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The InsideView 20 – The Top Sales Industry Social Media Users

January 7, 2010 in InsideView 20, Sales 2.0 | Tags: , , , , , | by insideviewblog | 10 comments

Social media is changing hundreds of industries and professions, and sales is no exception. To recognize those members of the sales industry who in their use of social media are bringing together important news, sales intelligence and theory, we are pleased to announce the full list of the ‘InsideView 20.’ This list of sales industry leaders is composed of sales executives, writers, trainers, analysts and more, all of whom are making savvy use of many of the social media tools available today and helping usher in the renaissance we like to call ‘Sales 2.0.’ These are the folks, who like InsideView itself, are doing their part to deliver us to the future of the sales industry – one that is highly connected, informed and efficient.

1. Mike Damphousse, CEO/CMO of GreenLeads
@damphoux
Company website: http://www.green-leads.com/

GreenLeads is a B2B company specializing in marketing strategies and leads. Mike has over 20 years of experience in sales, marketing and technology in an array of industries. He consistently tweets helpful links on the topics of lead generation, demand generation and a variety of other sales-related topics and regularly engages with his followers.

2. Anneke Seley, author of the book, Sales 2.0, CEO and founder of Phone Works
@annekeseley
Anneke’s blog: http://www.sales20book.com/wp/blog/

Anneke brings her expertise from the sales and technology industries to the masses through her books, articles and savvy use of social media. Her role as the CEO of Phoneworks, a sales strategy and implementation consultancy, and experience designing OracleDirect provide her with a uniquely informed insight into Silicon Valley. Anneke is a true Sales 2.0 leader.

3. Jonathon Hewitt, founder of SEO Sport
@gohewitt
Company Website: http://seosport.com/

Jonathon is founder of SEO Sport, a search engine marketing company. He has over a decade of internet marketing experience and is an unstoppable tweeter. John is constantly sharing tech and social media stories, providing his followers with a constant stream of smart, handpicked information on these areas.

4. Josiane Feigon, CEO of Telesmart, author, blogger
@josianefeigon
Company Website: Telesmart

Josiane started Telesmart over 15 years ago and has over 25 years sales experience in the technology sector. She is also the author of a couple of books the latest of which, Smart Selling From the Inside Out, came out this fall. She blogs on a very regular basis through the Telesmart company website and updates twitter all the time.

5. Trish Bertuzzi, President and Chief Strategist at The Bridge Group
@bridgegroupinc
Company website: www.bridgegroupinc.com

Trish Bertuzzi has over 27 years experience working in technology and more than 11 as president of The Bridge Group, a Sales Consulting company. She tweets frequently, sharing tips on sales, marketing, technology news and other interesting life tidbits. If you have an inside sales team you need to follow Trish.

6. Jill Konrath, Jill is the CEO and founder of Sales Shebang and the Chief Sales Officer and CEO of Selling to Big Companies
@jillkonrath
Company Website: http://www.sellingtobigcompanies.com/

Jill is not only CEO of the company Selling to Big Companies, she is also the author of a successful book by the same name. She tweets often and blogs on her company website about smart selling strategies. She has over 20 years of experience working in the B2B sales industry.

7. Alen Majer, Founder and Owner of The Science and Art of Selling, author
@alenmajer
Company Website: The Science and Art of Selling

Alen’s company, The Science and Art of Selling, trains, coaches and consults with executives and sales teams on sales strategy. His sales expertise also extends beyond domestic borders, as he speaks internationally and is the co-founder of the Sales Academy-Croatia and Sales Institute of Croatia. Alen is a prolific writer in both the analog and digital mediums; he is the author of several books including the most recent, Selling is Better Than Sex, and is constantly tweeting and adding content to his company website.

8. Joanne Black, founder of consulting business for Referral Sales, No More Cold Calling
@referralsales
Company Website: No More Cold Calling

Joanne has over 30 years experience in sales training and consulting. She is the founder of Referral Sales strategy-based business No More Cold Calling and has worked in a range of industries including retail, technology, finance, etc. She tweets, blogs and creates podcasts regularly on the secrets behind referral sales.

9. Chad Levitt, a sales associate at EMC Corp. and author of the New Sales Economy Blog
@chadalevitt
Chad’s blog: New Sales Economy Blog

Chad is not only involved in the business of sales during the day, but he writes on the topic for two highly regarded sales 2.0 sites, salesgravy.com and sales2.com. Chad stays up to date on anything relating to sales 2.0 and shares tons of information on this space via his blogs and Twitter.

10. Tibor Shanto, principal and founder of Renbor Sales Solutions Inc.
@renbor
Company Website: Renbor Sales Solutions Inc.

Tibor started Renbor Sales Solutions Inc. which helps businesses increase and better their sales by focusing on Objective Based Selling. Tibor has over 20 years experience ranging from leading global sales teams to telemarketing. He was very quick to join the online information revolution and continues to stay on the pulse of sales and technology, follow him on Twitter for a steady flow of great sales advice and news.

