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 2^nd 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.

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)

@PaulCastain

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

@SalesBlogcast

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

@tmreidy

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

@BrianJCarroll

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

@KenThoreson

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)

@EricBlumthal

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

@Iannarino

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

@SkipAnderson

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

@PeterOstrow

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

@DaveStei

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

By: Christopher Kelly

Is the Cold Call Really Dead?

The top salespeople would tell you that cold calling can never be truly “dead”. A sales guy has to stay in tune with the market, understand what his buyers want, and meet those needs in the most professional manner. There’s lots of talk about the Social CRM and Inbound Selling. How can CRM’s bring the power of the social part of web, right in to the home of a sales person. SalesForce’s recent acquisition of Jigsaw comes close to it. Bringing user contributed data within your CRM is the first step to enabling sales team’s access first hand data, which could be 90% accurate.

Aligning Sales and Marketing Teams with Sales 2.0

SI is seeing the birth of a new technological wave, which is enabling Sales organizations be better and efficient at what they do, without having to shell out more for it. The amalgamation of marketing and sales teams through technological mediums is helping organizations reduce the quarrel, and increase the bottomline. Can these two teams truly be in sync? I’d say Sales 2.0 is doing exactly that.  Enabling the same technology to be accessible by both, and when the tech. helps marketing “generate” better leads, and Sales “qualify” them quickly, there’s no question the two would be each other’s better half.

Ideas like Sales Intelligence, Sales 2.0, and Customer 2.0 are helping organizations form a more cohesive strategy to approach their customers and prospects. As I mentioned in my earlier post, Connection Mapping is emerging as the new favorite, technology is enabling organizations reach out to better qualified leads, and Marketing is able to give more focused leads to their counterparts in Sales.

Sales 2.0 Equals Better Productivity

We at SalesView are doing all of it, under one roof. Enabling the Social Part of the web to be accessible within the CRM (Twitter feeds, Google blogs update, LinkedIn connections, and Facebook connections) (Social CRM), enabling Marketing and Sales Teams use the same technology to generate better pipelines (Sales 2.0), and helping organizations feel the pulse of the market (Social Media). All of it aimed at reducing research time, increasing ROI, and giving our users an efficient and productive way to sell.

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.

By: Christopher Kelly

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.

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.

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!

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).

As Rembrandt general partner Jerry Casilli put it, “InsideView is leveraging the explosion of social media to help businesses dig out from the recession and supercharge their sales teams for growth.” In their coverage of the news today, TechCrunch added to this, noting our ability to “give businesses sales intelligence and information that will aid sales operations with helping develop and maintain leads and clients.” We consider that a crucial element to growth in the current economic climate.

Indeed, we’ve worked hard in the past year by growing our customer base, helping establish an innovative sales community embracing the principles of Enterprise 2.0 – known as the Sales 2.0 Alliance – and a sound, yet innovative freemium business model. It’s exciting to continue this momentum throughout 2010.

Adds Casilli, “The triple-digit revenue growth that the company has been achieving quarter in and quarter out is a testament to a remarkable management team, a unique and right-timed product, and the power of the Freemium go-to-market model paired with a strong value proposition.”

We have continued this list from our original IV 20 because there are just too many great examples of social Web use to stop at 20. So, throughout 2010, we will continue to recognize worthy individuals and ultimately create InsideView’s top 50 sales industry social media users…stay tuned. Now, without further ado, your sales industry social media stars:

1) John Cousineau – Founder and CEO of Innovative Information

Twitter: http://twitter.com/jcousineau

More:  John is the founder and CEO of Innovative Information, makers of Amacus, a B2B sales productivity tool for Sales Reps. John specializes in B2B sales productivity and has spent over 30 years harnessing the capabilities of technology and information in ways that inform and accelerate business productivity. John regularly shares his wisdom on sales through multiple channels, including twitter and his blog.

2) Craig Rosenberg – Vice President, Products and Services at Focus

Twitter: http://twitter.com/funnelholic

More: Craig serves as VP of products and services at Focus, while also being the man behind the popular B2B sales blog www.funnelholic.com. Craig has had a wide range of sales experience having worked at over 23 startups ranging in technology verticals from storage, networking, business applications, security and infrastructure. Craig regularly posts new content to his blog, which he notes is intended for ‘those who live and work at the top end of the b2b funnel,’ if that sounds like you, check it out.

3) Miles Austin, Founder of Fill the Funnel

Twitter: http://twitter.com/milesaustin

More: As a sales professional who tweets multiple tips and resources per day, Miles knows a thing or two about sales Web tools (his company helps sales people select/implement the tools and training necessary for your team to benefit, quickly).  Check out Miles’ blog, www.fillthefunnel.com, to learn about the latest sales productivity tools.  (Full disclosure, we recently had the honor of being featured as a favorite sales intelligence tool on his blog.)

