These 5 trends are derived from a very, very interesting Inside Sales Trends Report: 12 in 2012 Inside Sales Trends by Josiane Feigon. Folks, you need to read the whole report and frame it to your desk throughout the year. Josiane is right on the money when it comes to what to expect in this year’s inside sales trends.

I would like to take the opportunity to show you five of these trends with some additional comments of my own.

1. #WINNING - Everyone is looking for some big wins this year in 2012. Whether you didn’t quite reach your marks in 2011 or looking to blow 2012 out of the water, you need to be following those innovators and problem-solvers who are reshaping today’s sales. They know the business and how to effectively use their sales tools. A great list to take a look at is InsideView’s 25 Influential Leaders in Sales - these are the people you should be following when it comes to inside sales.

2. Avoid the Slack Blitzer Backlash - As a buyer, how many times have you heard automated responses or pitches read straight from the script? It’s time to think about creating calculated campaigns that are personalized - you need to start selling to People, not Contacts. [Check out People Insights from InsideView to learn how to start selling to people]

3. Seize the Hidden Sales Cycle - The new normal now is our self-sufficient customers who are engaging later and alter in the sales cycle, and coming in much more informed than ever before. They still want a relationship with someone who understands their pain and meets their needs. You need to look for the right people, with the right message, at the right time – your buyers will know all about you, make sure you know everything about them and can provide for their needs. Be that person for them in 2012.

4. Mix the New Substantial Communication Cocktail - The phone and email can no longer do it alone – they need their peeps! People throughout the world are more connected to each other than ever before. No longer do you need the traveling salesman knocking on office doors hoping for an answer. Start bringing other process into the sales system to get in touch with your prospects.

The new cocktail has five ingredients: phone + texting + video + emails + social

5. Re-engineering Randomness - Say good-bye to safe and predictable linear thinking, and say hello to the weird and the wonderful. Some may be wary to admit it, but we are living in a modern industrial age as businesses getting ahead of the curve these days are the ones who think outside of the box and go beyond normal business.

Get creative and innovative for 2012.

To view the free, FULL report of Josiane Feigon’s 12 in 2012 Inside Sales Trends click HERE. 

From Ireland to the United Kingdom, sales people just gained more intelligence as InsideView announced the general availability of InsideView UK & Ireland edition. Working with eight of the leading integrators and resellers in the region we are already making an impact for over fifty businesses since we announced our move into Ireland and the UK.

InsideView gathers tens of thousands of information sources, filters what matters, and delivers the intelligence on UK and Ireland businesses directly into all of the market-leading CRM solutions. But what will the UK and Ireland Edition offer?

UK and Ireland Edition capabilities include:

• UK and Ireland territory maps for list building and prospecting
• Turnover displayed in GBP (£) or Euros (€)
• Individual profile setting for country-specific display of currency
• Expanded content coverage for companies, executives, public sector and government entities

What will the UK and Ireland Edition Offer?

With the UK and Ireland Edition of InsideView comes new Channel Partners. Together, InsideView and these partners are bringing actionable sales insights to teams of sales professionals in enterprises across the region. CGE Software, a specialist in Microsoft Dynamics CRM and a distributor of add-on CRM enhancements, highlighted the advantages that InsideView brings to its customers.

Content Sources – UK and Ireland Edition of InsideView

In response to the huge demand from companies selling to UK and Ireland businesses, InsideView is continuing its global expansion by bringing the industry’s leading sales intelligence solution to the UK and Ireland. We pull content from over 7,000 UK specific sources, the top 8 can be found here.

“InsideView is a powerful application that gives marketing and sales people great insights into the prospects and customers they target,” said Mike Spink, sales director of CGE Software Limited. “The most significant aspect of InsideView, is its ability to identify key people in millions of companies throughout the UK and the world — and deliver rich social profiles and connection paths to them. Of all the solutions I have seen, InsideView is the absolute best.”

Audra Oliver, head of marketing communications for King Worldwide and InsideView customer offered: “We are thrilled to have InsideView not only for the company information, but for the contact details, news, smart connection feature, and financials. We sell everything from investor relations services to high-level crisis management consulting and being able to get relevant company information at the click of a button is very valuable to us. Moreover the InsideView team is helpful, responsive, and made getting started virtually effortless. I would highly recommend it.”

InsideView is also teaming with business information providers and gathering data from all major news, social, and company sources that are specific to the U.K. and Ireland. This information improves the effectiveness of sales professionals that serve these markets where more than forty-five percent of the population is active in social media.

Umberto Milletti, CEO of InsideView, commented, “As more businesses understand that they can get an inside edge by leveraging social, news, company and professional information, they are turning to InsideView. The delivery of InsideView for the U.K. and Ireland is an indication that we can rapidly respond to the growing demand for sales intelligence around the globe.”

Selling to people has not changed dramatically over the past hundred years. You have a product or service, identify a pool of prospects and then discover how many of them you can help. Sure thats over simplified but when it boils down, those are some of the key components. What has changed a great idea over the past few years is not so much the overall process but the details of how to sell to people.

Most sales people do not have the opportunity to walk into the offices of their prospects, see the awards on the wall, photos on the desk and bag of golf clubs in the corner. These were the details a salesperson would use to break the ice, find some common interests and start a conversation. Without these insights, a salesperson is left to their own devices and would be left with being just another sales guy with a pitch. Get beyond the contact data of someones business card and get to know your prospect as the person and not just a contact in your CRM.

People buy from people. Business is done not necessarily with the company with the best product but more often with the salesperson who has found a connection with their prospect through a shared interest or a referral. In the post on the 8 ways to increase sales we outlined some best practices to follow.

