check it out at Amazon or Barnes and Noble. I just read it, really enjoyed it and learned from it. I think you will too. You can also download a free chapter at www.DrivenNation.com

Told in the context of a story, Razi’s book teaches the ancient Eastern concept of “Junoon” as the means to help people like you and me find their dreams and get in a state of single-minded focus that makes the achievement of those dreams and goals a certainty.

Whether you want to start a business, learn a sport or solve a major world problem, achieving the state of Junoon should be where you start. Plus you may not read another non-fiction business book this year that features people from the future (really!)

By Nigel Edelshain, Sales 2.0

Why do sales people use “plan D” as the default when cold calling?

As you may also know I’ve come up with this approach called “Social Calling” that works so much better than traditional cold calling.

I came up with this approach not because I found some tablets hanging out on a hill in Northern New Jersey but because I spent years making thousands of ineffective cold calls. Then I started a telesales firm and had my team make tens of thousands of ineffective cold calls.

By Nigel Edelshain, Sales 2.0

I'm having a bit of a "Mashable Moment" today (aka this post is about tools/technology).

I've seen several new feature updates come out of LinkedIn lately and I feel several of these are important for you to know about. These updatesare giving you new ways to use LinkedIn as a "Social Calling" tool (my methodology for smart prospecting for those who have not heard that term ad nauseam from me already).

The update LinkedIn launched today is a new feature to follow companies. This feature is important in my opinion because it gives you a new source of trigger events that you can use to help you "get it" to your target accounts.

By Nigel Edelshain, Sales 2.0

I've read some stuff recently that seeks to categorize all forms of prospecting as cold calling. I'm not onboard with throwing everything into the cold bucket.

Wikipedia says cold calling is “approaching prospective customers or clients, typically via telephone, who were not expecting such an interaction”

I don’t believe referral selling (or referral selling using social media, aka Social Calling) is cold calling. That’s where I would like to draw my cold calling line in the sand.

I can deal with trigger-event based calling being called cold calling. And can even deal with smart “socially engineered” calls being called cold calling. But I draw the line at calling a call “cold” when someone makes a real introduction. To me that’s a call you are expecting.

By Nigel Edelshain, Sales 2.0

I went to speak to my friend and New York master sales trainer, David Leaver of Opus Partners, on this one. (You may have noticed a trend in my last two blogs posts that I am interviewing other experts. This is because I don’t know everything).

David has been at this sales training game for a while and as such is not easily impressed by gimmicks or gadgets that are “all flash and no cash.” So it’s notable that David has taken to LinkedIn like the proverbial mallard. That should tell all you Sales 2.0 doubters that there’s something here – my opinion.

Nigel: David what are the primary ways you use LinkedIn to sell?

By Nigel Edelshain, Sales 2.0

Every time I speak at a conference or do a webinar someone asks about Twitter. Seems like that bird is a bit of an obsession these days.

I have a couple of theories on how sales people should use Twitter but I thought I’d check my sanity this week and ask a brain trust of sales experts for their top tips on how sales people should use Twitter. I asked them...

“What's the best way for sales people to use Twitter to develop leads?”

Nigel Edelshain, Sales 2.0

My wife is still a little annoyed with me that I did not start Jigsaw.

Now, I love Garth and Fowler like brothers (well I’m an only child so I’ve got to do something). Actually all the folks at Jigsaw are awesome. The only problem is I thought of the Jigsaw concept many years ago probably about the same time as Garth and Fowler but they were smart enough to do something about it. These days Jigsaw has a million members and has “crossed the chasm” and one day Garth may ask me to visit his mansion in North Carolina or he’ll have so much money his mansion will be in San Mateo (blimey, I don’t know if Mayor Bloomberg can even afford a mansion in San Mateo but maybe).

Anyway, this blog post is not really about Garth’s personal life or Jigsaw but it’s about a new tool I just saw this week that totally reminds me of my thought patterns when I saw Jigsaw – as in “duh, I should have built that”.

That new tool is called PeopleMaps.

It’s a question I’ve been asked a lot over the last few years. “What are the best sales books?"

Here’s my top 20 sales books somewhat in order (putting them in order is super-tough for me as it’s like choosing between children but I took my best shot).

If there’s enough interest I’ll dig down into individual reviews of each book in future post (or at least say the top 5 or 10). Let me know via the comments if you fancy that.

By Nigel Edelshain, Sales 2.0

Last week I attended a great webinar with Joanne Black and David Nour. These two are a dynamic duo for me in that they bring together years of experience in referral selling with years of experience in social media. The basic two compounds of the amalgam “Social Selling” (my baby)

So admittedly I was predisposed to like this webinar as I love the subject of sales people using social media to sell and especially the subject of sales people filling their sales pipeline more effectively using social media rather than volume cold calling – the “old smile and dial”.

But the bit of the webinar I want to share is not any of the nuggets of information Joanne or  David served up (and there were several of these) it is actually information from the audience. The information is from a couple of online polls Joanne and David carried out during the webinar.