Congratulations to David Greenwald of PGi for being our 5000th follower! David has been using InsideView to make him more productive for years. It’s awesome to have customers like him making an impact by leveraging sales intelligence. PGi is a developer of video conferencing software that has a pretty slick interface. They were the first video conferencing platform I saw that integrated social networks into their product, and you all know how much of a fan I am when it comes to B2B use of social networks.

As a Global Sales Executive, David can really benefit following our tweets as we generally like to reach out to sales people around the world to better their skills and selling methods. Give him a follow @nexgentechsales. Thank you David!

We would like to take this opportunity for those who are reading this blog post and follow InsideView through any social media channel, to say thank you for all of the tweets and feedback you have given us over the years…You truly are our #1 fans.

How a few shifts in your sales process can have a huge impact on sales revenue.

I read a great article on Inc. yesterday on 12 ways to increase sales. The author Geoffrey James pointed out some of the most important things a salesperson or sales manager should do to increase sales in 2012. He hit the nail on the head when it comes to why these 12 ways to increase sales revenue will work, I want to tell you how to do it in 8.

1. Reduce the number of opportunities you pursue. It’s not a numbers game. By focusing your sales energy on fewer opportunities that have a higher chance of closing, you can give these customers more of your time to move the deal along. Leveraging traditional sales drivers and trigger events you are aware of, you will know which prospects have a much higher percentage of closing.

2. Increase the percentage of time you spend selling. There will always be admin work. As a salesperson you may not have the ability to hand your busy work off to others but there are ways that you can still increase your time selling. Most sales people on average spend 10hrs a week researching prospects. By leveraging technology and sales intelligence you can cut that amount of time in half and free up some of that precious time to be talking to prospects and customers and sell more.

3. Stop buying technology because it’s cool.

Stop spending your money on the next shiny object. Invest in technology that is actually going to help you sell. Focus on tools that will provide you

• Trigger events that effect your prospects and customers
• Valuable connections through multiple social networks and existing business relationships
• More personal insights that turn your CRM contacts into people you can relate to and add context around
• Highly targeted and intelligent prospect lists

4. Terminate weak engagements–politely but immediately.

Just as your company should have a solid lead qualification process to identify new opportunities you should spend the time to disqualify deals. A sales team should know what their ideal customer looks like and focus their energy on them. If a prospect doesn’t fit the mold, quit trying to force them into it.

5. Hone your lead generation effort.

Sales people need to understand the art of lead generation is shifting to an online world. Stop waiting for your phone to ring and look for the people you can help in real time. Social networks are a goldmine for the socially savvy sales rep. If you know what you are looking for, finding new opportunities with social media isn’t difficult. For example our sales team found this update on Twitter and jumped in.

What’s a good company database alternative to Hoovers? They don’t seem to want to sell me anything.

— Ross Mayfield (@Ross) January 10, 2012

These types of updates are something your sales team needs to be on the look out for. After 24 hours, Hoovers still has not replied to Ross’s update on Twitter. Listening is key. Leveraging connections and personal insights our sales team was able to connect and help Ross with his business needs.

6. Don’t focus on the gatekeepers.

Understand who the real decision makers are. Get to know them as people instead of the contact that makes decisions at XYZ company. Stay engaged with them during the sales cycle by engaging with them outside of the actual sale. Connect with prospects on social networks and try and help them with other questions they may have and add valuable insights on their industry.

7. Stay on top of your opportunities.

Build a watchlist on your opportunities so you can be fed news and other alerts to things that are changing within their company. Leveraging technology to keep your finger on the pulse of your opportunities will insure that nothing slips by you and you can even stay a step ahead during the sales process.

8. Outflank your competition.

I say it during my speaking engagements: Be different, Be better. Your prospects are getting 100+ emails a day and called as many times a week. This tactic may work some of the time but don’t do what your competitors are doing. Stand apart from them by leveraging your connections to get the introduction, connect with the decision makers on social networks to have more engaged conversations in a medium that they are already spending time in.

It works!

Closing out the year we wanted to look over the content that you have found most interesting and shared most often. 2011 was a big year for sales intelligence and the use of technology by sales teams to be more effective in finding new opportunities and closing more deals.

