by Sales Guy

In today’s business environment new customers, existing customers, managers, and peers will look you up online in an effort to get a glimpse of who you are and what you're all about. They will use what they find to make instant judgments about you, and those judgments will impact your ability to influence and persuade them.

This is the point that many sales professionals miss when considering how much effort to place in building a presence online via social media. They wrongly assume that there should be a direct, measurable, 1 to 1 result from these activities. But, it just doesn’t work this way because customers care about getting their problems solved.

Your professional presence online positions you as the one person who is most capable of bringing solutions to the table. However, it is just one piece in a strategy designed to get people to like you, believe you, and trust you. With this in mind, take some time this week to review all of your online profiles and answer the question: “Based only what you see and read, would you BUY YOU?"

If the answer is "no" or "not sure," then you need to make some changes -- right now. Here's how.