3 steps to take when your reputation is attacked online, by Barbara Weltman

Barbara Weltman

Social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook are the Wild West when it comes to expressing opinions about customer service and other business experiences. But freedom of expression on social media outlets and other public forums does not extend to defamation (an injury to your reputation). Can or should you sue? These 3 steps will help you decide what type of action, if any, to take.

Steps to take

Step one. First determine whether anything actionable has occurred. Online statements can be:

• Opinions that do not constitute defamation.
• Physical threats that rise to the level of criminal activity.
• Defamatory statements (that meet all three criteria below).

The first type of statement is protected free speech; the second is a matter for the police. Only the third type of statement -- a defamatory statement -- may be actionable, meaning you can bring a lawsuit to recover damages.

Defamation is a false statement of fact that results in an economic injury. There are several elements to defamation, all of which must be present in order to amount to something actionable:

• A publication addressing someone other than the person being defamed. Online statements constitute a publication.
• The statement of fact must be false. Truth, no matter how unpleasant, is a complete defense to any defamation action.
• The statement must be understood as one tending to harm the reputation of the person it concerns. If the person is a public figure, there must be actual malice in making the statement.

In one case, a person whose professional reputation was irreparably damaged was able to win an $11.3 million recovery.

Step two. Determine whether a defamatory statement is worth taking legal action. If the defamatory statement is merely embarrassing but does not seriously impact your pocketbook, it may not make business sense to pursue the matter; just let things just die down. Consider:

• Time -- Any legal action involves a great deal of time and emotion on your part.
• Cost -- Legal fees for representation can be high. Attorneys do not take these cases on contingency where the sought-after recovery is something other than money (taking down defamatory statements, providing equal time and exposure to correct public misperceptions, etc.), and you must bear the cost of legal action throughout the term of the case. Do a cost-benefit analysis to determine whether the cost of litigation is worthwhile compared to the damage you've suffered and the likelihood of success in winning the case.

Step three. Make a decision. After consulting with a knowledgeable attorney and assessing the time and expense it will entail to pursue legal action, decide whether to go forward or drop the matter. 

Special considerations:

• Anonymous writers. It's possible, but more difficult, to pursue legal action when the defamatory statement has been made by an unknown person. There's a good article about this at Law.com.

• Retractions. If you decide to proceed, you may be required under state law to request a retraction before you go on. The retraction usually must appear as conspicuously as the original defamatory statement. If there's a retraction, it reduces the possible monetary recovery and may help you decide to drop the matter at last.

Monitor your online reputation

How do you know if you're being maligned? It's good business practice to use various tools to track what's being said about you and your company in articles, blogs, and various social media sites. Tools to help:

• Echomail
• Echosonar
• Google Alert
• PR Newswire's Media Monitoring
• ReputationDefender
• Socialmetrix Echo

***

Barbara Weltman, Publisher of Big Ideas for Small Business®
www.BarbaraWeltman.com
info@BarbaraWeltman.com
Twitter: BarbaraWeltman

Cold Calling Perfection: Are You Hearing This? by Kendra Lee, President, KLA Group

Kendra Lee,
President, KLA Group

In email prospecting strategies, one of the first things I advise is that you send yourself a draft before hitting the final send. That way, you get a sense of what it's like for your prospects to receive your emails. You can quickly see where you need to make adjustments to grab your prospect’s attention and get a reply.

This same checkup strategy works well for your cold calls, too.

Many of your best and worst phone habits are the ones you probably aren’t even aware of until you hear them. They’re the same habits that may be keeping you from closing more first appointments.

So, how do you assess your cold call effectiveness? Record them.

It used to be that only the largest companies had access to telephone recording equipment. These days, however, numerous recording options exist. Recording functionality may already be built into your company phone system. If not, at the very least, you can use one of the free conference calling options that record calls.

Depending on where you live, there could be legal issues that require you to notify your prospect that you're recording the call, so do confirm that first. And if recording cold calls makes you uneasy or isn’t possible, ask a peer to listen in while you make calls instead.

Here’s a quick checklist of 10 things you should listen for in your cold call reviews.

1) Are you opening the call with a compelling value proposition? The better you get at grabbing a prospect's attention during the first few moments of a cold call, the easier time you'll have of advancing the sale.

2) Are you talking about products, or business needs? Prospects care most about solutions to their problems, so be sure to frame your call in those terms.

3) Do you sound like an expert? It's important to be authoritative if you want prospects to trust you with their time, much less their investment.

4) Are the suggestions you make, or situations you talk about, accurate? For your discussion to have any weight, it has to focus on a need the prospect considers to be valid and important.

5) How are your listening skills? No cold call should be a one-way conversation. Ask questions that engage your prospects and learn to listen closely to the feedback you're receiving from prospects.

