Are You Skeptical?
By Paul McCord

I'm sure you've heard of social media. I'm sure you've heard what social media can
do you for your business. I'm sure you've heard that social media is going to
change your life. I'm sure you've heard that if you're not involved-if you haven't
embraced social media unquestioningly and with checkbook open, you'll be left in
the trash heap of business history. I'm sure you've noticed that all of these dire
warnings about the hell you'll be relegated to if you fail to give your life over to the
empowering wonders of social media are coming from product developers, trainers,
and consultants of-social media-that is, those with a very vested in interest in its
sweeping success.

Sorry, but I'm highly skeptical. Not of its value. Certainly I see value in some of it.
Yet I see a lot of hype and useless techno gizmo flash in a great deal of it. In the
end, I see value, not salvation. I see uses, not a revolution in how people connect
and communicate. I see humans still being human-including that minority who find
it safer connecting with a piece of technology than a real human, cloistered in their
office or bedroom playing like they're building a network of close associates when
all they're doing is avoiding that most frightening of all human activities-interacting
with real, live, in-person humans.

As I said, I certainly see value. I see value in the ability to communicate
instantaneously. Well, we had the ability to do that already, but social media allows
us to mimic face to face interaction to some extent. I see the ability to find and
create relationships with men and women we would not have had the opportunity
to do so without the technology. I have friends and associates now that I would
never had in the past. Some of these men and women live literally half way around
the world from me. Some I've gotten to know very well. But the reality is that no
matter how much time we spend communicating via email, on Skype, or through
any other technological means, the relationship lacks the depth and dimensions
that my one-on-one, physically in-person relationships have.

I have clients and prospects that are in countries that I know I'll never visit. We
interact, we communicate, we make real progress in changing their business. But
these relationships lack the depth and dimension of those clients I deal with face-
to-face.


Sure, social media gives us the opportunity to prospect in some new ways. It gives
us the opportunity to find and meet people we'd never meet otherwise. It gives
prospects, vendors, and the curious new ways to find us. It gives clients,
competitors, and others new ways to praise us, recommend us, attack us. But it
cannot give us a substitution for the experience of connecting with a human in a
human way. It isn't a substitute for living in the real world, with real world business
and social relationships, with old fashioned marketing and prospecting, with a plane
ticket in one hand and phone in the other. We'll still have to have the soles of our
shoes replaced, our hair combed, our suitcase packed, our car ready to go.Few of the product developers, trainers, or consultants overtly claim that social
media will replace these things. Most, if asked, will acknowledge they won't. But
when you listen to many of them, their message is something very different. I read
one who claimed that if you're not spending at least four hours a day working social
media you're doomed to fail in the coming business environment-and by the way,
he'll teach you how to do it for just a small fee of $3,500 a month.

I encourage my clients to engage social media but to reject the hype.

Some of the developers, consultants, and trainers of social media that I know think
I'm doing a great disservice to my clients. Some have told me that I shouldn't be
allowed to misguide my clients in this way. I've been told by one that if I had any
integrity I'd get out of the training industry since I don't understand that the world
has left me behind.

This in my opinion is nothing but the same hype, the same wishful thinking, the
same hope that they've found the MECCA of business that preceded it with the
telegraph, the telephone, the fax, the mobile phone, and every other advancement
in technology. All of these changed business, it didn't revolutionize it.

It's the Jetson's mentality where we're all going to be flying instead of driving,
pushing a button instead of vacuuming the floor ourselves, sitting behind a
computer instead of engaging humans in human relationships.

Yes, I'm skeptical and I continue to encourage my clients to be the same. Engage
the technology; reject the dreams. Use the technology; forget the message of
business salvation. Find the technology that is really useful to you and don't worry
about each new toy, each new tweak, each new incarnation of the business
messiah. Don't worry about rushing to be the first to embrace a new twist-if it's
really that important, it will be there later-but if you get so caught up in the hype
that you invest your life in it, will your business be there later?


Paul McCord is a leading authority on prospecting, referral selling, and personal marketing.
He is president of McCord Training, a Midland, Texas based sales training, coaching, and
consulting company. His first book, Creating a Million Dollar a Year Sales Income: Sales
Success through Client Referrals (John Wiley and Sons, 2007), is an Amazon and Barnes
and Noble best-seller and is quickly becoming recognized as the authoritative work on
referral selling. His second book, SuperStar Selling: 12 Keys to Becoming a Sales
SuperStar has just been released. He may be reached at
pmccord@mccordandassociates.com or visit his sales training website at
www.mccordandassociates.com or his highly popular blog
http://salesandmanagementblog.com

Copyright 2008, Paul McCord. May be reproduced without change, with proper attribution
and brief bio. Notice of when and where article is to appear to
pmccord@mccordandassociates.com