This was last year’s Epiphany.

What led to the new epiphany was my pontificating on CRM systems.  This was a recruiter-centric talk about the future of recruiting.  Many recruiter CRMs have connections to LinkedIn profiles.   Every one of these, that I have seen, has been implemented incorrectly, not due to any fault of the vendors.  In an optimal situation, the data inside the Profile should be mashed up with current CRM data.  Instead, LinkedIn requires usage of their API which brings back a canned LinkedIn profile. This is what I call “social linkage”.

The optimal situation would be a pair of  “social agents”.  While a company may have 1000 company prospects  in their CRM, they may only contact 50 in a given day. One “social agent” would automatically refresh the entire CRM on a longer cycle such as once per quarter.  Another just-in-time social agent would update the CRM just before the outreach process.  Why is this important?  LinkedIn is not a definitive data-source; nothing is.  What happens when you combine Facebook, Google+, Jigsaw (now data.com), Foursquare, twitter and whatever social network Microsoft comes up with?  Are you going to clutter your Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics interface with 6-8 little snippets, much with redundant information?   This gets ugly fast.  The optimal implementation is to have a social agent retrieve LinkedIn, Data.com, Google+, Facebook, Twitter information.  Next, mash, score, apply analytics to present the information in a way that optimally fits your selling model.

What about Apps?

Enough setup.  First, I’m a huge iOS (iPhone/iPad) fan are there are some simply amazing apps out there.  Same thing for Android.  The iOS & Android AppStore model has really opened up a world of possibilities.  However, there is a problem.  While these Apps do great singular things, they do not communicate with each other.

That is a problem.

I’ll take FourSquare, the social check-in service, as an example.  Right now I’m at the SanFran airport.  When I got here, I had to open FourSquare on my iPhone, search for San Francisco International and check in.

This is why people get check-in burn out.  A check-in service is fun; keep track of your network of friends, compete for points, etc.  It should not be work.  Here is how it should work.

Build a special class of Apps called Agents.  Right now, there are Apps that can “push” notifications and work in the background, but that is limited.  An Agent would be able to interact with other Apps.  Example:  A Foursquare Agent could track my location and push check-ins to me for approval.  Now I don’t want to be checking into every gas station I drive by, so I would need an Agent to control my privacy/whereabouts.  The privacy Agent would screen the check-ins coming from the Foursquare agent.  Check-ins would then be automatic, or prompted for my to confirm, or anything I wanted it to be.

Newsflash: I just pulled up my Foursquare App to get a screenshot of it for this blog.  While I had it open, I saw that a friend of mine, Jenny D. also checked in to SFO.  Since I got sick on notifications popping up from Foursquare, I had notifications turned off (essentially, every app controls this individually, which is poor architecture). Luckily, I saw the notification and I would have the option to say hello if time permitted.  If I had a notifications App, that controlled all notifications from all Apps, I could set it up so when I was traveling, I would get all notifications from people in close proximity.

Setting these types of permissions on every individual App, would be (and is) a nightmare.  The only way to control it is with a master-permissions Agent.  A master permissions agent is called a “Clewd”.  I derived it from the word “include”.   The Clewd will be the agent that forces the world to work on your terms. You choose what to be included into.  Apps will not have the ability to push information in any direction, unless the Clewd agent allows it.

Your own Clewd should be stored on you mobile device.  When Facebook adds another feature, they would not be able to opt you in without asking you saying hello to your Clewd agent on your mobile device.

The Clewd is inevitable.  If you don’t see it yet, you are not overly connected. You have not experience “App-Overload”.  You have not joined the 4th social network, download the iPhone App and then turned off notifications.

The Clewd will control more than just the interactions between Apps.  If you have a business email address, you probably get a mass amounts of newsletters, webinar invites, and product announcements.  The marketing automation system that sends you these emails is the same as an App; *it* controls the permission options. You have no control over options;it forces you into it’s choices.  Example: Opt-in or Opt-out?  I say screw them!  I want to be in total control of how the world interacts with me.

Here are examples of a Clewd and a set of Agents working together with emails.

1. For every incoming invitation to an event, webinar, etc, an agent parses of the date and time as well as the vendor information. Check the Clewd if you have explicitly blocked this vendor, if not, Agent #2 compares to your current Calendar, if you are not open at that time, deletes the email or adds it to your Calendar (as an option), based on your Clewd preferences.

