Laureen Earnest

Laureen Earnest

Third Collective
As the founder of Third Collective, Laureen brings 28 years experience as a business growth strategist in sales, marketing, and channel management. Laureen’s authentic customer first approach has helped her build strong relationships and impact organizational development. She is a Founding Member, Alumni & Instructor at the Social Media Academy.
  • 6 comments 2,175 reads
    Posted on 2009-08-24

    Is your marketing department on stage performing a solo? Are they hogging the spotlight and acting as if the other members of the company orchestra are not on stage? Let us look at your social media initiative from another angle.

    Let us consider every staff member with customer touch points as playing an instrument in your orchestra. The Brass section is sales trumpeting the company messages on a street corner like are found in New Orleans. Percussion is played by PR and marketing while the deep Bass Rhythm section is R&D and Engineering chartered to keep the beat of the company in time with the market. The String section is Customer Service playing an engaging melody in accompaniment with the whole; while HR plays woodwinds adding new harmonies to the performance by hiring talented new orchestra members.

    So you see, without a conductor to lead or sheet music to follow, your orchestra has nothing to follow and your audience will only hear noise versus a...

  • 7 comments 2,309 reads
    Posted on 2009-08-11

    There has always been a definitive line between salesmanship and engineering. They use different parts of their brains to think and they typically are very different personalities. The salesperson is personable and approachable while the engineers dive deep to solve the problems confronting the world. The divergence between sales and engineering is a chasm not often crossed until now.

    So how did the Engineer out sale the salesperson? Easy – the engineer fully understood the power of the Social Media platform and knew the methodology and strategies to achieve the results needed to close the sale. She, (yes the engineer is a she) had been brought up to date on the changes that had taken place in how customers think and behave by having many nights discussion with a Social Media Academy Alumni.

    The differences in their approaches to Social Media determined the outcome. Here’s the comparison:

    Salesperson: Was told by his manager Social Media is for the...