Oh no! Another article about the cloud!
Relax—this article isn’t going to talk about the cloud. You already know how helpful the cloud and associated apps can be in building a business. By now you’ve also probably figured out how to use EverNote and Trello and Square and Intuit’s entire suite of bookkeeping/accounting tools.
In this article, we are going to talk about the new (and, okay, one not so new) piece of tech that you can use to foster and build relationships with potential partners and investors.
MineWhat
We’ve talked about MineWhat before. If you sell products over the Internet (and who doesn’t these days) MineWhat is an essential tool. MineWhat allows you to track all of your sales and customer data. Why is this important? Because it gives you specific numbers as to what you are already selling. It allows you to not just see what sells well but why the less popular products are less popular. This is important information and it is of special interest to investors and partners who will want to see all of your data, not just the numbers worth bragging about.
Start Meeting
These days your workforce and partners can live anywhere. More importantly, they can work and meet with you from anywhere because tools like Smart Meeting make it possible. Smart Meeting is virtual meeting and conference calling software that allows you and any group of people to sit down and work together on something in real-time. It lets you share screens with people—a tool that has been especially helpful during presentations—no more emailing PowerPoint files!
Rapportive
Rapportive is an add-on for Gmail that basically pulls up all of an email sender’s information—website, social media profiles (it focuses primarily on LinkedIn), how that person is networked to you, etc. Gmail is becoming the primary go-to email provider. Even if you have a company based email, you can route it through Gmail’s servers and use this add-on.
Rapportive is helpful because it saves time. You won’t have to go searching through all of your own profiles and emails to figure out how you know someone.
HARO
HARO stands for “Help a Reporter Out.” Though, technically it isn’t software or specifically tech related it is still a great tool for entrepreneurs and startups to use. It is a connection platform that joins reporters in search of “scoops” with the businesses who have them. For example, instead of simply blasting your latest press release through all of the free press release platforms and hoping it gets picked up somewhere, you can upload your story here. Reporters who are searching for something to write about that day are more likely to see it and get in touch with you.
How does this help with investors and relationship building? The simple version is: this helps you build relationships within the press that you might later be able to leverage to your mutual benefit. The more complicated answer is this: investors and partners are more likely to take you seriously when they see you mentioned in the press. If you can get a few profiles of yourself or your company, you’ll attract more attention and investment capital.
These are just four of the latest(ish) tech and tech related tools that you can use to build relationships, partnerships and attract investment dollars. What are some of your favorites?
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