I hope you”ll join me for Boosting Returns With Web 2.0 Technologies, a special 90-minute interactive webinar, July 23, 2009, at 12-1:30 Eastern; 11-12:30 Central; 10-11:30 Mountain;  9-10:30 Pacific.  It is hosted by Buyouts Conferences” Private Equity University.

Our panelists are

David Teten, CEO, Teten Advisors

Michael S. Pfeffer, Managing Director, Post Capital

Seth Levine,  Managing Director, Foundry Group

During this 90-minute online seminar you”ll learn the following:

• The skinny on Gerson Lehrman, GuidePoint Global, Evalueserve Circle of Experts, DeMatteo Monness, Coleman Research Group and other expert networks–how to get the most out of them;
• What it takes to join and take advantage of the most popular gated communities for investors and executives, including sites such as ACG Network, Angelsoft, INMobile, and Albourne Village;
• How to use Web 2.0 services to perform background checks on managers, and to quickly identify and talk with customers, competitors and suppliers of target companies;
• Which leading professional and social networking sites to join to land introductions, keep tabs on colleagues, recruit executives, find co-investors and unearth opportunities for new transactions;
• How to use a blog to differentiate yourself and attract deal flow to you…instead of chasing after deals;
• How to easily and cheaply keep your contact management system up to date and exhaustive.
• How to optimize what people see when they Google your name

Register now and you”ll get two special benefits: a complimentary PDF copy of The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online, a book on how to find and close deals leveraging online technology; and a PDF copy of the exclusive slides from the Webinar.

Order a DVD.

This is not a webinar on the mechanics of how to use LinkedIn - this is focused entirely on the business strategy of using LinkedIn - how to create value for your business and career and how to be most productive with the time you spend on LinkedIn. Some of the specific topics include:

• The latest “dos and don”ts” for building an effective profile that gains maximum exposure in search engines
• Tips for direct one-to-one outreach-the right way to find and connect with others
• Ways to create value from the networks of others
• Effective use of the Q&A function: how to find the nuggets, what and when to answer, as well as potential legal liabilities
• How to use the answers section to be recognized as-or to find-an expert in your field
• Understanding and utilizing the power of LinkedIn groups
• How LinkedIn can be used as a tool for competitive research and product launches
• Stealth strategies for seeding conversations
• How to maximize productivity-profiles and routines (how often to check it, avoiding e-mail overload, etc.)
• Ways to merge blog feeds into your profile
• Understand how and why a paid LinkedIn membership can be of value to you

This is a 90-minute webinar with plenty of time for live Q&A. Registration is $149 and includes an activity guide to maximize your learning experience.

I had read a galley copy of the book prior to the kickoff, and the event was functionally a summary of the ideas in the book.  I definitely agree with the big idea of the book, which is that a major driver of your professional and personal success is a small number of high-quality, tight relationships.  I also agree with Keith that your support group can be more effective if you formalize it and add some structure.  Keith acknowledges that this is hardly a new idea; he’’s popularizing the well-known concept of a mastermind group.  I blogged a user’’s manual for a mastermind group back in 2005. 

There are lots of books out there on success and personal development, full of wisdom.  Unfortunately, the great majority of readers look at the books, but don”t implement a single idea.  Keith discusses this problem, and advances what I think is a powerful solution: building a group around you which will hold you to your commitments to change. 

I”m just as guilty of this.  Although I”ve been familiar with the concept of a mastermind group for a long time (at least 2 decades) i have to admit I have not formally structured one around me.  One of my personal commitments for 2009 is to create an active, aggressive, and diligent Mastermind group, and I credit Keith for pushing me on that. 

My notes on his talk follow:

—————————————

Let me cut to the chase: a small number of relationships will have a dramatic influence on your career. 

Starts out by doing psychographic profile of audience: asking people to identify as circle, square, triangle, and Z.  (David: I would be amazed if there’’s any psychological validity to this exercise.)

I”m so passionate about this because I think these ideas are particularly opportune

4x more people live alone today than in the past-an all time high.

Over 50% of Americans say no one has their back—and a lot of those individuals are married.

Describes our cultural lack of social capital. 

