|
Sunday, August 03, 2008
Sales 2.0
Sales 2.0 is a new approach to B2B sales. Quite simply, the Sales 2.0 approach provides sales organizations:
- Increased proximity to prospects
- The ability to replicate and standardize selling best practices
- Superior visibility into sales rep effectiveness
The result is greater intimacy with your prospects/ repeat customers. However the process in effect actually works in reverse:
- Top organizations understand what their best sales reps do to sell effectively
- Understanding high value sales activities helps detail the sales process steps
- Sales 2.0 organizations then take this best process and standardize it across the sales team. In effect, they can upgrade the behavior of their mediocre sales reps.
- Of course, the end result is increased proximity to prospects and customers (and implicitly, increased sales with effective use of resources)
The ability to implement this change is enabled by sales 2.0 applications and tools. At this point a good question to ask is:
What about the Sales 2.0 social network?
So far, it's been difficult to see an application has been able to define meta-social network at an organizational level. However, I believe that social networks do exist within within sales. The sales social networks in any given territory are informal social networks that are clustered around prospects with a similar profile or problem set. The best sales reps are able to recognize, understand, build, penetrate, and connect within these sales social networks at a local level and that defines their ongoing success. Engaging the social network is part of the sales reps best practice.
Sales 2.0 applications help you recognize and implement such best practices. Coming up next: How?
Comments:
Sales may represent an opportunity for social networks, but the real killer apps lie in social networks for servicing technical products.
Why? Because this paradigm mirrors the real world with better potential systems. Expert servicers are always staying in touch via conferences, local chapters, and lately, text and Web boards. Better social networks for these skills based trades would really be a win.
There is nothing on the market yet that had addressed this opportunity, and the VC is just not interested.
This sounds like it was written by a bot. Meaningless.
Good stuff. What put you onto the topic? Seems like a shift from the past threads.
# // Aaron Ross // 6:09 AM
Umair,
Have you been blog jacked. Doesn't read like your writing?
In a way, I think this idea aligns with Doc Searls's VRM concept. But I think most salespeople who are in power right now will be against this sort of transparency, especially when you consider how powerful sales departments are at a lot of organizations. They are the rock stars of the company. I really like this idea, but I think it might take a generation or so before we see this happening at a lot of organizations (but I hope I am wrong).
The social networks for servicing technical products is a great example of the power of localization. In sales organizations, local area networks are fundamental to these people connect.
I think this is Kashif Hasan posting.
Hey, Kasif, introduce yourself.
Aberdeen Research has a new free report all about Sales 2.0. It's interesting because it talks to what the more successful companies are doing technologically to improve the sales process. It's free and a good read.
http://www.aberdeen.com/includes/asp/sponsored_registration.asp?ci=/launch/report/benchmark/5308-RA-social-about-selling.asp&spid=30411419
(For full disclosure, the company I work for is one of the sponsors).
Post a Comment
|
