"Bob makes Sales Club by calling 3 people to get the latest deal status" - said nobody, ever! Have you ever calculated time spent tracking down information like deal status, latest competitive positioning, pricing, marketing collateral? It's a lot. There has to be a better way, right? There is - and it's called Chatter.

As a sales productivity coach my passion is showing new salespeople how to make the most of their precious time, and getting them to their number with speed. Salesforce Chatter is one of the best tools in my tool kit.

Salesforce.com Chatter is social networking with a business twist. It helps salespeople connect with their critical business colleagues in a social way. You follow their projects and priorities. You are connected to their key data and documents that are essential to you closing your deal. Good-bye overflowing inboxes, good-bye silos, good-bye time wasting tasks!

After you have logged into Chatter for the first time, implement these top ten action items and see immediately how Chatter helps you stay on top of what really matters:

1. About me: complete your personal section in your Chatter profile with your Bio of expertise, key skills, past jobs, photo and other relevant information. This will be to go to place for your colleagues to learn more about you 

2. Follow the right people: top executives, successful sales people, respected people in the organization. Be selective with your membership, no need to follow everyone who follows you, only follow people who will add value to your job. 

3. Join relevant Chatter groups: groups help you stay organized, collaborate on documents, and work more productively. Tap into specific groups to uncover valuable information and get help from people with the right knowledge.  Topics could be a specific opportunity, or a particular product offering, or industry, or marketing launch etc...

4. Follow and Collaborate on key accounts & opportunities: shorten your sales cycle by giving and receiving important deal status updates with everyone that touches your accounts. You will always be in the know when something changes like a deal stage or a close date

5. Create Groups: collaborate in real-time with the people that matter and that support you and your accounts. Chatter users report having 27% fewer meetings. Groups can be completely public and open for everyone to join, or completely private so discussions can be kept confidential. You can even invite your external customers in to collaborate, perhaps the coach in your account

6. Connect with experts: ask a question using Chatter and get help from people with the right expertise, sometimes answered in seconds. Just post the query on your wall or strike up a live chat instantly. Perhaps a pricing question, an answer needed to complete an RFP or a legal question

7. Gather competitive intelligence: get the latest information, files, materials and updates straight from your competitive intelligence team.  Ask questions, crowdsource answers from peers, use hashtags to index #competitive wins

8. Follow the right files: big files clog everyone’s email inbox, and version control is impossible. But it’s easy to share files with Chatter. Drag and drop the file and your collaborators see updates instantly. 

9. Go mobile: Stay connected to the people and records that matter most--never miss an important development, even when you're out of the office. Update your status, post comments, upload documents, and much more, all from your mobile device.

10. Participate: ask questions, chime in with answers, discover the best information, share your knowledge. Do ask yourself when posting on Chatter ‘Who else would benefit from this” and ‘is this relevant to our business.’