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

The Art of Social Sales E-Book: Sales 2.0 Strategies in 5 Industries

I am honored to be included among the authors of this e-book, including Paul Greenberg, who spearheaded the project for The Customer Collective and asked me to contribute. As always, my content focuses on real sales and marketing people, generating measurable results using social media and networking. Do you have a “social sales” success story to share?

Here’s a summary of the book’s topics.  You can download a copy free with registration.

Sales are not often traditionally thought of as a social process. But the behavior of the modern customer is changing. Customers today, in many ways that we’ll explain, can increasingly be described as “social customers,” prompting the contemporary sales organization and even the individual salesperson to rethink how they sell. And that can be daunting for many reasons.

• Learn how high-tech, non-profits, retail, sports and telcos leverage new strategies to engage with customers.
• Develop strategies to use social networks to generate leads and cultivate relationships.
• Learn how companies like newScale and ConnectandSell are using LinkedIn and Twitter.
• Participate in the conversations that your newly empowered consumers are having.

Featuring input from:

	Paul Greenberg is a recognized CRM thought leader, the author of the best-selling CRM at the Speed of Light,  President of The 56 Group, LLC, a customer strategy consulting firm focused on cutting edge CRM strategic services, and a founding partner of the CRM training company BPT Partners, LLC.
	Anneke Seley is  CEO and founder of Phone Works, a sales strategy and implementation consultancy that helps businesses build and restructure sales teams to achieve measurable goals using Sales 2.0 principles. She was previously the twelfth employee at Oracle and the designer of OracleDirect, the company’s revolutionary inside sales operation.
	Jay Dunn is VP of Marketing for Lane Bryant, and Founder of Supergroup, the social network for marketing, social media, retail and design professionals. Jay combines his expertise in marketing, design, and branding with his passion for new media, social networking, and technology to reinterpret retail marketing for a variety of clients.
	Jouko Ahvenainen is a pioneer in social media marketing, and played a significant role in the development of the first social marketing intelligence solutions for mobile and media companies. He is co-founder of Xtract, the world’s first social network analytics company, and Grow VC, the first global peer-to-peer micro-funding service for startups.
	Brian Komar is the Director of Strategic Outreach, Activism and Alliances at the Center for American Progress, overseeing three portfolios focused on strategic marketing efforts to strengthen the capacity of progressive advocates and networks, amplify the progressive voice, and extend the reach of the Center’s policy work.
	Mark DiMaurizio is VP of Technology Solutions for Comcast- Spectacor, overseeing the company’s sales and marketing technologies for its Philadelphia sports properties (Philadelphia Flyers, Philadelphia 76ers) and all events at their two Philadelphia venues.

Tags: E-book, Paul Greenberg, Sales 2.0, social media, social networking

Confessions, True Stories & Free Drinks: Social Media Session at the Chicago Sales 2.0 Conference

After a long day of sessions covering Sales Lead Management 2.0, Customer Engagement Strategies,  and the Sales 2.0-Driven Sales Process,  we knew we had to wow the audience of 250 people to keep them engaged. Along with expert moderator David Thompson, CEO of Genius.com, my social media panel-mates, Kevin Popovic, President of Ideahaus, and Nigel Edelshain, CEO of Sales 2.0 LLC, and I  took to the stage last Thursday with beers and glasses of wine in hand.  David, who knows how to warm a crowd,  kicked off our session by announcing “the bar is open!” and set the stage with an overview on the incredible growth of social media (More than 275 million blogs! More than 300 million active Facebook users! ) Kevin, who looks the part of a social media guru (think blond California surf god) kicked off the panel with a staggering survey of all things social media and an introduction of his concept of Satellite Marketing (TM).   Part professor, part British comedy guy Nigel, who authored the popular e-book, “Don’t Cold Call. Social Call” spoke next and showed how prospect outreach + social media to research and personalize conversations produces greater than eight times better results than traditional prospecting (love those metrics!)

I started my presentation with a confession: “a  little over a year ago, I was a social media skeptic.”  Much to my surprise, I’m now considered enough of an expert in using social media and social networking in the sales process that I am invited to speak on the topic at events such as this.

How did this happen?!

Earlier this year, I was introduced to someone who became my company’s largest client this year.  This may sound commonplace except for one thing: the introduction was made on Facebook. It was enough to make a convert out of me.  Given my own experience starting out with some serious doubts about the ROI of using new media in sales, I focused my talk on a live demo showing  three examples of success featuring real people in real companies generating real results. I told personal stories to show how social media and social networking are helping sales and marketing people generate qualified leads and revenue.

Example #1: Dell Computer’s DellOutlet Twitter team
Dell has generated $2million in revenue in 2 years by attracting over a million followers to its Twitter property, which promotes returned and refurbished products; $3million if you count the additional $1M in sales generated from new products purchased from its main dell.com site that originated from a link in Twitter. It took Dell 18 months to realize the first $1M from Twitter and only six months to generate its second million.

Example #2:Dan Harding, Regional Director of Sales at ConnectandSell

Dan claims 80% of his qualified leads are coming from referrals, social networking and social media, which he considers technologies that leverage his personal referral network.  I wrote about Dan’s use of LinkedIn, which includes using SlideShare and frequent updates to his status to stay front of mind with his contacts, in an earlier post, “Social Networking in Sales: Show Me the Money”. Every time I talk to Dan, who exemplifies a Sales 2.0 leader,  he has a new successful approach to report. He recently closed sales worth 50% of his monthly quota by using social networking to stay connected to customers who have changed jobs.  He learned of these customers’ job changes through LinkedIn Messages and then requested an introduction (via LinkedIn, of course) to the new company.  The new sales closed within 30 days. Dan also “social calls” by reading his customers’ blogs, blogs that are popular in the vertical industries he targets, and blogs that his customers read.  RSS feeds alert him when updates are available, which triggers new personalized customer contacts. Dan then weaves the blog content into his outreach message, letting prospects know he is following them, their industry, or their area of interest.

Example #3: Mark Hamilton, former VP of Marketing at newScale

Mark, who recently left newScale’s CMO post to found a stealth startup,  launched a mixed media campaign which included both traditional programs (press releases, email, webinars) as well as new media (blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn Groups) to announce a new product to a new market and offer a free trial.  The social media used content as the draw to the offer rather than a traditional product push. Within 30 days, $3million in incremental revenue was added to the sales pipeline, 2/3 of which came from social media and networking. 50% of the traditional sales opportunities were qualified opportunities. 90% of those coming from social programs were qualified. As a result, newScale is increasing its investments in social media.

Gerhard Gschwandtner, conference host and Publisher of Selling Power, concluded the session by letting us know he is a strong advocate of social media in sales.  Not only is he on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, among other social networks, he is also blogging once a day.  Check out his post on the Social Media panel for another perspective.

How are you using (or thinking of using) social media and social networking in your sales and marketing efforts? What results are you seeing?

Tags: Sales 2.0, Social Calling, social media, social networking

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