• 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)

Ignite Smarter Conversations
Once a contact becomes a qualified lead or opportunity, sales needs to know who to reach and how, and what to say to get their attention. It’s no longer just who you know that will make business deals happen, but what you know about who you know, tightly synched with when and where you should know it. After all, according to IDC, IT buyers indicate that ~54% of sales reps are unprepared for their initial customer meetings.

To prep for the meeting, your reps can tap into sales intelligence to pinpoint what’s top of mind for the contact and immediately establish rapport on the call. With access to multiple data sources in a single place, your sales reps will spend less time on research, yet will be more effective on the phone.

A study by CSO Insights shows that even when using CRM:

• It takes sales reps an average of 4 voice mails or emails to get that first, pivotal appointment with a prospect
• They often have to wait 3 to 4 days for a response
• 60% of sales reps waste the equivalent of 6 selling weeks a year just trying to get customers on the phone.

Combined, traditional business information services and social media can help create the best prospect intelligence, enabling sales professionals to sort through potential deals and dealmakers. With insight into companies (for example, M&A activity, new leadership, and major initiatives), contacts (title, email, and phone number), and social profile information or people insights (“I see we have friends in common,” or “We went to the same school,” or “You recently tweeted about X”), your sales reps can start the conversation off right.

The sales reps that take advantage of the intelligence to be found in the online conversation are reaping the rewards. In a study of sales reps within 2,000 companies, the reps that turned to sales intelligence ended up with higher win rates.

How ‘smart’ are the conversations you have with prospects?

Summer of Sales Intelligence: InsideView Sees Huge Gains in Customers and Major CRM Platforms, Delivers 8 Million Sales Triggers in Recent Quarter

Ten times more companies started using intelligence to sell better in 2011′s Q3 than any other quarter. That’s according to the latest numbers from InsideView, the leading provider of sales intelligence for the enterprise. The company also revealed it delivered more than 8 million unique new opportunity sales triggers to its customers during the same period.

Intelligence Over Data: Quality and Quantity in Harmony
InsideView’s sales intelligence provides something data simply can’t: a competitive advantage. Anyone can provide a current title, phone number or email address on a lead. Only InsideView can provide this basic information, but more. For example, a business event — like an acquisition or merger — that warrants sales outreach, or news event like a product launch, that matters to the ongoing sales conversation.

“While other companies are betting their business on providing more and more data, we’re finding accelerating demand for higher quality sales intelligence, not just more data,” said Umberto Milletti, CEO of InsideView. “Sales intelligence is the combination of not only business data, but social context, how you’re connected to a lead or prospect, valuable news insight, and real-time triggers that inform you when to take action. In fact, we’re delivering 35 million unique news trigger events to our users a year to help them sell better and generate more revenue.”

Independent research firm Aberdeen Research has found that InsideView’s style of sales intelligence increases several key areas for sales success, including sales quota attainment, customer retention and overall revenue growth.

“We have seen that, in 2010, the best-in-class organizations outperformed by achieving 28% revenue growth compared to just 3% for others — and intelligence is a key reason for this,” said Peter Ostrow of Aberdeen Research.

Big Growth and Launch of CRM+
InsideView’s own growth saw almost 10,000 new professionals using its free product, and over 250 enterprises signing on to its award-winning paid version, since July. In August, the company launched CRM+, which brought its intelligence technology to a broader business sector including marketing, service, human resources and more.

“InsideView gives businesses sales intelligence and information that will aid sales operations with helping develop and maintain leads and clients,” noted TechCrunch in coverage of InsideView’s CRM+ launch. “CRM+ now brings social data to all CRM users (marketing, operations, customer service, etc.), not just sales.”

InsideView was also the only provider of sales intelligence included in August’s Gartner Magic Quadrant for Social CRM.

