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Save Your Company from Sales Data Overload.

March 30, 2011 in Sales 2.0, Sales Intelligence, Social Selling by Koka Sexton | 2 comments

 

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. [tweetmeme source= "insideview" only_single=false]

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.

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InsideView Names Ralf VonSosen Vice President of Marketing

March 29, 2011 in Notifications by Koka Sexton | 1 comment

Veteran CRM and Cloud Technology Executive Joins to Expand Sales Intelligence Leadership and Growth

InsideView, the social selling and sales intelligence leader, today announced that Ralf VonSosen has been named vice president of marketing to drive InsideView’s expansion and growth, and to bring InsideView’s sales intelligence to the more than ten million B2B sales professionals across the globe. VonSosen’s responsibilities include branding, corporate communications, demand generation, product marketing strategies, and marketing operations.

The news comes on the heels of InsideView’s $12 million Series C funding round and next stage of acceleration of worldwide distribution, as well as the recent launch of Social Selling University. Social Selling University educates sales professionals on how to leverage social media technologies and methodologies to increase sales productivity and drive revenue throughout the entire sales cycle.

“As a seasoned CRM and technology executive, Ralf brings valuable insight to InsideView’s product and brand positioning. He is an integral part of our leadership team,” said InsideView CEO Umberto Milletti. “Ralf will help us take our company and product from its current place as a visionary go-to leader to our next chapter as a ubiquitous sales productivity tool among the millions of sales professionals looking to incorporate social selling and sales intelligence into their work.”

VonSosen brings nearly two decades of CRM and Cloud technology marketing, strategy and corporate development expertise to InsideView. He most recently spent five years as VP of marketing — leading fast-growing eCommerce start-up marketing strategies – most recently at MarketLive and previously Infopia, where he helped build each company’s brand, develop their partner ecosystems, expand revenue generation and drive product innovations. Prior to that, he played a fundamental role in launching the first SAP CRM on-demand solution as VP of solutions marketing at SAP. In the late nineties, VonSosen built Siebel’s communications and energy CRM industry solutions as director of product marketing.

“In our current world’s mandate of working smarter and faster with real-time data, InsideView is leading the charge in a market thirsty for innovation: sales and CRM,” said VonSosen. “InsideView is the only company in the market that provides a solution to the overwhelming amount of data available about prospects and customers. I’m excited to be a part of a team that’s changing an entire industry by allowing professionals to spend more time selling, and less time dealing with the burden of information overload.”

Connect with VonSosen and follow the InsideView marketing story on LinkedIn.

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Driving Sales Productivity with Social Selling

March 25, 2011 in Prospecting, Sales 2.0, Sales Intelligence, Sales Management, Social Media Tips, Social Selling by Koka Sexton | 2 comments

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Social Selling University has continued to grow in numbers. After a great launch of the program at the beginning of this month with an All-Star series of webinars focused on leveraging social media for sales. We have also started building a community of sales 2.0 professionals interested in learning more about building a pipeline of new opportunities through social networks. [tweetmeme source= "insideview" only_single=false]

With an increased focus on enablement through sales intelligence, we are planning on more product enhancements and training. We are leading the conversation for sales people or why social media is important to the sales process.


Recent Social Selling Webinars


Social Calling – Integrating the Who, What & When of Prospecting <~~ WebEx Link

Is your calendar chock-full of meetings with well-qualified prospects? Is cold calling working great for you? Are you having a ball making cold calls? If you answered “no” to any of these questions, you may want to attend this webinar.

You’re now dealing with a super-frazzled and super-distracted “Customer 2.0″. The volume cold call is as “dead as a dodo” when dealing with “Customer 2.0”. But smart prospecting is very much alive.

What you will learn

  • Why the cold call is dead if it means “smiling and dialing”
  • How to use the Who, What & When of prospecting to maximize your chances of getting into your prospect’s office
  • How you can use Sales 2.0 tools and techniques to increase your cold calling results dramatically, causing an approximately an 8 x improvement.
  • Some of the key Sales 2.0 tools for prospecting and how to use them.

