sales

17 Nov 09

The Wrong Definition of Sales 2.0

"I believe that Sales 2.0 is the addition of new processes and tools layered on top of traditional sales principles that when combined can enable more effective selling. Sales 2.0 is like combining the art and science of sales together for a synergistic effect — one component is not nearly as explosive without the other."

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Social Software 2.0: Enterprise Process Ubiquity

"In talking with people about the Enterprise 2.0 industry, I like to insert yet another versioning number scheme:

* Social Software 1.0
* Social Software 2.0"

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socialsoftware enterprise2.0 crm workflow process sales

Social Software 1.0 is the “Tools Era”. Put these collaboration and information sharing tools in place, then let the benefits flow. And the benefits do flow.
Here’s how I define Social Software 2.0:

The integration of collaboration, increased findability, social networking and crowdsourcing into core enterprise activities requiring defined workflows, specific user sign-offs, results measurement and role-based access.
1 more annotations...
- In Social Software 1.0, that’s a standalone wiki. I’m a fan of the notion that collaboration needs to occur in-the-flow of work. And having a separate wiki for collaborating on a customer quotation analysis makes it tougher to get usage.
  
  In Social Software 2.0, that’s a collaborative space integrated into a sales force automation application. The customer quotation analysis occurs right where all the “action” occurs in the effort to win new business.

04 Nov 09

Vendre !: La motivation n'est plus ce qu'elle était !

"Au long de ma vie professionelle, j'ai souvent entendu des dirigeants avisés affirmer avec une fière assurance : "de toutes façons, il n'y a que le plan de commissionnement pour faire courir mes vendeurs. Le reste c'est du bla bla".

Le principe de base est très simple en effet. Si vous voulez que vos commerciaux fassent ce que vous attendez d'eux, il suffit de mettre en place les récompenses (ou incentives, pour parler dans cet abominable jargon franglais qui envahit toutes nos correspondances désormais) qui vont bien. Plus tu fais ce pour quoi je te paye, plus je te paye."

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sales incentive performance

2. Tant que les objectifs commerciaux peuvent être atteints à travers la répétition "mécanique" de tâches élémentaires, le système traditionnel de motivation par l'argent fonctionne conformément aux attentes : plus le système de commissionnement est attractif, plus haute sera la performance du vendeur ;
3. En revanche, lorsque l'atteinte des objectifs commerciaux passe par la sollicitation de facultés cognitives ne serait-ce que rudimentaires, alors le système traditionnel
de motivation par l'argent fonctionne à rebours du principe ayant prévalu à son élaboration : plus
le système de commissionnement est attractif, moins bonne sera la
performance du vendeur ;
1 more annotations...
- 5. Dans la plupart des organisations, la définition des plans de motivation des salariés (incluant le sacro-saint plan de commissionnement des commerciaux) ou des politiques de rétention des talents s'appuie sur des hypothèses de travail complètement erronées du point de vue des sciences sociales ;

23 Oct 09

Social CRM Strategies for Sales

"VP of Sales: “I don’t have enough leads!”

VP of Marketing: “You’re not following up on the leads I gave you!”

Much of this discord seems to relate to the definition of a “lead”. (And no, I’m not going to dive into the even more contentious definitional world of terminology over what we call these things we give to sales). That’s up to each organization to decide – but unless sales and marketing are on the same page, there’s going to be trouble.

Clearly, the sales team is expecting the “lead” to have reached a level of discernible buying interest. We’ve seen that tools like lead nurturing communities with lead scoring can help identify the buying interest before the sales team contacts the lead. I will suggest that in addition to having discernable buying interest, there is another operational difference that comes into play when the lead moves from marketing to sales: the lead is ready to receive more personalized information about the product or services being sold."

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lead leadgeneration sales socialcrm communities RFP businessprocess

Providing a social business process that facilitates the questioning and sharing of answers is an excellent function for Social CRM, BTW. All of the strategies that relate to Social CRM for customer service come into play for this application. After all, you’re trying to efficiently share the expertise of your best subject matter experts – just as in customer service.
Imagine a living social “RFP answering” community. What if you took every question that came with an RFP and put it into your online community as a question (along with the answer) and the ability for others to ask more deeply about the question, or even to answer and discuss?
2 more annotations...
- Clearly some RFP questions would not be appropriate for this kind of treatment.
- Another concept we’ve used to good effect in our communities is that of the VIP Room. We create them for all our customers as repositories for the work products of professional services engagements and training

