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Yesterday marked the one year birthday of the SalesView Buzz tab. The Buzz tab launched on May 11th, 2009 as the first Twitter integration for CRM (including Salesforce, Oracle CRM, Microsoft Dynamics, NetSuite CRM.) While the launch was received with a great deal of enthusiasm by media and analysts (after all, what journalist wasn’t smitten with Twitter in the Spring of 2009?), the benefits of having Tweets about customers and prospects available directly within CRM were not immediately obvious to many B2B sales people.
Similar to the adoption pattern for our Facebook mash-up and LinkedIn integration before, customers and prospects started to identify and leverage actionable sales intelligence from the social media stream. One of my favorite anecdotes comes from a meeting with the VP of Sales at a key customer account a few months after we launched the Buzz tab. As part of our regular quarterly account review we walk customers through recent features & enhancements. This included the Buzz tab at the time so we had him bring up the SalesView Buzz tab (i.e. Twitter & Google blog search) for his own company.
As it turned out, one of the most recent Tweets mentioning his company was a person looking for competitive product recommendations:
- “We’re evaluating marketing automation solutions – (our customer) vs. (competitor #1) vs. (competitor #2). Thoughts?”
TA-WEET! Yes, that was a hot lead and yes he was impressed. The icing on the cake was that within a few minutes the VP of Sales had logged in to see the Buzz tab for himself and by that time someone had already responded as follows:
- “Definitely (competitor #1)… we went through the selection process over 1 year ago and have been happy since.”
TWUH-OH! He interrupted our meeting to make sure the right sales rep followed up on this lead immediately, before his competitor (or their fans) could further slant the conversation to their favor.
Now obviously you will not always have hot leads like these land in your lap but this example does speak to how important a customer acquisition channel Twitter has become. As with other traditional and emerging channels, it provides new ways in which to listen and engage with the new, social customer (a.k.a. Customer 2.0) . The nature of Twitter, which is real-time and entirely public, requires that you sales reps keep an ear to the ground at all times, lest your competitors should be the ones to pounce first.
The B2B sales and marketing landscape is shifting, adjusting to the rapid advancements in social networking and online buyer behavior. From start-ups to multi-billion dollar organizations, the industry is facing the hard fact that traditional, old school methods of marketing have become largely ineffective. Traditional online marketing tactics are losing traction at increasing rates. It’s now all about trust and “heartfelt marketing.”
Traditional tactics are being replaced by new approaches designed to catapult prospecting and retention efforts into never before seen realms, connecting with customers while providing more transparent access to information. As part of this shift, marketing must focus on sales enablement, to help sales professionals better communicate with and understand whom they are selling to.
The dramatic changes in online buyer behavior are driving a need for adaptation – as the Customer 2.0 spends more time online engaged with social media and networks, they create more information about themselves and the products they use, which can really help sales organizations engage more effectively with this new type of prospect. The Customer 2.0 will always lead the way, but savvy Sales 2.0 professionals can keep pace with efficiency-driven solutions.
At InsideView, our sales productivity technology allows sales teams to gather real-time insight about their prospects and customers. Information is aggregated and organized from thousands of sites, providing any and all information about a company and the employees within, including new hires, employee transfers (or termination) and news. With this information, the sales and marketing teams can drive sales through social media, tapping into social networks like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook to keep pace and communicate with the Customer 2.0.
The fact is that “old ways” of marketing are dying.
The impact of mass marketing and mindless telemarketing is drying up. Those that will find a way to enter the same playing field as their (increasingly social) customers will thrive. Those that stick with archaic methods will wither.
As we all know, there is no better way to learn than through failure. And on that note, we’d like to announce our sponsorship of the SalesFail Contest.
We are out to find the most entertaining stories of failed sales experiences. With an award of $2500, this will be the one chance that sales professionals get to earn a commission on their past sales fails.
If you happen to be in sales, or have ever tried to (unsuccessfully) sell anything, enter your story at SalesPop (or see what is being discussed on Twitter or Facebook).
Despite the economy, it’s been an exciting spring here in San Francisco. Some highlights include the very thoughtful discussions around the continued rapid evolution of what social media and networking mean for sales and marketing at a few recent events we’ve participated in — Sales 2.0 and SaaS Summit. Taking a step back, we are reminded of the umbrella under which a lot of the excitement and innovations in our world lies: Enterprise 2.0.
To quote the oranizers of the upcoming Enterprise 2.0 conference, E2.0 technologies “make accessible the collective intelligence of many, translating to a huge competitive advantage in the form of increased innovation, productivity and agility.”
As the social Web continues to expand and weave into every possible aspect of our lives, the data and content that comes with it poses both great potential and challenge for the enterprise as a whole. For example, as we recently explained, Twitter essentially “ups the ante” in terms of volume and frequency of new data. It’s on us to keep up, and to infuse the specific and relevant portions directly into the place where business is driven.
Any enterprise initiative needs to “embrace the new tools that enable contextual, agile and simplified information exchange and collaboration,” as the E2.0 blog explains.
The recognition of Web 2.0′s importance in business continues to roll out in the tech world; everything from folks “just getting it” (like this blog post at Tech Leader) to others already putting on yearly conferences on the theme. We’re excited to be a part of this tidal wave of change and taking an active role in piecing the many new technological mediums into agents for more productivity, smarter workflows and a more informed enterprise.
