Six Ways to Woo SMB Executives

Dell’s DWEN Event Does it Right

If your company is wondering how to effectively sell to the massive SMB (small and medium-sized business) market, you are not alone.  Many businesses are realizing that they have to shift their sales models to profitably offer lower-priced or subscription-based products and services to volumes of smaller businesses.  Dell, an early leader in understanding how to sell to SMB, adopted inside sales and other Sales 2.0 practices at a time when selling computers direct – online and by phone – was not the norm.  My recent experience speaking at the DWEN (Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network) event in Rio de Janeiro underscored what I already knew about their leadership and understanding of the large and growing SMB opportunity.  Here are six things that Dell does right with the DWEN event – practices you may want to emulate in wooing SMB execs.

1. Host a top-draw event at an exotic destination with huge market potential.

Dell’s decision to hold DWEN, an invitation-only event, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, demonstrated their understanding of the country’s skyrocketing revenue potential, especially in the women-led SMB market.  It’s a pretty great draw as conference destinations go, too. Last year, DWEN was held in Shanghai; next year (decided by online vote during this year’s event), DWEN goes to India.  See a trend?

2. Send your highest-level execs and make them accessible.

Nothing says, “we care about you and your business” like showing executive support for your customers.  Steve Felice, the highest-ranking SMB executive (who reports directly to Michael Dell), not only kicked off both days of the event but also made himself available by taking part in all the social events.  I was able not only to introduce myself, but to discuss a strategic, soon-to-be-announced project with him that Phone Works, my company, is doing for his division – a project that highlights their company’s support of cloud computing and Sales 2.0.  Other Dell heavy hitters, including Erik Dithmer, VP and General Manager of SMB Americas and Consumer Latin America, Kim Hibler, VP U.S. SMB Sales, and other senior executives were not only in the audience, but led panels and discussions.

3. Showcase your attendees – invite many to be speakers.

DWEN featured some well-known personalities. Moira Forbes, publisher of ForbesWoman, was invited to moderate and interview Arianna Huffington, who appeared via video conference…talk about Interview 2.0!  All other speakers were attendees like me: founders, CEOs, authors, investors, press and analysts from around the world.  I met women from Canada, Brazil, Australia, India, Japan and China, in addition to other Americans.  Of about 125 people, more than 25% of the attendees spoke on panels or were recruited to lead informal breakout and pool-side sessions held throughout the two days.  Dell recognized that we all have something valuable to share and, by participating, we were all engaged.

4. Deliver pertinent, actionable content.

In the panel on which I spoke, “Ahead of the Curve: How the Right Technology Strategy Can Promote Real Growth,” led by Kim Hibler, I emphasized that today’s customers demand relevant messages and content that can help them in their business. Lattice Engines, one of the conference sponsors, delivers this in spades.  Their sales intelligence software, salesPRISM, used by Dell’s sales team, helps reps identify the right Dell solution for each customer’s unique needs by providing dynamically updated, data-driven talking points that the salespeople can use to engage in relevant, timely discussions with their prospects and customers. salesPRISM has helped Dell increase sales productivity and drive higher sales growth.  You can read more about Dell SMB’s success with Lattice Engines here.

Other panels discussed funding options, using social media in business, and marketing to youth (“How Gen Y will rock your world: Seize upon their love of technology and their resistance to marketing.”)  Perhaps the best-received session, “Pitch Confidence,” was affectionately labeled the “Dolphin Tank.”  Entrepreneurs were invited to deliver a two-minute “sales pitch,” after which they received critiques from both investment experts and the audience.  Unlike the typical “shark tank” that many CEOs experience when presenting to VCs and other investors, a fundamental rule of this session was that feedback be presented in a constructive and supportive fashion.

5. Know your audience (without being sexist.)

DWEN is a conference for women and Dell embraces that.  And I’m not just talking about what goes into the goodie bag.  Dell set the tone for an atmosphere of trust and collaboration, discussion and participation that showed their understanding of women (and men who get Sales 2.0.)  They packed the program with the right topics, encouraged Q&A and interaction throughout the event by placing microphones at the audience tables.  (Ever met a woman who doesn’t like to talk?)  There were also nice touches that women appreciate: morning yoga on the beach, chocolate at the breaks (thanks to sponsor sweetriot – chocolate with a social conscience!)

6. Avoid the temptation to make the conference one giant commercial.

One of the most difficult principles in Sales 2.0 – and one I struggle with myself – is how to let your audience know what you have to offer, without turning them off by what may be perceived as a sales pitch.  Dell handled this beautifully at DWEN.  While Steve Felice mentioned Dell’s cloud computing initiatives and recent acquisitions (Boomi, which integrates applications, and SecureWorks for information security and threat protection), Dell’s offerings were not on the main stage. They had one small exhibit at one of the breaks, and put into practice one of Sales 2.0’s most compelling approaches of putting your product into your prospect’s hands to let them sell themselves. Dell gave away a Vostro laptop to every attendee, custom-skinned with a photo of Rio’s famed Carnival.

What has your business found to be successful in selling to the SMB market? How would you like to improve?