More than 90 percent of executives never respond to cold-call sales or unsolicited emails.

Sales intelligence can identify connections between colleagues within an organization and prospects to reveal opportunities for meaningful sales contact. By arming sales professionals with actionable information from social sources, media outlets, company information and changes in business dynamics they are more likely to trigger sales. Sales professionals can quickly identify relevant connection points and build profitable, trusted relationships with prospects and customers that win more business and drive revenue.

‘It’s like watching an Ancestry.com commercial’

You’ve seen the commercial, a site that starts connecting the dots between you and your family and then builds a map of your entire family tree. It lets you see your connections to people you may never have known existed just by following the trail of connections through out history.

How can that apply to B2B sales?

• What if you could identify connection across multiple social graphs and include people you may not be connected to through a social network?
• How valuable would it be to have social streams from your prospects so you could see the updates, pictures and interactions they share?
• Would it be beneficial to be able to follow these people so anytime they were mentioned in the news or online you would get an alert so you could show you are listening?

Early adopters of People Insights like Network Hardware Resale are already seeing an impact in lead generation, opportunities and revenue.

“Social media mapping is my favorite feature. It’s just so cool. It’s almost like watching that Ancestry.com commercial- it’s like ‘I got a leaf!’ It’s when you find that connection that absolutely breaks you into an account; and once you’ve done that, your energy in looking for more of those connections goes WAY up. That becomes your best lead gen strategy ever. Now you want to have and create personal relationships with people through social media so that you can leverage those relationships.” - Michael Lodato, Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing at NHR

Leveraging people insights isn’t just a good idea, it’s the only way you will increase your lead generation and create new opportunities in 2012. As explained in the post 5 ways sales intelligence can increase revenue, research shows that:

• 59% of the best in class companies have leveraged sales intelligence tools to identify or disqualify prospects with more accuracy
• 53% of companies have been able to identify existing customers that have upsell/cross sell opportunities
• 48% of companies have increased the quality of leads intheir pipelines
• 28% use technology to capture and share sales knowledge internally.
• 21% of companies reduce the amount of time doing sales research

For salespeople and sales leaders, understanding how to sell to people not contacts will be the difference between hitting or missing your number.

Congratulations to David Greenwald of PGi for being our 5000th follower! David has been using InsideView to make him more productive for years. It’s awesome to have customers like him making an impact by leveraging sales intelligence. PGi is a developer of video conferencing software that has a pretty slick interface. They were the first video conferencing platform I saw that integrated social networks into their product, and you all know how much of a fan I am when it comes to B2B use of social networks.

As a Global Sales Executive, David can really benefit following our tweets as we generally like to reach out to sales people around the world to better their skills and selling methods. Give him a follow @nexgentechsales. Thank you David!

We would like to take this opportunity for those who are reading this blog post and follow InsideView through any social media channel, to say thank you for all of the tweets and feedback you have given us over the years…You truly are our #1 fans.

There are two types of accounts, regular and strategic. Both are important and need to be given the time and resources to be successful but strategic accounts has a larger impact on the company and will get some extra attention. The important thing to remember and be disciplined about is that NOT every account is a strategic account. The most important consideration for what makes a strategic account is whether the account you are working with desires a lasting win-win relationship with your company.

Choosing a strategic account

Accounts that are identified to become strategic for the company must be working for a common goal that will bring growth to both organizations. You need to think of choosing these accounts as a business initiative versus a sales initiative.  If both companies aren’t committed to the partnership then you shouldn’t move forward.

Things you should put in place for a strategic account.

• A cross functional team for communication
• Full executive endorsement
• A clear measurement of growth and success.

Working with Strategic accounts

When you have identified a strategic account, the real work starts. Working with and managing the process of gaining a strategic account takes time and resources that you may not be familiar with. Because this account will have a long tem impact on your company, special attention needs to be paid to the process to insure everything falls into place as needed.

• Account specific value proposition
• Find out where each company sees the business relationship today, one year and five years out.
• Create a joint action plan that holds both companies accountable for success
• Roadmaps and future plans must be shared

Both companies should have separate sets of metrics, one that can be communicated with internally and one that will be shared in conjunction with the strategic account.

Internal measurements

• Revenue
• ROI of the project
• Margins achieved

Joint metrics

• ROI from joint investments
• Completed goals in the action plan
• effectiveness of the communication channels

If the strategic account falls apart then it’s safe to say that it wasn’t the right company for your business to be working with. If either of you are not achieving mutually beneficial goals then the relationship needs to be re-evaluated, fixed or disolved. This will happen as you work with more strategic accounts but should be minimized as much and as often as possible. Every strategic account that falls apart should be systematically analyzed to see the causes and understand what and more importantly when these red flags could have been identified to make the needed adjustments in the future.

You all know and love that middle of the afternoon feeling when the coffee seems to wear off and all of life’s endeavors seem to focus on the goal of making it to 5p.m. (All future and present employers please disregard that last sentence) One fantastic way to get through this midday funk is to find a really inspiring quote. I often find that tweeting a great little quote will find more retweets and responses than any other tweets. I gathered 25 quotes in sales I find to be very powerful and motivating. I hope you can take at least one to heart because there are some great ones in this list. 

