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.

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!

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.

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

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

Great information, please keep us updated!

How do you go about identifying a prospect’s blog/site at the outset?

Thanks,
Kate

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