30 Sep 09

Thoughts on Sales 2.0 from Lee Levitt

"From my perspective, Sales 2.0 is not about technology. It’s about improving the capabilities of the seller and the organization behind the seller. Technology is just one of the components of improved sales productivity. The primary component is improved processes. With a healthy focus on what works and what needs improving in the sales organization, executives can identify the processes that must be improved. Then and only then should technology be brought in to ensure that those processes scale"

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Sales people spend way too much time searching for information, giving up and creating sales assets on their own (assets that typically exist elsewhere in the organization).
Sales 2.0 empowers sales people with simple, efficient access to information about customers and prospects already in context, usable from the start. Pulling this information together, analyzing it, cleaning it, ensuring that it is relevant — these activities should be done by a centralized group and then provided to the sales person or team at the right time — just before a call planning session.
1 more annotations...
- It’s all about pipeline hygiene — efficiency and effectiveness of “co-creating” value with the prospect or customer. Selling is dead.

22 Sep 09

The Social CRM Virtuous Cycle

In this installment of our Social CRM Blog Series, we’ll be turning from “Why” you should be looking at Social CRM to “How” you should think about it for your own organization. For that purpose, Helpstream developed a concept to help visualize this process—we call the Social CRM Virtuous Cycle:

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socialcrm customers customerservice sales marketing leadgeneration awareness

Listening is an essential skill for every business function, and Social CRM gives you an unprecedented opportunity to hear what’s being said—both within your own customer community and throughout the broader Web through social monitoring tools
Getting the word out is always high on the marketing agenda—Social CRM is a helpful vehicle for doing this. Word-of-mouth begins with your customers. It is important to make sure your marketing is delivering the right words to the right mouths;
3 more annotations...
- Find a role for other Influencers and interested parties to play in your community. Invite them to join your conversations. Make sure you have discussions and content available that will appeal to those audiences. A proper social platform will give you all the tools you need to create a personalized experience that differs for customers, prospects, influencers and even competitors and naysayers—now you can minimize the downside and maximize the upsides
- Once you’ve got leads visiting your community, it’s time to look for opportunities to close. A properly configured Social CRM system and platform will have afforded you the ability to nurture the leads until they’re ready to be sold to.
- Aside from awareness, sales benefits from the three “R”s that communities can readily offer: references, referrals and repeat business.

22 Jul 09

Leaders: Listen to Your Salespeople!

Your best salespeople possess vast knowledge about how to connect with and motivate people - and perhaps take the company to the next level. But they rarely get to share their knowledge with senior managers. As a practitioner and student of business-to-business selling for more than half a century, Clif Reichard has learned to translate sales knowledge into leadership knowledge. This post is one in an occasional series.

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management leadership salespeople sales connect motivation

23 May 09

Ten Ways Twitter has Completely Changed the Sales Process

Twitter is fueling Enterprise 2.0 and changing the sales process by opening up how providers and clients discover, interact and close deals with each other. It’s not hard to imagine that all sales forces will be Twitter-based within a few years (if not Twitter, some other system that ties providers and clients into open networks). Viewed in this light, closed “Twitter” systems like Yammer that keep corporate data and communications more private would limit the sales process to the narrow channels that existed pre-Twitter

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twitter microblogging sales salesprocess

08 Apr 09

Where is the Business Value in Enterprise 2.0?

What we haven’t done so well is make the business value case—how does it help organizations become more productive and competitive?

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Enterprise2.0 value businessvalue problemsolving sales productivity technology organization talentmanagement interactions tacitinteractions

What we haven’t done so well is make the business value case—how does it help organizations become more productive and competitive?

26 Feb 09

Are You Clinging to the Wrong Business? | Above and Beyond KM

In fact, lately Xerox has started to tell its customers not to waste their money on unnecessary machinery purchases and is now selling consulting services to help those customers better manage the equipment they have in order to make their end-to-end printing processes as efficient and cost-effective as possible

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xerox sales goal problems problemsolving km lawyers

WebWorkerDaily » Archive Hard Selling vs. Soft Selling: Which Approach Do You Use With Clients? «

This got me thinking about my own approach to selling my freelance services. Could I get away with saying something similar to a potential client? I can imagine some of them getting turned off, while I can picture others saying “yes.” I wouldn’t dare try it, of course. The sales process is my least favorite part of online freelancing.

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sales socialmedia communities

Hard sell strategies are aggressive and usually put a high amount of pressure on the client. The clerk who sold me the shovel is a simple example. Other tactics include cold calls, forceful sales letters, and unsolicited pitches. You’re there to sell, they know it, and you know it — there’s no gray area.
Soft selling focuses on the relationship-building aspect of sales. You don’t put psychological pressure on potential buyers. Instead, you find passive ways to show them that you have the solutions they need.