Success On All CRM Solutions
InsideView’s leadership continues across all major CRM platforms:

• Salesforce.com: InsideView continues to be the all-time most popular sales app on the salesforce.com AppExchange.
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM: In July, the company was selected as a 2011 Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace Solution Excellence Partner of the Year.
• SAP: Earlier in the summer, InsideView gained the prestigious “Powered by SAP NetWeaver®” certification status.
• SugarCRM: In June, InsideView and SugarCRM combined forces to bring InsideView standard and out-of-the-box.
• Oracle CRM OnDemand: InsideView is part of the Inner Circle program.
• NetSuite: Collaboration through the Preferred Partner Program.

To learn more about InsideView, please visit www.insideview.com.

One of the best messages from Dreamforce was the realization from 45,000 attendees that data is good but it is not enough to move the revenue needle. The comments from current customers and new businesses that stopped by the booth validated that cold calling is dead and without a very targeted message with relevant information from both traditional sources and social media, a sales rep’s chances of getting contact and creating new opportunities is very slim.

With the announcement that Jigsaw and D&B are being combined to create Data.com, our customers are echoing our response that this is just further validation that data is a commodity and without a layer of intelligence to help sales, marketing and support identify the right people to contact, you may as just use last years Yellow Pages.

 Where’s the value-add? D&B and Salesforce are pitching this idea as a marriage between two classes of data: Salesforce contacts and D&B business. (For “Salesforce contacts,” read “Jigsaw.”) But Jigsaw data already associates contacts with their companies, and already contains (by Salesforce’s own estimate) over 4 million crowd-sourced corporate profiles. Of course, this calls into question the authenticity (and accuracy) of those profiles versus D&B’s professional research.

Keeping the entire company on the same page with prospects and customers is something that CRM can help with but it’s not the answer. There are so many things changing with companies on a daily, weekly and monthly basis that it’s impossible for anyone or any company to keep up with all the changes in leadership, news and events. This is why we believe that sales intelligence is the answer.

Adding a layer of intelligence to your sales process will dramatically increase sales productivity and increase your opportunity win rates. Does social media answer all the needs of every sales organization? No. But it adds an additional layer that gives sales people an edge when identifying new prospects and making that first phone call less awkward. Even marketing automation companies like Marketo see the value in leveraging social media for sales.

10 additional Articles on Data vs. Intelligence

• The problem with BIG data.
• 10 tips to drive sales productivity.
• Social Selling in the Enterprise
• The Only Sales Application on the Gartner Magic Quadrant
• Data Accuracy vs Quality
• Sales and Marketing alignment with social media
• Listen to your customers using social intelligence
• Is social media the new cold call?
• Using Twitter for social selling.
• Intelligence Trumps Data for Sales Productivity

Beyond Data: InsideView Brings Intelligence to Marketing, Sales, Service, and Operations

By going beyond mere business data to provide complete customer intelligence, Our latest product CRM+ revolutionizes the way all CRM end users – from sales, marketing and service, to operations and partner channels – know their contacts and prospects, build trust, execute productive one-to-one relationships and, ultimately, drive more revenue. With today’s launch, we set a new standard in bringing holistic and social intelligence to the fingertips of all B2B CRM users.

“We have seen that, in 2010, the best-in-class organizations outperformed by achieving 28% revenue growth compared to just 3% for others – and intelligence is a key reason for this.” – Aberdeen Group

“What made 100,000+ sales people more productive is now available to service, marketing, operations and partner channels: the intelligence needed for meaningful one-to-one relationships.,” said Umberto Milletti, CEO of InsideView. “For example, just as sales has used intelligence to increase conversion rates, marketing uses contact intelligence to hone their campaigns, account management uses current news to time renewal offers, and professionals such as business development use intelligence to open new relationships.”

“Overwhelming ‘big’ data falls short in providing the intelligence needed for one-to-one business in marketing, service, sales and operations. For example, it’s a no-brainer to have current contact information on a prospect, but what about a holistic view of how you’re connected through former reference customers? Or a news article showing the company just made an acquisition? What about their latest tweets? It’s time for forward-looking intelligence in CRM to correct the ‘rear-view mirror’ approach currently provided by data companies,” said Umberto Milletti, CEO and founder of InsideView.

