Sales 2.0 Thinking: Get an Outside Perspective

We are all insanely busy these days. In our day-to-day jobs, we are so focused on execution that it’s difficult to think about how to improve performance and productivity.    Here’s an idea:  talk to people outside your company, compare experiences and share ideas.   I’ve been interviewing Sales 2.0 leaders for my new book project and they all have one thing in common: they find time to call their peers doing similar work in other organizations, attend conferences and networking events and read about how others are improving results in sales. These Sales 2.0 practitioners seek out and are open to outside perspectives.

Last week I traveled to Atlanta to deliver several Sales 2.0 workshops, thanks to the invitation of Mark Barry of OpenView Partners, Marge Beiler of RareAgent, the AA-ISP (American Association of Inside Sales Professionals) and others who sponsored the events. I call these events workshops rather than presentations for a reason. I am not the only person contributing information: participants share their successes and challenges and everyone learns from each other.   In order to be a credible and current Sales 2.0 “expert”,  I feel I need to be continually learning from my clients and those that come to hear me speak.

In my Sales 2.0 workshops, I start by presenting the key concepts of Sales 2.0, what is driving it, and how companies are producing better results by practicing it. Then I get to my favorite part: facilitating a conversation with the audience.  In two days in Atlanta, I got to hear from Venture Capitalists and investment partners, business executives running venture-funded start-ups, sales professionals,  inside sales managers, inside sales reps, recruiters, trainers, and several other service providers, all of whom were eager to learn – from me as well as from other participants – what is working in the new world of selling and buying. Here are some of the things I learned:

1. In order to engage prospects, stand out from the crowd.

• At one company, e-mails that include a humorous video are getting a 20% better response than those without
• Prospects appreciate a personal touch: hand-written note cards and physical mailings are being well-received

2. Companies are experimenting with allowing inside sales reps to work from home.

• Most managers agree that this works well as special recognition for senior reps who are performing (but not recommended for new hires)
• Bringing the sales group together (face to face) is still important for team-building
• One company found a loss in productivity with remote reps

3. Large, established companies are learning from smaller companies.

• Much of what start-ups (and we in the Sales 2.0 community) take for granted is new learning for the Fortune 500
• There is huge potential to expand the role of inside sales within large companies (and improve their margin and customer satisfaction)

4. Sales teams are using social media  but don’t yet know how to evaluate the results.

• Most managers buy in to using LinkedIn in the sales process; many are skeptical about Facebook and Twitter
• Connecting to customers and prospects is a good idea

Read also Mark Barry’s excellent blog post about these events, Sales 2.0: Succeeding in the New World of High Productivity.

What have you learned by looking outside your company for new ideas? And where do you find them?

Tags: inside sales, Sales 2.0, social media, telework, video

Social Media and Inside Sales: Time Waster or Money Maker?

Rini Das, CEO of PAKRAGames, is one example of a Sales 2.0 executive who, by all indications, is on the path to revenue-generation by incorporating LinkedIn, Google Alerts and Twitter into her online prospecting strategy. She and her CMO, Michelle Stewart, search for, research and send personal messages to their target audience (often based on the information their prospects provide themselves on their profiles and in their tweets): sales VPs and inside sales executives in selected industries who are either one-degree-removed connections or are those with whom they share a group. By incorporating these outreaches into their weekly prospecting process and religiously tracking metrics, they know how many prospects contacted via these sources will end up in their pipeline. Of the invitations they extend, 72% accept, 36% are are qualified and 21% make it to their pipeline.

But many inside sales leaders – and their managers – are still questioning the value of social media in the sales process.  This was one of the key topics discussed at last week’s Inside Sales Summit, now in its second year and produced by the young but growing AA-ISP (American Association of Inside Sales Professionals). The conference, held in Minneapolis, drew more than 200 executives and managers who manage phone and Web selling and lead qualification teams from companies including 3M, ADP, Apple, Carnival, FedEx, GE Medical, GeneSys, IBM and a host of smaller companies. The panel discussion I led, “Social Media in Inside Sales: Time Waster or Money Maker?” was one of several sessions aimed at inside sales professionals looking for new ways to engage increasingly hard-to-reach and harder-to-please buyers. The panel included senior-level sales executives Brett Wallace from ZoomInfo, Greg Volm from InsideView and Kevin Flynn from salesforce.com, who described how they’ve integrated social media into their sales, marketing and internal team collaboration.

