InsideView is putting together our Insider Summit and everyone is invited. If you are a sales or marketing professional responsible for lead generation and revenue, this years Insider Summit is going to leave you with real examples and training on how to do your jobs better. InsideView is the standard in sales intelligence applications helping more than 100,000 sales professionals, and over 1,000 market-leading companies including Adobe, AIG, BMC, Cap Gemini, Experian, and SuccessFactors.

Block off these dates and register for the Insider Summit 2012.

Here’s just a peek at some of the great sessions we have already planned for the Insider Summit.

• Increasing Lead Quality and Conversion by Building a Sales Intelligence Culture
• 7 Ways Sale Intelligence Helps Manage Sales Operations
• Where is the ROI? Social Selling Metrics
• Turning Cold Calls into Warm Calls with Sales Intelligence
• 9 Social Selling Tools You Should Not Go Without
• How Sales Intelligence Can Make You a Better Sales Executive
• Keeping the Lead Engine Running Smoothly: Data Hygiene and CRM Integration
• How to Get in Front of those Elusive Executives

Panel Discussions with Industry Experts and Marketing & Sales Leaders Topics will include: Changing Buyer Dynamics, Social Selling, Managing Change, Staying Competitive, and others.

Since we are still in some of the planning phases, if there is a topic you feel would be informative to sales and marketing leaders, leave us a comment or jump over to our community to post it in our discussion group.

Dreamforce 2011 was an amazing event. With over 40,000 registered attendees, this marked a new milestone for Salesforce’s annual conference in San Francisco. We had an excellent time meeting with our customers that have InsideView embedded into their CRM and met a ton of new people that wanted to know more about how our application can help drive sales and marketing efforts.

After a lot of planning on our booth and theme, it all came down to the actual event and seeing if we were able to execute as well as we wanted. Turns out we did a bit better than expected. WooHoo Insiders!!

Knowing that there was going to be a focus by attendees on Radian6 getting acquired by Salesforce and the growing trend for companies trying to become more social, we stuck with a focused message around “Cutting through the noise.” One of the chief complaints I hear about social media being used by B2B companies is that listening is great but getting to the relevant conversations that can be leveraged by sales people is difficult. That’s where sales intelligence comes into the picture and has shown to increase revenue for B2B companies.

The first Keynote by Marc Benioff focused on the Social Enterprise and showed how companies from all over the world have started collaborating and engaging within social networks and Chatter. This messaging was music to our ears since we have been leading the charge with delivering social intelligence to companies for the past 5 years.

This really got people here excited because the Social Enterprise is much larger than just sharing news with people in Chatter groups. There are very few applications that people can use to gather social intelligence on companies that enable sales and marketing teams to get alerts and monitor trigger events within their accounts. Having links to a contacts social profiles are nice but when that gets compiled with relevant business events and you’re able to see how you are connected to people in ways LinkedIn can’t show, you have a powerful application that can drive revenue in any company.

Social Selling Panel

We held a session during Dreamforce around how companies can cut through the noise of social media and get very targeted intelligence on what their customers and prospects are doing. Our speakers included Umberto Milletti, InsideView; PC Christopher, Avaya Inc.; Mark Stock, Adobe Systems Inc.; Mike D’Onofrio, Concur Technologies Inc.

Social media is changing how customers interact with enterprises and how they buy. At the same time, customers’ social media conversations with peers are creating “big data.” For sales reps, making sense of all this data is overwhelming. The session showed how winning sales organizations are increasing their performance and gaining an edge on their competitors by harnessing big data and using changing customer behavior to their advantage. Each of the speakers gave real world examples of how they leverage sales intelligence to grow their pipelines and close more deals.

The Metallica Axe

We launched a mini-Dreamforce campaign around Metallica who was playing at the Global Gala. That all came about when we heard the first rumor/leak that Metallica was going to be playing at the event. We searched all over and found the most awesome giveaway possible. An autographed Metallica guitar. Then we spun up a Twitter profile for the @metallica_axe and started building the buzz. The Metallica guitar giveaway was so successful that we had people coming to our booth wondering how we worked out a deal with Dreamforce to have this as the giveaway. There was no deal, we just wanted to give away the most amazing prize during the event.

We wanted to focus on the people around Dreamforce so we identified some of the top influencers and built a presentation to showcase them.

The autographed Metallica guitar was such a hit that Marc Benioff sent us a message when there were problems getting into the concert.