4) Craig Elias, Creator of Trigger Event Selling

Twitter: http://twitter.com/CraigElias

More: Craig’s Twitter handle share articles and resources to help sales professionals be more effective and efficient via social sales…and clever posts like “Word of Mouth on steroids.” Craig is authoring SHiFT! Harness The Trigger Events and leading the upcoming Webinar, Trigger Events: The Silver Bullet in Sales.

5) David Brock, Sales Consultant for Partners in Excellence Twitter

Twitter: http://twitter.com/davidabrock

More: David’s enthusiasm for building successful businesses and organizations is clear as he provides a consistent stream of content, enabling sales and business professionals through great information and tips about making the most out of their careers and opportunities. Be sure to tune in to his blog for his ideas…in long form.

6) Ardath Albee, B2B Marketer, Strategist, Writer, Storyteller and Author of eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale

Twitter: http://twitter.com/ardath421

More: Ardath is one of the lead generating and marketing gurus of Twitter. She shares her insight and highlights that of others on a consistent basis on Twitter, her blog and in her book – which, of course, involves best practices and tips for marketers.

7) Nigel Edelshain, CEO of Sales 2.0

Twitter: http://twitter.com/nedelsha

More: There’s a lot to live up to if you are the CEO of a company called Sales 2.0, an organization dedicated to the improvement of sales results via new and innovative Web tools. Nigel, however, lives up to the challenge by tweeting about all things Sales 2.0, including the latest news, tips and resources.

8)  Jeffrey Gitomer – Sales writer, consultant and speaker

Twitter: http://twitter.com/Gitomer

More: Jeffrey has created a veritable industry of his own within the sales industry. He has had great success in the print media world, authoring New York Times best seller books on sales strategy and effectiveness and also gives over 100 presentations per year on average on the same topics. On the social media front, Jeffrey has amassed a significant Twitter following for his short, concise sales tip tweets. He also blogs on sales topics at www.gitomer.comand www.trainone.com

9) Stephen Dill - Owner at SRD InterActive, Partner at MatchPoint

Twitter: http://twitter.com/srdill

More: Stephen refers to himself as a ‘Sales & Marketing consulting by day, reinventing public education by night.’ On the sales side, Stephen is seasoned in sales and marketing with expertise in the development and use of social media and interactive channels and their integration with traditional sales and marketing channels. Check out Stephen’s blog to read his thoughts on sales, technology and education or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/srdill

10) Joe Vaughn, Sales professional and blogger

Twitter: www.twitter.com/joesales

More: Joe’s moniker, Joe Sales, sums up the feeling of the faceless salesperson, which is why it is refreshing to see that the man behind the name is so active on social media. Joe tweets insights on sales, among a range of other entertaining topics on his feed. Check him out at www.twitter.com/joesales

The best product award, given to SalesView, faced some steep competition, and points to a thriving environment of innovation in Andhra Pradesh overall. Indeed, the vision of ITsAP is to “position Andhra Pradesh as the leading intellectual capital of the world, by nurturing entrepreneurship, research and innovation, to achieve global excellence in IT products and services.” There was no shortage of intellectual capital at the event!

Our India-based team is right in the thick of this entrepreneurial corridor and this is a certain vote of confidence in what we’re doing for sales productivity, including outside of our headquarters here in San Francisco and on a world-wide scale.

More on the summit can be found at ITsAP’s event page and you can also join the organization on Facebook.

Great work and kudos to our team there!

How to Finally Put Customers First

Rapid Social Sales Response Explained

As Altimeter states, social sales enables seamless lead opportunities, emphasizing how being “social” allows companies the opportunity to reinvent business workflow, thus bringing new technologies to existing business functions like sales. As business-productivity technologies evolve, recognizing providers and detailing solutions are among the first steps of social adoption by enterprises, and we applaud Altimeter for their work in helping organizations map their route into the developing world of social technologies.

Why Companies Will Manage their Social Relationships

A few key takeaways from the report:

• For companies, real-time may not even be fast enough. Companies need to be able to anticipate what customers are going to say, so they can be prepared and preemptively engage.
• Companies are unable to scale to meet the needs of social. No matter how many community managers a company hires to support, they’ll never be able to match the number of active customers. So they need tools, and they need them now.
• Customers don’t care what department you’re in; they just want their problem fixed.