What made 100,000+ sales people more productive is now available to service, marketing, operations and partner channels” Umberto Milletti

CRM+ is for any company looking to empower all external-facing employees with real-time intelligence on prospects and customers, suppliers and partners. InsideView’s CRM+ provides just that to ensure all users are looking at the same information, improve KPI, and create more meaningful one-to-one relationships. InsideView CRM+ does this within workers’ process flow within their existing CRM platform.

Independent research firm Aberdeen Group has already shown the benefits of InsideView’s intelligence on sales results: At least a 10 percent increase in top-line revenue and more than 10 percent increase in quota attainment, to name a few. When intelligence is applied to additional areas – such as marketing and customer service – the impact is even greater.

“Providing intelligence to not just sales but to other parts of the organization including marketing, customer service, and operations makes a big difference in terms of overall organizational performance,” said Peter Ostrow of Aberdeen Research. “We have seen that, in 2010, the best-in-class organizations outperformed by achieving 28% revenue growth compared to just 3% for others – and intelligence is a key reason for this.”

“As companies continue to embrace social CRM, they need intelligence – not data – to manage the rapidly changing landscape of customer relationships,” Milletti added. “We are excited to launch this next big step in providing this meaningful, actionable and results-driving intelligence to the entire social enterprise.”

New Social Selling University Website

Social Selling by definition is the use of sales 2.0 tools to identify and engage prospects to create new opportunities and drive revenue. The biggest obstacles I encounter when talking to sales teams is that even though they are familiar with social media on a personal level, they don’t know where to start when it comes to applying these tools to their professional life.

Social Selling University is broken into 4 main parts that are designed to offer education and resources to sales people that want to know more about leveraging social media for sales.

• Resources
• Webinars
• Blog
• Forum

The amount of content is growing and we are just about to roll out our next series of webinars featuring sales experts and training on ways to make the most out of Twitter, LinkedIn and other social tools that can get you more connected with your prospects.

“While others focused on one-to-many marketing and service areas, we have focused on the one-to-one relationships critical for sales,”

“InsideView distinguishes itself as one of the few vendors in social CRM focused on sales processes,” reads the Gartner report, available for purchase here. The report continues, “With an emphasis on usability, InsideView has promoted a compelling vision for applying search and relationship mining technologies to aid salespeople with key informational needs around sourcing contacts and leads, as well as monitoring business events and personnel within accounts.” Ease-of-use is also praised: “…easy to set up and personalize to specific needs (i.e., list building, lead generation, lead qualification, precall research in prospecting, account research, etc.).”

The report also highlights InsideView’s ability to uncover new sales opportunities and relationships, as well as to provide real-time intelligence and social information on leads and prospects through its unique Buzz Tab. One new area of emphasis by InsideView is the establishment of broader community: just last month, InsideView launched a Lithium-powered community for its nearly 100,000 users.

“While others focused on one-to-many marketing and service areas, we have focused on the one-to-one relationships critical for sales,” said Umberto Milletti, CEO of InsideView. “It’s great to see the industry analysts agree on the importance of these one-to-one relationships. We are now expanding more into the areas of marketing and service as these recognize the need for deeper relationships. Look for some exciting announcements about our offering soon.”

Companies have realized that a solid social media strategy is vital to the companies goals for revenue and growth. Emphasis still remains on common business goals like

• Customer retention
• Customer acquisition
• Customer profitability
• Branding

With these priorities in place, traditional methods of execution are being supplemented by social media. Even with such large numbers of companies leveraging social media, research shows that only 17% of them feel they are ahead of the curve when it comes to using social media to achieve these goals. (source)

One of the things I notice most when talking to companies about their social media strategies is that it focuses primarily around marketing and support. These have obvious benefits that can be measured and scaled to show an ROI.

