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Sales 2.0 is the bread and butter of what we do here at InsideView. Essentially, we want salespeople to incorporate sales intelligence into the new generation of sales where social selling comes into play. Unfortunately, this methodology of sales 2.0 is skewed in various definitions and discussions of its effectiveness. As a result, I have had the privlidge of gathering 15 great sales 2.0 posts that provide some solid definitions, rich in content.
- Sales Tip: The Social Graph is Your Friend – Nigel Edelshain
- 37 Character Tweet Led to Huge Sales Opportunity – Anneke Seley
- 5 Essential Books to Understand B2B Sales 2.0 – Katie Byrnes
- 7 Forward Thinking Presentations You May Have Missed – Chad Levitt
- Sales Success Strategies for a Social World – Gerhard Gschwandtner
- What the Heck is Sales 2.0 (& Why Should I Care) – Pamela Seiple
- 40 Great Social Media Infographics for B2B - Koka Sexton
- Sales 2.0: Is Hunter vs. Farmer Theory Outdated? – Claire Moore
- How to Shorten Your Revenue Cycle – Andrew Hunt
- 10 fresh Ideas on Sales 2.0 And Sales Process – Marci Reynolds
- Productivity on Steroids (Podcast) – John Cousineau
- Lead Scoring is 878% More Effective Than Cold Calling – Paul Rafferty
- What is Sales 2.0 (And Why You Should Care) – Padalog
- Statistics Show the Business Case for Sales Enablement - Paul Krajewski
- Sales 2.0 The Impact on Selling and Sales Process – Tony Cole
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?
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.
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.
InsideView Launches Social Selling University to Provide Comprehensive Education for Sales Professionals, Driving Sales Productivity Through Social MediaWorld’s Top Sales Experts, Social Media Pundits Unite for Launch of First-of-Its-Kind Education Initiative
Today Social Selling University officially launches as the first program to educate sales professionals on how to leverage social media technologies and methodologies to increase sales productivity and drive revenue throughout the entire sales cycle. The first-of-its-kind program instructs sales organizations, consultants and in-house teams about selling to the modern and socially-connected customer — Customer 2.0 — and offers both an on-demand curriculum and live workshops. The program is open to all sales professionals starting today.
Social Selling University’s (SSU) actionable content and interactive learning modules have been developed by expert instructors, including experienced thought leaders, authors and analysts. Classes are designed for all levels of sales professionals, covering a broad range of topics including entry-level social media instruction on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, best practices for managing personal online brands and how to accelerate the sales cycle by leveraging recent business events, social conversations and social relationships (aka “social intelligence”). The program’s instructors will provide expert advice to sales management on how to best incorporate social selling into their organizations, and educate sales professionals on how to utilize social media platforms to drive greater sales productivity.
“Social media is fundamentally changing the way sales professionals navigate the sales cycle — what worked two years ago, doesn’t work anymore because socially savvy buyers know far more about products and companies than ever before,” said Barbara Giamanco, Talent Builders CEO. “Fortunately, SSU levels the playing field by teaching sales executives, managers and reps how to interact with and sell to the modern consumer. These social sales practices breed relationships and eliminate the need for cold calling.”
Who should attend SSU?
Any sales professional — from account rep to sales team leader, director or executive — who CANNOT answer the question: “What is social selling and why does it matter to my sales organization?”
Isn’t social media for marketers? Why does social media matter to sales people?
- Social media marketing grew 50% in 2010 to $1.2 billion, and analysts predict that 2011 is the “year of social integration” for businesses. Social CRM has crested as the new and understood platform for sales and customer service.
“Salespeople who fail to leverage social media do so at their own peril. The problem is, many don’t know how,” said Jill Konrath, best-selling author of SNAP Selling and Selling to Big Companies. “Thankfully, technologies exist to allow any sales professional to gather and share relevant buyer information and achieve greater sales success. Social Selling University is a great place to start and continue learning what’s possible in the new world of social selling.”