The Winner of the Guitar

The winner was pulled from about 1000 names. Rebecca D. or SFDC_Nerd as she is known on Twitter was the lucky lady who walked away with the prize. After a bit of back and forth with Jetblue, Rebecca and the guitar were given VIP passes back to Boston where the axe will be cherished.

Conclusion

Dreamforce 2011 was a great event. One of the largest events we attend every year. Getting to meet so many customers and talk to people wanting help with sales enablement is a wonderful experience. Now we just have to start thinking abut how we are going to out-do ourselves next year.

Talking to sales executives about the results of sales intelligence has opened the door to many new conversations. One of those is the growing need for marketing departments to understand the use of applications like InsideView in the overall strategy of identifying new prospects beyond just buying lead building lists from data providers and focusing on specific companies and contacts that can benefit from their products and services TODAY vs. in the future. As more and more companies are trying to blur the lines between sales and marketing, leveraging sales intelligence applications to be used by both groups has become more important.

We were approached by the Online Marketing Summit (OMS) on becoming a sponsor to their event and what we could offer to their large audience. The synergy between our message and the marketing professionals attending the event was obvious. Marketing professionals are focusing on the use of social media to communicate and engage with their customers and prospects, how that translates into sales is become even more important as a ROI is attached to these activities online.

InsideView will have a booth at the event and we will be in great company. Companies like Adobe, ExactTarget, Marketo and Social Media Examiner will have a presence as well as be providing speakers during the show.

We believe that marketing departments are hungry for information and applications that can build strong relationships beyond the one to many approach typically rolled out. Sales intelligence allows for marketing to target companies with pin-point accuracy and then give sales teams the same relevant information with the social media connections for those companies and contacts.

InsideView will be speaking about this during the event in a session titled Social Selling: The Sales Strategy that Will Lift your Marketing Success where we will give an explanation of where social media plays a part in sales, how to build strategies to engage customers through their lifecycle and why marketing should be focusing on the 1:1 relationship.

You go to college, get accepted into a MBA program and take all the core courses designed to introduce you to the various areas of business such as accounting, finance, marketing, human resources, operations management, etc. But where does social media fit into this? That was a question on the minds of a large group of professors that attended the recent Summer Marketing Educators’ Conference 2011 hosted by the American Marketing Association.

Social Marketing Meets Sales: The Role of Social Media in Professional Selling

That was the title of the session being run by Robert Peterson Ph.D, Professor in the College of Business at Northern Illinois University and Michael Mallin Ph.D. Professor of Marketing and Sales at the University of Toledo. The epic resumes of these two people is just too much to list. They have both been involved in shaping business minds for a long time and have contributed research that has made an impact on not just the universities they work for but the students that have passed through their classes.

Social media trends and how social plays a part in the sales process was a special request by the organization that these two took on to put together. They were referred to me by the sales methodology company Miller Heiman (thanks!) as the expert in social selling and it only took me two emails to fill a panel of 4 other experts in the field. Anneke Seley, Craig Rosenberg, Maria Pergolino and Adam Metz were great enough to take time on a Sunday afternoon to discuss and answer questions from people with degrees that were almost intimidating. (for me anyway)

Social Media in the Classroom

Teaching social media does not come easily to academics, especially when it comes to specifically teaching social media for sales. The attending professors heard the panel discuss why social selling is important, what’s been working, and how to either develop courses around the subject matter of leveraging social media for sales or incorporate social media into the courses they are already teaching.

In the discussions the professors all agreed that Social Selling in the Enterprise was a key topic being raised by their students. Understanding what social networks, sales 2.0 tools were available and more importantly how to use them was a focus for the coming school year. I believe everyone on the panel delivered. It was exciting to see professors taking notes and raising their hands to get more education on this growing field of study so they could pass it along to their students.

Social Selling 101

The annual event by Salesforce was lit on fire when it was leaked that Metallica was going to be playing at Dreamforce. What’s a little more noise added to an event that draws a crowd of  about 20,000 people all drinking off the SaaS fire hose. It was about this same time that we were working on our Dreamforce plan for the year. We needed a prize that would be as great as prior years. We introduced our sales intelligence in 2009 so  gave away an Aston Martin fitting for anyone with secret agent desires of being the next James Bond of selling. In 2010 InsideView was bringing social media relevance to sales people and building the foundation of Social Selling for the Enterprise so we delivered a 63′ 3D TV. This year had to be even BIGGER.

