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Guest post by Josiane Feigon – author, blogger, entrepreneur, and founder of TeleSmart Communications.
I was shopping for a new road bike last week and trying to figure out the difference between the steel, aluminum, and carbon frames. In explaining the differences, the guy said, “This heavier bike is like the 1.0 version and this newer, lighter one is like the 2.0 version.” Bingo — sold! These days everything that carries a 2.0 stamp promises a glimpse of what the future holds.
The Sales 2.0 Conference East takes place in Boston today. Sales leaders have gathered once again to learn about the latest tools, processes, and best-practices that will increase sales productivity and ultimately drive revenue. As I ponder the evolution of Sales 2.0, I think back to a question posed by an audience member at the 2nd Sales 2.0 Conference in March 2009 that gave everyone pause – Should we first focus on defining “Customer 2.0” and their buying process before moving on to “Sales 2.0”? A year later, the answer is a definitive yes.
In the last five years Web 2.0 and social media have fundamentally changed customer behavior and their buying process. Those changes have put the customer in the driver’s seat and in control of the conversation, which in turn demands that B2B sales professionals adopt different tools, tactics, and processes for listening, connecting, and engaging with their social customers. This explains the growing interest in Sales 2.0 and Social Selling.
Customer 2.0 has arrived and they’re moving fast. These techno-savvy, socially engaged buyers don’t want to be sold to. They have survived one of the toughest economic landscapes in history, and they’re traveling light — smart enough to know what they DON’T want:
- They’ve been lied to, betrayed, and held in sales headlocks listening to empty product pitches. They don’t want to be pushed, pitched, or prodded any more.
- They don’t want to be sold to, read email clichés like “premiere solutions provider” or “next-generation,” or sit through “death by PowerPoint” demos or presentations.
- They don’t want to stand in long-lines. They much prefer going through the quick self-service queue.
- And they don’t want to be spoon-fed a big dinner that ends up making them sick. They want to eat bite-sized pieces, full of flavor, that they can pick up with their own hands and easily digest.
And they’re smart enough to know what they DO want:
- They want you to really listen to their needs, to tell them why their business is unique and makes a difference.
- They want to shop through their own channels, and they are really good at it. They scope the market on their own and are resourceful and smart when it comes to making choices — they may actually know more about your product than you do.
- They are very social and easily influenced. When making a decision, they are much more likely to listen to friends and colleagues before they listen to your sales team.
- They have their own rhythm. They’ve learned how to wait for desperate discounting at the end of the month — that’s where the deals are. But surprisingly, they aren’t looking for deals, they aren’t looking to be the next hero, they just want to know their investment is solid because they don’t want to check it/rebalance it/refresh it over time.
Customer 2.0 travels light and moves fast! Is your sales team equipped to keep up?
About Josiane Feigon
Josiane Feigon is author of the book, Smart Selling on the Phone and Online- the sourcebook for inside sales. Her Cubicle Chronicles blog is voted among the top 25 sales blogs. She is founder and CEO of TeleSmart Communications, a 20-year veteran and thought leader of the industry, Josiane is recognized as one of the world’s leading experts on inside sales team and manager talent, providing consulting, coaching, and training solutions for hundreds of Fortune 1000 companies. Visit Josiane’s website: www.tele-smart.com, and read her blog, purchase her book and download her latest ebook and white papers.
A 20-year industry veteran, Josiane is the founder of TeleSmart Communications. Since 1994, this San Francisco-based solutions provider has been a leader in developing global Inside Sales teams and managers.
The new Customer 2.0 is savvy and social, utilizing a myriad of networks and channels to voice their opinion and recommend the products they love (and condemn those they dislike). But there’s also a select group of sales pros who have taken this social bull by the horns, providing insight to their peers about getting on the same level as the customer via sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and their own blogs.
In January, we recognized the savviest sales industry professionals using the social Web, and continued the list because we were equally impressed by yet another pack of social media leaders.
Today, we extend the InsideView 50 to another select group of sales executives, writers, trainers, analysts and more – all of whom focus on leading the new wave of selling, or what we like to call, Sales 2.0. Like InsideView, these individuals are ushering in a new era of sales, and we’re happy to recognize them for doing so.