What we are finding more of now are companies that want to be in that group of companies that are leveraging social media a head of the curve. This is done through the use of applications and training. Where many companies are building a more strategic focus is in their sales teams where social media is getting used to drive revenue and customer acquisition.

With sales enablement and sales intelligence applications the ability to turn social media into a sales tool becomes a reality and even a necessity to many companies that see the financial benefit of them.

When companies become active in social networks with the goals listed above, the actions should not stop with the marketing department. Sales teams should be trained and active in the networks where marketing has identified new prospects. The goal is to bring the prospects from a virtual environment into a live conversation with the sales team. This may be easier with some prospects than others but some prospects will gladly take a demo or a call with the sales team but want an active engagement online as well during the buying process.

If your company is not activating the sales team members to engage in social media where the prospects are responsive (that’s where you found them originally) then you risk losing them. Your sales team may lose them in the sea of other emails and calls that they receive on a daily basis.

When a prospect is engaged online and sales or lead qualification gets involved there should be an effort to incorporate a social selling strategy that blends common sales process with an online one. You’ll find more engaged buyers and customers that communicate with you in many channels and become advocates for your company during the buying process and throughout their time as a customer.

What is Gamification?

One of the trending topics in business is gamification. If you are not familiar with the term, in short, gamification is the application of game mechanics to non-game experiences that can drive an audience to a desired behavior.The size of the audience available through gaming is enormous and rivals television as a medium.

According to Forrester, gamers span just about every demographic.

• 65% of Xbox gamers are male
• 59% of “social gamers” (like Farmville…) are women
• 23% of the “social gamers” are Boomers between 45 and 65 years old.

In general gamers are also more motivated to have ‘connections’ with people than non-gamers. In the world of sales, connections and engagement is key to driving pipeline growth and creating new opportunities.

A few definitions of gamification:

• A game is structured play, usually for fun.
• Gameplay is interaction inside of a game.
• Game Mechanics are constructs or tactics commonly used in games to encourage gameplay. These are things like badges, points, leader boards, levels, challenges, achievements and virtual sheep you can put on your virtual farm.
• Game Dynamics are strategies commonly used in game design based on psychological motivations. These include things like “Appointments,” in which someone does something to gain a reward, “Avoidance,” in which someone does something to avoid a punishment, or the “Free Lunch” dynamic, in which people feel they are getting something because of their behavior.
• Currencies are ways to give people incentives based on various motivations in a digital world: the need for financial reward, the need to do good, the need to help one’s community, the need for recognition and influence, the need for pleasure. We can assign currencies to each one of these motivations to reward people for desired behaviors.

Gamification for Sales

Turning the sales process into a game is not a stretch of the imagination for companies. In may ways companies with B2B sales people have already added game mechanics into the process on a small scale. Glenngary Glen Ross has an amazing scene in the beginning of the movie where Alec Baldwin is addressing the sales team where is explains First Prize is a Cadillac and Second Prize is a set of steak knives. This is how most businesses gamify sales to date.

• Commission checks
• Presidents Club
• Spiffs

These are all typically based around revenue for a company and these game mechanics drive the behavior of the sales team to sell more. This is where most companies end the game process but that is about to change.

Companies like Xactly have developed an application that drives compensation management , most typically marketed to businesses that have become buried in spreadsheets trying to track sales teams and their commissions. That’s a big enough problem to tackle for companies but their application has some functionality that brings gamification to the sales teams directly. At a recent event I heard Xactly discuss how their customers base compensation and commissions on a series of behaviors that lean more ‘reward’ to the sales person if they do things such as close a deal early in the month or if they sales can close a deal within a specific time frame.

This opens up a lot doors into how companies could introduce game mechanics for sales even extending beyond revenue events.

Game On for B2B Sales

Research shows that financial rewards for gamers is only one incentive and not even the primary factor that people play games. We saw this internally at InsideView when we wanted to drive social media adoption by the company. The only game mechanic we had to put in place was a monthly email that highlighted to most active employees on Twitter. The internal competition to be in First Place drove up the number of updates from employees 312%.