Shoot us a tweet with your favorite sales quote! – @insideview

1. “You don’t close a sale, you open a relationship if you want to build a long-term, successful enterprise.” ~Patricia Fripp
2. “Whenever an individual or a business decides that success has been attained, progress stops.” ~Thomas J. Watson Jr 
3. “Everyone lives by selling something.” ~Robert Louis Stevenson
4. “In order to succeed, we must first believe that we can.” ~Nikos Kazantzakis
5. “How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.” ~Gilbert K. Chesterton
6.  “As you travel down life’s highway…whatever be your goal, you cannot sell a doughnut without acknowledging the hole.” ~Harold J. Shayler
7. “Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust.” ~Zig Ziglar
8. “And old Dave, he’d go up to his room, y’understand, put on his green velvet slippers – I’ll never forget – and pick up his phone and call the buyers, and without leaving his room, at the age of eighty-four, he made his living. And when I saw that, I realized that selling was the greatest career a man could want.” ~Arthur Miller (1915 – 2005), Death of a Salesman, 1949.
9. “A mediocre idea that generates enthusiasm will go further than a great idea that inspires no one.” ~Mary Kay Ash
10. “Catch a man a fish, and you can sell it to him. Teach a man to fish, and you ruin a wonderful business opportunity.” ~Karl Marx
11. “On any given Monday I am one sale closer and one idea away from being a Millionaire.” ~Larry D. Turner
12. “It’s just called ‘The Bible’ now. We dropped the word ‘Holy’ to give it a more mass-market appeal.” ~Editor, Hodder & Stoughton The Daily Telegraph, 30 Dec 1989.
13. “It used to be that people needed products to survive. Now products need people to survive.” ~Nicholas Johnson
14. “Most people think “selling” is the same as “talking”. But the most effective salespeople know that listening is the most important part of their job.” ~Roy Bartell
15. “If you work just for money, you’ll never make it. But if you love what you are doing,and always put the customer first, success will be yours.” ~Ray Kroc
16. “I have never worked a day in my life without selling. If I believe in something, I sell it, and I sell it hard.” ~Estée Lauder
17. “A smart salesperson listens to emotions not facts.” ~Unknown
18. “Everyone lives by selling something.” ~Robert Louis Stevenson
19. “Victory is sweetest when you’ve known defeat.” ~Malcolm Forbes
20. “Day by day, what you do is who you become.” ~Heraclitus
21. “The wise man puts himself last and finds himself first.” ~Lao Tsu
22. “Good ideas are common – what’s uncommon are people who will work hard enough to bring them about.” ~Ashleigh Brilliant
23. “Falling down is how we grow. Staying down is how we die.” ~Brian Vaszily
24. “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” ~Albert Einstein
25. “The difference between involvement and commitment is like ham and eggs. The chicken is involved; the pig is committed.” ~Martina Navratilova

Welcome to the year 2012! I hope the first couple of weeks is everything and more you could have hoped for in terms of sales and getting jazzed for a fresh start. I compiled a list of some blog posts I thought you all might find interesting. They outline a lot of really great best practices to get you up and running this year. For those who didn’t quite hit your marks last year, now might be a good time to start switching things up a bit. Spend the morning or afternoon reading these from some truly influential figures in sales.

1. Personality Study of 1,000 Top Salespeople-Harvard Business Review - Heavy Hitter Sales Blog
2. 12 Ways to Increase Sales – Inc.
3. Being True To “You” – Paul Castain’s Playbook
4. Optimism is a Selling Skill. Is Your Glass Half-Empty or Half Full? – Salesopedia
5. How to Create an Enchanting Pitch #OfficeandGuyK – Guy Kawasaki
6. 5 Leadership Tips for Sales Managers - Better Closer
7. Seven Steps to Sales Transformation – Selling Power
8. 8 Ways to Increase Sales – InsideView
9. Want the Sales? Watch What You Say… – Joanne Black
10. The Beauty of Imperfection – Jill Konrath

Shoot us at a tweet @insideview if you like our collection of blog posts!

How a few shifts in your sales process can have a huge impact on sales revenue.

I read a great article on Inc. yesterday on 12 ways to increase sales. The author Geoffrey James pointed out some of the most important things a salesperson or sales manager should do to increase sales in 2012. He hit the nail on the head when it comes to why these 12 ways to increase sales revenue will work, I want to tell you how to do it in 8.

1. Reduce the number of opportunities you pursue. It’s not a numbers game. By focusing your sales energy on fewer opportunities that have a higher chance of closing, you can give these customers more of your time to move the deal along. Leveraging traditional sales drivers and trigger events you are aware of, you will know which prospects have a much higher percentage of closing.

2. Increase the percentage of time you spend selling. There will always be admin work. As a salesperson you may not have the ability to hand your busy work off to others but there are ways that you can still increase your time selling. Most sales people on average spend 10hrs a week researching prospects. By leveraging technology and sales intelligence you can cut that amount of time in half and free up some of that precious time to be talking to prospects and customers and sell more.

3. Stop buying technology because it’s cool.

Stop spending your money on the next shiny object. Invest in technology that is actually going to help you sell. Focus on tools that will provide you

• Trigger events that effect your prospects and customers
• Valuable connections through multiple social networks and existing business relationships
• More personal insights that turn your CRM contacts into people you can relate to and add context around
• Highly targeted and intelligent prospect lists

4. Terminate weak engagements–politely but immediately.

Just as your company should have a solid lead qualification process to identify new opportunities you should spend the time to disqualify deals. A sales team should know what their ideal customer looks like and focus their energy on them. If a prospect doesn’t fit the mold, quit trying to force them into it.

5. Hone your lead generation effort.

Sales people need to understand the art of lead generation is shifting to an online world. Stop waiting for your phone to ring and look for the people you can help in real time. Social networks are a goldmine for the socially savvy sales rep. If you know what you are looking for, finding new opportunities with social media isn’t difficult. For example our sales team found this update on Twitter and jumped in.

What’s a good company database alternative to Hoovers? They don’t seem to want to sell me anything.