I think that there are so many companies now talking about social media and with the acquisition of Radian6 by Salesforce it’s bound to be the focus of the event. Sure, we will be focusing on leveraging social media for sales too and our thought that we deliver the best application for Social Selling for the Enterprise is our driving focus. That’s the keyword, FOCUS. The industry is exploding with sales 2.0 and old companies trying to jump on the social selling train and the truth is that there is room for a lot but we haven’t found a company yet that can deliver trigger events along with social connections to drive a dramatic decrease in sales research and deliver an ROI on social selling.

After about 10 minutes and a few searches online we had found what we feel is the best giveaway during Dreamforce. A guitar autographed by the entire Metallica band during the 2000 Summer Sanitarium Tour. The official contest announcement is scheduled for later this week but I’ll tell you that you should give our Facebook page a big Thumbs UP if you want the information of how you can bring home a piece of Metallica history.

This is the first mentions of Salesforce having Metallica as their featured performer at their annual Dreamforce 2011. Metallica known for songs like The Unforgiven, Master of Puppets, Fade to Black. I was skeptical about the news but the profile is owned by a Salesforce.com sales rep. Sure it could just be a rumor but coming from someone within the company adds some credibility to the update I would think.

There has been no official statement from the Salesforce or Dreamforce team on this news but I would suspect that will happen soon. They need to get on that before the entire world knows Metallica will be attending their massive conference before they say anything. It’s also really nice that Shakeel is willing to give out some passes. I’m sure he’s going to be the popular guy within the #DF11 group if that’s the case.

Twitter has been spreading the news about Metallica fairly quickly and most people are excited at the news. Are you more or less excited about Dreamforce now?

Update: Marcus Nelson the head of social media for the company passed along this reply to my request. hmmm…. I didn’t hear a “NOT True” in there. I bet we hear something by the end of the day.

Salesforce has officially responded which makes me think Metallica IS going to be the performer. Why else would they @metallica (hence getting their attention) if they were not planning on signing them or already have. Again. Still all rumor but this is all adding up to a Heavy Metal Dreamforce.

Thank you Marc for confirming the news!

Other than the small tornado warning , the experience of the event was a great one. I had the opportunity to meet some people from the sales world that I never had before like Trish Bertuzzi of the sales consulting company The BridgeGroup. Trish pulled me away on the last day of the event to play a little word association and recorded my responses to a series of words related to the inside sales profession.

Jonathan Farrington has taken the lead in organizing one of the largest online events geared towards the sales profession. The 2011 Sales & Marketing Success Conference is an event where 36 of the top speakers, bloggers and experts from the sales world are getting together  over a 5 day series to educate and enlighten sales professionals in  succeeding, winning and exceeding expectations. We have come through the toughest financial crisis in history, and we believe it is now time to be positive and look forward.

Besides being one of the largest events of it’s kind that is sure to leave people with a ton of take aways, we have an opportunity to provide support for the relief efforts to the tragedy in Japan. There is a small fee for each session ($5) that will be collected and then donated to the Japanese Disaster Fund (via the Red Cross).

We are part of the launch event on Monday May 9th. This is the schedule for Monday: All times are Eastern (for GMT, add +5)

5 Must-do’s to Leverage Social Selling
for Your Lead Generation and Sales Teams
Presented at: 15:00 – 15:30 by Koka Sexton

Your customers have changed. How you find them and engage with them has changed too. They get information from their social network and trusted sources online, leaving information about what they need in their online social interactions. It’s more important than ever for sales organizations to recognize this opportunity to build relationships and generate new leads. You need to create a personal and trusted relationships via online interactions to beat the competition.

Many attendees of the keynote address by Umberto Milletti and the breakout session on Getting a Competitive Advantage through Social Selling asked for copies of the presentations used. InsideView has a profile on SlideShare and we continue to upload more content to it every week. These are the presentations we used during SugarCon.

 
Big Data & The Emergence of Social Selling | SugarCRM SugarCon #scon11

 
Getting a Competitive Advantage through Social Selling | #scon11 @sugarcon

 
5 Must-Haves For Boosting Sales With Social Media

SugarCon ’11, SugarCRM’s fifth annual user & customer conference, brings together SugarCRM users, developers, partners and experts from around the world. Packed with two days of business, technical and product presentations, SugarCon provides practical knowledge that you can apply to improve your company’s performance.