Sales teams could, and I think should be incentivised for a number of activities outside of just revenue generation. True, the primary responsibility for sales teams is to close deals but within that process of selling there are a number of activities or tasks that can be measured and applied with game mechanics to drive even more productivity. Image a sales team that saw their work as a game and wanted to unlock as many achievements as possible to be recognized publicly and financially?

I hear more and more companies trying to add a layer of gamification to their sales processes. There are several ways to do this and the achievements and metrics are different depending on each companies desired goals.

• Number of calls
• New opportunities created
• Engagement on social media
• Discussions created in company communities
• Leads generated by online/personal social activities.

The list can go on forever. The truth is that they are almost limitless and all drive business metrics across different departments.

Is your company thinking of implementing gamification to sales or have any game mechanics that have been working so far?

“We are truly excited that InsideView will be supporting the AA-ISP’s mission of helping inside sales reach new levels of professionalism, recognition, and performance,” said Larry Reeves, AA-ISP Chief Operating Officer. “The sales world is changing, and Inside Sales is taking on an ever increasing role in the success of organizations. Recent studies indicate that corporate America is growing their year-over-year inside sales positions by 15%, while field sales are flat or decreasing. Today’s Inside Sales Professionals are top notch individuals proficient in a wide variety of skills that were never part of the sales role a few years ago. The face of sales is changing, and Inside Sales Professionals are leading the way,” Reeves commented.

“InsideView is an ideal social selling tool for inside sales professionals who rely on research prior to making contact with a prospect. It’s an ideal fit for inside reps who need immediate access to customer intelligence between the hundreds of calls they make each week. Besides being an excellent tool for inside sales, they support our vision for the growth of inside sales, and are an ideal supporter of what our association is all about,” stated Bob Perkins, AA-ISP’s Founder & CEO.

“Recent studies indicate that corporate America is growing their year-over-year inside sales positions by 15%, while field sales are flat or decreasing. Today’s Inside Sales Professionals are top notch individuals proficient in a wide variety of skills that were never part of the sales role a few years ago. The face of sales is changing, and Inside Sales Professionals are leading the way,”

“We are pleased to be supporting the AA-ISP, the industry’s leading association dedicated to advancing the profession of inside sales,” noted Greg Brush, InsideView’s VP of Sales & Customer Success. “We share a common vision to help take inside sales to the next level. Both of our teams are looking forward to the continued growth of inside sales and remain passionate about improving the productivity of inside sales professionals.”

About the AA-ISP
The American Association of Inside Sales Professionals (”AA-ISP”) is dedicated exclusively to advancing the profession of Inside Sales. As the only association of its kind, the AA-ISP serves as an authoritative resource to leaders and individual sales representatives who want to take their organization and careers to the next level of professionalism and performance. Our mission is accomplished through an industry-specific focus on leadership and individual development, member forums and networking, best practice sharing, individual training, career development, sales accreditation and annual conferences.

Leveraging social media and online communities to drive revenue works. You may remember the post Should Sales people be Blogging where we explained how IBM is leveraging social selling. In the Social Selling University we have had great speakers like Jill Konrath, Anneke Seley, Joanne Black and others that have given Enterprise Social Selling  tips and strategies to members of the community. Umberto Millet our CEO has written a number of articles around the revolution of social selling in B2B.

Enterprise social selling is growing up. With the growing desire for Social CRM within companies, collecting social conversations for analysis was only scratching the service. What the social enterprise does with those conversations is where the rubber meets the road. Social media is more than a tool for marketing people and it’s being well established that every department across the enterprise can leverage social media for everything from prospecting, opportunity management and customer retention.

What these data suggest is that being a successful salesperson today is about much more than being a persuasive presenter: it’s about the hard work that happens before and after that presentation, from researching customers to pulling together internal stakeholders to planning how to grow the account over time.

