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5/4/10 – John McCormick
Watching all the buzz around Salesforce.com’s newest app “Chatter”, and Marc Benioff leading the charge in a jump from “Cloud 1” to “Cloud 2”, it got me thinking of all the technological change that has occurred in sales over the last few years. Remember when Zack Morris was ordering pizzas in class from his gigantic cell phone? Now we are all glued to our iPhones, Blackberrys and Droids… and can email, post and play a game while ordering pizza in class.
When I read Marc’s post on moving to Cloud 2, it occurred to me that a similar movement is underway in the sales intelligence world, popularly referred to as Sales 2.0. We have moved from static to dynamic data, from editorial based information (think Hoover’s) to user generated content (think Jigsaw and NetProspex.) We’ve moved from a “who do I know” mentality (think Rolodex) to a “how are we connected” mentality (think LinkedIn and Facebook.) And we’ve moved from a research mentality (think news clippings) to a follow/subscribe mentality (think network updates, RSS feeds and email alerts.)
The days of going out to do manual research and putting it all together are past us. Having actionable sales intelligence delivered to me through my CRM just makes sense. Today’s top chefs don’t go out and go to Safeway, then Whole Foods, then to the Fish Market – they have all their ingredients delivered to them. Why should sales intelligence be any different?
| Cloud 1 —–> Cloud 2 | Sales 1.0 —–> Sales 2.0 |
| Type/Click —–> Touch | Search —–> Follow / Subscribe |
| Yahoo/Amazon —–> Facebook | Black Book —–> Facebook / LinkedIn |
| Tabs —–> Feeds | Newspaper —–> Blogs / Wikis / RSS feeds |
| Chat —–> Video | Mass Email —–> Event Based Prospecting |
| Pull —–> Push | Customer 1.0 —–> Customer 2.0 |
| Create —–> Consume | Call Volumes —–> Meaningful Interaction |
| Location Unknown —–> Location Known | Onsite Visits —–> WebEx / GoToMeeting |
| Desktop/notebook —–> Smart phone/Tablet | Cold Calling —–> Social Calling |
| Windows/Mac —–> Cocoa/HTML 5 | Hoover’s/OneSource —–> SalesView |
The point here is this… we are already doing all these things separately – but why? When all the information I need can be delivered to me within my CRM and help make my message more relevant – seems like a no brainer. Do you think Zack Morris would still be using something that is outdated by 10+ years?