11. Chris Powell, VP of sales and founder of Industrial Interface
Twitter: @TechSalesLeads
More: Industrial Interface home

If you work in sales, you need to follow Chris on Twitter. His feed is chock-full of sales industry insights and links to relevant articles and studies.

12. Randy Ferrell, VP of Sales at Care2.com
Twitter: @randyferrell
More: Care2.com

Need another reason why Twitter is a brilliant service? You get to regularly see what is on the mind of a VP of Sales for a forward-thinking organization. Randy frequently tweets links to really interesting articles that are related to the issues his company works on, such as the environment, health, human rights and animal welfare.

13. Paul Cummings, VP Sales and Marketing for Impression Management Professionals
Twitter: @paul_cummings
More: Impression Management home

Paul is VP of Sales at a sales training and leadership development organization, so following him is like getting a double dose of what you need in the Sales 2.0 world. From Webinars to articles – great stuff, Paul!

14. Helene Zemel, Senior Regional Sales Director for AmeriPlan

Twitter: @hzemel
More: Health Plans Plus blog

Helene tweets and blogs regularly, keeping her followers entertained and informed on both her personal interests (she’s a classically-trained pianist) and the issues shaping her professional world (healthcare reform and industry trends).

15. Megan Heuer, Research Director at SiriusDecisions
Twitter: @megheuer
More: Sirius Blog

Meg is a regular contributor to her company blog, examining topics like what sales really needs, and an active tweeter, sharing links and constantly joining the conversations she finds important. As part of the research team at her firm, she’s no doubt gathering a cornucopia of insight from the social Web.

16. Brad Trnavsky, President of Sales Management 2.0

Twitter: @bmtrnavsky
More: Sales Management 2.0 profile

In addition to tweeting about the latest sales and marketing resources, Brad has created an entire social community for the sales management profession at Sales Management 2.0 with more than 1,100 members. If you’re not tapped into that conversation, we highly suggest doing so now.

17. Maurice Cheeks, Apple Educational sales executive
Twitter: @MoCheeks
More: MoCheeks.com

Maurice is a frequent blogger, Twitterer and general social media force who shares thoughts about a wide range of subject from media to sales to philosophy — sounds about right for an Apple employee.

18. Alden Mills, founder of Perfect Fitness
Twitter: @aldenmills
More: Perfect Fitness blog

You’ve probably seen the Perfect Pushup device in stores and on TV, now meet the man behind the muscle by following him on Twitter and checking out his blog, which gives you extra tips and clearly written posts on how to get the most out of your workout. This former Navy SEAL is not only tearing it up in the gym, but is also active on the social Web. Great stuff for advancing his goal of “perfect fitness.”

19. Kendra Lee, President and IT sales expert at KLA Group
Twitter: @KendraLeeKLA
More: KLA Group

Following Kendra on Twitter is not only a way to get insight into the latest sales and marketing events, but also a clear answer to issues such as the best way to follow up with leads and why you should take a long, hard look at your actual sales processes.

20. Bill Rice, founder and CEO of Kaleidico
Twitter: @BillRice
More: Better Closer blog

In addition to founding a company that provides a CRM solution to the mortgage industry, Bill writes regularly on smarter marketing and social selling at his blog, and keeps his Twitter followers in the know on the latest tips and tricks for the best sales strategies.

Twitter: brand new channel, same old challenges

April 9, 2009 in Sales 2.0, Technology | Tags: , , , , , , | by perramond | 6 comments

Weeks after Paul Greenberg’s thought-provoking post on ZDNet, the debate continues as to whether Twitter could/should evolve into a Social CRM or remain a channel/medium (read: a “non app”).  This on-going conversation in the Blogosphere & Twittersphere, have actually done a lot to bring together the social media crowd and social CRM (“CRM 2.0″) proponents.  There’s also some promising talk of collaboration between industry pundits Paul Greenberg and Brian Solis.

One of Paul’s central arguments here is that Twitter is not (and should not become) an application, but rather remain “just” a channel / medium (albeit it a powerful, extremely trendy, and perhaps transformation one.)  Most of the reader comments agreed (no shocker there… Paul has a pretty loyal following, and he has a nasty habit of being right most of the time.)

One particular blog comment from “kotharia” struck a chord.  The gist was that while leveraging Twitter as a listening & communication channel is a good start, “these emerging channels have a potential to generate a huge volume of conversations (unstructured data) which cannot be harnessed easily.”  Hmm, this problem sounds familiar.  They went on to suggest that “One would need effective tools to harness & synthesize the data to enable better decision making.”

BINGO!  One thing is guaranteed… just like all other media, traditional and social, Twitter will exacerbate information overload. We happen to focus on solving this problem specifically for sales & marketing professionals but really the principles are applicable across all knowledge workers.  You need a layer of intelligence / analytics operating on top of Twitter (along with all other potentially useful data sets and information sources) if you want to make it relevant and actionable.  SalesView is focused on doing just that for sales/marketing/support professionals, WITHIN their CRM.  Call it social CRM, CRM 2.0, socialprise, or just plain cool… the bottom line is that it has a huge impact on sales productivity.

