You are currently browsing the monthly archive for April 2009.
A few weeks ago we had the chance to talk with Adam Needles, a writer, marketing veteran and academic who focuses on the ways in which brand strategy meets technology and innovation. He’s currently working on his MBA, but keeps a regular and in-depth blog with snippets of his forthcoming thesis and book.
His most recent post, “Online Compiled Lead Sourcing Providers: Assessing Their Value and Understanding Their Evolution,” explores the history and current state of the lead cycle, and the changes that have taken place in the process. Among the points made is the recognition that sales and marketing are becoming increasingly aligned.
The rapid ‘death’ of the consultative sale means that marketing organizations increasingly are playing a more-pervasive role in the lifecycle of leads – blurring the traditional lines between marketing and sales organizations.
This “blurring” – or alignment – is a major tenet of Sales 2.0, and it’s great to see folks like Adam making it part of their repertoire of discussion. We were able to speak to this particular evolution, and he explains how InsideView adds value to the lead and deal-closing process:
Why rely purely on public records or traditional address lists when the Web freely offers a wealth of information about prospects, often self-updated – particularly via social media? Moreover, what more can you learn about leads that takes your insights from pure demographic information to more-contextual ethnographic and behavioral insights? That is, in part, the concept behind InsideView, which is…focused on improving the conversion of leads via online compiled lead sourcing providers – a push toward improving the ‘relative truth’ of lead information.
That last point is spot-on, and lead information is constantly being informed by new information and social Web data – the latest being Twitter, which has the potential to give short and constant insight into any given lead. It’s exciting to be a part of bettering the sales process through working towards complete lead sourcing.
Or as Adam puts it: the truth.
One of the most exciting things about being a part of the Sales 2.0 space is working with companies to actually help answer their questions and to get an implementation plan in place. The technologies are upon us, but there are still a myriad of questions folks have about how to carry it all out, what it can really do for them, and why it’s so important.
Tomorrow, April 21, will be the second of a free, four-part educational Webinar series all about sales intelligence. The session, titled “Prospecting 2.0 – The Cold Call is Dead,” features Sales 2.0 author Anneke Seley, as well as Jellyvision Labs VP of Business Development Josh Braun and Marketbright VP of Sales Mike Pilcher. They’ll discuss and help answer any questions you have about effective prospecting and lead/opportunity generation.
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Update: The Prospecting 2.0 webinar was a huge hit. Thank you to all those that attended. And a big thank you to our moderator, inside sales goddess Anneke Seely and to our panelists, fearless Sales 2.0 experimenters Mike Pilcher and Josh Braun.
A recording of the webinar is now available at http://www.insideview.com/WEBINAR/
Despite the economy, it’s been an exciting spring here in San Francisco. Some highlights include the very thoughtful discussions around the continued rapid evolution of what social media and networking mean for sales and marketing at a few recent events we’ve participated in — Sales 2.0 and SaaS Summit. Taking a step back, we are reminded of the umbrella under which a lot of the excitement and innovations in our world lies: Enterprise 2.0.
To quote the oranizers of the upcoming Enterprise 2.0 conference, E2.0 technologies “make accessible the collective intelligence of many, translating to a huge competitive advantage in the form of increased innovation, productivity and agility.”
As the social Web continues to expand and weave into every possible aspect of our lives, the data and content that comes with it poses both great potential and challenge for the enterprise as a whole. For example, as we recently explained, Twitter essentially “ups the ante” in terms of volume and frequency of new data. It’s on us to keep up, and to infuse the specific and relevant portions directly into the place where business is driven.
Any enterprise initiative needs to “embrace the new tools that enable contextual, agile and simplified information exchange and collaboration,” as the E2.0 blog explains.
The recognition of Web 2.0’s importance in business continues to roll out in the tech world; everything from folks “just getting it” (like this blog post at Tech Leader) to others already putting on yearly conferences on the theme. We’re excited to be a part of this tidal wave of change and taking an active role in piecing the many new technological mediums into agents for more productivity, smarter workflows and a more informed enterprise.
Do sales professionals leverage consumer tools enough to generate business? What is the one thing that separates the good sales VPs from the great ones?
Those were just a few of the questions that Sales 2.0 expert Scott Schnaars asked our own CEO, Umberto Milletti, in today’s video interview on his blog Beyond Snake Oil. It was great to sit down with Scott – a Sales 2.0 leader in his own right – and talk about the ways Sales 2.0 tools and technologies continue to drive enterprise solutions. Check it out!
Last week, amidst continuing news of the Madoff scandal, the thought crossed our minds: This seemingly distant national headline sensation is directly related to what sales folks unfortunately experience regularly: Lost deals and customers. Simply put, they are the result of poor intelligence. And on the bright side, while we can’t turn back the clock on Madoff, every day we have new opportunities to compete for customers.
This is the theme of a recent post featured in Sales and Marketing Management, penned by our CEO, Umberto. Want to read more? Check it out here.
Release notes for SalesView release v40
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HIGHLIGHTS
User-Driven Executive Coverage – We’ve made it possible to add any executive to SalesView from our partners ‘on-demand’. Just as you’ve been able to add companies to SalesView whenever a lead or account of interest is missing, you are now able to add new business contacts to SalesView on-the-fly (searching by name or title key words.) This is extremely useful for your lead qualification and account research!
Expanded Smart Connections – We’ve improved our Smart Connections technology to help you identify more ‘hidden’ relationships. For example, you can now leverage colleagues’ previous employments and view all 2nd level connections. These enhancements have more than tripled the number of connections visible within the average lead / account.
One click CRM export – We’ve streamlined the account, lead, and contact export process for Salesforce.com and Oracle CRM On Demand customers. You can now export executive profiles with a single click from the People tab in the CRM mash-up.
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OTHER ENHANCEMENTS
Improved performance – We’ve significantly increased speed, particularly for your CRM mash-up views, by streaming Smart Agent trigger events ‘on demand’ and persisting Smart Connection results so they are not calculated at load time.
Launch executive profiles from summary alerts – We’ve added the ability to drill down to business contact details directly from your daily/weekly summary alert emails whenever an executive is mentioned in a Leadership Change trigger event.
CRM export preferences – We’ve persisted CRM mapping / preferences so that you are not prompted to select their CRM each time you export a new Account, Contact, or Lead from SalesView.
Custom Smart Agent creation – We’ve added a prompt in the Analyze tab to let you know about any badly formed custom Smart Agents. If you happen to create too broad of a Smart Agent definition, you will see a prompt within a few minutes so that you can quickly refine your key words and logic.
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InsideView – The Sales 2.0 Leader
SalesView is an on-demand sales intelligence application that increase sales productivity and accelerates sales cycles. SalesView leverages socialprise technology to bring insights from both traditional editorial sources and emerging social media into enterprise applications.
