Guest Post by Josiane Feigon: Sally has my vote!

It’s so great to hear the community’s reaction to our announcement of Sally Duby’s change in role at Phone Works. Here’s a particularly nice one, celebrating Sally’s contributions to the inside sales profession, from our friend and partner, Josiane Feigon.  Josiane is President of TeleSmart Communications, author of “Smart Selling on the Phone and Online” and writer of the “Cubicle Chronicles” blog, where this post appeared yesterday.

Two weeks from now,  the most influential inside sales experts will gather for AA-ISP’s Leadership Summit in Minneapolis on May 10th and 11th. The line-up of speakers, authors and sessions is impressive. These two days will be packed with information designed to energize and educate you to a new level. If you haven’t signed up, I highly recommend you carve out time to attend this fantastic event. You can even use my promo code “TeleSmart” when registering and get a discount to attend the conference.

One of the highlights of the upcoming  event is the Awards Ceremony, which recognizes some of the most influential inside sales professional. Last year, I was honored with this award and hope to hold on to my crown this year also. But wait, there’s room for more – so Sally Duby gets my personal vote for most influential inside sales professional 2011.

For the past 15 years, Sally has been at the helm running Anneke Seley’s successful company, Phone Works. Her leadership has helped PhoneWorks achieve tremendous growth. She has also been instrumental in developing Silicon Valley’s Telebusiness Alliance which is a thriving professional organizaiton of inside sales managers and directors who meet on a bi-monthly basis to discuss trends, compensation, tools, etc.

Sally Duby and Kevin Bacon have one thing in common, everyone revolves 6 degrees around them. Over the years, I have found myself in so many situations where I mention Sally Duby and suddenly, I’m family – everyone knows Sally!  If I ever start a Perez Hilton–type gossip blog or an Entertainment Today show around the inside sales industry, Sally will be my main source.

There’s nothing worse that being misunderstood and the inside sales field is one of the most complicated and confusing industries out there and many people don’t get it. Sally Duby does–inside and out. She knows the field, the people, the processes, the technology and deeply understands how it all changes within seconds. She knows how a company never really believes they have arrived because once they do, it’s time to tear it down and put it back together.

Sally has recently taken on a new position managing the SMB business for Skype, working closely with another inside sales powerhouse, Cathy Sidwell. These two together will transform Skype and make inroads into areas we never thought possible, so I’m excited to see it happen and wish her luck.

Tags: AA-ISP, inside sales

Defining Sales Enablement

I’m publishing a series of Q&A excerpts from my interviews with Sales 2.0 leaders. This is the first of three excerpts from my interview with Sharon Little, director of field marketing communications for VMware.

Anneke: You have a mission statement for your sales enablement group. What is it?

Sharon: To deliver high-value consumable information that builds competency, drives culture and enables performance for the field.

Anneke: Isn’t that Marketing’s job? What’s the difference between what your group does and what Marketing does?

Sharon: We do the translation and packaging of information created by Marketing and other sources. Our job is to make that content prettier and more actionable for the sales team. For any content, we can determine what’s missing and fill in the pieces to make information worthy of the sales person’s time.

Anneke: What’s the difference between Sales Enablement and Sales Operations?

Sharon: In my view, Sales Operations sits between Finance and Sales, while Sales Enablement is the liaison between Marketing and Sales. Sales Operations works on behalf of Finance on things such as budgets, compensation plans, metrics and technology to make sales people more productive. I believe that, over time, Sales Enablement will provide the same service for Marketing.

Anneke: What are the most important words of advice you’d give sales executives looking to implement a sales enablement program?

Sharon: I would start by asking them to open up their perspective on how they view sales enablement. This is about transformation — not just training, communications and kickoff. Every sales leader must be thinking about how to prepare their teams for the next hurdle — a well-articulated sales enablement operation is strategic on many levels. At a minimum, sales leaders must insist that programs and tools be consumable, actionable and easily absorbed by the sales team, and in a format that can be put to use with a customer immediately, without hours of modification. Equally important, they should be integrated and aligned with the rest of the tools the sales organization uses on a regular basis. They should tie together, support each other and just make sense. I call this, “The golden thread of sales enablement.”

I truly believe that, five years from now, every sales executive will insist on having an experienced sales enablement team at his or her disposal. Sales enablement is the key to solving sales and marketing alignment issues, and it is the lever sales leaders need to drive performance. Sales operations measures what you are doing and predicts future performance. Sales enablement makes it actionable.

Read the full interview with Sharon Little in the Resources section of this website.

Tags: actionable content, content, marketing and sales alignment, marketing communications, marketing materials, Sales, Sales 2.0, sales and marketing alignment, sales enablement, sales enablement tools, sales materials, sales operations, sales process, sales programs, sales support, sales tools, sales training

Salesforce.com Goes Social and Reduces E-mail 40%

For all the talk about how social media will transform the way we sell, I have seen few examples of sales-department–wide adoption and even fewer that can point to measurable results. Some really smart veteran sales experts have confided that they just don’t “get” social. That’s why I was looking forward to the presentation, “Changing Our Own Game: How Salesforce.com Uses Chatter,” at last week’s Dreamforce conference, where I was a blogger attendee.