We”re an institutionally lonely ”group of us”.  We as humans can”t live like that.

Our solution is to hunker down/carry more on our shoulders.  That’’s not the answer.

We have developed program that allows you to build your own safety net/community. 

I want this group of individuals to try something new this week. 

You need a minimum of just 1 lifeline relationship. 

Asked who’’s in the audience from Greenlight Community; about 25 people stand up.

In a study of high-performing teams, the #1 predictor of success was how much they cared about one another.  If you care about one another, you stop others from taking dumb risks.  Other models: Weight Watchers, AA.  We don”t have to invent anything. 

Certain individuals make you feel good about yourself.  I use Aunt Rose as my model.  I think about what she would do in a room.  Aunt Rose always cared about everybody. 

She was seeking a way to care about people.  She was always so helpful; ” can i get you something to drink?”  What if we walked around the world acting like hosts at a party?

These are all tactics that are part of what we call ”instant intimacy”. 

Your personal success wheel consists of:

- giving back

- spirituality

- physical wellness

- intellectual stimulation

- financial sucess

- prof”l growth

- deep relationships

Exercise: tell a partner you choose your dream, and define your learning goal and performance goal.  And explain what you”re going to do to get there. 

What can you do to prompt people to approach you?

The book was conceived as a professional development tool, but I”m coming to the conclusion that the lifeline relationships are most important in your most intimate relationships.  The book should be an instruction manual for newlyweds.

Most of your friends lie to you.  You tell them to.  I want you to stop supercharging feedback.  People think that if someone gives you feedback you have to do something with it.  Feedback is just data.  You should want as much as possible of it. 

You need to know exactly what is holding you back.  Even if they”re wrong,  i want to know, so i can manage around it. 

Now I have 10-20 people i can call on as my lifeline relationships. 

This requires you to take more risks. 

Identify the glass ceilings you”ve created in your life.  The only thing holding you back is you.  Only you can fix your problems. 

A lot of people who read ”never eat alone” are schmoozers.  They didn”t get the real message: it’’s not about measuring the size of your database. 

The very things we want to hold back from people, they suffer from too.  Get over yourself; you”re not unique.

What you just did was courageous.  I”m cool if you say, ”i”m not going to share my vulnerabilities, because i”m scared”.  but don”t say, ”it’’s weak to share my vulnerabilities.”  That’’s just wrong.

——————

NEXT STEPS

Learning Goal: what you need to learn this week.

- Ask who can help you with that learning goal?

- Pick 1 habit to kick

- Pick 1 Accountability Partner for the week

- Call 1 person for a long slow dinner.

Members-only Web sites with names like CapIntro.com, HedgeACT.com and HedgeConnection.com promote their online offerings as an alternative to real-world meet and greets. They argue that capital introduction - the practice, traditionally performed by prime brokers and third-party marketers, of bringing together hedge funds and qualified investors so they can perform initial due diligence and discuss mutual goals - is faster and cheaper on the Internet.

Since I haven”t tweeted much in the past couple of days, I had no idea what she was referring to, but fortunately it was a reply, to this:

What? WHAT???

I did remember briefly checking out TwtAd. I”m constantly researching various ways of “sponsoring the conversation”. I think there are some possibilities in that area, and as a social media strategist, it’’s my responsibility to explore new services and business models.

But I never authorized them to start sending stuff out in my name. In fact, once I got in, I decided I needed to take a closer look before I activated my account.

Just to be sure, I tried to log in to TwtAd:

In case you can”t read the fine print, it says:

You have not activated your account yet so you cannot login. Please go click the activation link that was sent to your e-mail.

So I want to take a look at the activation email:

Note the highlighted text:

Before you can get started publishing our ads we need you to verify your e-mail address.

And yet, they”re publishing ads using my account, even though I haven”t activated my account and verified my email address!

FAIL!

Massive, nuclear whale fail!

I”d like to just cancel my account, but apparently I have to activate it first. In the interest of expediency, I”ll probably go ahead and do that rather than wait to get hold of their service department. I”ll post an update.