This is the list of the top 25 sales intelligence posts that people read during 2011

1. 25 Influential Leaders In Sales
2. How Science is Changing Sales As We Know It
3. Why Cold Calling is the Bottom of the Barrel
4. 40 Social Media B2B Infographics
5. Gamification of the Sales Process
6. 10 Reasons You Need a LinkedIn Profile
7. 15 Posts on Why Cold Calling Is On Its Way Out the Door
8. The History of Apple CEOs
9. Bridging the Massive Social Media Gap Between Sales and Marketing
10. Have No Fear: Why Sales Teams SHOULD Be On Social Media
11. Creating a Sales Plan and Executing It.
12. 10 of the Best Sales Sites
13. The Death of Cold Calling – Ending the Debate
14. 10 SlideShare Presentations That Will Make You a Better Salesperson
15. Why Social Media is Important to the Sales Process.
16. Top 10 Reasons for using Facebook for your Business
17. 20 Awesome Sales Posts You Should Read
18. 5 Great SlideShare Presentations on B2B Selling
19. The Social Media Landscape – Facts and Figures for B2B Sales (Infographic)
20. Should Sales People Be Blogging?
21. The Problem with Big Data
22. The Future of Social CRM
23.  Do You Listen to Your Customers?
24. 10 tips for Driving Sales Productivity: Tip #1 
25. A Dip Into Sales Data vs. Sales Intelligence

• Miles Austin
• Marge Bieler
• Dave Brock
• Barbara Giamanco
• Matt Heinz
• Carlos Hidalgo
• S. Anthony Iannarino
• Craig Rosenberg (AKA The Funnelholic)

Sales Intelligence drives revenue.

“Based on the 12 ways sales people leverage the internet it is clear that B2B sales teams spend a lot of time researching prospects and customers on the web and social networks. It’s no longer an issue of not having any information ahead of time, the issue is that there is an overwhelming amount of personal insights available. Sifting through it to find the relevant information you can act on today appears to be the challenge at hand. Sales intelligence drives revenue by feeding sales people trigger events and insights within a company or contact.” (Koka Sexton)

Make the most of a B2B Social Networks more advanced features and functionalities.

“On the B2B side of the house, LinkedIn is the networking tool in the US with some 130 million members of the 100 million-plus community. Many people know how to invite people to their network, but they usually do not know what to do after that.”

Here are a few of the ways that savvy B2B salespeople will leverage B2B social networks:

• Advanced people search: Create prospecting lists based on the criteria of your ideal buyers. Save the list, and LinkedIn dynamically updates and alerts you weekly to the new people matching your criteria who have joined the network. Each week, you can then plan your strategy with respect to how you’ll approach the initial interaction.
• Applications: Use the applications to add video, compelling presentations, white papers and case studies or sync your blog posts to your profile. Keep your content fresh and people pay attention. In the past eight weeks, I’ve secured four paid gigs and in every single case, I was told it was because my profile stood out from the rest and because they liked the video. It is all about engaging people and enticing them to want to know more.
• Polls: Create a poll to gather real-time trending information that you can share with your prospective buyers.
• Status updates: Ongoing status updates that are ‘relevant’ and provide value to others keep salespeople visible; because at the end of the day, it is all about visibility.
• Groups: Leveraging groups (the right groups!) gives you an incredible opportunity to demonstrate credibility, but not selling!
• Use the Answers section to listen and respond to the questions that people are asking. Every single day people ask what products to buy and from whom.
• Events: Hosting an educational session for potential clients? Use the events functionality and use it to share with your network.” (Giamanco)

Monitor prospect discussion and social data for buying signals.