Borrowing from Apple’s commercials, if you are a Facebook or Twitter user, you already know how to use Chatter. As with Facebook, in Chatter you get started by uploading your photo and writing something interesting about yourself. Then you post updates, ask questions, or write on other people’s “walls.” Like in Twitter, you “follow” other Chatter users or groups, which gives you access to their updates. You can also “unfollow” if someone repeatedly posts drivel or too many photos of their pet lizard. What’s different about Chatter is that this so-called social behavior happens within the application where Sales 2.0 reps and managers live: CRM. Because of this, the product could transform the way sales and other teams work.

How Salesforce.com is Using Chatter

Sales: Deal Collaboration, Sales Support

Enterprise sales rep Chris Cranis described Chatter as a central place to post a presentation for an important customer meeting that included a cross-functional selling team of technical sales engineers, product specialists and sales professionals. He also uses Chatter to find customer references and ask customer questions. Before, this would have required mass e-mails or tracking down a sales engineer. Chris recently came to the aid of Chief Customer Officer Jim Steele, who posted a question on his mobile phone posed by a customer’s CIO he was visiting. Within four minutes, Chris provided the answer. Still an e-mail-centric worker, Chris set the application to inform him about updates via e-mail.

Events: Linking Attendees

Dreamforce attendees could communicate with each other before and during the conference via the Dreamforce Chatter application (including mobile versions for iPad, iPhone, Android and BlackBerry). I joined the Sales and Marketing 2.0, Social Media and Small Business special-interest groups — as well as a popular group called “The List,” which catalogued and discussed all the parties — to find people with similar interests.

Surveys: Crowd-Sourced Feedback

Teams can easily weigh in with their opinions on logos, marketing programs, website changes, etc. Scott Holden, senior director of product marketing, used Chatter to get feedback on signage for the Dreamforce event.

Competitive Analysis

Matt Bennetti, senior director of competitive intelligence, uses Chatter to gather information when someone joins the company from a competitive company. He then uses the application to disseminate content to sales and marketing and the executive team. Followers, organized in groups according to competitor, can add to the information to make it even more complete. Before Chatter, Matt would put files in a content library, hoping somebody would download it. He would also be a roadblock when someone had an urgent question. With Chatter, a whole group of experts can provide answers.

Salesforce.com’s Results

Salesforce says they have reduced e-mail by 40% with Chatter and have driven productivity and sales growth. I imagine this is because conversations are easier to follow and find, which makes volumes of e-mail follow-ups less necessary. Communications are consolidated and typically personalized to the interests of a pre-defined group.

I’ll be interested to hear more specific sales-growth metrics and details of how salesforce.com is measuring the 40% e-mail reduction. Has the company merely moved the traffic from one communications vehicle (e-mail) to another (Chatter)? And what additional metrics should we attempt to measure when evaluating or rolling out our sales team’s use of social media: Content relevance? Timeliness? Employee/Customer Experience?

Encouraging Adoption

Salesforce.com claims they had 100% adoption in two weeks. How? It doesn’t hurt that CEO Marc Benioff is a prominent user and is known to “follow” people at all levels of the company. The company also tracks use metrics and rewards the most active on the application. The “Chatterati” (top 25 contributors) are rewarded with special perks such as good seats at the keynote President Bill Clinton gave at the Dreamforce conference and inclusion in company management meetings at tony resorts. This is not only a treat for the Chatter super-users; it is also a great way for management to get insight on product usage that can be used to help customers.

Could special recognition and rewards — or simply the “fun” aspects of social media — increase system use in an otherwise reluctant sales force? Scott Holden claims he didn’t use Salesforce.com much before Chatter was released, but now he looks forward to logging in. Yes, he’s in marketing not sales, but couldn’t this work for sales reps, too? Presumably, you could use similar incentive-based approaches to stimulate adoption of any social media — or other Sales 2.0 practices and technology.

If you’re curious about Chatter and how it could increase sales productivity for your organization, you can give it a try yourself. One of the big announcements at Dreamforce: You can now get your whole company on Chatter for free.

Will you try Chatter or another social collaboration platform? What are your objectives, concerns and challenges?

Sneak Preview: 2010 Inside Sales Compensation Study

Next month, Phone Works will publish the 2010 Compensation Report on sales development (lead generation) and inside sales (quota-carrying) reps, as well as managers. Survey respondents will receive the report first. It should be no surprise that, in most companies, inside sales — selling and qualifying leads by phone and Internet — is a rapidly growing function, given market factors such as increasing customer preferences for online education and communications, increasing cost of sales, and greater focus on sales productivity. If your company is starting up or expanding inside sales or evaluating your sales model, you’ll be interested in the survey results.