Twitter ups the ante in terms of volume and frequency, but the challenge is not a new one. Before our current love affair with Twitter, most organizations had not yet figured out how to filter & analyze the thousands of online news sources, much less the hundreds of thousands of business blogs out there. So we can’t assume that Twitter is “noisier” (as measured by signal to noise ratio, not volume) than any previously available media. It’s just a bigger fire hose!

Here’s the approach we’ve taken to date…
http://www.insideview.com/cat-platform.html

Basically we look at channels / media / content as plug & play. Blogs come along, plug it in. Twitter comes along, plug it in. Rest assured that in the next 6-12 months, some OTHER shiny, new thing will capture the hearts & imagination of sales & marketing so what then?  Just plug it in. After all, the next-next-big-thing promises to accelerate the commoditization of content and worsen information overload. Unless, that is, you have tools that can filter & analyze data in the cloud to identify only the relevant & actionable information.

That’s where we think things are going. What do you think? Reply here or Tweet us at http://twitter.com/insideview.

Why Bernie Madoff Matters to Sales

April 2, 2009 in Sales 2.0, sales intelligence | Tags: , , , | by insideviewblog | Leave a comment

Last week, amidst continuing news of the Madoff scandal, the thought crossed our minds: This seemingly distant national headline sensation is directly related to what sales folks unfortunately experience regularly: Lost deals and customers. Simply put, they are the result of poor intelligence. And on the bright side, while we can’t turn back the clock on Madoff, every day we have new opportunities to compete for customers.

This is the theme of a recent post featured in Sales and Marketing Management, penned by our CEO, Umberto. Want to read more? Check it out here.

RELEASE NOTES: SalesView – v40

April 1, 2009 in product updates | Tags: , , , , , , , | by perramond | Leave a comment

Release notes for SalesView release v40

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HIGHLIGHTS

User-Driven Executive Coverage – We’ve made it possible to add any executive to SalesView from our partners ‘on-demand’.  Just as you’ve been able to add companies to SalesView whenever a lead or account of interest is missing, you are now able to add new business contacts to SalesView on-the-fly (searching by name or title key words.)  This is extremely useful for your lead qualification and account research!

User-Driven Executive Coverage

Expanded Smart Connections – We’ve improved our Smart Connections technology to help you identify more ‘hidden’ relationships.  For example, you can now leverage colleagues’ previous employments and view all 2nd level connections.  These enhancements have more than tripled the number of connections visible within the average lead / account.

Expanded Smart Connections

One click CRM export – We’ve streamlined the account, lead, and contact export process for Salesforce.com and Oracle CRM On Demand customers.  You can now export executive profiles with a single click from the People tab in the CRM mash-up.

One-click CRM export from SalesView mash-up

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OTHER ENHANCEMENTS

Improved performance – We’ve significantly increased speed, particularly for your CRM mash-up views, by streaming Smart Agent trigger events ‘on demand’ and persisting Smart Connection results so they are not calculated at load time.

Launch executive profiles from summary alerts – We’ve added the ability to drill down to business contact details directly from your daily/weekly summary alert emails whenever an executive is mentioned in a Leadership Change trigger event.

CRM export preferences – We’ve persisted CRM mapping / preferences so that you are not prompted to select their CRM each time you export a new Account, Contact, or Lead from SalesView.

Custom Smart Agent creation – We’ve added a prompt in the Analyze tab to let you know about any badly formed custom Smart Agents.  If you happen to create too broad of a Smart Agent definition, you will see a prompt within a few minutes so that you can quickly refine your key words and logic.

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InsideView – The Sales 2.0 Leader

SalesView is an on-demand sales intelligence application that increase sales productivity and accelerates sales cycles.  SalesView leverages socialprise technology to bring insights from both traditional editorial sources and emerging social media into enterprise applications.

New Study on Sales Intelligence from Aberdeen Research

February 12, 2009 in Uncategorized | Tags: , | by insideviewblog | Leave a comment

An insightful study was recently released by the Aberdeen Group on trends in Sales Intelligence. The report, “Sales Intelligence: The Secret to Sales Nirvana,” examines the new ways in which companies are using technology to “improve the effectiveness of the sales force and enrich the quality leads in the sales pipeline.” Naturally, the subject is near and dear to our hearts here at InsideView and we were pleased to see that many of the report’s observations on ‘Best-in-class’ practices are already employed by InsideView. Below is a passage from the study that we strongly agree with and which highlights one of the key advantages that sales 2.0 technology brings:

“By contextualizing a lead with relevant company, executive, or industry information, top performing companies are better suited to distinguish themselves from the competition and better articulate how their products and services can help combat the business challenges the prospect faces.”

If you would like to read the full report, it is now available for free at the Aberdeen website: http://www.aberdeen.com//summary/report/benchmark/5379-RA-sales-intelligence-nirvana.asp.

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