I kicked off the panel by describing “The Inside Sales Social Media Panacea”: What sales managers need to know in order to answer the “time waster or money maker?” question:

-For each of your customers and prospects, you know which social tools they use and prefer (if any), so your team can easily reach them in new ways and stand out from everyone else.

-You have a proven process for using social media in the sales cycle and can track social media outreaches (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc.), along with calls and e-mails and the associated contacts metrics: connections, qualified leads, forecasted leads and sales.

-You can measure the impact of pre-contact research using social media and networks such as blogs, LinkedIn, Google Alerts and Twitter, and decide if the extra time spent in planning mode, which reduces activity, yields better results.

-You know which leads and which sales came from which social media and networking activities and at what point in the sales cycle, draw conclusions accordingly and spread the best policies and practices across your sales organization.

What other questions are you asking about social media? How are you measuring the success of your social media and social networking programs? What results are you seeing?

Tags: inside sales, social media, telemarketing, telesales

The Sales 2.0 Conference: The Results of Listening to (or Ignoring) Your Customers

For me, attending the Sales 2.0 conferences is like going to a 500-plus-person family reunion. There are so many Phone Works customers, partners, friends and familiar faces in attendance that, in two days, it’s impossible to spend the time I’d like to catch up with everyone. The good news is the size and continued growth of the Sales 2.0 community, as witnessed by the increasing number of conference participants, bodes well for the health of companies’ finances and their customer relationships, as buyers and sellers embrace Sales 2.0 practices and technology. As we heard from presenter after presenter at the conference, successful Sales 2.0 strategy and implementation increases sales effectiveness and efficiency.

In reviewing my notes (actually my live Twitter stream; follow @annekeseley and others with #s20c if you want all the details), I found some recurring themes worth emphasizing. One of the simplest but most important ones has to do with paying attention to the people who buy your products and services.

Employ a Chief Listening Officer

Jeffrey Hayzlett, chief marketing officer and VP at Eastman Kodak (and a showman on top of that), gave the most entertaining presentation on critical business transformation I’ve experienced yet. During his talk, “Kodak’s Successful Fight for Survival in the Digital Age,” Jeff revealed, among other things, how his company embraced social media to connect more closely with customers. After naming a chief blogger — one of the first large companies to do so, according to his interview with Sales 2.0 Conference staff — he created the position of chief listening officer. This person’s job is to follow online conversations across social platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, as well as on blogs, and direct them to the appropriate department within Kodak for follow-up. This allows the company to respond in real time to customers’ needs.

I like the concept of dedicating staff to listen to (and ensure response to) customers. With the evolution of social media tools, wouldn’t it be great if our sales managers and reps could all become listening officers?

Engage With Unexpected Contacts

Jeff  and I connected on Twitter and exchanged a few personal messages just before his presentation. This is the first Twitter interaction I’ve had with the CMO of a Fortune 500 company. The guy knows how to engage!

Have you had any interactions on Twitter with C-level buyers you’ve never met (or other social networking or social media sites)?

Consider an Updated View of ROI

Like many of us, Hayzlett is frequently challenged by his CFO about the ROI of his social media marketing programs. His retort: “Engagement is the new ROI. You want to know the other ROI? Return on Ignoring!”

If your competitors are following and responding to customers on social media, and you aren’t, can you imagine what that might cost you?

Consider an Updated View of CLV

Though I don’t think they coordinated their presentations in advance, Clara Shih’s presentation supported many of Jeff’s key points by introducing a new way of thinking about Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). In her presentation, “Social Networking & Sales,” the wicked smart and always delightful Shih, CEO of Hearsay Labs and author of The Facebook Era, touched on the concept of “Social CLV,” which Clara promised to cover in the second edition of her book. Social CLV includes word-of-mouth (WOM) referrals, customer support cost savings, and sales resulting from idea contributions. Hayzlett gave a perfect example: By listening to a customer suggestion to add an external microphone jack to its digital video camera, the company was able to create a competitive advantage in one of its products that can be measured in revenue dollars.

Are you listening to your customers and implementing their suggestions? What are the results?