And without further ado:
Paul Castain, VP of sales development for Consolidated Graphics (CGX)
Company Website: http://www.cgx.com/Public/index.asp
Paul is the VP of sales development for CGX by day and a Sales Jedi by night (and day.) He shares his more than 25 years of sales experience on his blog, The Sales Playbook. He also shares tips & tricks, resources, industry news and other great stuff with over 12,000 sales professionals that belong to his Sales Playbook group on LinkedIn.. He has trained more than 3,000 sales professionals, has authored numerous articles and manuals and is currently in the process of releasing his first book.
Doyle Slayton, founder of SalesBlogcast.com
Company website: http://salesblogcast.com/
Doyle is the founder of SalesBlogcast, a sales and leadership blog that provides industry insight, resources and information. As the founder of the blog, Doyle has become an internationally recognized sales strategist, speaker and blogger, and his LinkedIn group has developed a huge following with regular contributions from sales professionals around the world.
Thomas Reidy, author of The Sales Whisperer for Entrepreneurs
Company website: http://www.thomasreidy.com/
Thomas is an accomplished author and provides resources and advice from more than 30 years of experience in sales and business development. He is also the only expert of his type to appear 12consecutive times in Who’s Who in America, and specializes in coaching “Old School vs. New School” business development skills.
Brian Carroll, CEO of InTouch
Company website: http://www.startwithalead.com/
Brian is the CEO of InTouch and creator of the B2B Lead Generation blog. He authored Lead Generation for the Complex Sale (McGraw-Hill) and has shared his expertise in publications including BtoB Magazine, Selling Power, Sales and Marketing Management, The Wall Street Journal and CMO Magazine.
Ken Thoreson, president of Acumen Management Group
Company website: http://www.acumenmgmt.com
Ken is the president of Acumen Management group. He brings a wealth of “old school” expertise to our list of savvy sales professionals, sharing his expertise on Twitter and in a variety of publications. Ken writes the Your Sales Management Guru blog and contributes regularly on LinkedIn.
Eric Blumthal, CEO of Count5 and creator of (social network for salespeople)
Company website: http://www.count5.com/
Eric is the CEO of Count5 and the creator of Funny Sales Cartoons, a social network for salespeople. His Twitter bio says enough: “I tweet about sales effectiveness★★#B2Bsales thought tweader / software CEO that doesn’t take himself 2 seriously. I help Sales VP’s w/execution.”
S. Anthony Iannarino, president and chief sales officer of SOLUTIONS Staffing
Company website: http://thesalesblog.com/
S. Anthony is the president and CSO of SOLUTIONS Staffing, and runs The Sales Blog. He also owns B2B Sales Coach and actively tweets with tips and resources to help educate and inform fellow sales professionals.
Skip Anderson, founder and president of Selling to Consumers
Company website: http://blog.sellingtoconsumers.com/
Skip is the founder and president of Selling to Consumers, a sales training and consulting company. Similar to his peers on our list, his Twitter bio speaks for itself: “Authority on B2C selling, writer, retail sales training, speaker, blogger, geek (not in the tech sense, but in the geeky sense).”
Peter Ostrow, sales effectiveness research director at the Aberdeen Group
Company website: http://www.aberdeen.com/
Peter is the sales effectiveness research director at the Aberdeen Group, and is a highly recognized analyst covering the technology, service and consulting enablers that enterprise sales forces deploy to become Best-in-Class organizations. His research is widely publicized and covers topics such as sales training and sales intelligence.
Dave Stein, founder, chairman and CEO of ES Research Group
Company website: http://www.esresearch.com/
Dave is the founder, chairman and CEO of ES Research Group, and is a highly recognizedcontributor to leading business magazines and websites. The sales expert began his career as a professional trumpeter, but has since worked up a great reputation for his professional contributions (some of which can be seen in his blog).
InsideView is a hotshot company with a dazzling future. As the leader in sales intelligence and social CRM, InsideView is revolutionizing the way business people communicate. Period. It’s what to say, when to say it, and to whom to say it…compliments of SalesView, InsideView’s killer app.