— Ross Mayfield (@Ross) January 10, 2012

These types of updates are something your sales team needs to be on the look out for. After 24 hours, Hoovers still has not replied to Ross’s update on Twitter. Listening is key. Leveraging connections and personal insights our sales team was able to connect and help Ross with his business needs.

6. Don’t focus on the gatekeepers.

Understand who the real decision makers are. Get to know them as people instead of the contact that makes decisions at XYZ company. Stay engaged with them during the sales cycle by engaging with them outside of the actual sale. Connect with prospects on social networks and try and help them with other questions they may have and add valuable insights on their industry.

7. Stay on top of your opportunities.

Build a watchlist on your opportunities so you can be fed news and other alerts to things that are changing within their company. Leveraging technology to keep your finger on the pulse of your opportunities will insure that nothing slips by you and you can even stay a step ahead during the sales process.

8. Outflank your competition.

I say it during my speaking engagements: Be different, Be better. Your prospects are getting 100+ emails a day and called as many times a week. This tactic may work some of the time but don’t do what your competitors are doing. Stand apart from them by leveraging your connections to get the introduction, connect with the decision makers on social networks to have more engaged conversations in a medium that they are already spending time in.

It works!

The assembly line has been a manufacturing process in the making for hundreds of years. However, it wasn’t until 1913 that it was perfected by the Ford Motor Company creating huge ramifications for the entire industry of automobiles and manufacturing. The concept of sales intelligence seems similar of creating such ramifications as it comes brings together a different concept of sales combined with extraordinary results.

An Industrial Revolution

Henry Ford’s assembly line changed all that the world knew about manufacturing in the early 20th century. Following this new form of production, companies all over the world began to develop similar models creating a small industrial revolution as automobiles and mass production began to change everything about business. The age of sales intelligence comes with dawn of a new industrial revolution steered by the power of a more social type of business. Sales intelligence is emerging as a result of the rise of social media. Humans are now linked to one another more than ever drastically changing the method of sales. Research is showing that the theory of 6 degrees of separation has been broken by social networks like Facebook.

Efficiency

Prior to Henry Ford’s assembly lines, the production of a single car took an astronomical amount of manpower, money and time. The average car cost $850 and took about 12.5 man-hours to make. Following the introduction of the assembly line, Model Ford T’s were being sold at $290 and only took 1 hour 33 minutes to make. Sales intelligence brings similar results of vastly improving efficiency. The average sales rep spends more than half of their day (4-5 work hours) researching customers and prospects. With  real-time company and contact information paired with social media and smart agents, sales reps cut down their researching time of prospects and customer data by 50% – hence, giving them more time for prospecting and selling.  (Understanding the Science of Sales Intelligence)

A Change in Tradition

The assembly line was a massive change in the tradition of craftsmanship and mastery. With very small and easy work done for less amount of workers, the traditional factory production system moved away from skilled workers and a larger workforce. Sales intelligence moves beyond traditional selling and moves into an age of social selling. As mentioned in the study the Science of Sales Intelligence, 92% of prospects don’t make a meeting when cold-called or emailed by a sales rep. With the power sales intelligence sales reps are able to move out of rhythm of blindly cold-calling and instead given the right people, the right message and the right time for selling.

The most notable element to derive from this analysis is how paramount both business solutions changed their industry. Sales intelligence will one day be a huge part of the sales industry as it will cease providing reps with contacts but the person behind the data.

2012 is here folks. New goals and high ambitions are in place as the slate is cleaned for the new year. It’s time to stoke the 2011 coals and fuel the 2012 fire. Here are 15 posts I put together with some very interesting predictions and strategies for this coming year. Hope you enjoy it and best of luck for this fine year!

1. 30 Social Media Predictions for 2012 From the Pros – Social Media Examiner
2. 5 Sales Management Questions We Answered in 2011 – Selling Power
3. 8 Great Marketing Infographics To Inspire Your 2012 Objectives – B2B Marketing Insider
4. 11 B2B marketing trends to watch (or wish) for in 2012 – Customer Think
5. How to Get Your Prospects to Call You Back in 2012 – InsideView
6. Sales Discussions That Need To Disappear in 2012 – Paul Castain’s Sales Playbook
7. Things I’m Wishing For In 2012 – Insider Sales Experts Blog
8. Social Media: Five Facts to Bank On in 2012 – Ad Age Digital
9. CRM 2012 Forecast – The Era of Customer Engagement – ZDNet Blog
10. SaaS Predictions for 2012 – Smart SaaS
11. Top 7 Critical Sales Trends for 2012 – Heavy Hitter Sales Blog
12. 12 Sales Trends for 2012 – Barrett Sales Blog
13. Bring on 2012 – Salesopedia
14. Your 2012 Marketing Plan: Tell Me What to Do – Business Grow
15. How to Create an Enchanting Pitch #OfficeandGuyK – Guy Kawasaki

It’s a new year and you have new sales goals but you can’t dismiss the facts gathered from 2011. 92% of executives you try to contact will not return your phone call. You should already know why, unless you have an amazing reason for them to listen to your message, they will delete it in the first 5 seconds. If you don’t give them a compelling reason to spend the time to call you back then you get forgotten about.

When calling on a prospect for the first time there are some simple steps you should take to make sure they return your call.

Leveraging existing connections

When doing your 2012 prospecting, make sure you focus on people you are connected to. Your customers (if they are happy) should be willing to make introductions or serve as references to other companies that you are trying to engage with. 84% of the people you try to connect with leveraging an existing connection will respond. If there is ever a more compelling reason to stop dialing for dollars, this would be it!