“Prospect research has changed forever. In no other time in my life have we seen prospects update their own information and update you on what they are doing in their personal and professional lives! Today’s modern social salesperson is exceptionally prepared for their sales calls. One tip: Company data is interesting (e.g., … [alerts] about your sales prospect’s company: ‘New product launch!’), but prospect social data is even more interesting, because it will tell you what the person really cares about (‘Just got back from sales training in Florida, learned a ton!’).” (Rosenberg)

“Leveraging twitter for sales is very effective. Once you know how to use Twitter as a sales tool, you can get insights into people and companies in realtime.” (Sexton)

“Watch for buying signals across the social Web. One of the greatest opportunities for salespeople via social media is to see into the buying cycle far earlier than we’ve typically had access to. Before social media, we could deepen our understanding of the buyer and use outbound marketing to connect with a particular need, try and find resonance with a buying signal, etc. But that, at best, was a fishing expedition most of the time. Now, if you know the buying signals and pain/problem keywords your prospects typically exhibit before they’re ready to buy, you can watch for those discussions and keywords across the social Web. Do a couple keyword searches on Twitter, for example, and you’ll be surprised how many people, in real-time, are talking about their existing challenges, their frustrations with competitive products and more.” (Heinz)

“Social media is a great tool for salespeople, but for not for the reasons that some people believe. Social media isn’t a replacement for the prospecting activities that success in sales requires, as some seem to suggest. It is a simply a set of tools that allow the execution of some of those activities. There is way too much focus on using social media tools for inbound marketing, and way too little on leveraging the tools to better enable the execution of the fundamental roles of salespeople: opening new opportunities. Opening new opportunities isn’t a passive activity, and salespeople who wait for their prospects to find them aren’t successful by any of the measures we use in sales. The salespeople who are successfully using social media are using the tools to identify and open communication with their dream client contacts. They are using tools like LinkedIn to identify the people who they can most easily create value for within their target accounts. More still, they are researching their prospects, discovering what they are reading, what they are writing about, and where their interests lie. Social media better enables salespeople to know who to call and how they might best create value for those people.” (Iannarino)

• 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)

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.

1. Sales Tip: The Social Graph is Your Friend – Nigel Edelshain
2. 37 Character Tweet Led to Huge Sales Opportunity – Anneke Seley
3. 5 Essential Books to Understand B2B Sales 2.0 – Katie Byrnes
4. 7 Forward Thinking Presentations You May Have Missed – Chad Levitt
5. Sales Success Strategies for a Social World – Gerhard Gschwandtner
6. What the Heck is Sales 2.0 (& Why Should I Care) – Pamela Seiple
7. 40 Great Social Media Infographics for B2B - Koka Sexton
8. Sales 2.0: Is Hunter vs. Farmer Theory Outdated? – Claire Moore
9. How to Shorten Your Revenue Cycle – Andrew Hunt
10. 10 fresh Ideas on Sales 2.0 And Sales Process – Marci Reynolds
11. Productivity on Steroids (Podcast) – John Cousineau
12. Lead Scoring is 878% More Effective Than Cold Calling – Paul Rafferty
13. What is Sales 2.0 (And Why You Should Care) – Padalog
14. Statistics Show the Business Case for Sales Enablement - Paul Krajewski
15. Sales 2.0 The Impact on Selling and Sales Process – Tony Cole

1. Anneke Seley – @annekeseley
2. Trish Bertuzzi - @bridgegroupinc
3. Joanne Black – @ReferralSales
4. Sam Richter – @SamRichter
5. Jill Konrath – @jillkonrath
6. John Barrows - @KenseiJB
7. Kendra Lee - @KendraLeeKLA
8. Josiane Feigon - @JosianeFeigon
9. Barbara Giamanco – @barbaragiamanco
10. Nigel Edelshain – @nedelsha
11. Nancy Nardin – @sellingtools
12. Don F. Perkins - @donfperkins
13. Paul McCord – @paul_mccord
14. Tibor Shanto – @Renbor
15. Gary Hart – @SalesDuJour
16. Gerhard Gschwandtner – @gerhard20
17. John Cousineau - @jcousineau
18. Kenneth Darryl Brown – @KenE3C
19. Pelin Thorogood – @PelinT
20. S. Anthony Iannarino – @iannarino
21. Eric Blumthal – @EricBlumthal
22. Doyle Slayton - @SalesBlogcast
23. David A. Brock – @davidabrock
24. Miles Austin – @milesaustin
25. Mark Hunter - @TheSalesHunter

If marketing is the focal point of social media engagement, sales NEEDS to be brought into the loop. Training sales teams to use social networks like LinkedIn, Twitter and blogs can have a huge impact on building pipeline and driving awareness of your company. Customer centric marketing brings a 1:1 relationship with prospects and customers that can be transitioned and managed by sales teams.