When a sales team is empowered they are able to be more effective. When a good sales team is empowered, they almost seem unstoppable. The study by the Harvard Business Review explains that sales people are currently spending 15% more time doing administrative tasks like preparing for meetings with potential customers now than they were a few years ago. Leveraging sales intelligence and social selling any sales team can be more effective and produce more revenue than sales people that do not based on the study by CSO Insights. The discussion around the death of cold calling becomes even more obvious when an Enterprise Account Manager has social media tools in his arsenal.

Marketing departments are spending money and energy to develop campaigns that drive qualified leads to sales people. What if sales people implemented some of the same strategies to drive leads of their own? The answer is that the sales people that figure out how to do this first are going to reap the benefits from this for years to come, building your corporate brand, extending your reach and make you more transparent to your prospects and customers.

There is a clear difference between Sales 2.0 and Social Selling. Primarily it’s by adding in a higher level of engagement by the salesperson within the social networks of their prospects and customers. Studies also suggest that this level of engagement is appreciated and in some ways expected by customer 2.0.

It all comes back to the phone book

Just when you would think the explanation of data vs. intelligence was a moot point, a customer brought us another little anecdote that drives the nail in even further to the coffin of big data providers. Most startups and even larger businesses have a need to deliver leads to the sales team. This can be done using a combination of many marketing campaigns and targeting people that can benefit from your product or service. One of the normal go-to methods for companies is to inject a bunch of names into their CRM in a form of list building that gives the sales people a starting point of people to contact. Companies buy these lists because it’s better than handing a sales team a stack of yellow pages and telling them to start at A and work through Z. But is it really any better?

The problem with data as a launching point

Companies need data. List building has a place in the process but if that’s what you are relying on to drive a large volume of revenue for your company, you are going to be very disappointed. Using data as a launching point for your inside sales team to start working through is almost as bad as handing them a copy of the Yellow Pages for their territory with the industries they should focus on. Where do they start? What companies should they call first? Even with a more focused set of targets, sales people still have the same problems. Without some context or sales intelligence around the company or contact, sales people are still walking blind. Sure they’ll call 50 people and get 3 people that might be interested for a follow up but again, it’s a VERY grassroots process that belongs only in the history books.

What happens when you add a layer of actionable intelligence to the data? All of a sudden sales people are getting alerted to sales opportunities, they get fed information that they can pass onto their prospects and customers about trends and issues facing their competitors and how the prospect can benefit more from the service they offer. Sales intelligence has an explosive impact on driving revenue for a company.

The solution that builds revenue faster

When you hand a sales person a lead, it’s in their DNA to follow up on it with a call, email or some other communication. It will be hit or miss using the phonebook approach and they will move onto the next name on the list. We’ve documented case studies where customers are getting upwards of 70 new opportunities a month, per rep and watched sales efficiency increase dramatically by eliminating a large chunk of research a sales person needs to do. This will never be done by the Big Data vendors as much as they want you to believe it. Sales intelligence is the only solution.

Business Insights, Contacts and News Immediately at Fingertips of Users of SAP CRM 7.0

InsideView, a sales intelligence leader, today announced its InsideView CRM Sales Intelligence 2.0 solution is now SAP-certified for integration with the SAP® Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM) application 7.0, earning “Powered by SAP NetWeaver®” certification status.

Through the integration of InsideView CRM Sales Intelligence with SAP CRM 7.0, users now have access to complete and relevant intelligence on millions of companies and decision-maker contacts worldwide, directly inside the platform. Users can spend more time selling and less time researching their prospects and customers. InsideView CRM Sales Intelligence dramatically improves sales performance by bringing together traditional business information from the world’s leading sources, breaking news and social intelligence about companies and contacts into a single window within SAP CRM 7.0. The “all-in-one” sales intelligence makes it fast and easy to discover prospects, qualify leads, engage decision makers, close deals, and grow customer relationships and top-line revenue.