A Little Research Goes a Long Way

Do your homework on the person you are calling before you pick up the phone. Stop treating the names in your CRM as contacts and start thinking about them as people. If you dont have a prospect watchlist created for your prospects, do some research on them through social media. Are they active on networks like LinkedIn or Twitter? What are they saying. I’m sure there are some good pieces of information you can gather that will give you better personal insights on them.

Warm up every cold call.

Before calling, connect with the prospect on social media or by sending them the tried and true email. Send a short, personal letter saying something like, ‘I’d like to introduce myself. I’ve noticed your company has been actively growing the size of your widget factory and I’d like t know if I can help with anything’. Make sure you enclose something of value and indicating that you’ll be calling in a few days to gauge interest. Then, promptly follow up.

Build a conversation about the prospect first.

Building from that last two, you should know about your prospect as a persona and know about their specific business needs. Using the trigger events you monitor around their company and industry coupled with what you have gathered about the individual, structure your first conversation all around them. I’m not saying to avoid a sales pitch but make sure your pitch is completely focused to them and their company. Talk about what you have discovered and see if there is anything you are missing. Highlight how your product has helped companies like theirs recently and see if they are in a position to look at it in more detail and find additional value.

Closing out the year we wanted to look over the content that you have found most interesting and shared most often. 2011 was a big year for sales intelligence and the use of technology by sales teams to be more effective in finding new opportunities and closing more deals.

This is the list of the top 25 sales intelligence posts that people read during 2011

1. 25 Influential Leaders In Sales
2. How Science is Changing Sales As We Know It
3. Why Cold Calling is the Bottom of the Barrel
4. 40 Social Media B2B Infographics
5. Gamification of the Sales Process
6. 10 Reasons You Need a LinkedIn Profile
7. 15 Posts on Why Cold Calling Is On Its Way Out the Door
8. The History of Apple CEOs
9. Bridging the Massive Social Media Gap Between Sales and Marketing
10. Have No Fear: Why Sales Teams SHOULD Be On Social Media
11. Creating a Sales Plan and Executing It.
12. 10 of the Best Sales Sites
13. The Death of Cold Calling – Ending the Debate
14. 10 SlideShare Presentations That Will Make You a Better Salesperson
15. Why Social Media is Important to the Sales Process.
16. Top 10 Reasons for using Facebook for your Business
17. 20 Awesome Sales Posts You Should Read
18. 5 Great SlideShare Presentations on B2B Selling
19. The Social Media Landscape – Facts and Figures for B2B Sales (Infographic)
20. Should Sales People Be Blogging?
21. The Problem with Big Data
22. The Future of Social CRM
23.  Do You Listen to Your Customers?
24. 10 tips for Driving Sales Productivity: Tip #1 
25. A Dip Into Sales Data vs. Sales Intelligence

This is the final post in a study we created along with Focus.com to discuss the best practices to leverage social media for sales teams. After talking to eight of the top thought leaders in sales training and sales technology we wanted to bring their insights to you. This is going to be a 3 part series that covers what successful salespeople are doing to leverage social media in lead generation and accelerating their opportunities. Some of these experts are listed in our post on the 25 most influential sales leaders. Much appreciation to these experts for taking the time to address the question “How do your successful salespeople leverage social media for selling?“

• Miles Austin
• Marge Bieler
• Dave Brock
• Barbara Giamanco
• Matt Heinz
• Carlos Hidalgo
• S. Anthony Iannarino
• Craig Rosenberg (AKA The Funnelholic)

Cultivate your own personal brand on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and beyond.

“The one thing I learned early in sales is that the most unique thing you are selling is not always the company or the product, but it is always you. Social media provides you a unique opportunity to build your brand — as well as endless opportunities to ruin your brand. The first thing anyone does before meeting with someone is to check their LinkedIn profile. Successful social salespeople carefully and thoroughly complete their LinkedIn profile, including a picture. All their social bios (Twitter, etc.) are meaningful, unique and memorable. Limit access to your Facebook if it has any offensive or borderline offensive photos.” (Rosenberg)

“Many sales managers dont think Twitter is a place for sales people. I disagree. With social media exploding as a form of communication, there are going to be more and more people leveraging the channel for business conversations. Not just brands but real people that want to solve business problems by asking others online. Learning how to listen and track people on Twitter will be a goldmine of information in some cases for salespeople.” (Sexton)

“Social media provides platforms for the individual sales rep to stand out from the crowd like never before. To be the one who is providing the most helpful information, the best references, and what is going on in that industry/market. I recommend that sales open their consideration more broadly than just the big three of LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Each has its place and purpose in an overall social strategy that must be in place prior to any active social media use for a company or an individual producer. How about a personal landing page for you as an individual where prospects/customers can go to learn more about you? Take a look at creating an http://about.me page, and then highlight all of your other online activities with links to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and even your company website for example.” (Austin)

Establish your expertise by contributing to conversations — without selling.

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to understand how the science of sales intelligence has an effect on driving revenue. In addition to knowing more about yur industry and prospects than your competition, you will be able to lock yourself in as an expert of your market. By not just being a salesperson, you will open more lines of communication that will lead to more opportunities.

