Using social media to discover leads and broker new business relationships has become an essential part of the sales process. In the second part of Hootsuite’s interview series with Altimeter analyst and best selling author Brian Solis, we gain his insight on how sales professionals need to think about social selling.

By Alix Drabek of BCBusiness A Q&A with the Silicon Valley thought leader “Everybody’s talking about disruption and innovation, but no one’s really disrupting or innovating. Everyone seems to be copying a lot,” says Solis, who opened GROW Conference 2014 with a rising call for real innovation. If you want your startup idea to succeed, put your customer’s expectations before your entrepreneurial ambitions, he argues—or your pitch could fall on deaf ears. BCBusiness spoke to Solis about disruption, customer engagement…

Washio CEO and co-founder Jordan Metzner checks out mapping information with Washio staffers at the company’s Santa Monica, Calif., headquarters.(Photo: Sean Fujiwara) Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY covered the latest service to help you clean up your life…and yes, it’s an app. Washio, the Uber of Laundry, is the latest on demand service to help people get laundry picked up, cleaned and delivered as they wish. Jefferson talked to Brian about his thoughts on the fledgling company…  I don’t know my…

Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Facebook Inc., in San Francisco. Mark Milian of Bloomberg Businessweek took on Facebook’s attempts to compete against or outdo Snapchat. The article included thoughts by Brian Solis. The allure of Snapchat is hard to ignore. Following is an excerpt of Milian’s blunt take… Mark Zuckerberg’s Snapchat envy shows no signs of abating. Facebook’s various photo-messaging apps and add-ons haven’t managed to replicate Snapchat’s popularity for any extended period of time, according to data from…

Brian Solis and Hugh MacLeod are long time friends. When Brian was writing What’s the Future of Business? Changing the way businesses create experiences, he set out to design the book as an experience unto itself. Part of that work was shape, design, layout and a whole slew of other UX strategies to make a print book matter in a digital world. Brian said that in the end, he successfully created an “analog app” by rethinking the navigation of a…

Gabrielle Karol writing for Fox Business focused on Facebook’s bold move to push its messenger app out of the native Facebook environment. It’s a move she wanted to investigate further. As part of her research, Gabrielle contacted Brian Solis to discuss the news. Here’s an excerpt… Over the next few days, Facebook (FB) will stop allowing mobile messaging on its main apps. The social-networking giant is separating messaging capabilities from its main iPhone and Android apps, directing users to its…

CNN’s Sara Ashley O’Brien covered the news around Facebook’s “Buy” button tests. She explored how small businesses should approach the new capability and whether or not it was going to help or hurt business. Sara reached out to Brian Solis for his thoughts… “This represents a tremendous opportunity for savvy small businesses to generate sales in real time,” said Brian Solis, principal analyst at Altimeter Group. “This is an opportunity for innovation.” “This could be so incredibly successful if businesses…