2. For each incoming email, have one agent extract the contact information, agent #2 checks your CRM for *outgoing* emails from you.  The Agent provides the Clewd with credentials  “This email is from someone you have in-turn emailed before” says the Agent.  The Clewd likes that, as you have set it up that way.  Since Agents are very-flexible, you don’t have to be limited to a simple “exact email match”, it can look for anyone at the same company.

3.  Expanding on the previous example:  For all non-recognized emails, don’t show them as they come in. That can be distracting.  Show all non-recognized emails once every two hours in a group; don’t mix them with high-priority ones. Let me delete them as a group. Sorry Google: “Priority Inbox” was poorly implemented.  Take this idea: please.

There are 1000′s of potential uses of a Clewd.  What happens when the RFID label on the bottle of water you just bought communicates with your Ford Focus computer, which then tells the Billboard you are approaching on the hi-way that you have driven 200 miles and 4 hours since your last bottle of water.  It then shows you a ice-cold-water ad, just turn into the oncoming exit.  This is the world we are headed for unless the permissions rest with the individual.   Watch the movie Minority Report. With Mobile outselling PC’s, the majority of future interactions with technology will happen on your mobile device.  Apple and Google can be leaders here.  Agents that interact between Apps will be a prerequisite.

Where is the Clewd to be stored?  This all-important set of rules that defines how the technology world will interact with you?  Ask yourself: Do you want Facebook or LinkedIn to control it?  They would love that.  My ultimate prediction is one of two places.  My first preference is stored, securely on my mobile device. Secondly is a 3rd party service, secure, where you pay $20 a year to have them manage your world-rules, your Clewd. This service provider cannot have a conflict of interest; it cannot generate revenue via ads.  No Facebook, Google, etc.  It may be a new business model.

The future must be permission-based and we each must control our own permissions. If we don’t it will be a world where conversations stop and everything is pushing and yelling trying to out-do each other.

Will the AppStore turn into the AgentStore?  Probably not, but in the future, it will be the Agents, not that Apps that have unique value.  What would you pay for an Agent that made all email communication obey your rules?  I would drop $100 in a heartbeat.  What is an email App worth… $1.00?

I’ll continue thoughts on this topic as I have them.  The question next is how to force those pushing content to obey the rules of the Clewd.

Note:  At this point I am not sure if a Clewd is singular or Plural, meaning one Clewd contains all your rules or each rule is a Clewd…I’m leaning towards one-contains-all.

The focus for this article will be business social networking.  If you are worried about your Facebook friends and photos and the life sucking that goes on in personal social networks, don’t worry, they will be around for awhile.  They will be dying a totally different death.  That will have to be a future blog posting.  Ask me over a beer and I will explain it.

Ask three people to define business social networking and you will get three different answers.  Try it. Going even further, I hypothesized that you ask ten different people about the benefits of business social networking, you will get ten different answers.  I was recently inspired by a quote attributed to Steve Jobs about dogma as “Being satisfied with the results of other peoples thinking.”  This article will be as dogma free as possible.  While I can’t help being influenced by everything that is being written about social networking, I have come up a few unique conclusions.

1.  LinkedIn is not a social network. Most of my contacts are either in a sales or recruiting role.  In the early days, the premise behind LinkedIn was that you can connect to many people through a chain of trusted referrals. It does not matter what the creators of LinkedIn claim it to be.  LinkedIn was founded on the idea that you can go through a series of trusted connections to network with a target person.  It was a noble idea, however, LinkedIn is now controlled by the mob.  The real question is… how are the majority of people using LinkedIn?   The answer:  Get as many connections as possible, build as big a network as possible.  Next, when you find someone in LinkedIn that you want to connect with, read their background and connect directly.

LinkedIN is a social database.

2.  Social CRM is a buzz word.

The community aspect of SocialCRM is aptly named.  Unfortunately, the average person confuses the community, group and collaboration aspects of SocialCRM with popular social networking sites like LinkedIn. They are different.

SocialCRM is not concisely defined.

When everyone is copying what everyone else is thinking, you get a buzz word.  Fun to report, you don’t need to think too much to find other articles to read, alter and republish.  Read about Social CRM and then write about Social Recruiting. It goes both ways.  But what is Social CRM?  SOCIAL is the base part of the equation.

Unfortunately SocialCRM is being used as a catch-all phrase and it is confusing the consumer. For clarity,  SocialCRM should be broken into 2 distinct terms.  Here is a way to clarify thinking and talking about it.

