My Sales 2.0 World
crbrowning | Jan 20, 2009 | Comments 14
As a proud member of the New Marketing Labs, I have the flexibility to experiment with new technologies and processes. Since my start, I have been avoiding standard sales activities and been taking a more ‘social’ route. So far, I have had fantastic results. Let me explain a bit more about about my Sales 2.0 experiment:
What currently does not work (or could work better) in sales 1.0:
- Cold Calling: A tremendous amount of time and effort for the sales professional and an extreme annoyance for the prospect. Why should you trust these people that interrupt your day?
- Complex Sales Process: Sales organizations need to adapt to two connected facts: technology has made information readily available on most every topic and buyers are leveraging it to become very sophisticated. Sales processes that emphasize education insult the potential client and slow the process down.
- Presentations: These are used too many times as a crutch for the sales professional and end up as a barrier to real conversations. Should I mention boring too? Or did you already fall asleep when I said wrote presentation?
So what am I doing for Sales 2.0? Here is a partial list, it is growing every day:
- Research: Social Media gives us access to so much information, it is a sales person’s dream. Every day I comb through RSS feeds in which I target prospect’s blogs and key search terms in Twitter. I track trends in Friendfeed as well as stay on top of the latest news through Google alerts. Bottom line: this leads me to the right person at the right time.
- New Outbound: Instead of cold calls, I use a whole range of technologies that blast through the clutter. I comment on prospects blogs and engage and retweet messages on Twitter. I become a trusted contributor to the conversations. Outbound efforts become highly relevant and personal, not interuptions.
- Conversations/Presentations: Standard sales presentations prevent active dialog. Engaging in a real conversation with a prospect about what they want to do and what they are looking for is the goal. At Mzinga I used Delicious.com as my slide deck, I am looking to enhance that at New Marketng Labs with Flikr, Twitter, slideshare, YouTube, and others to stimulate and foster conversations during sales presentations.
So far I have been very successful in my Sales 2.0 experiment. Here is a quick example of what I did today to more clearly illustrate what I am doing:
Quick Case Study in breaking through the clutter:
9:20am: found read relavent blog post in RSS feed and added comment
9:45am: found blog author on Twitter and followed & added to prospect feed in TweetDeck
11:00am: prospect followed me back
11:30am: re-tweeted prospect’s blog post with compliment
4:00pm: sent prospect direct message through twitter asking if I they had interest & if I could email
4:30pm: recieved response with prospect’s email address!
I will continue to report on this, but I would love to know what others think. Please comment below.
/colin
Filed Under: Sales 2.0
Hi Colin,
We must be on the same wavelength. I have been posting a series of thoughts on selling and social media. I think we are very much in early adoption. I have been trialing different kinds of “presentation” tactics as well, primarily with video and Twitter. As you mention in your post, the results have been fantastic, changing the conversation and accelerating real dialogue. And it’s fun too!
Your post summarizes it all really well. I hope we see more sales folks begin to experiment and adapt to the cool and powerful access available today.
Colin,
Very interesting. Sales 2.0 is indeed an “experiment” into what works in the Internet Age. In the end it’s really about the math of the ROI. Who cares if you cold call or Twitter to get a lead? It’s all about ROI.
In a “Sales 2.0 world” sales and marketing are one so all e-marketing techniques make total sense.
Great work! You may yet be the Newton of the Sales 2.0 world.
Nigel
Interesting post Colin.
I struggle with communicating this message internally, and appreciate your articulating it.
The proof is in the pudding as they say, and I have seen my relationship with new customers become more value-based more quickly. We “know” each other before we ever meet face to face. I like that and so do they.
Hi Colin.
I could not agree more! I would love to hear more about your “Sales Presentation 2.0″ as you develop it. Great idea. As Barack Obama said in his inaugural address, “..the world has changed, and we must change with it.” That goes for selling, too.
Companies –and sales professionals — adopting Sales 2.0 are the business leaders of the future.
/Anneke
Colin –
Great information, please keep us updated!
How do you go about identifying a prospect’s blog/site at the outset?
Thanks,
Kate
Hi Colin,
We (ecairn) have a SaaS application that instrument the exact process that you described… which is how I found you btw.
What it does is the following:
- enable you to find and aggregate all the different social media places relevant for your target/ your community (blogs, twitter search, LinkedIn Q&A, Youtube …)
- qualify bloggers (influence, audience)
- provide some advanced search capabilities to zero on the conversations that you want to spot (i.e as an example challenges that your product/service solves for the client)
- expose the social identity of the blogger (FB profile, LinkedIn profile)
- enable you to track your engagement, mark the conversation you want to follow
On our example, we focus on the social media marketing community (1000+ blogs, a few twitter search and LinkedIn querries)
I think we could bring a huge productivity gain in your daily social media engagement routine.
Are you interested in a demo ?
If so email me !
Best
Hi Colin,
I loved your post. Thanks, it’s giving me all kinds of ideas and it really makes sense. I’m going to go follow you now. Looking forward to more info on Sales 2.0. What better way to build trust, than be part of the conversation and build the friendship.
Make it a great day!
Dirk
Well I’m all for it, I loved how you broke it down to how you do this! For me this is a natural extension to reach new people. I’m still harnassing my ‘in person’ people skills. So for now this works!
Outstanding!
For ‘Sales 2.0′ read ‘Networking 2.0′
You have realised what so many business people sadly fail to, that conversations and relationship building provide so much more long term potential than traditional sales techniques.
Social media has simply made that so much more simple and effective.
If you are not a ‘tecchy’ then Twitter, Blogging, Google Alerts et al can be overwhelming. But for those prepared to pick it up bit by bit (or byte by byte – sorry!) there is real value as you have illustrated so clearly.
Great approach.
However, there are entire industries that are nowhere on Twitter, FB etc. Sales 2.0 relies on your prospects being on the same technological wave.
Having said that, the principle of building relationships works in sales whether one phones or Twitters!
I’m sad. Why did you have to give away some of the best stuff:-
It is amazing how well this approach works, combine it with a smart way to catalog the information, follow thousands of leads, clients and people over the years and suddenly you have the stack of cards everyone wants…
Hi Colin,
I agree with your views on traditional selling. My business is about 6 months old and I quickly found out cold calling doesn’t work. Even reaching out to friends can be a miss if they aren’t in the market for your products or services.
What I like about the Sales 2.0 technique is it sends up a flare to let folks know you’re out there. The ones that are attuned to your message, products, or services will gravitate around you and then you gain a higher quality lead.
Admittedly, that’s my theory. In actuality, my Sales 2.0 efforts are more scatter shot than yours at the mo’ because I’m still developing my “system.” However I’m convinced this is a better way to go. Some of that is undoubtedly a personal style….I’m a writer by nature and have a geek’s love of technology.