To the twtAd owners and anyone else running any service related to social media:

General design principle: Don”t do anything automatically on behalf of users without giving them a clear description of exactly what is going to happen (and when), and preferably giving them the chance to approve or cancel it.

For our research project on VC/private equity deal origination, Renny Monaghan of Salesforce pointed me to a 2008 Dreamforce panel on Asset Managers and How They Power Their Businesses with Salesforce CRM.  The video and Powerpoint are downloadable here.  My notes follow.

I think the most interesting point came from Erik Yewell, who said, “We don”t (unlike Bloomberg ) currently offer ability to message any other Salesforce user. However, over time you”ll see more networking amongst Salesforce users.”

The panelists” biographies:

Jim Creighton, CEO, Creighton Capital

Jim’’s career in the financial industry spans over 30 years. He has been Global Chief Investment Officer at 3 of the largest global investment management firms - Barclays Global Investors, Deutsche Asset Management and Northern Trust. He has also had ”hands on” roles in 3 successful startup investment organizations. He has extensive experience in the management and trading of carefully structured portfolios at the highest level of institutional scale.

Mandy Allen, Senior eBusiness Manager, Fortis

Recently merged with ABN Amro. Runs Salesforce implementation

Mandy has spent the last 15 years in the Investment industry, managing global projects for Sales and Research business areas.  She has implemented 2 previous CRM implementations (both in-house built) before implementing salesforce.com CRM for Fortis Investments in 2008.  Mandy is currently the eBusiness Manager in the Marketing division responsible for Intranet and CRM program management.

Brock Hubbard, Manager, Business Intelligence, Janus

Brock joined INTECH in November of 2003 and joined JanusINTECH Institutional in February 2006. He currently serves as Business Intelligence Manager. Prior to joining Janus Capital Group, Brock was in client service at Great West Life and Merrill Lynch. He received his MBA from Regis University and bachelor’’s degree from Florida Atlantic University in Business Management. Brock has 9 years of financial industry experience.

Rodric O”Connor, CTO, Blum Capital

Rodric joined Blum Capital in 2003, and has been responsible for leading the internal technology and security group. Mr. O”Connor has 20 years of experience in information technology and development within the financial services and technology sectors and has been recognized as an InfoWorld CTO 25 honoree. Prior to joining Blum Capital Partners, L.P., Mr. O”Connor held the position of CTO at Putnam Lovell NBF, an investment bank. Mr. O”Connor has a BS (Joint Honors) in Computer Science and Accounting from the University of Manchester, U.K.

$3B AUM. Make strategic block investments into public markets, and sometimes then take those investments private.

Moderated by: Erik Yewell, Sales Engineer, Salesforce.com, Financial Services Vertical

Creighton

Using Salesforce since 2004. Started in 2004 in IR. Expanded to LP events tracking, web to lead. Custom objects for project management. We”ve also added in a research database that our PMs use to track portfolio companies and pipeline companies they”re thinking of investing in. Also use this for compliance.

Hubbard

Fully on Salesforce since June of this year for complete sales cycle. 24 month sales cycle for institutional investors. We have workflow implementation: certain triggers go to legal, implementation, etc. We have custom object to track investment accounts. We have customized a Gift & Entertainment solution for tracking our employees, consultants, etc, to help in compliance.

Allen

Similar to Brock. We”re now adding a client servicing module, which is used by our outside transfer agent. That’’s available to all salespeople. Now upgrading our data reporting, since we”re working on integrating two merged companies. Fortis & ABN Amro had separate client bases with Chinese Wall between them (which we took down later). To enhance user take-up, we made the screens look a lot like Microsoft Dynamix.

Creighton

In my prior roles as CIO at big businesses, we had huge tech staff to build customized solutions for us. As a new, small business that was not an option for us. We started with sales process & client contact. We now have something very sophisticated compared with what I had before. Have expanded to position & activity side. During the Asian currency crisis at my old firm, I couldn”t see exactly what were my current positions.

Hubbard

We use a custom activities tracking feature that we built internally to capture how we service accounts. We saw that many of our clients have multiple accounts with us, which need to be serviced differently. So we built a tool that allows multiple investment accounts to be created. VisualForce allows us to see those accounts. We need to associate consultants with each account. Prior to VisualForce, users had to know the exact user account numbers. This allows both local and mobile users to have data at fingertips.