“Step 1: Figure out where your buyers are. Step 2: Be there Step 3: Contribute without intruding on the safe social environment people are interacting in. You hear a lot of stories of vendors finding leads in social platforms, but a lot of salespeople are just ‘there’ — contributing and building both trust and reputation. This approach serves them well. Many people are not just turned off by sales in general, but are absolutely repulsed by salespeople invading their online conversation to sell them something. My advice to salespeople is to get ‘in the mix,’ but don’t sell. Join the community and have conversations with industry leaders, peers and end users. There are salespeople who have built their online presence to the point where prospects have reached out to them for advice. That’s a big win.” (Rosenberg)

“Directly share information, become an expert, and generate a following. You are an expert. You understand your market, your customer’s problems, and the information they need to be more successful. You read the trade publications and regularly (possibly daily) find articles that your prospects and customers should read.” (Heinz)

“If our customers are already there (as research would indicate), then we as salespeople can’t afford not to be there and participating. Initially, salespeople should use social media (blogs, discussion forums, websites, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter) primarily for listening and learning—what are the customers saying/asking, what is competition doing, etc. They should be engaging customers there, as well as using traditional channels. They need to be taking part in social conversations, they need to be representing their products and solutions in those conversations.” (Brock)

“With all the talk in the market about the importance of customer/buyer engagement, it is vital that today’s B2B rep use social as a means to dialogue with their buyers and customers. As reps thought the dialogue must change from one of pure sales to one of helping shape the discussion and to establish themselves as thought leaders and knowledgeable about their market, their buyers’ challenges and seen as a resource for answers. The best way to do this is via social, and the more reps understand that their involvement in this medium and having an active part in the discussion is key to the buying decision, the more they will begin to engage.” (Hidalgo)

“Become an industry source of knowledge by using one or more of the many curation tools that are now available, many at no cost.” (Austin)

• Miles Austin
• Marge Bieler
• Dave Brock
• Barbara Giamanco
• Matt Heinz
• Carlos Hidalgo
• S. Anthony Iannarino
• Craig Rosenberg (AKA The Funnelholic)

Sales Intelligence drives revenue.

“Based on the 12 ways sales people leverage the internet it is clear that B2B sales teams spend a lot of time researching prospects and customers on the web and social networks. It’s no longer an issue of not having any information ahead of time, the issue is that there is an overwhelming amount of personal insights available. Sifting through it to find the relevant information you can act on today appears to be the challenge at hand. Sales intelligence drives revenue by feeding sales people trigger events and insights within a company or contact.” (Koka Sexton)

Make the most of a B2B Social Networks more advanced features and functionalities.

“On the B2B side of the house, LinkedIn is the networking tool in the US with some 130 million members of the 100 million-plus community. Many people know how to invite people to their network, but they usually do not know what to do after that.”

Here are a few of the ways that savvy B2B salespeople will leverage B2B social networks:

• Advanced people search: Create prospecting lists based on the criteria of your ideal buyers. Save the list, and LinkedIn dynamically updates and alerts you weekly to the new people matching your criteria who have joined the network. Each week, you can then plan your strategy with respect to how you’ll approach the initial interaction.
• Applications: Use the applications to add video, compelling presentations, white papers and case studies or sync your blog posts to your profile. Keep your content fresh and people pay attention. In the past eight weeks, I’ve secured four paid gigs and in every single case, I was told it was because my profile stood out from the rest and because they liked the video. It is all about engaging people and enticing them to want to know more.
• Polls: Create a poll to gather real-time trending information that you can share with your prospective buyers.
• Status updates: Ongoing status updates that are ‘relevant’ and provide value to others keep salespeople visible; because at the end of the day, it is all about visibility.
• Groups: Leveraging groups (the right groups!) gives you an incredible opportunity to demonstrate credibility, but not selling!
• Use the Answers section to listen and respond to the questions that people are asking. Every single day people ask what products to buy and from whom.
• Events: Hosting an educational session for potential clients? Use the events functionality and use it to share with your network.” (Giamanco)

Monitor prospect discussion and social data for buying signals.

“Prospect research has changed forever. In no other time in my life have we seen prospects update their own information and update you on what they are doing in their personal and professional lives! Today’s modern social salesperson is exceptionally prepared for their sales calls. One tip: Company data is interesting (e.g., … [alerts] about your sales prospect’s company: ‘New product launch!’), but prospect social data is even more interesting, because it will tell you what the person really cares about (‘Just got back from sales training in Florida, learned a ton!’).” (Rosenberg)

“Leveraging twitter for sales is very effective. Once you know how to use Twitter as a sales tool, you can get insights into people and companies in realtime.” (Sexton)

“Watch for buying signals across the social Web. One of the greatest opportunities for salespeople via social media is to see into the buying cycle far earlier than we’ve typically had access to. Before social media, we could deepen our understanding of the buyer and use outbound marketing to connect with a particular need, try and find resonance with a buying signal, etc. But that, at best, was a fishing expedition most of the time. Now, if you know the buying signals and pain/problem keywords your prospects typically exhibit before they’re ready to buy, you can watch for those discussions and keywords across the social Web. Do a couple keyword searches on Twitter, for example, and you’ll be surprised how many people, in real-time, are talking about their existing challenges, their frustrations with competitive products and more.” (Heinz)

“Social media is a great tool for salespeople, but for not for the reasons that some people believe. Social media isn’t a replacement for the prospecting activities that success in sales requires, as some seem to suggest. It is a simply a set of tools that allow the execution of some of those activities. There is way too much focus on using social media tools for inbound marketing, and way too little on leveraging the tools to better enable the execution of the fundamental roles of salespeople: opening new opportunities. Opening new opportunities isn’t a passive activity, and salespeople who wait for their prospects to find them aren’t successful by any of the measures we use in sales. The salespeople who are successfully using social media are using the tools to identify and open communication with their dream client contacts. They are using tools like LinkedIn to identify the people who they can most easily create value for within their target accounts. More still, they are researching their prospects, discovering what they are reading, what they are writing about, and where their interests lie. Social media better enables salespeople to know who to call and how they might best create value for those people.” (Iannarino)

• Miles Austin
• Marge Bieler
• Dave Brock
• Barbara Giamanco
• Matt Heinz
• Carlos Hidalgo
• S. Anthony Iannarino
• Craig Rosenberg (AKA The Funnelholic)

The first step and one that was consistent across 100% of the successful salespeople was to get connected.