08 Feb 09

La performance commerciale, une histoire d'argent ou d'amour ?

Alors, pour développer le business dans ces temps difficiles, David nous confirme qu'il n'est pas nécessaire d'apprendre aux collaborateurs à vendre, ni de monter les enchères sur les primes.

Il faut, au contraire, trouver, partner par partner, manager par manager, quel type de business le passionne, quel type de client il a profondément envie de servir.

Car avec la passion, on le sait tous, on fait des miracles.

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sales incentive motivation management clients prospects businessdevelopment

15 Jan 09

Selling Enterprise 2.0? | Synergise IT

Enterprise 2.0 is not something you can sell by itself. Its like if you sell ice-cream, you have to give a cone/cup to hold the ice-cream. Therefore Enterprise 2.0 is like the cone/cup and other systems like Enterprise Content Management, Information Management, Enterprise Search and Business Intelligence is like the ice-cream. If you are wondering why I say Enterprise 2.0 is like the cone/cup and not the ice-cream, its because, Enterprise 2.0 is not the key technology but the key attitude. Its a culture and belief that supports the organisation to achieve their goals.

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enterprise2.0 sales consulting

22 Sep 08

Les réseaux sociaux améliorent les relations client et augmentent les ventes pour les entreprises - M2IE : le blog du management de l'IE et de l'entreprise 2.0

Une étude (CRM and Social Media: Creating Deeper Customer Relationships) commandée par Avanade et réalisée par le cabinet Coleman Parkes Research explique que les entreprises qui utilisent les réseaux sociaux améliorent leur relation client et augmentent leurs ventes. Cette étude a été menée auprès de 541 cadres supérieurs, en Amérique du Nord, en Europe et en Asie-Pacifique. Cependant, elle met aussi en évidence la frilosité des cadres, comme le principal frein à l'adoption des nouveaux médias tels les réseaux sociaux. Ce qui montre que la plupart des entreprises ne sont pas encore prêtes pour adopter les réseaux sociaux.

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socialnetworking socialnetworks sales

Plus de 75 % des entreprises dans le monde admettent que les réseaux
sociaux s'imposeront, s'ils ne font pas l'objet d'une gestion anticipée
9 sociétés sur 10 reconnaissent que la prochaine génération d'employés
ouvrira la voie à cette évolution au travail.
2 more annotations...
- Plus de 60 % des sondés conviennent que les réseaux sociaux sont l'avenir
  des entreprises en matière de collaboration et de technologie.
- 3 sociétés sur 5 reconnaissent que les dirigeants ne saisissent pas le
  potentiel qu'offrent ces réseaux sociaux, tant aux entreprises qu'aux
  clients.

24 Aug 08

Enterprise 2.0 Startups - Know Your Market

Nowadays, very few companies are worried about hosting mission critical applications outside of their own networks. Security is less of a concern, because companies are generally comfortable with Web security. And SLAs still exist, but they’re not the predominant issue. Most companies understand that web-based / hosted applications stay up fairly well, but nothing is perfect.

But even with many of the biggest issues resolved over the last 10 years, companies are still not adopting Enterprise 2.0 at the pace you would expect. And many Enterprise 2.0 startups can’t get the traction they need.

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enterprise2.0 business market sales startup

. Enterprise 2.0 startups have to be wary about overselling innovation and change, while at the same time not sacrificing the value they bring.

29 Jun 08

5 real life examples to make the case for KM in a sales environment

Consider the following five simple scenarios based on real situations I have witnessed during my time in the Richemont Group. I must stress that I expect these to be relevant today to a majority of retail Organizations, and not only in the luxury sector:

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knowledge knowledgemanagement value valuecreation sales

”[..] an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value” (Louis V. Gerstner, Jr., former CEO of IBM)
By reinventing the wheel we might improve it, but is it worth the costs when all that is needed is a regular wheel?
4 more annotations...
- Knowledge is power and even more now than ever. However, if organizational knowledge is retained and not shared, is the organization as a whole really gaining any lasting power from it?
- Everybody is replaceable, yes but at what costs?
- It is reasonable to assume that each department builds on past successes and is expert in his field. However, wouldn’t each project of a particular department benefit from the proactive input of all other stakeholders?
- Learning and innovation depends on a culture encouraging risk-taking and therefore making “mistakes”. However, shouldn’t this imply that we all collectively learn from these “mistakes” and avoid making them twice?

04 May 08

Vendre !: Pas de jeu sans enjeu

La vente de biens immatériels comme par exemple des logiciels d'entreprise (business-to-business ou B2B) comporte une difficulté majeure : connecter l'acte de vente au métier de l'organisation cliente.

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