CollaborationCRM – Denoting the functions within a CRM that allow group collaboration, community connection and project sharing.  Salesforce chatter is a good example.

SocialCRM -  Connectivity to existing social networks like LinkedIn.  This is the definition, when polled,  that most people believe social CRM to be.  (Straw poll yielded 9 out of 10 assuming this definition).

Social Linkage – defined below

The current implementions of Social CRM (as defined above) defeat the purpose of having a CRM.  The best implementation of a CRM is when the CRM is self-contained.  Art Papas, CEO of Bullhorn, an Applicant Tracking System (recruiter CRM) describes it well.  “Our clients live inside Bullhorn”.   The best CRM should have everything the users need, inside the CRM.

Example: you click on a LinkedIN link next to a contact record in your CRM.  What happens?  A browser page opens and you are in a separate web page, disconnected technology, outside your CRM.  This is Social Linkage, not social CRM.  Bad process.

If a CRM is implemented correctly, you should not have to leave the CRM to perform important tasks.

Most of what is touted as Social CRM today is simply Social Linkage.  Social CRM sounds better, sounds integrated, but in every case I have seen…it is not.   What is the challenge here?  Until LinkedIN and Facebook and all the other networks allow tighter integrations,  social linkage will be all that we have.   LinkedIN wants you to stay on LinkedIN,  Facebook wants you on Facebook.  Salesforce wants to be able to say they have connection to LinkedIN.

3. Marketing, not sales, is driving “the idea” of Social CRM

If you look at who is pushing the SocialCRM idea, it is marketing.  The dream:  Having EVERY contact in your CRM mashed up with all social network information.  This would be great for marketing and market segmentation, but unnecessary for sales.   The Reality:  Click, click, and more clicks.  The current state of SocialCRM is, at best, Social Linkage.  The reality does not match the dream.  Marketing is pushes the dream and leaves sales stuck with the reality.

If you have a question about what sales thinks about “Social CRM” as it relates to social network data, look at the ratings The LinkedIn plugin got on salesforce CRM.   Don’t get me wrong,  I am a fan on LinkedIN.  Visionary concept, great source of data, however, it is not seamless with CRM.  If anything the combination is anti-social CRM.

Attn marketers: Your focus should be social media, let sales people worry about and define SocialCRM

4.  Social Agents will replace Social CRM. Social CRM/Social Linkage tries to solve the problem of having “an answer” for every contact in your CRM.  Every contact that you can view in your CRM will, if available, have a link to external social network profile(s).  Services like RapLeaf aggregate multiple social network links associated with a specific person.  Due to the sheer volume of information, mashups are not always correct due to the ambiguous nature of contact information.  The end result:  You click on multiple different links in your CRM and open multiple disparate sources of information.  Even when the links are correct you get Another Bad process.

Enter social agents.

The best products are built from dreaming an ultimate scenario.  Then, working backwards to what is possible.  If there were no constraints…What is the ultimate potential of Social CRM?  Answer:  Every CRM contact has real-time social network information from all social networks.  This information would not be linked, but mashed up inside the CRM.  This is not happening.  Why?  (1) It is not in the interest in the Social Network (really social database) to make the information free and fully available.  (2)  The incentive chain of $ is not there.

So if it is a bad idea to pre-populate social network information for every contact in your CRM, what should be done?  On demand, social agents.

The average sales rep engages 10-20 contacts per day.  A real-time, on-demand social agent is fully capable of making a real time extraction of social network information, mashing that information up inside the CRM and presenting it in a usable format for a sales rep.   This is what sales wants.

Conversely, I have seen a sales reps presented with a CRM that has Linkage to social networks.  While the potential is exciting to the sale rep, they are fired up about the available information available, usage drops off dramatically.

As soon as marketing starts thinking and stops listening to reporters & consultants (who listen to reporters), demand for social agents will proliferate.

5. Social Data comes in 2 distinct flavors

Where someone went to college will never change.  It is a fact, fixed in time.  Where someone currently works is a fluid social data point.   A fixed social data point only needs to be found and stored once in a CRM, whereas fluid data points require social agents to keep them updated.

Fixed and fluid social data points should be treated differently.  Why is this important to understand?  Treating  fluid and fixed data points, with different agents reduces the refresh and load on the technology infrastructure that empowers social agents.  In addition, what can be done with the result of social agents varies based on the information being fixed or fluid.

Last thought. Adding a human-verification element, to cement data accuracy, is realistic on a fixed data point.  Scan once, verify and store forever.