When it comes to social selling, so many of these tenets are key to the process. If you know your lead and prospect inside and out, you’ll have a productive and engaging interaction no matter what. If your sales team has the right tools in place, they’ll be “first responders” when opportunities arise, and will be able to do so without wasting hours of time researching.

You can see the report in its entirety here; we’d love your comments and thoughts on what you think!

Lead Generation

B2B Lead Generation Blog: Brian Carroll, CEO of InTouch and author of Lead Generation for the Complex Sale, runs a blog about B2B lead generation, sales leads and marketing for the ‘complex’ sale.

Dig It: SalesDog.com is one of the Internet’s most visited sales-success sites, with insight from several of America’s leading sales experts, bringing practical selling tips and strategies to salespeople, sales managers, business owners and entrepreneurs.

The Virtual Handshake: A resource guide for Web 2.0 technology users, including blogs, social network sites, virtual communities, relationship capital management software and more.

Lead Management

Sales Lead Management Association Blog: Articles to help you become more successful in the lead management sales business process. The blog allows you to respond to posted articles, share your thoughts, opinions and ideas.

Sales and Sales Management Blog: Paul McCord, best-selling author, sales expert, coach and trainer, provides insight about sales and sales management issues, specializing in sales trends and topics including introductions vs. referrals, use of incentives and much more.

Lead Nurturing/Qualification

The Online Marketing Blog Network: The network brings together expertise from the sales and marketing online community, contributing news, ideas, strategies, commentary, insights, research and more

Inside Sales Experts Blog: Shares thoughts about best practices for sales, lead generation and nurturing and revenue generation, including trends, tips, models and metrics.

B2B Sales and Marketing Blog: Industry discussion about lead generation, qualification and nurturing, focused on providing ideas about global business-to-business sales support, growing the sales pipeline and increasing sales numbers.

For an expanded list of all-things-sales blogs, check out the Top 100 Blogs to Boost Your Sales Skills.

The videos below are a great mix of metaphors, infomercial pitches and, well, some we cannot categorize. Although they may not be of the highest quality, they are certainly entertaining.

Leave a comment and let us know your all time favorites.

Ever get the feeling that you’re working with a bunch of monkeys?

The Credit MacDaddy plugs his business with an awkward rap

“EZ Divorce Law” now known as “DivorceDeli.com”

Larry Love, owner of “Better Days Auto Sales,” loves his cars and loves you

Vince with ShamWow here…

Motivize! Pulverize! Realize! with Get Your Basketball On

The Red House Furniture’s theme cannot be described in one caption

Bobby Denning  furniture and appliances and reality and auction and…

An insurance company going for the scare factor

We recently asked the group if they had any advice to share with their peers. What we received was advice, best practices, cautions and words of wisdom that will surely help the remainder of the sales industry dive in to the tempered waters of social media, and navigate the terrain of the traditional sales industry.

Tibor Shanto, principal and founder of Renbor Sales Solutions Inc.

If you have something to say, say it, say it loud! Join LinkedIn and take some time to find groups in line with your interests, then speak up. Share your blog posts, join discussions, answer questions and take advantage of any other way to be vocal.  Once you have contributed to a discussion, Tweet about it. Not only will you be able to get solid feedback about a variety of topics, but you can then take those ideas and blog about it. From there, you can tweet it – a very effective and cyclical cylce.

LinkedIn creates an ongoing opportunity to involve new people, new views and perpetuate your learning and ability to expand your network as people learn about you and your thinking. From there, build relationships and carry the conversation off line – sometimes these people will be sales leads, industry experts or at the least, people you share common interests with.

Chad Levitt, Account Executive at HubSpot, Author of the New Sales Economy Blog

In “Six Simple Steps to Reach More Prospects,” Chad shares his insight about connecting with your target accounts and contracts: “If you are wondering if these 6 steps will work — they do — I use them everyday with success. The beauty of these 6 simple steps is that they are easily repeatable and do not waste your time on unnecessary tasks.”

Identify your target account

Go to Jigsaw.com and type your target account into the search field and click ‘go.’ Select the contacts you would like to connect with at your target account

• If the company’s main line is the only one listed, call and ask the operator to give you the direct extension. The operator will usually give it to you. If they try to put you through say you will reach out again later and hang up.

Go to Google and type in the name of your target prospect and the company’s name

• Many times you will find their LinkedIn profile, other social media networks and affiliations. Explore their LinkedIn profile and social networks and get to know your target contact. You may also find related news items that may be relevant.