Tags: Clara Shih, Jeffrey Hayzlett, Sales 2.0, Sales 2.0 Conference, social media

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

The 2.0 Practice: What One Innovative Architect is Doing to Attract New Clients

At a time when even top design firms have been laying off their entire staffs and shuttering their doors, Mark English, a San Francisco-based architect, has tripled his client base in the last year – during the biggest recession and housing crisis almost since The Great Depression. In this interview, I ask Mark about the innovative, “Sales 2.0″ thinking that enabled his growth.  I also ask him to describe his experiences with new media: How does he use his separate blogs to reach different audiences? How do tools such as Twitter and Facebook expand his reach? How did he get started, and to what does he attribute his success during challenging economic times?

Anneke: Tell us about the business opportunity you capitalized on this year.
Mark:  Like many business owners, I started the year wanting to grow my practice.   With the help of a business consultant, though, I came to the conclusion that a lot of the work we do is not scalable.  But I also realized [that] we had a unique opportunity. When I started my business in 1992, it was a lot like today’s economic climate.  I started doing energy and structural calculations for other architects just to get me through the recession. The energy compliance work was boring, specialized, and tedious – but unavoidable. Just like taxes. My energy compliance work (known as “Title 24”), which leads to repeat business several times a year, was my ticket to growth during a slow economy.

Anneke: When you came to the realization that energy compliance work could drive your business growth, what was your experience level with social media and social networking?

Mark: A year ago I had no clue what Facebook and Twitter were, or how I might use them for business purposes. I had to have someone sit me down and actually physically take me through them.  At that time, we had 15-20 clients on the energy compliance side of the business, without any active marketing.  The goal was to get to several hundred clients using social media.

Here’s a picture of how I integrated social media into my traditional marketing approach:

Anneke: So how do you use the social media sites for business benefit?
Mark: We looked at what would differentiate us from other architects out there.  We were ahead of the curve in recognizing we needed a web site as a way to advertise and present our services online.  We then started putting out newsletters in PDF format. People liked that.  We got a couple hundred subscribers.  Then we decided to do a blog that talked about our services but was attractive for other reasons.  That became “Green Compliance Plus”, which has two main goals:

1.    Provide Title 24 energy compliance documentation tailored to the specific needs of architects and other design professionals.
2.    Foster education and discussion on energy compliance and green residential design concepts within the design and engineering communities.

We made a strategic decision to create all original content, which we felt would be more valuable than re-posting other people’s content.  Without Rebecca Firestone, my writer and business content developer, none of this would be possible.

Anneke: Tell us about the content.
Mark: We started interviewing.  We included conversations with green builders, suppliers of energy efficient heat, power and lighting systems, solar companies, lots of people in the green industries.

Anneke: How did you drive people to your blog?
Mark: We started cold calling architects who were our prospects.  Many of them subscribed to the blog right away.  After that we started doing lunch meetings.  Of 100 people we invited, 50 would respond and have lunch with us. Sometimes it took several months to schedule.  Eighty percent of those lunch meetings turned into a sale.  And every time we post to the blog site, we send an email link to our subscribers.  This way we stay on top of everyone’s mind.

Anneke: Are you using a system to track your contacts? How does it help you win business?
Mark: We have everything in salesforce.com.  There’s not much work out there right now for residential or commercial architecture, but we have these new clients on the energy side.  They hire us for small jobs, which the system helps us track, and as the economy improves, there will be more.  The system helps us stay in touch with customers and produce recurring revenue.

Anneke: You have another blog, as well, right?  How did that come about?
Mark: On the architecture side, we created “The Architect’s Take.”  The genesis for that came from my experience as the building architect for the Metropolitan Homes Showcase in June of 2009.  I met a few of San Francisco’s top architects working on that project and realized I needed to find a way to get to know the others to increase my visibility in the architecture community.  I decided to do a second blog featuring architects we like.  We interview them about themselves, not just their work.  As an architect, I want to know what makes someone tick.  The Architect’s Take blog is a way for me to access well-known architects without barriers.  No one has turned us down for an interview yet.  From a professional point of view, this gives us a much higher profile with our peers in San Francisco.  That kind of visibility can lead to awards, jury invitations, and other opportunities.

Anneke: How exactly do blogs and Twitter generate prospects?
Mark: We have three sites: our main website, our “Green Compliance Plus” blog and our “Architect’s Take” blog and they all work together.  We use WordPress as our blog tool and it has an automatic Twitter engine.  Whenever we post something, it sends out a Tweet (Twitter post).  The Tweet shows up on a follower’s computer or mobile phone, they click on it and it takes them to the original blog article.  We find people retweeting (RT) our tweets to their own networks which expands our audience exponentially.  I’m also using design blog sites like houzz, which is an online portfolio for architects and designers.  You upload photos of your work.  People can sift through the content visually.  We get 12-15% of the flow to our web site from houzz.com and it has already provided several work opportunities for us outside of San Francisco.  There’s another one called Apartment Therapy that’s really big.  That also drives traffic to our sites.