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.

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.”

Leveraging social media during a sales process can make a huge impact on the deals you are working on. Using Twitter for Sales Intelligence gives sales teams some great insights to the companies and contacts you are targeting. Never before in the history of sales have sales people had the ability to know so much information about the activities of a prospect. Where they travel, who they hang out with, even as much information as how they are feeling. Don’t you think it could make a difference on when you call a prospect based on if they are having a bad day or not? If nothing else, it will let you decide how you approach them.

As more companies and employees start leveraging tools like Twitter for communication you have the opportunity to get a direct line of sight on what’s happening within their worlds.

How Can Sales People Use Twitter For Sales Intelligence and Sales Growth

Based on our research, there is irresistible evidence that Twitter should be a component of a B2B sales person’s tool kit. Here are some easy steps you can take to boost sales using Twitter:

1. Create a Twitter account.
2. Identify the Twitter profiles of your customers and prospects. The easiest method is to look for the Twitter symbol on the website or to run InsideView to search for contacts with Twitter profiles.
3. Create a Twitter List of your target profiles. This will enable you to isolate the tweets from your targets (vs. those form your family and friends).
4. Use various Twitter search tools (e.g., search.twitter.com)

Here’s a list of some tid-bits of sales intelligence we came across:

• Customer recommendations
• New company initiatives
• Exhibitions at conferences
• Job openings
• New senior hires
• Articles by executives
• New customer wins
• Product launches
• Awards won

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.

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?

Xactly Improves Sales Win Rate by 10%, Triples Lead Volume and Conversion Rate

InsideView, the social selling and sales intelligence leader, is proud to share the sales success story of customer Xactly Corporation, the leader in on-demand sales performance management. With InsideView, Xactly has dramatically increased its qualified lead volume and conversion rates, as well as improved its overall sales win rate by ten percent.

“We have been able to grow rapidly and increase market share, not only because of our highly differentiated product for incentive compensation, but also how we sell with InsideView,”

Prior to Xactly, organizations were constrained managing sales compensation on error-prone spreadsheets or with high-priced, on-premise solutions. Xactly established its market leadership by delivering a more cost-effective way for companies to easily manage sales commissions, while improving sales behavior and performance. Business has been strong for years, but the company wanted to take their sales performance to the next level, tightening all screws and treating each lead and prospect like gold.

By deploying InsideView across its entire sales force, Xactly sales reps now have immediate access to InsideView’s unique and integrated sales intelligence directly within Salesforce CRM. For every lead, prospect and existing customer, Xactly reps are able to get fresh and complete information, as well as real-time insights into everything from social media profiles, company news, financial information, competitive analysis and more. InsideView’s real-time application, including comprehensive up-to-the-minute sales alerts, allows Xactly’s reps to spend more time selling with the best information at their fingertips.

“We have been able to grow rapidly and increase market share, not only because of our highly differentiated product for incentive compensation, but also how we sell with InsideView,” said Steve De Marco, Vice President, Corporate Sales, Xactly Corporation. “With InsideView, our sales professionals are substantially better prepared for meetings than competitors because they understand their prospects’ unique business challenges and how to position our product as solutions for those challenges.”

“Even with a strong market position, Xactly was working to improve a common area in any sales organization: productivity,” said Ralf VonSosen, VP of Marketing at InsideView. “We are pleased to have had such a broad impact on their sales cycle — not only total lead volume, but the conversion of the leads and ultimately the company’s win rate. This is the power of integrated sales intelligence.”

InsideView significantly improved Xactly’s sales cycle by constantly monitoring and alerting reps of actionable items related to leads, prospects and existing customers.

One of the most important rules of sales is to listen to your customers. As a sales person if you are doing all of the talking, your customer is probably going to fall asleep on the other end of the phone. The same is true when giving presentations, you have to make it entertaining if not interactive so you can keep the audiences attention. You want your customers attention, you want them to be engaged with you wherever they are in the process.