Having spent many years in Marketing, Sales, and Business Development – I know first hand the advantage of having inside knowledge of your prospects and clients. Sure, there’s lots of info out on the web, but who has time to sift through millions of search results. Time is my most important asset and having the “inside” scoop is my deadliest weapon. SalesView is the best of both. SalesView is the best of both. Critical insight and triggers, right inside my workflow, at the moment I need it. I’d always rather be on offense!
InsideView is growing crazy fast and I can’t wait to propel that momentum with innovative and productive partnerships and alliances. It’s great to be an “Insider”. Join the club – come partner with us! heidi.tucker@insideview.com
With new businesses implementing online marketing and blogging strategies every day, more and more business owners are now taking on the daunting task of online marketing, and they’re looking online for help on where to start. This can be a seemingly great tactic, albeit dangerous. The danger lies with the massive amount misinformation floating around. Because of that, I wanted to clear up five popular myths in order to help you avoid unrealistic expectations, expectations created by new businesses about the wonderful world of online marketing.
Thanks to Marketo for sparking my idea to take the opposite approach of their post.
And now, without any further ado, the list…
1. If You Build It, They Will Come
This common mistake is the inherent weakness of the “Content is King” argument. Creating content by publishing blog posts and articles does not mean search engines nor visitors will find your content. The truth is that even the best and most deserving content usually does not win because “Content + Marketing = King”. This is where search engine optimization and social media marketing have an effect on your success.
2. Creating a Twitter and Facebook Account Will Help Your Marketing Strategy
I’ve seen it a hundred times. A business wants to ‘get social’ and start focusing on social media marketing and interacting with their customers. So, they setup a Facebook profile page and a Twitter account and phew… that was hard. And now the traffic, customers and comments should come rolling in…yes? Wrong.
Leveraging social media for B2B sales and marketing success takes time, effort and some strategy. Expect it to take a little time, some research and learning on your end and a lot of tweets and updates to really get going (unless you’re a big brand). If done correctly, it can be a huge benefit to your marketing goals, sales objectives and your customer service.
3. Reading Online Tips and Techniques is a Substitute for Professional Help from Experts
The Internet is a large, large place full of great information. The problem is the percentage of content that is trusted, referenced, truthful and written by credible experts is particularly small. The fact is, what you read online is mostly opinion, made-up, you name it and should not be substituted for real facts or expert advice. Think of any medical website or advertisement and the message they throw in the fine print “This information is not intended to be a substitute for medical advice or treatment. Always seek the advice of a qualified professional.” If you understand and follow that methodology to keep your body healthy, do the same for the health of your business and its marketing strategy!
4. Automate Everything You Can to Save Time
This is yet another classic mistake caused by efficiency overload. Some things can be automated. Other things should never be automated. Lead scoring, company research and sales intelligence, tracking search engine rankings are a few examples of aspects that automation can save a great deal of time. However, other aspects like search engine optimization, demand generation and conversion optimization to name a few should always be manual. Sure, there are tools you can use to help, but these tasks are more of an art than a science where automation has no place.
5. Being Successful Online Is Easy
Probably the biggest oversight that companies fall prey to is the misunderstanding that being successful online is easy. What may have worked in 1998 definitely does not work in 2010 and success is much, much harder now-a-days. Search engines and stiff competition have taken away most “fast-track” online marketing efforts. Yet, companies are still misinformed and, just to name a few, still:
…think that a “set it and forget” approach will work (Not so much. It takes real work!)
…want to spend as little as possible to get great results (When has this ever worked?)
…want #1 rankings in less than a month (LOL! Really?)
…give IT departments more control than they do marketing departments and SEOs
Inbound Marketing is still a relatively new and quickly trending marketing strategy that was coined a few years ago by HubSpot. While it has fast become a high priority for companies looking to increase their awareness, traffic, and revenues via the Web, Inbound Marketing is often confused with search engine optimization.
What is Inbound Marketing?
Wikipedia defines Inbound Marketing as:
Inbound marketing is a style of marketing that essentially focuses on getting found by customers. Marketers “earn their way in” (via publishing helpful information on a blog etc.) in contrast to outbound marketing where they used to have to “buy, beg, or bug their way in” (via paid advertisements, issuing press releases in the hope they get picked up by the trade press, or paying commissioned sales people, respectively).
