Ah, what a finer sales and marketing world we live in these days. Back in the day, when you were in sales and made a cold call, that is exactly what it was. You were “coming in cold”, with no knowledge of your prospect other than their name and phone number. The advent of social media has been beneficial to both the salesperson, and to the prospect.

The salesperson is able to glean a tremendous amount of information regarding their prospect, which benefits both parties. How so? The salesperson can make more directed, professional, and value-based calls to prospects, which in turn will waste far less of their time. I’ve never minded getting cold-called by a company that did some research and brought me an idea of potential value. I DO mind being cold-called when it’s obvious there was no homework done, the salesperson has made no linkage between my likely business needs and their products, and they mispronounce my name (okay, I can see that one).

Salesforce.com has done an admirable job of linking social media with the platform. But I’ve been looking for a simple app that gives me a quick overview of the social medial landscape of Leads or Contacts. This past week I installed a free app from the AppExchange called Fliptop, and I highly recommend it. Easy to install, and it nicely presents a clean social media overview on Lead and Contact pages.