6) How does your telephone voice sound? Is your voice clear and relaxed, or full of "um's" and "ah's?" Cultivating a strong, clear phone voice is important for making prospects comfortable with you.

7) How skilled are you at dealing with objections? Cold calling is full of objections. Practice dealing with them over the phone and your appointment closing ratio will improve drastically.

8) Are you building enough interest before you ask for an appointment? Asking for an appointment too early is a common sales mistake. Make sure the prospect is interested enough in what you're talking about before you propose the next step.

9) Do you look for referrals if your contact turns out not to be the decision maker? Sometimes our research lets us down, but finding the wrong contact doesn't have to halt the sales opportunity. Ask for a referral to the correct decision maker and reference your initial call as an introduction.

10) Is the voicemail you leave one that you would return? If you're going to make cold calls, you're going to leave voicemails. Learning to leave the prospect with a compelling message – and clearly spoken return phone number – are great ways to make your telephone prospecting more effective.

If you can refine your cold calling, you’ll get past gatekeepers more effectively, leave more compelling messages, gather more relevant information, and close more first appointments.

And who doesn’t want to do all those things?

***

Kendra Lee is a top IT Seller, Prospect Attraction Expert and author of the award winning book “Selling Against the Goal” and president of KLA Group. Specializing in the IT industry, KLA Group works with companies to break in and exceed revenue objectives in the Small and Midmarket Business (SMB) segment. Ms. Lee is a frequent speaker at national sales meetings and association events. To find out more about the author, read her latest articles, or to subscribe to her newsletter visit www.klagroup.com or call +1 303.741.6636.

The Year I Lost My Brain - And How I Got It Back, by Jill Konrath

Jill Konrath
Snap Selling

It started exactly 12 months ago, right after SNAP Selling came out. At first I didn't recognized the symptoms, but in retrospect, they were there.

I was crazy-busy, running from one "must do" activity to the next. My inbox overflowed. I was constantly online, answering emails, tweeting, blogging, whatever.

Time evaporated before my eyes. At the end of the day, my endless To Do list was even longer. I'd accomplished virtually nothing, yet I'd worked the entire day.

Awash in this swirl of scattered activities, my primary goal was to stay afloat.

On my daily walks, I listened to podcasts and interviews. In the evenings, I plopped in front of the TV, surrounded by my computer, iPhone and iPad. Never disconnected, constantly consuming an endless supply of media.

Then I got hooked on a few computer games. These mindless diversions, my guilty little pleasures, filled up what was left of my free time. Hah! Did I say free time? There was none.

Clearly, this was no way to live. It was an existence, not a life. But things were really much worse.

I was actually losing my mind.

Please don't think I'm crazy. The truth is, if what I described sounds even remotely similar to your life, you're losing your mind too.

It's actually a function of our constant online flitting. There's a ton of research now showing that the internet is actually changing our brain. In short, we're losing our ability to:

• Concentrate: The more we're online, the more scatterbrained we become. We scan, but don't think - and certainly not deeply. And, we're forgetful. Yet we crave more stimuli and keep clicking away.

• Create: When we're caught in this morass, we can't come up with new ideas and rich insights. With our brains are on overload, they're stuck at a low-level of processing.

I felt all of this. I was spinning in place, going nowhere in a constantly distracted state. I even tried to be more productive, but that didn't work either.

Then I finally got away from it all - to a place where I couldn't be reached by phone and had minimal internet access. At first, I was twitchy. Really twitchy. (Going through withdrawal is tough.)

Amazingly, within two days my brain started coming back.

Creative thoughts popped into my mind. Fun ideas emerged. Fresh perspectives surfaced. I wrote everything down so I wouldn't forget - and also to free up my brain to do more important things.

And, since I like how I'm feeling a whole lot more now than I did before, here's the commitment I made to myself:

• I will limit my internet time to 3 hours per day. I refuse to let the internet destroy my creativity and problem-solving capacity.

• I will be unreachable for at least one hour daily. To do my job effectively, I need to think. I can't think when I don't protect my time.

• I will always have one fun project I'm working on. That's what keeps me alive.

• I will stay focused on the activity I'm on. This may be the hardest of all since I'm so used to allowing distractions. I can't tell you how many urges I fought off while writing this article.

Maybe you haven't lost your mind yet. If that's the case, make sure you protect it at all costs.

But if you're at all like me, your brain has already been severely impacted. I urge you to consider reclaiming it. The truth is, it's the key to your personal and professional success.
***
Jill Konrath is an internationally-recognized speaker & bestselling author of SNAP Selling and Selling to Big Companies. She helps sellers land new accounts and speed up sales cycles. To get four free sales-accelerating tools, visit  www.snapselling.com.