In short, Inbound Marketing is a way to ”get found online” by publishing information on the web and customers finding your published content. This allows your company, website and brand to earn credibility as the customer finds your content (provided they also find value in that content), making them more likely to trust your information, buy your products, recommend you to peers, etc. Put another way… Inbound Marketing = Getting Found by Customers
There is a bit of a Field of Dreams “if you build it, they will come” assumption with
inbound marketing. Just because you are publishing articles, white papers and blog posts does not mean customers will ever find your content. Why? Because publishing content, even great content, does not mean that search engines will find you, rank you high enough to drive meaningful traffic or that websites will link to you and promote your content. To do all that, you need search engine optimization (SEO).
What is Search Engine Optimization?
SEOMoz, a hugely popular search engine optimization company and online community, define SEO as the following:
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the active practice of optimizing a web site by improving internal and external aspects in order to increase the traffic the site receives from search engines.
In short, SEO is a marketing strategy that is the complex process of creating, publishing, promoting and optimizing your web site to maximize your ability to “get found” by search engines that will potentially drive traffic and customers to your site. Put another way… SEO = Getting Found by Search Engines
Within the internet marketing and SEO communities, Inbound Marketing is simply thought of as accessibility and content creation, along with the hundreds of other factors taken into account by SEO rankings.
SEO + Inbound Marketing = Getting Found (by search engines AND customers)
SEO not only encompasses publishing content to get found by customers, but the underlying process that inbound marketing assumes – making sure that your content can be found by search engines so that it can in turn be found by customers.
As you contemplate your Inbound Marketing strategy, take into account this classic quote: “great content is no substitute for great marketing.” A strong advertising, promotional, social media, inbound selling and/or SEO campaign has the ability to attract far more attention than the content may “deserve”. Seemingly unfair, it’s a principle on which all of capitalism has functioned for the last few hundred years. Spreading the word is often just as important (or more so) than being right, being honest or being valuable – just look at the world of politics.
With the advent of Web 2.0 and social media, it’s now easier than ever to find and connect with people. Social networks such as Facebook, Orkut, Hi5, MySpace are teeming with hundreds of millions of people looking to connect (or reconnect) socially. Meanwhile professional networks such as LinkedIn and Xing have attracted millions of people looking to connect professionally.
Social media has redefined not only how people connect but also the kind of information they share. While the initiated may know to share information selectively, some neophytes have learned the hard way that being candid about their personal lives can be hazardous to their professional career. All of this sharing has created a unique opportunity not only for online marketers, who are shifting more and more of their advertising budgets to targeted social media ads) but also to B2B sales professionals.
The same rich social profile information that allows marketers to do hyper-targeted advertising also enables sales people to do more targeted prospecting than ever before. Web 2.0 has created an abundance (many would argue a surplus) of social and professional information. This information overload has itself spawned a new category of sales tools and processes dubbed Sales 2.0. Conceptually Sales 2.0 is all about using Web technologies to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the buying process for both buyer and seller. In the context of information overload, the idea is to leverage technology to identify relevant business events and relationships from across thousands of sources and present this intelligence in such a way that sales people can easily act on it.
Among the various capabilities of Sales 2.0 applications, connection mapping has emerged as a darling. This comes as no surprise for those of us familiar with the concept (and power) of reference selling. Indeed the ability to identify a connection into a prospect and leverage a trusted reference is extremely effective. Personally, I’m much more inclined to take a call from a sales person who calls with a reference and my guess is that you are too. I may not buy the product or service but I’ll certainly spare a few minutes to learn more, which is a step further than most prospecting efforts ever get. Especially when budgets are tight and expectations high, we’re less inclined to take chances with new products and services. But if someone we trust has used that product or service, it lessens the risk.
Connecting the dots across different social networks and your internal systems can still be a tedious task. Sales 2.0 technologies can harness data from across the web and bring it under one roof, directly within your CRM. More importantly these sales solutions can do the heavy lifting to find the hidden connections that exist between you prospects and your reference customers, previous employers, colleagues, and executive team.