Here’s a preview of our findings:

Sales Development

• average target compensation increased 8% for reps compared with last year
• average target compensation increased 5% for managers
• 80% of reps receive some form of incentive pay on closed sales
• average growth, as measured by the number of reps on teams, compared with last year is 47%

Inside Sales

• average target compensation is virtually the same for reps compared with last year
• average target compensation increased 20% for first-line managers
• average target compensation increased 5% for senior managers
• average target compensation for hybrid (inside/field) reps is 17% higher than inside-only reps
• average growth, as measured by the number of reps on teams, compared with last year is 30%

Top Three Priorities for Improving Performance

1. Training
2. New technology, tools
3. Process improvement

Top Challenges for 2011

1. Improve sales effectiveness
2. New customer acquisition
3. Increase sales productivity

How do the metrics, priorities and challenges reported compare to your team’s? In what other metrics are you interested?

To receive a copy of the full compensation report, which includes base salary and target compensation figures, sign up for the Phone Works’ mailing list (if you aren’t receiving it already). By signing up, you will also receive monthly digests from this blog and news of upcoming industry events. You may unsubscribe, no questions asked, at any time.

Seven Sales & Marketing Insights From Recent Events

It’s conference season! If you’ve been unable to leave the office and the demands of your day-to-day job, not to worry. Here’s a summary of seven things I thought worth sharing from five superb events I’ve attended in the past three weeks:

1. Sales Enablement groups are increasing sales productivity.

Sometimes called Sales Productivity or Sales Effectiveness, this is a critical, dedicated function that is emerging in many Sales 2.0 companies. Though groups are defined, structured and staffed differently from company to company, there is across-the-board agreement that making the sales force more productive is a must-have, not a nice-to-have. Ken Powell, who presented at the Corporate Visions Sales & Marketing Alignment Forum, runs a large sales enablement group at ADP, supporting more than 5,000 sales reps. It has responsibility for developing sales tools, messaging, content/knowledge, lead generation and competitive analysis. Does your sales team need enablement?

2. Our biggest competition is the status quo.

Tim Riesterer, CMO at Corporate Visions, thinks customer conversations that help prospects question the status quo are your new strategic asset. In order to have these conversations, develop customer-focused messages, tools and skills. Brent Adamson of the the Corporate Executive Board presented data showing, in B2B companies selling complex products, “challenger” sales reps close more business than “relationship builders.” When the No. 1 thing your customers want to do is nothing, are you challenging their assumptions, making them think and teaching them something?

3. Re-thinking your website content improves results.

At Marketing Sherpa’s B2B Marketing Summit, Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, manager director of MECLABS, said, “People don’t buy from websites; they buy from people.” He showed examples of redesigned, “optimized” sites that significantly increased conversions and form submissions. Long paragraphs, vague and unsubstantiated claims, competing calls to action, and using “marketing speak” rather than plain English are some of the enemies of good results. Is your website failing to engage your prospects? Follow Dr. Flint’s three basic rules: Increase specificity, continuity and relevance.

4. Turn your events into networking opportunities for your customers.

Greg Sherry, VP of marketing and business development at Verint, shared 12 tactics to maximize ROI on a limited budget. One of my favorites is the idea to capture their customers’ areas of knowledge and expertise, as well as topics of interest, on the registration form for their annual customer conference. They then printed this information on the name badges, which facilitated valuable connections among attendees at the opening happy hour and throughout the event.

5. Be creative when selecting event venues.

InsideView and Marketo invited me to speak on a panel at their Customer 2.0 Roadshow event in San Francisco, which took place in a bar called the Harlot Lounge. It worked! Non-standard venues draw diverse (Sales 2.0–minded) people and set the stage for interesting conversations about how we need to change the way we sell to reach “social,” online and productivity-focused customers.

6. Measure the results of your new media marketing programs in terms sales people care about.

With a sales audience, metrics such as page views, open rates and click rates don’t have the same impact as increases in leads and sales. Presenting at Marketo’s User Summit, Todd Foresythe, a member of salesforce.com’s marketing team, revealed that decreasing traditional marketing spend 69% and increasing investments in social media and video yielded 33% more leads.

7. At executive events, mix up the content.

At the Oracle OpenWorld Sales Executive Summit, it was a little intimidating to speak before the America’s Cup sailing team and after Sean Tucker, the acrobatic pilot who flies at elite air shows along with the Blue Angels. But it was fun for the attendees (and me) to get a break from the business content, watch some thrilling sailboat and airplane videos, and have their photos taken with buff guys and the world’s oldest trophy.

These insights came from the Oracle OpenWorld Executive Sales Summit, InsideView and Marketo’s Customer 2.0 Roadshow, Marketing Sherpa’s B2B Marketing Summit, the Marketo User Summit and the Corporate Visions Sales and Marketing Alignment Executive Summit.

What events have you attended recently? What did you learn?