InsideView CRM Sales Intelligence also incorporates all major social networking sites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and blogs for easy access to warm connections and real-time insight about customers and prospects. Sales intelligence has been shown to increase revenue per sales person by more than 10 percent, compared to sales people who only have access to simple contact or company data.

“We are excited to deliver certified integration between InsideView CRM Sales Intelligence and SAP CRM 7.0, bringing rich business insight, alerts and actionable social media to customers,” said Heidi Tucker, Vice President, Global Alliances, InsideView. “The solution now integrated with SAP CRM delivers valuable functionality to empower 21st century sales warriors to achieve competitive edge.”

InsideView CRM Sales Intelligence is an indispensible resource for sales organizations that want to efficiently know their prospects and customers. It increases sales productivity, reduces cost (no need to buy company information and prospect lists from multiple sources), and improves CRM user adoption. To learn more about InsideView CRM Sales Intelligence integrated with SAP CRM, please visit www.insideview.com/SAP.

The SAP Integration and Certification Center (SAP ICC) has certified that InsideView CRM Sales Intelligence 2.0 has achieved status as powered by the SAP NetWeaver technology platform as an add-on for the ABAP™ programming language 7.0 for SAP CRM 7.0. This deployment was tested and certified by the SAP ICC.

There is a good conversation on the Social Selling University LinkedIn group that is worth sharing. The great thing about these communities is getting so much feedback from so many people with similar and different points of view.

I asked a question that comes up a lot with sales teams that are trying to close business. “Is it ever alright to nag or pester your prospects?” It’s a fine line that I used to walk when managing a territory. Your forecast shows a deal, you have a close date set and then the prospect goes radio silent and falls off the grid. So what do you do? How many calls do you make leaving voice-mails trying to get a status update? You can send an email a day until you get a response but that is definitely crossing into creepy nagging territory.

Social selling techniques can be used if they are not responsive to other communications. Without having a line in the sand as to what would be considered pestering, it’s hard to say. But some of our SSU members had great insights.

What do you think? Leave us a comment here or jump over to the Social Selling University LinkedIn group and post your response there.

As more than a place to waste hours of time digging through popular presentations, B2B sales people should run some searches on industries and other topics that you want to be more informed about. You could always be cutting edge and create your own SlideShare profile and start creating presentations that you can use for prospects and customers.

13 Ways to Make Selling Easy with LinkedIn

Selling to the CIO

Getting a Competitive Advantage through Social Selling

Sales 2.0: Is Your Sales Force Ready for the Digital Age?

B2B Lead Genration Using Social Media

Stop Cold Calling and Start Attracting Clients

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

SugarCRM Users To Have Seamless Access to InsideView for Social Selling

InsideView, the social selling and sales intelligence leader, and SugarCRM, the world’s fastest growing customer relationship management (CRM) company, announced today that InsideView’s powerful sales intelligence solution will come preinstalled in all editions of SugarCRM.  The integrated solution will provide all of SugarCRM’s users with immediate access to InsideView’s state-of-the-art sales intelligence at no incremental cost. The announcement was made at the annual SugarCon customer and developer’s conference.

The partnership comes at a time when sales people are overwhelmed with an explosion of data that leaves them spending more time searching for information and less time selling.  InsideView’s sales intelligence dramatically improves sales performance by aggregating the most valuable sources of external information sales people need about companies and contacts into a single, easy-to-access view within SugarCRM. This sales intelligence makes it fast and easy to discover prospects, qualify leads, engage decision-makers, close deals, and grow both customer relationships and top-line revenue.

Sales intelligence has been shown to increase revenue per sales person by more than ten percent, compared to sales people who only have access to simple contact or company data. InsideView’s platform aggregates and draws relevance from the huge quantity of business information available in tens of thousands of worldwide business publications; social platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and blogs; and financial and contact information.