Connecting with people you know through your personal networks and professional experiences to create business opportunities is nothing new. What is new is the scale of your network and the ease with which you can leverage it. In the last two years, early adopters of Sales 2.0 have seen excellent results leveraging connections. With the early majority now adopting Sales 2.0, conventional data providers are likely to want to play catch up and invest in connection mapping technologies as well.
The Altimeter Group’s R “Ray” Wang and Jeremiah Owyang recently hosted a Webinar called “Social CRM: The New Rules of Relationship Management.” The discussion revolved around an emerging trend in Social CRM platforms, including the business implications of choosing to acknowledge and interact with your customers rather than allow conversations to carry out without your organization’s knowledge or participation.
At the heart of the Webinar lived the fact that customers are using social technologies to share their voices, and companies are having a very difficult time to keep up. As a result, organizations are turning to Social CRM technologies to engage their customer base in both praise and complaint.
Altimeter defines Social CRM as a means to “understand where, what and which conversations are happening, and how to engage in conversation.” Social networks have become the customer’s virtual soapbox to share all information and commentary about their favorite, or least favorite, companies – a scenario that must be acknowledged and dealt with appropriately by company representatives.
If you are pioneering your company’s Social CRM initiative, or have been tasked with finding a solution for customer engagement, the Social CRM Pioneer Group is a great resource for more information and feedback from experts.
Wang and Owyang point to the importance of “listening before talking,” noting that by doing so an organization can identify top influencers, rank top conversations, prioritize top channels and gauge the tone of conversation. InsideView CEO Umberto Milletti discussed the relevance of listening before talking in a Sandhill article earlier this year, stating “In a prospect-driven buying process, sales reps need to actively listen and develop a conversation with prospects.”
Social media has led to a demand for immediate response – with Social CRM, companies can be among the first to respond to a public complaint, rather than getting lost in the eventual mass of commentary. Look no further than last year’s United Breaks Guitar scenario. Within hours of posting a video complaint about the airline mishandling his musical equipment, millions of viewers had shared the homemade PR nightmare. With an active Social CRM platform, United could have potentially calmed the waters with a fraction of the public interest.
Several additional notes from the Webinar:
- For companies, real time is not fast enough: Companies need to be able to anticipate what customers are going to say and do, in order to keep up. Example: Although Motrin responded to angry moms within 24 hours – it was too slow.
- Companies are unable to scale to meet the needs of social: No matter how many community managers companies hire to support, they’ll never be able to match the number of active customers. They need tools, and they need them now.
- Customers don’t care what department you’re in they just want their problem fixed: Support problems can quickly became a PR nightmare (United Airlines guitar incident) – had the support group known she was an influencer (and what it means), they could service the disgruntled customer better.
There’s no shortage of smart and important voices when it comes to where software and information-tech is headed, but there are only a few who seek to bring the entire industry together under one roof. The Software & Information Industry Association – formed 27 years ago in the early age of software publishing – is one of them, working across the myriad corporate, legislative and educational horizons to make sure that the space stays friendly for innovation.
We’re excited to announce that our CEO, Umberto Milletti, has been named to the SIIA Board this year (Software Division), and it’s an honor to be among such an excellent and diverse group of both established and emerging software leaders. SIIA provides a great forum for sharing and developing the ideas that will shape the creation of the next generation of software applications, and how they can help organizations achieve superior business results.
A key trend that we foresee in the software industry is the growing intersection between enterprise applications, like CRM and ERP, and social networking/Web 2.0 applications – essentially what’s known as Enterprise 2.0. And to this end, Cloud computing will be a key ingredient. As a company working in this exact space, we’ll bring unique perspectives – both of success and challenge – as well as overall thought leadership, in how these applications can grow and, as a whole, how the industry can press forward and how we can all achieve an end goal of business value and growth.
We’re very excited about working with such a great set of leaders, and here’s to a great year with SIIA!
As we all know, there is no better way to learn than through failure. And on that note, we’d like to announce our sponsorship of the SalesFail Contest.
We are out to find the most entertaining stories of failed sales experiences. With an award of $2500, this will be the one chance that sales professionals get to earn a commission on their past sales fails.
If you happen to be in sales, or have ever tried to (unsuccessfully) sell anything, enter your story at SalesPop (or see what is being discussed on Twitter or Facebook).