6.  Social Intuition will evolve from social agents

Once we have on-demand social agents, then what?  Take a mind walk:  We now have a CRM, where, on-demand, or slightly before  (predictive system)  social network information is extracted, parsed and mashed up inside the CRM.  No need to live anywhere but the CRM.  A dream of efficiency.

Now that I have all this information about someone.  How do I leverage it?  The fact that someone went to the University of Miami (The Hurricanes) is something that would be in social network profile.  Thus, via a social agent, I would have the University of Miami as a data point in the CRM.  However, would I know the UM mascot is the Hurricanes?  Would I know the score from the football team the night before?  Would I know the weather in Miami that day?   The answer to all these questions is no.

Enter Social Intuition

Social intuition is a combination of social network data points combined with real-time agents to gather additional talking points.   The prerequisite for performing this type of mash-up is (1) Aggregated & scored data from Social Networks (2) Highly accurate fixed data points (i.e.  Mascots for every college)  and (3) Intelligent agents that leverage, fixed data points with social data points to “intuit” additional information.

7.  Company-centric (NOT contact-centric) social mash-ups will prevail

Even with the proliferation of social networks, the average person has just a few, if any data points about them.  Multiply that by the number of people at a company and patterns emerge.  Patterns that would not be apparent in the microcosm of one person.  The best approach in sales is to engage multiple points of contact (people) at a company on the onset of first contact.  This approach is called Sphere of Influence Selling and is well documented in The Sphere of Influence Selling webinar.

Remember:  You talk to people, but the company writes the check.

8.  CRM Socialbases become the ultimate silos

The most valuable list is the list that no one else has.  Think about it.

The most unique set of data is inside your CRM.  Don’t worry about the world,  just about your clients and the companies you want to sell to.  Gather rich data from social networks and other sources and combine it with your CRM.  The future king of all data sets will not be inside social networks.  Companies will mash data from social networks and combine it with conversation history, notes, purchasing habits, etc.

CRM Socialbases will be built on a combination of Fixed and Fluid social data points.

The value of any list can be scored based on data quality & competitive advantage.  For example, LinkedIN has great data, but it is it exclusive?  No.  Anyone with a bunch of connection can get to the names of almost everyone.

9.  Things to watch

Bleeding edge: Watson.  An IBM supercomputer that will, in the coming months, be competing with top Jeopardy players.  In initial testing, it beat the average player, that were winners, on the Jeopardy TV show.  5 years ago this was not possible.   Watson is an answer machine.   What happens when you connect an answer machine with your CRM SocialBase?

Hot: Salesforce chatter: I like this technology.  Nothing that can’t be copied.  Expect to see it in every CRM within a few years. Brings another aspect of social into CRM, in terms of work teams and projects.

Fun: Proximity based social networks – Not a primary technology, but something that should be eventually mashed up. FourSquare is a good example.   (Yes, I am the mayor of Broadlook).

Practical: CRM Profiler – The next iteration of the technology is cloud-based, lives inside the CRM, jumps over social linkage and includes social agents.  Build your own social knowledge-base.

10.  Black swans emerging?

Black swan theory Something that changes everything in a space.  Denotes an occurrence that no one though of.

LinkedIn CRM – It makes sense, but would they alienate CRM’s that currently mash up with them?  It has happened before.  In the recruiting space, AIRS, a recruiter add on tool, created their own applicant tracking system.  Guess who integrates with AIRS today?  Nothing of importance.  Next AIRS was acquired by a RPO (recruitment process outsourcing) company… how many competing RPO’s will continue to use them?  The number is declining.

Facebook CRM – That would be real scary, however, a spin-off without the facebook label might fly.  The yo-yo ethics of their privacy policy is comical.  Can’t ignore them.

Salesforce acquisition of LinkedIn:  More likely to be Oracle, SAP, Microsoft or a company that has deep pockets.  Salesforce already acquired Jigsaw.

Scariest combo:  Google Acquires LinkedIn, creates the Google CRM and makes it free.  It actually makes total sense.  If Google wants to push ads all day long, while people are at work.  This is the way.  Gmail is already the best web-based email system.  They have google docs.  They have a mobile platform.  All the components are there.  If you take a step further and look at the talent they have hired, patterns emerge.   Nuff said.

Recap:

Social Network -> Social Database -> Social CRM  ->  Social Linkage -> Social Agents -> CRM SocialBase.

You heard it here first!