Anneke: What have the business results been?
Mark: We’ve tripled our client base. There’s no way to do that in this economic environment without the support of the blog sites.  They give us credibility and a competitive advantage.  Very few architects are doing this.  Some may be on the web, or have a blog site but they don’t update them very often or they’re doing re-posts of existing content.  We’re providing high quality content and case studies of actual clients.  The case studies are documented proofs of concept that give us credibility and plausibility. They show our value to  clients and prospects.

Anneke: What is the volume of opportunities coming from Twitter and how do you track it?
Mark: Through Google analytics, we can see what comes from Twitter.  Twitter provides 20-25% of the flow to our blog sites.  I’m at 2,500 – 2,600 followers and adding 100 to 120 a week.

Anneke: Where are your Twitter followers coming from?
Mark: Mostly from other networks.  One article on the “Green Compliance Plus” blog site was immediately retweeted (shared with other people’s networks on Twitter) twenty times to eleven other networks.  I got fifty new followers from that.  Companies we interview often include a link to our blog posts on their web sites.  In one case, we got 500 hits right away and the post still generates five to ten visits per day.  I also use the Tweet Adder engine to search and follow other prospects we might be targeting.  A large percent of them follow me back.  I would say that Twitter has become extremely useful.  I get a lot of e-mails from Twitter followers.

Anneke: So you’re not just writing two blogs and using Twitter and Facebook to publicize links to your own content.  You’re also following other people’s content and retweeting the information you believe your prospects will find valuable. How do you have time for all that on top of running your business?
Mark: During the week, I get to the office a little early and spend maybe fifteen to twenty minutes finding articles of interest on other sites like CNet Green Technology, the Contemporist, and houzz.  I tweet those and many of them get retweeted.  Every email I send includes links to our web site, blogs and my Twitter and Facebook links.

Anneke: You just spoke at an AIA (American Institute of Architects) event on December 4th with two other panelists using social media in their practices.  What did you learn from them?

Mark: Mike Plotnick from HOK spoke about using blogs to personalize client experiences and develop internal esprit de corps with a giant multinational company.  He stressed that designers and planners within HOK have willingly signed up to participate on his blogging team, even though writing blog posts is in addition to their regular jobs and they do it on their own time.  He also talked about how he, a self-described “traditional PR guy”, had to give up control to embrace new media.  The firm launched its social initiative in mid-2008 as part of a recruiting strategy to present a young, hip, cool, creative vibe to attract the right talent.  This was during a time when unlike today, there were limited candidates looking for jobs.  Mike also said there was initially no formal mandate to blog; they simply starting experimenting on the sly.  He does very little to control what his team blogs about.  The only rules are “nothing illegal, unethical, controversial, or confidential.”

Joel Robare, a designer who runs JR Studio, told the audience something completely different: he abandoned his blog in favor of Twitter, when he realized he was pushing content out to no avail. He claims his clients don’t have time to read long posts and favor the faster, more immediate information exchange that Twitter provides.   Joel said he posts 5-10 times per day, which he writes all at once in the morning while he is microwaving his breakfast, using a tool called TweetFunnel. His posts fall into three categories:

1.    What is going on in the market?
2.    His own insights
3.    Advertising for his business (no more than once every 15-20 tweets)

Joel checks where his prospects are spending their time online by entering their e-mail addresses into a product called Spokio. And he predicts that video blogging will be the next big thing.

Anneke: After the panel spoke, someone challenged you by asking how many decision makers have the time to read blogs, follow Twitter or Facebook streams.  How did you answer that question?
Mark: I gently suggested he think outside the box and look beyond a direct cause and effect.  I can track specific, measurable business results to my new marketing approaches.  But it goes beyond that.  I am building awareness and reaching an international audience at an extremely low cost. This, in addition to my pedigree, leads to credibility and trust.  People in my field now recognize my name. That’s worth a lot. There is no doubt in my mind that my activities are increasing revenue and profitability.

Tags: Blogs, Green Compliance Plus, Joel Robare, Mark English, Sales 2.0, social media, The Architect's Take