 

Driving Sales Productivity with Social Intelligence <~~ WebEx Link

Engaging today’s socially-savvy customer requires a lot more than a grasp of the basic facts and figures about their companies. It requires relevance at the time of engagement. Sales reps need a 360 degree view into their prospects that incorporates recent business events, social conversations and social relationships – in other words social intelligence.
In this webinar, you will learn:

  • What exactly is social intelligence
  • Why social intelligence trumps sales data in driving sales productivity
  • How to leverage social intelligence to engage the right prospects at the right time with the right message
  • Why leveraging social intelligence is absolutely critical to your sales success today

 

Social Selling for Executives: What the Management Team Needs to Know to Succeed with Today’s Customers <~~ WebEx Link

Are you a top executive in sales and marketing wondering how a social media strategy fits in your business? Or are you a sales or marketing professional who wants to discuss the benefits of social selling with your manager, an executive team or board of directors? Listen in as Anneke Seley presents data, metrics and customer case stories to illustrate:

  • Why and when you should include social media in your selling strategy
  • How companies large and small are using social selling
  • How you can get started with social selling

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There is No Magic in Closing More Deals With Sales Intelligence

March 10, 2011 in Prospecting, Sales 2.0, Sales Intelligence by Koka Sexton | 1 comment

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Closing more opportunities is the goal of any B2B sales organization. Fill the funnel and work the leads through a cycle that ultimately brings in revenue. None of this is possible in B2B sales without having conversations with the prospects and other stake holders.

The challenge that most sales people are having is that decision makers are crazy busy and even though they decide to download you application or grab a paper of your website, this doesn’t do much more than fill the top of the funnel with a ton of people that you can email or call to follow up with. Data from a new lead does very little to provide insights on what the person or company they represent is currently facing that could open up a conversation. This is why sales intelligence is so valuable. [tweetmeme source= "insideview" only_single=false]

What’s holding sales people back?

When it comes to doing pre-call research and getting some background on a prospect or company you are calling into, there is a lot of information gathered by just doing a Google search. The problem with this is there is very little context around the results. You can spend an hour digging through search results and other resources to get an idea of who the person is and what challenges their company is facing but you’re busy too and can’t justify a large amount of time to research to make a call that may only take 10-15 minutes. “Typically, there is a lot of knowledge out there,” says John Aiello, CEO of SAVO, in a video interview with Selling Power magazine publisher Gerhard Gschwandtner. “The gap is that people can’t find it.”

Sales Intelligence Drives the Conversation

Having relevant information fed to a sales team on their prospects has proven to increase sales win rates.

As a sales person, there is no excuse any more for not knowing more about your prospects and the company you are calling into. Sales Intelligence tools enable you to have relevant information at your virtual fingertips that can be used to know in many cases exactly how to position your product or service. There are even free sales intelligence tools available that can help.

Sales people need intelligence to close more deals. Making that intelligence available in a way that sales can capture quickly and easy to find is a necessity. In an Accenture study of more than 1,000 managers in the United States and the United Kingdom, nearly 60 percent have to go to numerous sources to compile the information they need to do their jobs well. About the same number reported that information as poorly distributed across the organization.

Building your sales pipeline and increasing win rates is not magic. There is no secret code that needs to be cracked for success. All you need is more information and a better way of identifying what matters when you start making connections.

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Why Social Media is Important to the Sales Process.

March 4, 2011 in Sales Intelligence, Social Selling by Koka Sexton | 8 comments

Companies across the world are agreeing that social media is changing the landscape of how customers interact with brands. Airlines use social media tools like Twitter to stay on top of customer service needs, companies use social media as a marketing tool to stay engaged with customers. The growing popularity of sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have become a breeding ground for conversations. [tweetmeme source= "insideview" only_single=false]

Sales Teams Need Social Media

What is rarely talked about it the need for sales teams to be active on Twitter and other social networks like LinkedIn. On a base level, sales people need to be aware that social media and social selling can have a measurable impact on their win rates. CSO Insights recently published a paper called “The Sales Intelligence Challenge” that addressed this. InsideView was involved in a Webinar with CSO Insights on this topic also. It was found in their research that B2B Sales win rates were highest when sales people used sales intelligence tools like InsideView.

 

Social Media is the Key

There is too much information available online these days that a sales person is walking blind if they are not using it in some way. Sales prospecting lists for contact data is fine but it’s not very effective on a large scale. Gathering contact information is only the first step in an effective sales process. The real intelligence comes from contact data and the relevant information about that contact.

Most times this means that sales people are opening up several tabs in their browser to run searches in LinkedIn, Twitter, Blogs and Google to see what they can find on their contact so a phone call or other engagement can seem timely and be well received from the prospect. Knowing more about your prospect, their company and industry is NOT provided by contact data or prospect lists.

The best sales professionals are gathering recent news and relevant information about prospects and companies by looking at social media  for the sales intelligence needed to drive the conversation.

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