As part of the initiative, SSU will host a Webinar series, featuring a panel of industry thought leaders to answer questions about how to use social media for sales, including:
March 3: Barbara Giamanco, founder and CEO of Talent Builders, Inc
March 8: Koka Sexton, director of Social Selling University
March 10: Jill Konrath, author of SNAP Selling and Selling to Big Companies
March 15: Patrick O’Malley, social media trainer and consultant
March 17: Nigel Edelshain, CEO of Sales 2.0
March 22: Pelin Thorogood, principal, Schulman + Thorogood Group.
March 24: Anneke Seley, CEO and founder of Phone Works and coauthor of Sales 2.0
March 29: Dan Schawbel, managing partner of Millennial Branding, LLC
March 31: Tibor Shanto, principal, Renbor Sales Solutions
On March 8, SSU will host a live, complimentary workshop following the Sales 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, where industry thought leaders will discuss the best practices for leveraging social media to increase sales team performance. Visit SSU’s registration page for more information about the agenda, speakers or sign-up information.
“Social media has completely changed the world of selling, and if you and your organization want to stay relevant, then you need to learn how to use these tools before your competitors,” said Dan Schawbel, the author of the number one international bestselling book, Me 2.0: 4 Steps to Building Your Future. ”Social Selling University is the first program to teach salespeople how to use Facebook, Twitter and other social tools to generate ready-to-buy leads and build relationships with customers that result in long-term business growth.”
About Social Selling University
Social Selling University is the world’s first initiative dedicated to teaching the sales profession how to put social media to work within their sales processes and organizations for greater productivity and revenue, through online instruction and in-person workshops. SSU staff includes dozens of the leading experts in social media, sales and Social CRM, and provides courses made specifically for executives, managers and representatives. Founded in 2011 by InsideView, SSU is the leading source of education about using the social Web to increase sales productivity through social intelligence. For more information, visit www.socialsellingu.com.
Social media has become a defacto marketing tool for any organization, but it’s incredible how scared sales managers and teams still are of letting their sales reps join the sales 2.0 party. But the reality is, the only thing you have to fear is fear itself…oh, and not closing more and larger deals faster than ever before.
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.
In addition, it always surprises me when a company pushes off any new technology based on such fear, and masks it with an excuse. Businesses that embrace innovation and new tools have a great track record of becoming leaders in their spaces. Social media is no different as it applies to sales professionals. There are very simple reasons that all of these excuses should be thrown away and sales people given a green light to social media engagement with leads and prospects.
Fact: Social selling produces results
Sirius Decisions Inc. recently said in a webinar that in most sales cycles, customers are now in control. Customers are doing 70 percent of the research online that drives the buying decisions, and then contacting a specific vendor for the purchase. The old concept of customers calling into a company to be ‘sold’ something is quickly vanishing. Since more of the buying process is happening online in discussion groups and social networks, sales people that are paying attention and, in most cases, are already a member of these networks like Twitter, will capitalize on these conversations and identify new opportunities much earlier than those without such social involvement.
Myth: Social Selling is not a time-suck
If your sales team is wasting their time online or talking to friends on the phone most of the day, stop now and reevaluate your employees. If you have talented and hard working people on your sales team, then you shouldn’t expect them to behave any different with using social media throughout the sales cycle. If your sales team is already using Twitter or other networks for personal use, they will be able to adopt a sales methodology around the same tools to produce revenue.
Myth: ‘Social Selling’ is too risky
This is an objection that comes up more often than any other, and it’s a common misunderstanding that a business can be destroyed in the matter of one status update or blog post. But, I don’t agree with this any more than I would with the idea that a poorly sent email to a customer can do the same. There was a point in time where sales people didn’t have access to email for that exact reason, but can you imagine not having email as a tool? The same will be said about social media tools in 10 years – those who embrace it will be in the drivers seat, and ultimately win out.
It all comes down to “letting go” and enabling your sales teams to be more effective. Social Selling is not fit for every sales person, but I’d bet you have a strong percentage of your sales team that would welcome the opportunity to drive opportunities through social tools in addition to traditional phone and email tactics.
This post originally appeared on Sales2.com where InsideView has regular contributions. Sales 2.0 is a site dedicated to the improvement of sales results.