InsideView has the good fortune to have multiple sessions at SugarCon 2011 where we will have the opportunity to cover a great deal of content. Starting off with a Keynote address from Umberto Milletti and then two separate breakout sessions with Inbound Marketing Manager and Social Selling Director Koka Sexton along with the VP of Marketing Ralf VonSosen.

Big Data and the Emergence of Social Selling with Umberto Milletti, Founder and CEO, InsideView

Room: Ballroom

Keynotes | Tuesday, April 5, 2011 | 1:15  – 2:00

As more businesses transact online and millions of users including executives and consumers use social media such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Blogs, there’s an overwhelming amount of data, also known as “Big Data”, on companies and contacts online.

This data deluge presents new challenges as well as big opportunities, especially for sales organizations, to distill actionable insights about prospects and transform selling from an art to science. Harnessing business and social intelligence about prospects will no longer be optional, but essential for increasing sales productivity and win rates.

Learn about why Big Data matters and how it can help you change the game of selling.

Session #1

Getting a Competitive Advantage through Social Selling with Ralf VonSosen and Koka Sexton

Track 4: The Sugar Exchange | Tuesday, April 5, 2011 | 2:00  – 2:40

Today’s customers are not very responsive to traditional sales and marketing tactics such as email blasts, cold-calls, and canned pitches. Using social media, customers are researching products and solutions, and talking to their peers for recommendations instead of listening to vendor pitches. Over 70% of the buyer’s journey is complete before it gets to sales.

Most sales reps and sales organizations are overwhelmed by too much data and frustrated by the loss of productivity as they seek actionable sales intelligence about their prospects!  Harnessing business and social insights about prospects from online data can be a game-changer and a productivity booster for sales teams.

Come to this session to learn about how you make your selling more of a competitive advantage, what you need to have in place, and how you can get started.

Session #2

5 Must-Haves For Boosting Sales With Social Media with Ralf VonSosen and Koka Sexton

Track 6: Social Business | Wednesday, April 6^th | 11:30am – 12:10pm
Your customers have changed. How you find them and engage with them has changed too. It’s more important than ever for sales organizations to recognize this opportunity to build relationships and generate new leads using social media. The problem is what tools to use, metrics to track and how to train them.

In this session, you will learn about the 5 easy steps you should take, that will empower a sales team to engage with customers in social networks. You will also learn what tools work best and how to measure the results.

Convergence is the premier Microsoft Dynamics event where you can experience first-hand how you can optimize your business and improve your bottom line. This event serves as the meeting point for the Microsoft Dynamics Customer and Partner business community.

Top Five Reasons to Attend Convergence 2011 Atlanta:

1. Learn how you can get the most out of your Microsoft Dynamics solution to drive sales productivity.
2. Network and collaborate with your peers and the product experts from InsideView and Microsoft.
3. Experience the latest solution innovations, new products and technologies InsideView offers to Dynamics users.
4. The event is cost effective, convenient, and organized to meet your needs.
5. Get insights into InsideView’s corporate direction for sales intelligence and understand future plans for your Microsoft Dynamics solution.

The best reason to attend Convergence 2011 is to be in the Geekiest party of the year

Monitoring. Listening. Tracking. Measuring. No, this isn’t a covert CIA operation: It’s the way brands and businesses are marketing…and selling…to YOU, Customer 2.0. Is it creepy? Regardless, it’s also a reality, and it’s working tremendously, as well as being adopted at a rapid rate by everyone from your local coffee shop to Best Buy to enterprises like Adobe. From social CRM to mobile-social tech to community management, 2011 is the year of full-blown execution after, well, two years of panels discussing ‘the future of social business.’ Come hear about the truly effective processes and best practices around social customer relationship management and intelligence, and walk away with an actual plan for your business in social selling and marketing.

In true SXSW fashion the attendees were very vocal online about the content and session.

There was a lot of interest by attendees to get a copy of this presentation and we aim to please. A couple hours after Umberto was done with the session, we posted the slides on the InsideView Slideshare account and the response was amazing! The great people at Slideshare noticed and we got added into their Business and Management Spotlight.

With a successful launch and great response to the Social Selling University, we are hosting a Social Selling Workshop to help educate and enable sales professionals to the impact that can be made by incorporating the use of social media to the sales process.

