Social networking is a hot topic in internet marketing. Web sites including friendster.com and myspace.com are crowded meeting grounds for web visitors who are hoping to get connected online. Social networking is also a growing technology for B-to-B interactions. From finding services, locating opportunities, even recruiting board members, these sites offer what business consumers need. Innersell.com is a company that is using social networking to drive real business for clients by locating prospects. A sample scenario on innerSell.com works like this
a. An innerSell.com member who sells real estate talk to a prospect of customer and learns that it has a need for $50000 worth of photocopiers
b. The member enters the need into innersell.com and sees a list of trusted photocopier vendors along with their ratings and their finder's fee.
c. The member views each vendor's ratings and selects two photocopier vendors who pay a 10 percent finder's fee.
d. The selected vendors receive an e-mail advising them that they've been chosen and instructing them to log into innerSell.com to see the load, contacts the customer, and wins the business; it pays innerSell.com its 10 percent finder's fee.
f. InnerSell.com then passes $3500 of winning vendor's finder's fee to the member who entered the winning lead.
1. At what stages(s) of het business buying process does innerSell.com operate?
2. What types of businesses is this best suited to serve?
3. What are some weaknesses with this technology?