Trendr is a mobile meeting platform (for iPhone and Android) that helps people in close proximity find each other through their LinkedIn profiles and set availability to meet. Once you’ve connected, just push the “let’s meet” button and the venue selection engine chooses a meeting site for you.
The promising startup describes itself as “The FourSquare of LinkedIn” — as FourSquare is to places, Trendr is to people looking for a meaningful conversation. Trendr meetups can be in any setting — a coffee shop, a football stadium and their “sweet spot” of large industry conferences. At large conferences, Trendr users can take advantage of convenient “Trendr meeting zones” to take networking to another level. With these zones, attendees can obtain new customers, increase repeat visits, and amplify their participant experience.
Trendr is taking the complexity out of face-to-face meetings and also fostering the serendipity of spontaneous meetings for building business relationships. It was a natural fit with Nimble’s platform for relationship building.
“A friend and early advisor was living in Asia-Pacific, and was following social selling champions Jon Ferrara and Sam Fiorella,” says Michael Beddows, CEO and co-founder. “Their messages about the importance of building and nurturing strong relationships resonated, and we played with an early version of Nimble.”
CRM + Social = Relationship Leverage
Beddows liked the ability to handle traditional CRM needs while tapping into the social conversations to leverage Nimble to boost relationship management.
“Nimble is really helping us start as we plan to go on, developing strong connections and understanding our contacts in the context of their full social ecosystem.”
Dynamic Contact Information Helps Them Keep in Touch
“We quickly saw the benefit of a 360-degree view of conversations online. When you want to stay in touch and be aware of what’s going on with someone, you need to follow what they’re doing and reach out on a regular basis. I knew we needed more than basic information — we needed context.”
George Stamatis, Trendr cofounder and Chief Relationship Officer, caught on to the competitive advantage of being able to see what people have been saying online, and use that for leveraging business.
“Before a meeting, it’s a tremendous advantage to be able to visit a contact record to see what my contact has been saying on social channels. Not only can I be prepared for a genuine, relevant conversation, I can also spot trigger events and find ways I can add value.”
Embracing the Pipeline
Trendr especially likes the Nimble Deals pipeline structure, and has embraced Nimble’s deal stages (Awareness, Prospecting, Qualification, Demo, Review, Close, Referral) , codifying them in their business plan.
“We really like to be able to see the progress of a deal and make sure that we’re communicating in a coordinated way throughout the whole process,” says Beddows. “It’s so important not to miss important milestones.”
Relationships Rule
He adds: “We’re a startup — building relationships with each other and with our community is our highest priority. Nimble is really helping us start as we plan to go on, developing strong connections and understanding our contacts in the context of their full social ecosystem.”