InsideView is a sponsor of the Sales 2.0 Conference and it makes sense that we bring our expertise of social media for sales teams to this audience. The Social Selling Workshop with be a combination of speakers talking about social media in B2B sales environments and a panel of experts that will discuss social media strategies and trends being found in companies adopting social selling techniques.

Workshop Agenda

4:00pm – 4:30pm: Welcome and Intro
Gerhard Gschwandtner, Selling Power

4:30pm – 5:00pm: Social Selling Primer
Koka Sexton, InsideView

5:00pm – 5:30pm: Social Media in B2B Sales
Jacob Morgan, Chess Media Group

5:30pm – 5:45pm: Break

5:45pm – 6:15pm: Panel Discussion
Moderator: Gerhard Gschwandtner, Selling Power
Anneke Seley, Phone Works
Pelin Wood Thorogood, Schulman + Thorogood Group
6:15pm – 7:00pm: Cocktails and Raffle

The Social Selling Workshop is not limited to attendees of the Sales 2.0 conference. Anyone in the area that is interested in learning more about social media for sales can attend.

Sales teams that converse effectively with clients about solving their problems and creating desirable business outcomes can sell higher in the organization, uncover new opportunities, and get ahead of the RFP — yet fewer than 15% of buyer executives tell Forrester that their interactions with vendor salespeople meet their expectations. What’s the disconnect?

Technology vendors spend more than $135,000 on indirect sales support for each quota-carrying salesperson, so the huge gap between sales force investments and perceived client value points toward a larger issue: Tectonic market forces are at work, fundamentally altering buyer/seller relationships.

To sell higher, capture wallet share, and deliver the business outcomes that customers desire, marketing, sales, and product portfolio leaders must collaborate to deliver on the three major themes that underpin Forrester’s Technology Sales Enablement Forum 2011:

• Organizing the expanding portfolio. CXOs’ tech purchasing decisions progress through an increasingly complex network of stakeholders with a range of expected outcomes. Vendors that fail to adapt their approach, not just their message, to this changing buyer landscape will be confined to commodity status and will lose strategic influence with customers. Successful vendors will adapt their go-to-market methods to organize problem-solving portfolios more effectively.
• Retooling the sales organization. Many sales organizations are adapting their go-to-market approach to more effectively model the customer and help the sales team have more valuable sales conversations. As the vendor caste system continues to emerge, salespeople and sales managers must transform their sales approach to engage in new ways designed to increase the overall value of the relationship.
• Driving your go-to-market strategy into the field. Marketing organizations are being asked to show a more measureable return on investment and play a larger role in helping the sales organization be more successful. While many marketers are stepping up to create overarching branding efforts to communicate a growing portfolio, the lack of coordination across product, field, solution, industry, and demand marketing creates a lot of complexity for sales in the process. To address this issue, many leading organizations are creating strategic programs to better organize and coordinate their sales support initiatives and spending.

The status quo is the enemy of tech vendors today. Competitive advantage depends on purposeful collaboration and change across the organization to focus sales enablement on buyers’ changing needs. Vendor executives should not underestimate the complexity of change or the difficulty of maintaining this new course.

Who Should Attend?

Forrester’s Technology Sales Enablement Forum 2011 delivers critical insights and actionable advice at the intersection of marketing execution and sales success. This year’s theme, “New Buyers, New Demands: Accelerating Sales Performance,” will engage leading executives in the following roles:

• Technology Sales Enablement Professionals.
• Technology Product Management & Marketing Professionals.
• Vendor Strategy Professionals

Forrester’s Technology Sales Enablement Forum 2011 provides a practical way to work back from customers’ needs to deliver better sales results. Leading enterprise and technology industry executives will deliver keynote sessions at this event and discuss the challenges they faced and the practices they have used successfully to bridge the enablement gap.

In presentations and One-On-One Meetings with attendees, Forrester analysts will deliver practical tools and frameworks for end-to-end sales enablement improvement as well as our latest data and insights into enterprise technology buyers’ desired business outcomes and purchase plans, including who is involved in purchase processes.

The Event’s speakers, including Forrester’s Chairman of the Board and CEO George Colony, Principal Analyst Scott Santucci, Xerox VP of Strategy & Marketing, Julie Meyers, and a panel of IT buyers, will answer relevant and compelling questions for sales enablement professionals, including:

• What does your CEO expect from you?
• What do your customers think of you?
• How do you enable the sale of business outcomes?
• How do you create and deliver effective sales messages?
• How do you ensure sales force adoption?