Sales people blogging comes up when talking to companies about ways to involve more sales and marketing alignment programs. I was reading Dave Brock’s recent post on the same subject and he explains that companies are “dead wrong” from a business point of view if they have sales bloggers. There could be some healthy discussion around this being a valuable use of time for short term gains but it’s getting much more clear as time goes on that content is king. Having a social and transparent company drives customer loyalty and generates new business. I think that companies that empower their sales people to use social media tools like blogs can exponentially increase awareness and drive lead generation and revenue for a company. I’m not the only one that thinks this. IBM has the same idea.
How successful can a B2B business be using social media? Fairly successful, at least in the case of IBM. We recently chatted with Ed Linde II, whose team is responsible for building Web assets to support the IBM.com sales channel and organic Web visitors, about IBM’s social media efforts and successes. He spoke about their Listening for Leads program, which he says has “uncovered millions of dollars worth of sales leads” so far, and is expected grow even more. Here’s a clip from the full interview available on eMarketer Total Access.
Mr. Linde II: Within IBM we have a number of people in the brand areas who are blogging and doing things in the social media space relative to topics like cloud computing.
In B2B we have a number of Websites that we built for our sales reps where we’ve enabled the reps to have a blog with RSS feeds that are connected to LinkedIn and Twitter. Their customers can follow them where they have an individual relationship.
Some of our reps have Facebook pages also. We also have a program called Listening for Leads, where we have people we call “seekers” who on a voluntary basis go to particular social media sites where they listen to conversations and determine whether there’s a potential sales opportunity.
eMarketer: How is IBM using Twitter?
Mr. Linde II: We promote our customer events on Twitter. When I say customer events, they could be Webinars, podcasts, virtual trade shows or physical trade shows. We advertise some of our promotions via Twitter. And our individual reps use Twitter to keep their customers updated about interesting news, events and things of that nature. Each rep has their own Twitter account. We also have the handle @IBMpcs because we sell refurbished PCs .
eMarketer: How are you tracking and measuring your social initiatives? You mentioned that you’ve identified millions of sales leads.
Mr. Linde II: We measure against number of sales leads identified. And we rate the lead value from those leads. Then the win revenue and win rate. So there are four key metrics—number of leads created, lead value, win revenue and win rate.
The purpose of the blog is to drive sales. Giving sales people a resource like their own blog or the ability to create content for the company blog is a valuable asset that businesses should not overlook. Marketing shouldn’t control the blog with an iron fist, most marketing people I know are constantly looking for new content to drive traffic and leads so it just makes sense to use internal talent to make this happen.
Take a look at your sales team, find out which of them can write well and articulate the sales landscape they are working in. With a little sales 2.0 training, they should be able to dedicate a couple hours a week to writing a post for the company. One blog post can go a long way, we are still getting leads from blog posts from almost a year ago written by members of our sales and support teams.
What will the software industry look like in 3, 5, even 10 years from now?
Cloud computing and social media are the two very significant trends that will shape the future of the software industry for years to come. Core cloud applications (email, CRM, ERP, etc.) will become an “operating system” that nearly all companies will have in place. These business applications focus on workflow automation – bringing in process efficiencies – and are sufficient to run a manufacturing or process business. However, businesses are increasingly delivering services, where employee knowledge and intelligence are the keys to success. This is where social media, business intelligence and collaboration technology becomes relevant, and crucial. It is designed to make employees smarter and more effective, not just to automate their jobs.
The big challenge with social media & collaboration is that it creates very, very large quantities of information. If you include systems-generated streams, the amount of information and data quickly becomes overwhelming. Software companies need to effectively tap into this growing source of “social intelligence,” developing technologies capable of monitoring the information stream for important and relevant intelligence. For example, a social conversations about their brands, products and people that might give users new insights and detail otherwise not available through traditional news sources. Software companies then must tackle the quantity-versus-quality problem by effectively filtering and analyzing the large quantities of available information. Lastly, they need to deliver the most relevant and useful intelligence to end-users in the easiest-to-consume manner: directly within the workflow of the business applications they enrich.