Use your existing connections and networks to actively pursue new introductions.

“It’s so easy, on sites from LinkedIn to Facebook and more, to see who your existing ‘friends’ and connections already know. On LinkedIn, for example, you can quickly search for contacts you want to meet based on which of them are already connected to people in your existing network. This is one of the best ways to get referrals and introductions, not by asking your network to ‘keep you in mind’ but, instead, periodically asking for specific introductions. By getting specific, your conversion rate goes up and you’re talking to the people you specifically want to meet and sell to. In your existing organization, there is the sales team, but I’m thinking the rest of the company is a gold mine of potential introductions — especially founders, longtime employees and others who have spent a long time in your industry. They know people, people know them, and they’re more likely to help you make connections and new introductions.” (Heinz)

“Every time they receive a referral, email or leadership content, salespeople can highlight names mentioned in document, then research mentioned leaders, clients and customers — even competition — and send a note or invitation asking to join their conversations via LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms. By connecting with each other, you then can offer assistance or referrals and also build a trusted network of individuals to help build your referral base. Most people are thrilled you took the time to reach out to them when reading their books, viewing their videos, etc.” (Bieler)

“Successful salespeople are also using social media to identify the relationships that their prospective clients have to other people they already know. Successful salespeople aren’t afraid to leverage their relationships, to ask for introductions, and to rely on the people they know and what they know to open these relationships. Because these social media connections exist, what was once invisible is now visible; it’s easy to identify relationships and leverage them to find a way in. But it’s important to remember that your prospective clients are also using the tools to learn about you. Recently, I called on a major prospective client. After our meeting, he searched for my name on the Internet and found that we had a common connection on Facebook (his best friend from high school). He called his friend to get a reference on me before deciding whether or not to move forward. Fortunately, his friend recommended my work. Social media is no longer something salespeople can opt out of. It reminds me of what President Richard Nixon used to say about foreign affairs: ‘You might not be interested in the world, but it’s interested in you.’ ” (Iannarino)

Use Twitter and other social channels to build deeper, early relationships with new prospects.

“Here’s exactly how you do it (at least with Twitter, but other social channels can likely be done in a similar fashion). Build a list of the prospects in your territory or market. With the help of an admin or an outsourcing service like eLance, go and collect the Twitter handles of each company and as many of the individuals as you can find. Using your own Twitter account, follow those companies and individuals. Then, using a tool such as HootSuite, set up a separate column where you can specifically watch activity from those prospects. This makes it easier and faster to engage with them on a regular basis. Answer their questions. Share a resource. Retweet their articles. In other words, use their attention to this social channel to build value by interacting where they are already spending their time and looking for information.” (Heinz)

It can be a pain in the rump trying to find a couple of blog posts worth spending your morning reading and jump-starting the week. Literally hundreds and thousands of sales blogs with self-proclaimed “best sales solutions” trying to cram their way into your Twitter feed, Google search results and your existence. Fret no more as I have done the searching for you and found what I deem some great sales blog posts. Take a look and have a phenomenal week.

1. The Secret Lesson Hiding in Nucleus Research’s ROI Study – CRM Outsiders
2. 5 Steps to Create a Killer Google+ Business Page – BrainSell Blog
3. Are You Lost In a B2B Sales Lead Paradox? – Marketo Blog
4. New Study Says Customers Think Companies Don’t Give a Damn ABout Their Time…Just Their Money – Brent’s Social CRM Blog
5. Customer Relationship Innovation for the Emergent Social Business - Brian Vellmure’s CRM Strategies Blog
6. Eight Business Apps That Will Change the Way You Work - Emergence Capital Partners
7. How Much Will You Sell in 2012 With Social Media? - Selling Power
8. Video: The Biggest Mistakes Sellers Make – Selling to Big Companies
9. Data Myth #4: Integration Ensures Cleaner CRM Data – DataMyth
10. Three Steps to Develop Yourself – S. Anthony Iannarino; the Sales Blog

• 42% have insufficient knowledge of the business needs of prospects
• 40% do not have the ability to identify the most likely buyers of their product
• 34% complain of having a sales process that is too long
• 21% See an increased customer churn forcing them to focus on filling the funnel

I predict in 2012 that these numbers will not change too dramatically but the results from companies that are actively leveraging technology and sales intelligence as a method of combating them will. Sales managers should be constantly on the lookout for ways to solve these business pressures and based on research by the Aberdeen Group, the top performing sales organizations have built strategies that can drive measurable results in building a sales pipeline and increasing the quality of leads.

• 59% of the best in class companies have leveraged sales intelligence tools to identify or disqualify prospects with more accuracy
• 53% of companies have been able to identify existing customers that have upsell/cross sell opportunities
• 48% of companies have increased the quality of leads intheir pipelines
• 28% use technology to capture and share sales knowledge internally.
• 21% of companies reduce the amount of time doing sales research

This research is important because it’s showing that companies that are having the problems listed above are able to continue achieving results by leveraging sales intelligence in traditional and non-conventional ways. Top performers in lead qualification teams understand that moving less qualified prospects out of their view has more value than dumping a volume of under vetted opportunities on the sales team. By not relying on data but the contextual news and social profiles of the companies and people you are contacting, better decisions can be made on which prospects to pursue and which leads to abandon.