InsideView CEO Umberto Milletti’s participation in a keynote address at SugarCon –  SugarCRM’s marquee global user group event – highlights the importance and urgency of social selling and sales intelligence for today’s sales professionals.

“Sales professionals using SugarCRM need to be able to create effective and actionable information from the massive amounts of data presented to them at any given time,” said Clint Oram, CTO at SugarCRM. “With this partnership, InsideView brings meaningful business insight for millions of companies worldwide directly into our easy-to-use platform. With this integration, any user’s view of his or her leads, accounts, contacts and opportunities will include real-time, relevant social and business insights and triggers.”

“We are excited to partner with SugarCRM to empower all SugarCRM customers and partners with automatic access to rich insight about millions of companies and key decision-makers around the world,” said Heidi Tucker, VP Global Alliances at InsideView. “Combined with SugarCRM’s ‘single system of truth’ and collaborative platform, “InsideView will help SugarCRM users find more relevant ways to connect with their prospects and customers to understand their important business issues. “

Building off the existing integration between Sugar and SalesView, the sales intelligence solution from InsideView, the companies are announcing a combined social CRM and sales intelligence solution. The latest edition of Sugar 6 will include SalesView pre-loaded into the system. This offers users the ability to tap into thousands of global data sources, as well as the vast universe of social media to gain relevant and actionable insight into their prospects and customers.

“A CRM system is only as good as the data inside of it,” said Umberto Milletti. “By accessing real-time sales intelligence and relevant social information within Sugar 6, users can discover prospects, qualify leads, engage decision-makers, close deals and grow customer relationships more quickly. SalesView and Sugar together form the building blocks of a winning social CRM strategy for any business.

SugarCRM is the first major CRM platform to ship with InsideView’s sales intelligence built right in. SugarCRM Cloud edition users will see InsideView immediately when accessing the newest SugarCRM version. All users of SugarCRM’s on-premise edition may download InsideView from SugarExchange or upgrade to the latest release of SugarCRM. To learn more about InsideView and how sales intelligence can dramatically improve your sales cycle, please visit www.insideview.com/SUGARCRM.

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.

The preponderance of business and social data on customers poses both an opportunity and a challenge for today’s sales professionals.  Given changing customer behaviors and demands, engaging today’s socially-savvy customer – Customer 2.0 – requires a lot more than a grasp of the basic facts and figures about their companies.  It requires relevance at the time of engagement.  Reps need a 360 degree view into their prospects that incorporates recent business events, social conversations and social relationships.

Fortunately opportunities to gather both business and social data are abundant, and data consolidation certainly simplifies this process.  However, the challenge is extracting the salient points from such information for the purpose of increasing sales.  Sales reps need to be able to make sense out of this ubiquitous and sometimes conflicting mountain of data and turn it into actionable insights to engage the prospect.

Social networks like Twitter and LinkedIn (as well as the entire blogosophere) are target-rich environments to find new opportunities and leads, and engage with prospects in a powerful and effectively intelligent new way. So what is holding companies back? Of the dozen or so objections I have heard, my conclusion is: FEAR. Fear that their sales team will not produce results, fear that the sales team will waste their time online and fear that their sales teams will do or say something online that will tarnish their brand and kill sales. The fact of the matter is, NOT letting sales professionals engage on social media is detrimental to the bottom line for the reasons below.

The sales productivity challenge can be addressed by putting in the right sales intelligence infrastructure in place to discover the relevant pieces of the prospect puzzle from all of these available sources, including social media.  A single “go-to” intelligence source helps sales professionals identify the most relevant, up-to-date and actionable insights about their prospects and customer with ease and efficiency -  driving sales productivity throughout the sales cycle.

Cases in point:

“Our decision to switch to InsideView was driven by our desire to consolidate multiple data sources into a single stream as well as improve the quality and relevance of the intelligence our business development team relies on daily to formulate target account strategy,” said James Warren, director, global business development at RightNow Technologies.

Let us know what you think about the video by leaving a comment here or on the InsideView YouTube page.