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InsideView and Marketo are pleased to announce the 2010 Customer 2.0 Roadshow, a six-city tour from August 4 to September 23rd. The roadshow is hosted by AA-ISP and Focus, and is underwritten by InsideView and Marketo. To learn more about the roadshow, and register now, please go to 2010 Customer 2.0 Roadshow.
Why should you attend the Roadshow?
- Hear about the latest trends related to Customer 2.0
- Learn about how leading organizations are selling and marketing to Customer 2.0
- Learn about what strategies you can adopt, from thought-leaders
- Network with other sales & marketing professionals, while enjoying snacks and beverages
- Get to see very cool venues!!
Where can I register?
- Click on this link: 2010 Customer 2.0 Roadshow
- Click on Register and select the city where you want to attend the road show and complete the form.
What if I can’t make it to any of the live events?
- If you can’t attend the live events, you can attend the two webinars that we have coming up:
— On August 3rd, there will be a Customer 2.0 Kickoff Webinar (Click on this link to register).
— On October 6th, there will be a Customer 2.0 summary webinar. We will discuss lessons learned during the roadshow. Please check back on http://www.insideview.com/events for registration details, which will be available soon.
BroadVision, a pioneer and innovator in eCommerce solutions has selected SalesView, to ramp up their sales productivity. We’d like to thank BroadVision and extend a warm welcome.
Information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, and wisdom is not foresight. Each grows out of the other, and we need them all. — Arthur C. Clarke
About 32,000 years ago, French cavemen started drawing on their walls to help each other solve the crucial problem of the day: Where can I find big meaty animals, and how do I kill them?
Since then, our communication tools have advanced beyond bone chisels and ochre paint, but the central objective hasn’t changed so much. We’re all still looking for that woolly mammoth.
For most salespeople, the search involves gathering data, from which to glean insights, enabling a conversation to begin, in the pursuit of a sale.
It’s a multi-step journey. Unfortunately, too many data providers act as if the first part – amassing raw information about a prospect – is all you need to close a deal.
At a basic level, any piece of data is just a fact. This company had $50 million in revenue last year, for example, or that CEO’s name is Pat Paterson. No matter its size, any database is simply a compilation of facts, and nothing more.
A dictionary is not a great novel just because it contains all the words of a great novel.
Smart. Fresh. Complete.
Awhile back, we condensed InsideView’s product goals to a catchphrase: Smart. Fresh. Complete.
Roughly translated, it means we’re aiming to provide the information you need (Complete), in real-time (Fresh), cleverly parsed into unique, relevant analysis (Smart).
Smart comes first in that mantra, and it’s not a coincidence. To us, it’s the key differentiator between InsideView sales intelligence and Old-School Data. Facts are common; intelligence is rare.
A fact is the news that Company X plans to acquire Company Y. Intelligence is the proper interpretation of how that event will affect operations at the two firms, as well as how the merger will shift the landscape of its industry.
Deeper intelligence is to demonstrate the ways you can benefit from it all, by detailing how the acquirer’s goals dovetail with your own product’s features, and pointing out that the CEO sits on a charity board with your own boss.
Old-School Data companies want you to believe that “data” and “intelligence” are synonyms. That’s why their marketing pitches always emphasize quantity over quality, as well as the horsepower of their data-gathering engines.
More data does not mean better data. Even if it did, it would not make those vast accumulations of facts more useful in-and-of themselves. Analysis is what turns information into knowledge, and intelligence is what turns that knowledge into wisdom.
Smart companies know that.
In the recent past, I’ve read tons of blogs and news on Sales 2.0, Customer 2.0, and Sales Intelligence (SI). It’s not new anymore to be able to connect with people “Socially” over the web. People frequently ask “is cold calling dead?”. I’d argue that it’s evolved, than being dead. The advent of Social Media (though the idea is over 30 years old), has enabled “Cold Callers” to become more “social”, make their calls “warmer”.
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.
This past Thursday and Friday I attended Lithium’s annual customer conference on Community Management and Social CRM: LiNC 2010. I have some experience in these areas not only because I’ve worked on products to support Community Management and Social CRM (a.k.a. CRM 2.0) but also because as a User Experience professional, my job calls calls for customer empathy and a deep understanding of their needs. When I worked at a small start-up, Zaq Interactive Solutions in Toronto and Montreal about 10 years ago we were pushing online communities and community management. This was well before marketers and other areas of the organization were ready for it and that’s why the business failed. More recently I worked at Yahoo! and I was involved in the research, design and development of their first social shopping product around deals where the desire for customers to connect was extremely clear.