Anthropologist’s View on Listening

Recently, Chris Bailey published a post called Listening to What Isn’t Said. Chris is an anthropologist who works in customer experience design and his post is definitely worth reading.

In his post, he gives us five simple ways to listen to what is not said.

• Shut Up
• Be Naive
• Get Curious
• Show Me
• Record It

But listening to your customers on the phone or in person is only part of the conversation you should pay attention to. A sales person should be listening to everything around your customer as well as their company and there are a few ways to do this.

Set up your InsideView Watchlists. Why go searching for trigger events and news about your customers when you can get a custom email sent to you every day. This is a pretty comprehensive list of news around the companies you are tracking covering leadership changes, acquisitions, lawsuits, and executives that show up in the news.

Another practice you should follow for you customers is to setup a search specific to them on social media networks. Does their company have a Twitter profile? Big announcements and other company news will be shared through the corporate Twitter profile that you might want to be aware of. You can always go the next step and follow your cusotmers personal Twitter feeds also. You can do this by setting up a list in Twitter and making it private if needed so you can see what the people from inside the company are saying. Sometimes this is a great way to get introduced to others in the company or see what you contact is interested in outside of work. InsideView has a list specific for employees that anyone can follow or read.

Paying attention to your customers and listening to them on and offline can give you better insights to what matters most to them and gives you multiple ways to engage with them and build stronger relationships.

How are you listening to your customers? What tools or applications do you recommended?

This is the first mentions of Salesforce having Metallica as their featured performer at their annual Dreamforce 2011. Metallica known for songs like The Unforgiven, Master of Puppets, Fade to Black. I was skeptical about the news but the profile is owned by a Salesforce.com sales rep. Sure it could just be a rumor but coming from someone within the company adds some credibility to the update I would think.

There has been no official statement from the Salesforce or Dreamforce team on this news but I would suspect that will happen soon. They need to get on that before the entire world knows Metallica will be attending their massive conference before they say anything. It’s also really nice that Shakeel is willing to give out some passes. I’m sure he’s going to be the popular guy within the #DF11 group if that’s the case.

Twitter has been spreading the news about Metallica fairly quickly and most people are excited at the news. Are you more or less excited about Dreamforce now?

Update: Marcus Nelson the head of social media for the company passed along this reply to my request. hmmm…. I didn’t hear a “NOT True” in there. I bet we hear something by the end of the day.

Salesforce has officially responded which makes me think Metallica IS going to be the performer. Why else would they @metallica (hence getting their attention) if they were not planning on signing them or already have. Again. Still all rumor but this is all adding up to a Heavy Metal Dreamforce.

Thank you Marc for confirming the news!

Many of our customers and students of the Social Selling University have asked what they should do once they decide that their sales team should leverage social media more during their sales prospecting. We have created a 5 step process that

1. EVALUATE WHAT YOU’RE DOING.
Many people on your team probably already use LinkedIn, Twitter, blogs, etc. Take stock of how you’re currently connecting with and listening to customers, and see what seems to be working. Where are you successfully engaging and building relationships with prospects and customers?

2. START BY LISTENING.
Just as you wouldn’t run into a cocktail party and start shoving your business card under everyone’s nose, don’t jump on Twitter and start jabbering about your business. Instead, listen to what your target market is saying. Get a sense for who your customers’ mouthpieces are and their communication and interaction styles.

3. SHARE INFORMATION.
Create a way for your team members to share information internally. There are a variety of CRM-compatible tools to facilitate the tracking and sharing of information companywide. So if at a trade show your marketing manager meets a prospect who loves to ride horses, that information can be entered into a collaborative database and used to strengthen ties during follow-up calls.

4. COMMIT TO THE PROCESS.
Building relationships online is not something you can do all at once. Realize you may not see the payoff right away, and commit to three to six months before you evaluate your efforts.

5. COMMIT TO EVOLUTION.
Your team’s social-selling skills will need to evolve with the Web. Prepare to invest time and effort in updating your social- selling strategy, learning about new tools, and keeping skills sharp.

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

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.