Salespeople who understand how to use social media and sales intelligence to quickly build trust and credibility with prospects are more successful than those who do not. InsideView is the only application that combines millions of company and decision-maker contact records with actionable sales triggers, rich social profiles, relevant news alerts and major social networks into one simple user interface.

Within Microsoft Dynamics CRM, account and contact records, InsideView delivers an all-in-one sales intelligence source. Salespeople save time and trump their competitors with real-time insights that get them into more deals at the right time, with the right decision-maker and with a relevant, meaningful message.

Are you seeking improvement in sales forecasting?

Would you like to see a reduction in your sales cycle and cost?

Do you want a holistic tracking solution and dashboard inside a familiar interface?

Are you interested in reducing overhead by moving to the cloud?

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is designed to help.  Be one of the first to hear how Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 can help you boost sales, improve marketing, enrich customer service interactions, and accelerate line of business application development through xRM.

This in-person Microsoft event is geared towards a select group of business and technical professionals—allowing you to network with Microsoft partners and other customers in your area, and learn how Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is being used by both public sector and commercial organizations.

Tuesday, February 08	Hyatt Regency Irvine 17900 Jamboree Rd Irvine California 92614

Seamless CRM Integration
InsideView integrates with Microsoft Dynamics CRM as a native mash-up in existing workflows. Deliver relevant intelligence directly into your CRM Accounts, Contacts, and Leads.

One-Click Import & CRM Enrichment
InsideView for Microsoft Dynamics CRM allows your sales & marketing team to add new prospects and update existing Accounts, Contacts, and Leads with a single click.

Drives Sales Productivity
InsideView for Microsoft Dynamics CRM makes sales teams more productive by reducing research time, increasing lead conversion and win rates.

If you are an Inside Sales professional or a sales leader, you should already know about the AA-ISP Inside Sales Leadership Summit 2011. This event will feature over 30 of the nation’s leading Inside Sales experts who will deliver presentations and discussions focused on the issues most critical to today’s Inside Sales Leaders and Managers.

As the only conference dedicated exclusively to the “front lines” of Inside Sales, this event will bring together Inside Sales Professionals to learn, share, and network. Inside Sales 2011 will deliver informative, thought-provoking presentations designed to help Inside Sales individuals, teams, and organizations.

This one day conference will include a variety of general sessions, interactive break-out sessions, and lively panel discussions featuring some of the nation’s leading Inside Sales experts. Focus will be on addressing issues critical to the success of today’s Inside Sales Professionals while providing key sales tactics and techniques. In addition, the Solution Provider Exhibit will offer attendees the opportunity to meet with leading inside sales vendors.

The conference will be packed full of innovative, practical ideas and best practices. Inside Sales Professionals will leave exhilarated, enthused, and armed with new knowledge, techniques, and tools designed to improve and enhance sales performance.

Umberto Milletti will be a Featured Speaker at the event along with some other great speakers like Tom Scontras of Glance Networks, Steve Richards of Vorsight Sales Training and many, many more.

Increase Inside Sales Productivity with Social Intelligence

Cold calling is changing to warm calling, as prospects are demanding more relevance from sales reps.    Find out how to harness social intelligence to increase your sales productivity and accelerate sales cycles.  Learn how to bring social selling into your sales organization to improve prospecting effectiveness and close rates.

Time: Thursday, February 10 
from 4;15 p.m – 4:45 p.m

The AA-ISP Inside Sales Leadership Summit 2011 is less than  two weeks away and it’s not too late to register. InsideView will also have a booth at the event and we look forward to talking with you about our product or ways that we have maximized our sales productivity internally to double our revenue in a record breaking year.

After a little wait and some help by people voting up the topic, InsideView was accepted as a speaker at the 2011 SXSW Interactive conference in Austin TX. We believe we have some very compelling content based around the subject of social selling and how to take the creepy factor out of using social media to engage with customers. Here is the synopsis of the topic.

Social Espionage and Selling to Customer 2.0

Monitoring. Listening. Tracking. Measuring. No, this isn’t a covert CIA operation: It’s the way brands and businesses are marketing…and selling…to YOU, Customer 2.0. Is it creepy? Regardless, it’s also a reality, and it’s working tremendously, as well as being adopted at a rapid rate by everyone from your local coffee shop to Best Buy to enterprises like Adobe. From social CRM to mobile-social tech to community management, 2011 is the year of full-blown execution after, well, two years of panels discussing ‘the future of social business.’ Come hear about the truly effective processes and best practices around social customer relationship management and intelligence, and walk away with an actual plan for your business in social marketing and selling.