Send an introduction email that you should have saved in a template to save time

• Make quick changes to your template to personalize email, and let your target contact know in your email you will be calling shortly

Call back in a few hours to connect with your prospect

• If they respond to your email before you call them, immediately call back – they are usually at their desk. Leave a compelling voicemail if your target contact does not pick up the phone and mention your email. The combination of your email and calling will greatly increase the chances of reaching your target contact

Brian Jones, president of Industrial Interface, Inc.

Don’t be a business

The Internet allows people in every job to consume information that they find interesting at work.  If you can present relevant and useful information to your potential customers that is also fun and interesting, then you are well on your way to creating a valuable online brand.

It’s not always about marketing

Internet users can smell marketing speak a mile away. Why? Because it’s usually meaningless drivel that conveys no real benefit to anyone. Social media marketing is all about people sharing with other people. You need to personify your brand to compete in this space. If your company is just sharing its most recent product information, then no one is going to care. Don’t be afraid to be personal, funny, controversial and casual when representing your brand online.

Trust your product

If your product stinks, then all the marketing in the world isn’t going to help. If you’ve created a valuable website and clearly share the benefits of using your products, then users will be engaged when they get there. You won’t always have to push your products on customers through these online avenues.

Choose the right medium

There are a lot of popular social media sites that aren’t useful to every brand. LinkedIn is for professional networking and business information, while Facebook is reserved exclusively for fun personal interactions. B2B social media efforts need to be highly targeted to be successful.

Monitor the right metrics

Lots of people are interested in lots of stuff online, so traffic isn’t always a key to success. Look to customer sign-ups, calls or some other action that represents a real prospect doing something on your site. Getting a thousand people to your site is useless if no one takes the actions you need.

Joanne Black, founder of consulting business for Referral Sales, No More Cold Calling

Joanne’s tip is short and simple, but provide a sound perspective about LinkedIn.

Personalize your LinkedIn invitation

When I receive the standard invitation, “Please join my professional network on LinkedIn,” I know the person is reaching out to a list of people. I respond to a personal connection, as do most people. Use your invitation to re-connect, share a few short sentences about what you are doing or comment on their profile. It makes a world of difference. Also, do not accept invitations from people you don’t know.

Over the course of 2009 InsideView received highly regarded accolades from the sales community, including :

• JMP Securities Hot 100 List of best privately held software companies
• High praises from the research firm Aberdeen Group in their sales intelligence study
• Being ranked as the highest-rated application at the salesforce.com AppExchange
• Being named alongside Google and Facebook by CRM Magazine as a “Rising Star” in companies pushing the boundaries of social CRM

In the latter half of 2009 we partnered with NetSuite and released an application to leverage social networking, including Facebook and Twitter, within both Customer Relationship Management and Enterprise Resource Planning, spawning the Social ERP category.

In May, InsideView also launched the Smart Cloud and Buzz Tab (Twitter CRM integration) to incorporate real-time social media monitoring into all major CRM applications, while significantly enhancing our technology’s integrations with both Oracle CRM On Demand and Siebel CRM applications in support of Oracle’s Social CRM initiative.

We carry this momentum into 2010, and have no doubts that the new decade will be an era of Sales 2.0 technologies to make the life of the sales professional more efficient, more productive and, most important of all, more successful.

Aberdeen cites SalesView’s technology, aggregating sales intelligence from social media and traditional sources, in turn increasing sales productivity and velocity. The study credits SalesView’s CRM integration with providing the following benefits:

• 27% increase in overall productivity
• 32% more sales reps achieve their quotas
• 31% more sales reps see a better win/loss rate
• 18% more sales reps convert leads to the closing stage

According to Peter Ostrow, research director for sales effectiveness at The Aberdeen Group, “Access to sales intelligence, especially when directly fed into CRM/SFA systems, is clearly one of the major enablers for the best-in-class companies in the study. Sales teams who are deploying InsideView’s sales intelligence application are indeed achieving 32% better performance than non-customers, in terms of current lead conversion rates and hitting quota, and year-to-year growth in revenue and win/loss ratios.”

Perhaps the most impressive statistic from the Aberdeen study was this: despite the 2008 and 2009 recession, InsideView customers posted year-over-year gains in quota attainment, revenue, win rates, and lead conversion rates.

While we’ve been able to share individual success stories of InsideView customers, it’s exciting to have analyst research affirm the positive impact that Sales 2.0 technologies like SalesView have on sales organizations in aggregate. Check out the entire report here.

The Webinar, “How to Blow Out Your Quota in 2010,” is complimentary and will teach you and your organization how to:

• Achieve an average of 87% overall sales team quota
• Increase average revenue by 17%
• Experience an average of 7% improvement of lead conversion rate
• Raise average selling price/contract size by 45%

Register in advance at http://tinyurl.com/yzm8c7t.