Tags: boomi, Dell, Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network, DWEN, Lattice Engines, Phone Works, Sales 2.0, sales intelligence, sales intelligence software, salesPRISM, SecureWorks, small and medium-sized business, SMB, SMB Executives, sweetriot, Vostro

It’s Nice to Be Recognized: Thanks InsideView!

InsideView compiled a list of the “top 20 sales professionals who make great use of social media.” Not only am I proud to be named one of the “InsideView 20,” but it reinforces a key conversation we’ve been having with our customers about the role of social-media tools in Sales 2.0.

Phone Works is successfully using social media for our own sales efforts, and we are working with our customers to ensure they are employing these same best practices. We either take the lead in experimentation ourselves or follow leading innovators to ensure everything we recommend and implement for our clients has been tried and tested. Not every company is comfortable being out in front, so we only recommend Sales 2.0 practices and technologies that show clear measurable results, such as increased revenue, qualified leads or sales productivity.  As we move forward to help our clients reach the full potential of Sales 2.0, it’s nice to be recognized. Read about the InsideView 20.

Tags: InsideView20, Phone Works, productivity, social media

Transforming a Sales Organization: A True Sales 2.0 Story

Phone Works is helping the Media Division of a $14 billion communications company completely change the way they sell.  Our client is not unlike many companies, whose growth and margins have slowed or even gone negative in recent years.  What makes our client unique is their willingness to make bold, innovative changes to a traditional model that has worked for them for decades – until recently.   We have every confidence that with their dedication to re-invention,  they will become the clear market leaders in their industry. Why?

We have seen this borne out in other forward-thinking companies we’ve worked with – former employers and clients – who have been willing to take risks and fundamentally change the way they do business. As profiled in the Sales 2.0 book,  Oracle captured “low-end” and international customers early its history – and ahead of the company’s competition.  Syneron established a first-mover advantage by daring to sell to doctors and their office staffs differently -using the phone rather than expensive vacation junkets to fill the pipeline with qualified sales opportunities as well as serve customers with dedicated telesales reps.  Other businesses that have transformed their sales organizations and cultures to establish market leadership include Xerox, which created Team Xerox and IBM, which launched both phone and online sales organizations (IBM Direct and ibm.com).  All these companies decreased their cost of sale while increasing revenue by changing their sales coverage models.

Essentially, our work with this media giant includes building an additional sales channel to serve buyers through a centralized sales organization.  The first phase of implementation – serving the company’s smallest customers (in terms of annual revenue potential) -includes:

• creating sales goals and objectives that fit the new channel and sales culture
• addressing supporting compensation plans and incentives for both inside sales and field sales
• establishing distinct roles and responsibilities for inside and field sales that best serve customers
• building infrastructure, as well as all new sales processes,  in a new location
• evaluating sales talent, writing hiring profiles, and recruiting and training reps and managers
• redefining marketing programs to address customer needs and provide value while supporting sales goals
• implementing systems to increase sales productivity and effectiveness as well as capture market and customer data

In addition,  the field sales organization is being evaluated.  Not only has it become unprofitable to serve every customer with face-to-face visits from a sales team but it has become clear that not every sales rep is selling to their customers in the way they want to buy – with a consultative approach, focused on helping the customer improve their business results.  We will create an inside sales organization that follows customer-focused, Sales 2.0 principles: marketing programs will support sales goals, the sales process will be measurable and built according to the steps in the customers’ buying process, reps hired will provide value to customers rather than pitching products, and the organization will be technology-enabled.  The new inside sales channel will be the future footprint, leading by example and paving the way for field sales to embrace and model Sales 2.0 approaches to customers.

This is not to suggest that change isn’t difficult.  It is uncomfortable and scary for reps,  especially when organizations are transformed, job descriptions changed or positions eliminated, compensation is “adjusted”, and time frames to get up and running appear unreasonable.  Sales managers worry about keeping reps motivated and generating revenue during such times of potential upheaval. But doing nothing is no longer optional.  Our client company has shown leadership not only in its decision to undergo a sales transformation, but also in its implementation and roll-out of the changes.

Last week, I attended our client’s meeting to address “future state”, as they call their post-transformation world. In attendance were marketing and sales managers at all levels, from all over the country and from both the field and corporate organizations.  The participants were chosen for their openness, willingness to embrace change, and ability to help explain the necessity and opportunity ahead to their colleagues and staff members.   Regional sales vice presidents presented goals, desired outcomes, and a proposed new sales strategy and restructure and then quickly made the meeting interactive, breaking the group up into work groups to address possibilities as well as concerns. I noted that the concerns raised were very similar to other organizations undergoing Sales 2.0 transformations, especially when multi-channel team selling is implemented:

• How do we make sure customer relationships are taken care of  (i.e., who “owns” accounts?)
• What is our kick-off message internally and to customers to describe our bold, new, customer-driven sales organization?
• How do we support a team sellling approach through our new compensation plans?
• How do we staff our future sales team? Who on our current staff will fit into the new model with training and coaching and who won’t be able to make the shift?