Of course, end-user technologies have to be just as easy to deploy as they are to use, both for the end-users and IT decision-makers. The days of hard to use, difficult to implement software, will quickly fade. A new, two-pronged software distribution model is emerging to improve adoption: first, make the application as widely available as possible, promoting ‘bottom-up’ adoption, which in turn drives ‘top-down’ implementation. As an example, at InsideView, we created a free version of our sales intelligence application to facilitate broader adoption and distribution. I believe the “Freemium model” will become more and more prevalent in the software industry. But even without the universal availability of an app, the single-most important principle is making it easy for a decision maker to deploy with little effort across the target user base – and making it seamless, customizable and most applicable to the organization.
And what customer demands and business trends will drive changes in software products, how they’re developed, and the industry that provides them?
Social media is driving significant change in software, which is only going to accelerate over the next decade. Let’s start with the buyer. We are now selling to a new breed of prospect that I call Customer 2.0. These are socially engaged and well-informed buyers. They have abundant visibility into the companies they consider doing business with (products/services, pricing, competitive strengths and weaknesses, customer satisfaction, etc.). They’ve done their homework. And not surprisingly, this new breed of buyer expects vendors to be more educated about their business, too. They want to be engaged in targeted and relevant conversations about how to solve specific business challenges and urgent needs, not just receive a generic pitch. Social media changes the dynamics with prospective employees, business partners and vendors, enabling significantly greater visibility into business and personal aspects that can shape relationships and drive business decisions.
By listening to social media, companies have the opportunity to learn what is being said about and by their various stakeholders and audiences. This provides unique insights that aren’t available through more traditional sources. Of course, it’s a huge task to monitor the social conversation, filter out the noise to hone in what’s relevant. That’s why I believe any “external-facing” business application that targets customers, partners, vendors or employees will have to incorporate social intelligence directly into its workflow.
Unfortunately, many of these solutions have remained mostly in the ranks of workflow automation. This makes them useful for automating structured processes and reports for management, but not for enabling effective relationship building and engagement with their intended audiences. I strongly believe that the next-generation of software applications will have to tap into social intelligence within application workflow to bring in a new level of engagement and authenticity into the relationships these applications are intended to manage – and in the process improve business productivity. Next generation apps will also need to associate these new social insights with what we already know about our customers, prospects, vendors and employees to create a 360-degree view of these relationships.
This need for greater intelligence is a key tenet upon which to build any successful business application for sales, marketing, customer service, finance or human resources. All these professionals need to “get smarter” in their interactions with their constituents. Put simply, integrated social intelligence becomes an essential enabler for successful businesses engagements as we enter the new era of social media.
Original post made on the SIIA blog written by Nate Phillips. The Software & Information Industry Association is the principal trade association for the software and digital content industries. SIIA provides global services in government relations, business development, corporate education and intellectual property protection to the leading companies that are setting the pace for the digital age.
I responded to a poll on LinkedIn asking “What is your primary Client Relationship Management (CRM) software that you use?” and then took a peek at the results. I’ve been focusing a bit more on LinkedIn for sales people lately since it is the primary social network for companies and professionals. I thought the the information from a poll like this would be perfect for deeper analysis. Even though many of the answers were what I expected, I was caught off guard by one of the results.
Overall the numbers look great, there is still about 18 days to respond but with 1535 votes, this is an impressive number of people. CRM applications are what drives a company, customer engagement and pipeline in a way that helps executives and sales people keep track of what really matters and not focus on deals that are stalled and have a low chance of closing. Salesforce, Microsoft CRM and Oracle were the targeted choices with the option for people to choose “other” as well. Since there are probably a hundred other CRM applications that a company could use, these are the big 3 because of their enterprise adoption.
No CRM?
What surprised me in this this poll was that the creator added in a “None” option to the list. Makes sense but the number of people responding to the LinkedIn poll with this as an answer was concerning.
Of all of the responses, the largest number of “Managers” indicated that they do not use any CRM. None…zero. Though the poll is impressive for other reasons, I’d be interested in doing a follow up poll with this subgroup just to understand how they are managing their business.