Questions Answered

1. What are the BEST PRACTICES of social CRM that matter today?
2. What are the SUCCESSES and FAILURES companies have experiences in the past two years?
3. If you could employ just THREE social CRM tactics at your company, what should they be?
4. Where should you NOT put your money and time when it comes to social CRM?
5. How can you really get your teams to ADOPT any social CRM tools and processes?

Are you attending SXSW 2011?

As for InsideView, so far the show has been a huge hit. We have been flooded with visitors from customers and people looking to give their sales teams more relevant sales intelligence. We have had guest speakers like Josiane Feigon, Joanne Black and others that have talked about the growing need for sales teams to use social media as a tool to find new opportunities, generate referrals and build deeper relationships with customers.

We still have a couple days to go but Wednesday should be the last big day of the even with the InsideView ExactTarget party which is now completely SOLD OUT. The venue even had to be changed to accommodate over 1000 people that expected to come to the Dreamforce party.

Dreamforce is T-Minus 5 days 00 hours 44 minutes and 40 seconds as I write this post. The InsideView office has all hands on deck getting the last minute details worked out and preparing for the orchestrated chaos that is about to unfold. Every department has a role to play in the largest event we attend every year. Sales is polishing the presentations and following up with customers that will be attending, Marketing created some great graphics all around our theme of “See your leads in 3D“, created the microsite Dreamforce in 3D, and just received our shipment of the largest TV in the world that will be given away to a Dreamforce attendee.

As much fun as I know Dreamforce will be, it isn’t without a small level of stress that I’m sure every vendor has wrapped around worrying about all of the little things that could go wrong. Luckily I haven’t had any nightmares about the event but I would be lying if I said I didn’t wake up in the middle of the night from some lucid dream about the show and making a note about things I need to be sure to follow up on.

GlanceNetworks must be going through the same stuff since they posted this picture on there Twitter profile showing their Dreamforce final checklist.

Tradeshows especially the ones as massive as Dreamforce require a lot of planning and even more faith once it comes to execution. I started this week searching the intertoobs for blog posts about Dreamforce and trying to see what everyone else was writing about the event that could help Dreamforce veterans as well as the newbies of the show.

Dreamforce 2010 Resources

14 Things You Probably Don’t Know About Dreamforce by our friends at Marketo gives a great overview of what to expect at Dreamforce and even offered to give away a VIP prize to one of their fans by paying for their trip.

InsideView created an online paper all about Dreamforce that shows some of the best news on Twitter about the event and highlights some of the most interesting posts by Dreamforce fans.

CRMFYI aka. Jeff Grosse has a collection of blog posts around Dreamforce that go back a few years that are still relevant.

Arkus has a great post about the Top 10 reasons to go to Dreamforce. Although I think that #2 should be replaced by InsideView will be there, the #1 reason is spot on with education and going to this event expecting to learn more about the cloud and how Salesforce will impact your business in a wonderful way.

Dreamforce on Facebook:

Dreamforce: Tips for First Year Attendees was written by Force Monkey and has some excellent tips for people new to the Dreamforec experience.

7.) If you know certain people are going to be at Dreamforce, and you really want to meet them — make arrangements in advance! With Chatter, there’s no excuse to not reach out and make those connections now! Ask if they can get together with you for breakfast, lunch, dinner, coffee, drinks.

I just happened to stumble upon an #awesome collection of blog posts by Paul Young that feature an Insider’s Guide to Dreamforce. He covers everything from food, dealing with the over-stimuli of the show and even touches on the bathroom issues.

• The Insider’s Guide to Dreamforce, Part 1
• The Insider’s Guide to Dreamforce, Part 2
• The Insider’s Guide to Dreamforce, Part 3

Let’s not forget about the Dreamforce parties! After running around the event, collecting SWAG and listening to some of the best thought leaders in CRM, you get a chance to unwind and have a few drinks courtesy of some of the Dreamforce sponsors. If you haven’t seen it yet, make sure you look at the Dreamforce Party Directory.

Dreamforce Foursquare

For all of you geolocation addicts like me, you will probably be checking into Dreamforce from your phones. There are more venues being created daily it seems but there is only 1 Dreamforce 2010 – Moscone Center.