O”Connor

BlueWolf spent 6 weeks developing this for us, including process mapping and training. 2 developers needed. Pull in data from ThomsonReuters via XML feed, to avoid rekeying. Use Informatica to pull in data from Advent Axys. We have read-only area to pull in market cap, current shares owned, basic description of company. We also have 20-30 custom fields our investment professionals want to track about the firm. Consensus estimates for 3-4 years embedded. Share price is end of day price.

Easy to see common board members.

Historically we incorporated with Intralinks portal. Intralinks breaks up the PDF file into LP-specific information that goes into the appropriate folders.

For the research database, we implemented Informatica Ipaq for Salesforce.

Implementing the ThomsonReuters XML feed was very complex; the integration with Axys was easy (2 days).

Yewell:

It’’s not hard to get to integrated flat file databases, as long as you have integrated account numbers.

Hubbard

We use Informatica to push info out of Salesforce to our record-keepers. We use Biztalk for some ERS charges. We are working with S&P Money Market Direct to sync data with them.

Yewell:

Discuss user adoption.

Hubbard

Our primary concern is utilization of dashboards. User only cares about his data , not overall system’’s data. We”ve put a lot more workflow into the system, so phone calls are less necessary. This pulls people into the system.

O”Connor

As always, you need strong executive support. The ability of different departments to absorb new technology varies by department. I”m a great believe in making the system as smart as possible for the users. Integrate, automate, innovate. Use triggers & workflows.

Show users that you”re responding promptly to their needs.

At a prior investment bank where I worked, we ran competitions with monthly & annual prizes for best idea. We encouraged excitement about the system, encourage people to think about ways system can be used.

We do upgrades all the time without any special notices. Very transparent.

Yewell

Was it hard to get executive support?

O”Connor

Easy

Allen

Our users were using lots of Dynamix, so there was no hardship at all. They were happy to get out of it. (laughter)  We couldn”t make necessary changes in it. We could do changes in an afternoon with Salesforce. We had a strong senior manager who was a strong Salesforce advocate. We kept pushing ourselves to release new information. We changed a lot of screens to make them look like what people were used to.

Creighton

Very simple adoption, in part because we”re a small shop. We had to nudge a few people, but after a few days the better functionality was helpful to them. They like the ability to do anything anywhere in a secure way.

Yewell

What do you wish someone had told you that you were not aware of re: Salesforce?

Hubbard

Security. We now can tell service people: it’’s your client, you”re the one to take action on a particular client. The security model supports that. Development time previously with SQL was slower-we were shipping data to India. We”re able to customize public info for outside consultants. That’’s been a huge win. Investment people don”t want to see more noise.

Yewell

What have dashboards done for you?

Hubbard

We enabled dashboards so salespeople could see precisely what they”re being paid for. They can readily see if they”re meeting their goals, which drives compensation.

O”Connor

I try to look at AppExchange every few months. We use ComboMerge for some advanced Excel reporting. Availability of 3^rd party developers has grown a lot in the last few years. If you haven”t tried it, build your own applications.

Q&A from the audience

Creighton

We rely very little on prime brokers now. We want to be independent of them. They have a lot of valuable stuff. The only tool we use routinely are the risk models.

Q: Are you integrating with a portfolio accounting system? Do you use Salesforce for newsletters, updates, etc.?

Hubbard

Informatica feed with our accounting system took about 10 days. Very smooth. In our previous CRM system we had 3 accounting feeds; now we have one. We do contact our clients out of the system, using ExactTarget (through AppExchange). We hit them with newsletters, current market environment updates.

O”Connor

Informatica did the integration for us. We don”t do any direct mailing to clients thru the system.

Allen

We are just in process of purchasing a mass email tool. Our French office heavily uses mass email. Compliance checks everything before it goes out. Email templates are pre-approved, set up in our system.

Hubbard

We turn off the email functionality for compliance reasons

Yewell

There is the ability within Salesforce to relay all emails via ”Email Relay”, so the emails are sent via your email servers.