This was not a meeting of whiners,  though.  After raising concerns, the groups then brainstormed about possible solutions. By getting participation and “buy-in” from key field sales members who are seen are leaders by their peers as well as their staffs, our client is taking key steps to a successful move to the Sales 2.0 world.

How is your organization rolling out Sales 2.0 initiatives? And why? What are your experiences, including obstacles and challenges? Share your do’s as well as your don’ts!

Tags: field sales, inside sales, Phone Works, Sales 2.0, transformation

Social Networking in Sales: Show Me the Money

Last Thursday at the Sales 2.0 conference in Boston, a sales executive from Microsoft was lamenting the growing popularity of social networking in his sales force.  “My sales people are wasting valuable time on Facebook when they should be selling,” he said in frustration during the final presentation of the day (mine) on Social Networking in Sales.  This topic was part of the agenda of the first Sales 2.0 conference to take place on the east coast, which attracted over 200 sales leaders looking for innovative ways to improve sales results. The event featured presentations by sales pioneers at companies who described the ways they are transforming the way they sell using Sales 2.0 practices, or forward-thinking sales strategy, people, and processes, enabled by sales productivity and customer engagement technologies.

In the sales community, there continues to be skepticism about social media’s ability to help sales people sell. This concern is not unique to east-coast-based sales managers; similar doubts were expressed at the March Sales 2.0 conference in San Francisco, which I wrote about in an earlier post. As sales managers are struggling to make their numbers in a slowed down economy, they are super vigilant of keeping their sales reps focused on revenue-generating activities.  Other than social networking’s ability to  “like Botox, make us feel younger and fresher”, as a I read on Twitter the day of the conference, it has yet to be proven in many sales organizations as a productive channel for sales people to connect with and close customers.

To prepare for my presentation at the conference, I knew what I had to do: find real world examples of sales and marketing people not just using social tools – but also seeing measurable results, i.e., qualified sales opportunities and revenue. Naturally, I reached out to my network by posting my search for social media ROI on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn in addition to sending e-mail.  Here’s what I found:

Dan Harding, Regional Sales Manager at ConnectandSell, is on track to close 25% of his annual quota by using LinkedIn and Twitter.  Within four months of using these tools as part of his sales process, he has filled his pipeline with at least ten highly qualified opportunities representing several hundred thousand dollars in revenue.  He uses LinkedIn to stay in touch with his network of hundreds of contacts by regularly updating the status box to report on events, promotions, and customer successes. For example, Dan’s status box today reads:

Another Great Customer Kick-Off 12 reps, 12 hours, 140 connects, 24 referrals, 17 Demo/Follow-up! Meetings

E-mail is automatically sent to his connections through LinkedIn network updates, which drives people to check out his newly refreshed profile.  This includes a five-slide SlideShare presentation that succinctly describes how his offering helps clients increase their sales results.  Dan says, “LinkedIn helps me leverage referral-selling. I can easily update my network and stay in touch, which is resulting in e-mail and phone inquiries from people I used to work with or those they recommend.”

To the sales executives out there who are worried about social networking interfering with their ability to make their numbers, I say this: Sales managers who hire the right people –those who are self-motivated and driven to achieve – and set the right objectives, supported by the right compensation – can expect that these reps won’t waste time on non-revenue-generating activities. Quota-carrying reps and managers can easily experiment with social networking and figure out whether they help or hurt their individual productivity and ability to deliver revenue.

Social media also can be very effective in sales lead generation marketing(depending on whether your target audience engages in those media), as I found in another example. When Tealeaf became a client of my consulting company, Phone Works, we quickly learned of the company’s impressive results using Twitter to attract executive-level attendees to their Customer Experience Management seminars.    Tealeaf’s director of online marketing, Dave Ewart, has generated 10% of event registrants using Twitter and over 50% of them are in the company’s target audience – almost twice the percentage than registrants coming from traditional media marketing campaigns. Over $200,000 in potential sales has already been generated via social media marketing campaigns, which launched only a few months ago. Dave designed the event registration campaign to be viral by including an “invite an executive colleague” link in the confirmation e-mail as well as a “tell followers you’ll be attending” link for Twitter users.  Here’s what this looks like:

annekeseleyI just registered for Tealeaf’s executive Customer Experience Summit in D.C. on May 19, Join me. http://cli.gs/vy24LT (via @tealeaf) #wa

It is too soon to tell how many of these opportunities will close, given the length of Tealeaf’s sales cycle and the short amount of time that the company has been piloting these new programs.  Dave maintains, “Twitter helps us find prospective customers that we’re not reaching through other media, especially because new prospects are referring other prospects. ”

These are just two examples of how forward-thinking sales and marketing managers are generating quantifiable business results leveraging existing relationships as well as reaching new prospects using social networking.

What are your experiences with social networking in sales and marketing? Can you attribute measurable results such as sales or qualified leads to new media?

Tags: Facebook, LinkedIn, Phone Works, ROI, Sales 2.0, Sales 2.0 Conference, social media, social networking, twitter

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Tags: customercollective, Health Care, Phone Works, recession, recovery, Sales, Sales 2.0, sales advice, sales management, sales strategy, selling in a recession, sharing best practices, technology sales, vertical sales