As mentioned, the main topic of the conference was Communities and Social CRM. Of course now, thanks to twitter, conferences like this one easily generate their own time-based community. I tweeted constantly throughout the conference (under the wrong impression that I could win an iPad; contrary to what you might read below, sometimes user incentives DO work 
). The sense of community and the feeling that I belonged and was being heard was validated by responses, retweets and new followers. Even our complaints about the cold rooms made and impact and after a few tweets the temperature was promptly turned up.
Below is a summarization of what I heard and learned during the conference.
Your customers are everywhere. Are you?
Great idea and aside from sounding creepy it’s what you’re going to need to do. According to Patrick Riley, the Director of User Experience at Lithium:
- “Gen Y triggered the movement towards the Social Customer”
- “Now there’s more communication via social networks than email.
- “3/4” people on the web are tied to social networks. They’re also very conversant with the various technologies available to them.
- “Users are 4x more likely to contribute on mobile devices vs. desktop because they’re the most engaged. And Facebook mobile users are 6x more likely to contribute.
And consider this: “From first call resolution to first contact resolution, there’s a lot of stuff that’s gone on before that call.” – Paul Greenberg
Users want to be heard, recognized, and loved
The community feeds people’s needs to be understood, recognized, and valued. Letting the customer get control of their experience with the company is the core of everything. Customers want appreciation, not swag. Bragging rights are meaningful and receiving props from other community members is the kind of recognition they’re looking for.
While introducing the concept of Customer 2.0 at an Inside Sales conference last week, my colleague shared a truth in marketing video that sums up the above point about user recognition perfectly. Customer: “I’ve changed, we don’t hang out in the same places anymore. You don’t listen…”
There’s a shift towards transparency to gain customer trust
In Social CRM the company is “the man”. A lack of transparency making it difficult for customers to get the information they want affects loyalty. You should be brutally honest with your customers and speak in your own voice.
According to BestBuy the corportate culture and employee adoption is key. There social media engagemnts align with core philopsophies to empower employees and drive the customer experience. And Scoutlabs, recently acquired by Lithium, thinks every person in the organization should be in tune with the customer. They focused on making their system really easy to use because the voice of the customer doesn’t just below to marketing.
All superusers are not equal.
Superusers are your most valuable customers. They represent the “1” in the “90-9-1” principle. They are more likely to contribute to community sites and do positive brand marketing (via blogging) and defend your company on your behalf. At the conference, one of our prospects (and current product uses) asked to speak with me about my company’s user community. InsideView doesn’t have a formal community yet; that’s why I was at the conference checking out Lithium. I asked Matt (the prospect) why he would join our community and he said it’s because he’s so passionate about our product, SalesView and that he’d like to help out others with their experience with the product. These people do exist, you just have to find them. They come in 4 flavors:
- connectors
- critics
- creators
- collectors
Connectors help you sell. Critics give rich, actionable feedback. Why focus on these superusers who represent about 1% of your customer base? Because 1% of customers / trendsetters drive 15% of sales” (unknown source).
But don’t just focus on them. The real opportunity to grow your business is between the 9 and the 1 in “90-9-1” principle.
Don’t make participating in the community like work
Community contribution shouldn’t be like work. Or it won’t work. Adding labels and tags to make community content searchable is not something users want to do. The company can do that. Use your community to validate content. They’ll tell you if it’s wrong. And keep in mind that it’s much easier to start knowledge in conversation vs. on a blank page.
The Net Promoter Score is only the beginning
How do you measure the success of your products and services. We’ve been using the Net Promoter score for years. But we’ve been stopping short. Paul Greenberg asks what’s next? If step one is asking a customer how likely they would be to recommend the product(s) or service(s) to a friend, step two is “did you recommend…?” (that’s right; observed behavior is the only trusted measure), step 3 is “did they become a customer?”, and step four: “were they profitable?”.
Different types of customers require different types of communities
There are 3 types of communities:
- 911 – break / fix
- 411 – learn and improve
- 511 – explore and discover
The users of these communities display different underlying behavioral patterns and it’s important understand what they are.
Overall it was a great conference where much was learned. You can see all of my conference tweets using this search. I’ll leave you with one of my favorites:
–
Beth Goldman
Manager of User Experience
Guest post by Santosh Shukla, InsideView Hyderabad office.
Posting on Twitter, updating a Facebook profile, putting that Youtube video demo and uploading pictures to Flickr may be free of cost, but it’s wrong to think that social media for marketing and sales is free.
Social media are now standard tools of the Sales 2.0 workplace. But if you are like me, the “social” part of social media sometimes gets in the way of the work. That means you inadvertently spend some time to look at the tweets of people you follow, retweet some and end up spending much more time than you intended. Similar things happen when you go to LinkedIn to find a connection, and end up reading and joining irrelevant discussions.