Q:

How did you define an account? In our firm we have 65 UBSs.

Hubbard

We have separate record types: home offices, branch offices, etc.

Allen

Only an account labeled a client is verified by finance system. Users can”t create a new account, unless it’’s a prospect. Finance then converts that lead into an account. When we first launched the system, we were unsure who’’s who.

Yewell

Record-types are a way to look at different types of accounts in a system.

Q:

Who does your administration? IT side, business side?

Allen

We have one person doing Administration, and he sits on IT side.

Hubbard

Administration/production is all in IT. We have a change review board that meets weekly. We have administration rights in Sandbox, to show IT exactly what we”re looking for.

Yewell

I really like the idea of a sandbox. Historically, Salesforce avoided IT departments, because we didn”t have toys to give them. But now we”re moving closer to them. Any integration with other data requires talking with IT.

Hubbard

You need a Sandbox as soon as you add a 2^nd application, and particularly when you deal with integration.

Yewell

Sandbox allows you to clone your entire environment. There are easy tools to move changes from Sandbox into main environment.

Allen

We have several consultants working for us now, and each has his own Sandbox.

Yewell

How did Salesforce impact performance of integration?

Creighton

No problems with scaling.

Yewell

Some of our customers had millions of rows of data with Informatica. You can inject 18 streams of data at once.

Q:

Are any of you integrating with mobile? What hiccups have there been?

Allen:

We”re using Blackberries with Fortis. Had some issues with IT. We”re trying to do everything in our team. We find we need people working very closely with test & release teams.

O”Connor

We”re piloting, but not aggressively.

Q: What tool is your sales team using mainly for communication?

Allen

Outlook. We”re working on improving the integration, because people are cutting and pasting now. Previously with Dynamix, you had to duplicate everything, which meant your dentist

appointments got into Salesforce, which clogged the system.

Q:

Within financial services firms, there are certain areas where Salesforce seems better suited than others. What are the best areas besides investment management?

O”Connor

I”ve implemented this in many parts of investment banks. It’’s very suitable for anything that involves interaction with outside people & companies. Our legal people use only custom objects; for them this is really just a generic build tool.

Yewell

We don”t (unlike Bloomberg ) currently offer ability to message any other Salesforce user. However, over time you”ll see more networking amongst Salesforce users. Currently we don”t focus on trading environment.

Q:

Have you run into anything that you haven”t been able to do with Salesforce?

Creighton:

We”ve had some limitations with Reporting, because of one child to every parent limitation.

Parting Thoughts - Ideas to take away

Try creating a custom application, it’’s simple

Check www.appexchange.com every few months

for new apps to make your life easier

Dashboards are key to user adoption

Leverage the resources on the jobs board: developer.salesforce.com

Configuration is very easy

The security model is very flexible

Use automated email to notify teams of areas for training

Convenient to access wherever I am

The uptime is very good compared to in-house apps in big companies

The report writer is intuitive and easy to use, for business users

The Evolution Of Networking..a poem

First there were golf links.

Now there are the web links.

First there was the handshake,

Now there is the friend poke.

Long ago there was the deal making heavy hitter.

Now there’’s just twitter.

First there was the pitch book.

Now you have facebook.

Long ago there were relationships that lasted.

Now everyone’’s just email blasted.

If you”re not busy on linked in,

You will be when the wisdom of this keynote has..sinked in.

And you can be sure you”ll be virtually crushed,

If your business isn”t virtually pushed.

I”m a jazz/rock musician (guitar, drums, keys, a bit of bass and vocals) who long ago decided I”d be more productive applying my creativity to business collaboration and marketing. In other words, I wasn”t even close to the brilliance some of my friends displayed as musicians, and opted for a business career plus a classic-rock band of mid-life guys in in my basement instead. But I”ve been continually fascinated by replicating the creative environment and satisfaction of music in business environments.

“In the Groove”

A takeaway from the study, in my opinion, is that creative, right-brain thinking creates an alignment of invention and emotion that makes it fun for people to work together and to create new, breakthrough ideas. I”ve only dabbled in classical music and the fine arts, but my hunch is that the more real-time improvisational the art, and the less structured the roles, the greater potential for mental alignment. Jazz works this way, group improvisational comedy, probably dance, and even high-performance tennis doubles.

