Lately I’ve posted some on social media.  Surprisingly, I still meet salespeople who not only aren’t trying to better understand the role of social media, but also aren’t even interested in having any personal presence on the web.

The majority of the time they feel this way because they claim they either get all of their business locally or their business is so “professional” in nature that it simply does not make sense to have an internet presence.   What they are really saying is they don’t have a clue as to how to go about it and they’re content sticking with their “legacy beliefs” about what works for them.

Regardless of who you are or what profession you’re in,  it is absolutely essential for you to have the following three items:  A Google profile, a Linkedin profile and a Facebook profile.

For Google, go to www.google.com/profiles and it will take you to a site you can add your information.  Plain and simple, people use Google to find people, in much the same way that 30 years ago people would open up a phone book to find your phone number.

For Linkedin, sign up by going to www.Linkedin.com.  Yes, this will take you 20 minutes to complete and you will need to spend 15 minutes a week monitoring Linkedin, but it’s no different than taking time to listen to your voice mail messages — it’s part of the business world.

For Facebook, go to www.Facebook.com and set up a profile.  Go ahead and say that’s for kids or that is just plain weird.  I did. That was my thinking until 2009, when I finally signed up and slowly put my toe in the water.

Space in this blog is not going to allow me to share with you all of the reasons why you should do all three of these, but let me put it this way.  100 years ago many businesses in the United States still didn’t feel the need to have a telephone number. Today that would seem insane.  In the 1980s, the fax machine became more common and was widely used in offices. 15 years ago, email started growing in popularity and now you would be hard pressed to meet someone who doesn’t have an email address. You get the direction I’m going.

I believe that to resign yourself to “no presence on the web” would be detrimental to your consultative selling efforts and to your customer service.  If you haven’t already, start today to broaden your outlook on how the internet can and will impact your business.

No, it will not become your entire approach to interacting with  your customers.  I’ve written about that perspective in previous posts, like this one and this one.  But to say the internet plays no role and that you can simply disregard it would indeed be crazy.