Thus, a result-oriented foray into social media turns out to be a long walk into unknown (but interesting) woods and by the time we realize, the damage is already done. Time is money, and you’ve just wasted a pile of it.
Here some tips that I use to get the most out of social media while staying focused:
- Link your Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook accounts to save the time and effort of updating same status/message at different places.
LinkedIn with Twitter: https://www.linkedin.com/secure/settings?twitterSettings
Facebook with Twitter: http://www.facebook.com/twitter/
- Create lists on Twitter to follow tweets on related topics like Sales2.0, Golf, psychology etc. to be focused on reading only what you want to read at that moment.
http://help.twitter.com/entries/76460-how-to-use-twitter-lists
To follow the tweets of the IV 20 Top Sales Industry social media users here – http://twitter.com/skshukla/Sales2-0
- Use intelligent tools that allow you to focus on the crux and not deviate by being in your work window. SalesView helps you to read relevant blogs, tweets of the prospect that you are targeting within your CRM so you don’t have to leave it to get the social media benefits. It also finds the LinkedIn connections and Facebook friend connections for prospect accounts within your CRM.
- Follow top 20 Sales Industry Social Media Users and some more stars to get the latest and greatest information and views of the Sales (and Marketing) industry without spending too much time elsewhere.
- Talk to people who have pioneered in linking social web and enterprise, the creators of term “socialprise”.
I am sure you have some more tips that you use to efficiently use your time on social media and get the desired results. Please feel free to share them.
To follow all the Sales2.0 leaders’ tweets, just follow @skshukla/Sales2-0
If you use SalesView you’ll soon notice some pretty big changes to the way it looks and feels. What might not be as evident is how much these updates will help you do your job better. Our new design has been optimized so you can:
- Focus on what’s important with our new streamlined UI
- Get the job done quicker with fewer clicks
- Get more information where you need it
- Discover SalesView’s powerful features with ease
- Get the help you need at the right time
Focus on what’s important with our new streamlined UI
Information that rarely changes for companies has been streamlined to take up less space, leaving more room for up-to-date agent news results.
New Company Details Page
Current Company Details Page
A 400-pixel height option for most CRM Mash-ups means less scrolling to get the information you need.
Get the job done quicker with fewer clicks
The persistent “Recently Viewed” pane allows you to easily get back to companies and now people too.
Our mash-up is optimized for productivity so there’s less reason to leave your CRM Application. You can see below that company details now expand inline rather than opening in another window.
Information agent news articles load on-demand for increased performance. Unnecessary connections information was removed from the Watchlist to also help performance and make the list easier to scan.
Comparatively the current Watchlist loads all of the underlying data at once and shows less information when collapsed than the new version.
Get more information where you need it
We’ll show you twitter activity for contacts when it’s available while viewing these people in our Product and CRM Application Mash-up
In-product integration
Mash-up integration
More company financial and industry information is available on-demand.
Discover SalesView’s powerful features with ease.
New users will immediately realize the benefits of SalesView by receiving alerts for pre-determined companies. Our CRM Application Mash-up now includes access to useful features you might not know we have such as finding prospects.
The simplified and in-context alert settings make it easier to understand and modify your options.
New Design
Current Design
The new home page acts as a launch pad for key functionality.
Get the help you need at the right time
The In-context informational pop-ups help you understand how to use features.
In-product training and contextual training links on the sidebar make it easy to learn SalesView’s features.
These features will become available in the next couple of versions of SalesView. The designs are subject to change before the features are released.
Learn more about: InsideView | SalesView
–
Beth GoldmanManager of User Experience
beth.goldman@insideview.com
Today we were pleased to announce our $11.5 million Series B funding round, led by current investors Emergence Capital Partners, Rembrandt Venture Partners and Greenhouse Capital Partners. During a time when companies and businesses are looking to be more productive and efficient – especially coming out of the recession – we’re proud to get such a vote of confidence in the way we are stepping up to meet that need.
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.”
Here at InsideView, we have a strong team based in Hyderabad, India (the capital of state of Andhra Pradesh) – a city attracting a lot of technology innovators looking to leverage global talent (Facebook recently announced their new office there), and we’re very proud of their hard work. We are pleased to announce that last week, following a weekend of presentations and competition in front of hundreds of technology leaders, InsideView beat out more than 150 other companies to take top prize in the multinational corporation category at the Annual Software Products Showcase hosted by ITsAP, a non-profit representing the software and IT industry in the state of Andhra Pradesh.
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!