Happy Hours as Invention Opportunities

A way to leverage this is to find a time each week for people to set aside their pressing to-do’’s, and just brainstorm about business opportunities. In one of my businesses, we made this the Friday afternoon pizza hour. The really good ideas for business improvements and new products came also exclusively via these sessions - it was the only time where people had permission to think outside their roles, stop worrying about their obligations or speaking out of turn, and pose a zany theory to see where it led. One person was assigned to capture the notes (today I would commit them live to a Wiki, chat board, or feature-request log, and if you”re really ambitious in a distributed company, you could try having people contribute in a Twitter feed). The drinks usually associated with happy hours are completely optional (and probably not permissible in many businesses). Jelly beans work fine.

Team Productivity Enhancers - What Works…

Three other discussion threads in the same vein:

- I”ve read reports comparing team productivity in two scenarios. In both, a team is given an important business challenge to resolve. In scenario one, a team is told to go off individually, spend an hour or more researching the issue and coming up with ideas, and bringing them to the table at the next meeting. In scenario two, the team is asked to work on the problem only in group meetings. The findings about which created greater results were, that while the individually-prepared team gave “good” responses to the problem more consistently, the team only interacting in groups created breakthrough solutions that addressed more fundamental issues or new opportunities. They were able to think beyond the initial problem and invent a vision. This didn”t occur 100% of the time, so you are taking a bit of a chance with group brainstorming, but where you are creating new ideas without a driving deadline, this approach is much more effective.

- There has been a lot of talk about how Google gives their employees 20% free time to brainstorm and create/test new inventions (see the NY Times and Fast Company). Empowering people to not only create ideas, but to develop them is powerful. And, it’’s relatively easy in the software industry, where the cost of pilot production and posting something to the Web is small. However, based on experience at another major West Coast software corporation, it can get out of hand. Too many individuals can start posting too many ideas for the company to manage; creating redundant projects and unsanctioned competition between divisions and executives; and spinning off lots of unprofitable activities. A few techniques allow you to balance innovation, entrepreneurship and directional control in these situations:

1. First, document all ideas somewhere. The mere fact that someone’’s idea is being recorded gives the mind positive reinforcement, and individuals/teams start taking more time to explore more ideas.
2. Second, have a prioritization process for the ideas. I think it’’s too much for any individual to have complete discretion to pursue any ideas. The best approach is to have the inventor/evangelist need to demonstrate the business case for the idea before spending more than a few hours on it. This teaches engineers and other technical types to think about ROI as a prime organizational driver. The education takes time but is well worth it for organizational productivity - again, aligning people in the same mindset. For other companies with a more time-pressed or hierarchical style, I”ve experienced monthly meetings for the entire department (or if small enough, the entire company) where the best ideas submitted that month are highlighted, the creator is given a small award/reward, and management commits to reporting back in 4 weeks on exactly what they will do with the idea.

- Third, there’’s an interesting trend toward crowd-sourcing invention, where the vast resources of talented people on the internet are encouraged to contribute en masse to projects, ranging from highly-technical R&D and licensing projects (e.g. the company Nine Sigma), to online resources such as Wikipedia type databases of cost-saving solutions for small businesses. There’’s the potential to rethink business invention and the consulting industry through crowd-sourcing. A colleague of mine, David Gusick, is pursuing this path at Extreme Collaboration.

“Have a Nice Day” - By Creating Something with Others

If all of the above is time much to absorb for your hectic business day, I leave you with this “stop and smell the roses” thought from Dr. Weil in his newsletter blurb above: “To my mind, [the Max Planck Institute] study highlights one of the great joys of playing music, one voiced by many musicians: a sense of self-transcendence. Playing music together creates a rare chance to step outside of ourselves and our small concerns and join our minds wholeheartedly with others in creating something no individual could make alone. Seen in this light, creating beautiful music is simply a wonderful byproduct of a larger reward – connecting deeply with other human beings.”

When the worlds of business and music collide.