The research study on the science of sales intelligence goes a long way in showing that companies that want to increase revenue quickly with your existing sales team can do so by leveraging technology to speed up the sales process. A strategy around using sales 2.0 applications to identify strong/weak prospects should be a key focus for your 2012 sales plan.

Just a quick poll: Are the issues described above the same as for your company?

The best way to increase sales effectiveness is to speed up the research process and then get regular updates on your prospects and the companies they work for. In an article, Forbes spoke with some leaders in sales and got insights on the sales process and what steps sales managers should take to increase their effectiveness on finding more deals and closing them faster.

The overwhelming observations and advice from Wendy Weiss and Paul Castain pointed to finding the right prospects, being more prepared for the call, having intelligence around the prospects, and leveraging non-traditional communications channels to reach prospects.

Paul Castain,Vice President of Jedi Mastery at Castain Training Systems, says a lot of salespeople research a prospect only once during the process. “Business is moving at the speed of light, and things change constantly,” he says. “When you gather information, review it over and over again before you reach out to the client.”

Finding the right prospects to contact shouldn’t be a painful process. Sales intelligence can give you a fresh group of prospects based on sales trigger events in the industry specifically in your territory. These trigger events give you accurate and relevant news about the company or person you are calling. Since we know that most executives will not respond to a cold call, using connections to get introduced is important. If you can’t locate a professional connection to your prospect, use the intelligence you gather through news sources and social media to understand your prospect and make the connection.

Top sales tips to follow

• Approach them before they are in buying mode
• Focus on finding the best prospects
• Stop calling prospects if they are not responsive. Get creative in communications
• Sales people are expected to know about their prospects before the call
• Only talk 20% of the time and listen the other 80%
• Don’t be afraid to ask the tough questions
• Turn rejection into a learning experience
• Never stop learning how to be more effective

Surprisingly there are still a large number of companies that do not leverage sales intelligence. The Aberdeen study on the Science of Sales Intelligence shows that most companies deal with some very specific business pressures that sales intelligence can help with.

• 42% have insufficient knowledge of the business needs of prospects
• 40% do not have the ability to identify the most likely buyers of their product
• 34% complain of having a sales process that is too long
• 21% See an increased customer churn forcing them to focus on filling the funnel

All of these point to companies needing to be more nimble and enabling their sales teams to move faster with more targeted information. What are you going to different in 2012 to address these business issues?

The traditional approach to demand generation focuses primarily on outbound offers and campaigns to drive new leads into the funnel. However, the shift in buyer behavior forces companies to rethink their approach to demand generation. Social media stands out as a new source of customer engagement because it provides sales and marketing organizations with a tremendous opportunity to follow potential customers – even before they reach out to them.

Because the buyer relies more on peers and independent research in the early stages of engagement, it has become even more imperative that B2B firms bring sales and marketing together with a shared approach to revenue generation. Social intelligence has proven to be a key piece of this aligned approach as it enables deeper, more relevant engagement.

According to B2B’s “2010 Outlook: Marketing Priorities and Plans” survey, more than half (53.5%) of marketers surveyed said they currently use social media as part of their marketing strategy, up from 45% the prior year. Lead generation (cited by 48.9% of respondents) ranked as the second highest use for social media, behind only thought leadership (59.8%).

In one case study illustrating how progressive companies are integrating social media into their demand generation efforts, Concur Technologies has successfully integrated social intelligence across sales and marketing, influencing performance at each phase of the funnel.

Because the buyer relies more on peers and independent research in the early stages of engagement, it has become even more imperative that B2B firms bring sales and marketing together with a shared approach to revenue generation.

In the early stages of lead generation, Concur has utilized the list-building capabilities enabled by sales intelligence platforms to better target the SMB market. The company also improved conversions within the funnel by using social intelligence to address lead pre-qualification for inside sales. Finally, reps are able to receive alerts notifying them on trigger events at key accounts.

Despite the dramatic impact social media and social intelligence can have on demand generation, many companies do not integrate social media into their existing processes. During a recent presentation at the 2011 SiriusDecisions Summit, Jonathan Block, VP and Service Director for Reputation Management Strategies at SiriusDecisions, proclaimed, “Organizations ignore the leverage social media can offer throughout the cold-to- close process.”

Block emphasized the important factors that go into a successful social media strategy. He pointed out holistic measurement and reporting are key aspects of building an integrated social strategy. By effectively measuring both activity and impact, companies realize positive paybacks in brand reputation, demand creation and sales enablement.

It’s not only sales managers that are interested in increasing sales productivity. Every sales rep that is serious about their career tries to be more productive and effective in their sales efforts. One of the best ways to learn to be more productive as a sales person is to learn what is working and what is not by other experts.

Sure, we have a bunch of posts on how to be a more productive sales person but there is always more tips and tricks that come from other well known people that should be shared.

1. How Entrepreneurs Can Increase Productivity by 500% -TechCrunch
2. Top 5 Sales Strategies for 2012. Accelerate Your Momentum with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
3. The Three Types of Team Commitment
4. What’s Driving Your Customers Away?
5. 8 Ways to Incentivize Employees to Use CRM
6. Negative Assumptions Before Your Calls Usually Come True
7. What’s Your Plan Once You’ve Connected Via A Social Network?
8. The 10 Biggest Referral Mistakes Salespeople Make
9. Anatomy Of A Lousy Sales Email
10. One Marketing Guy Who Gets It (What Sales Needs, That Is)
11. Why Sales Forecasts Are a Joke
12. The Presentation Trap: Why Making Presentations Can Cost You the Sale
13. 10 Tips that Separate the Good Sellers from the Great Ones
14. Ignite More Sales with Sales Intelligence
15. Determining What Metrics to Track with CRM