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Posted by Trish Bertuzzi on Fri, Jun 11, 2010 @ 07:44 AM
The Sales 2.0 Conference is coming to town again and this one just gets better and better. Last year our clients had to be cajoled into attending, but this year they're excited to learn about the sales transformation that is taking place. Of course, our clients are the best and brightest so of course they are constantly seeking a competitive advantage!!
If you are still confused about Sales 2.0, let me give you our definition:
Sales 2.0 is the effective integration of people, process and technology
Where the 2.0 movement goes slightly off the rails is when it gets hijacked by just the technology piece. If you hire the wrong people or fail to craft an effective process, all the technology in the world won't make you successful. Or, as we like to say, "A fool with a tool is still a fool". You can find out more about our thoughts on this topic with Have You Mastered Sales 1.5?
Along those lines, I recently read a post by Donal Daly on the Customer Think blog: Don't Ever Buy a Sales 2.0 Tool. Here's an excerpt:
Everyone, especially men, seems to love the tooling analogies in business. "That's a great tool for the job." "This is an extra tool in your kit-bag." This metaphor for the digital world - the manual, physical paradigm - may suggest positive images of visible progress, but can obviate the need for what should be an obvious question. What job are you trying to get done? What problem are you trying to solve?
Donal hit the nail on the head! He goes on to say:
So, next time a vendor wants to show you his shiny Sales 2.0 tool, ask them:
- Do you understand my business?
- What's the most important task on my list?
- Which urgent business problem of mine does your ‘tool' address?
- How does it fit in with my strategic priorities?
There are going to be any number of best in class vendors at the Sales 2.0 conference. We use many of their technologies in our own business. But, the ones we work with and recommend have solid answers to the questions listed above.
So, if you want to learn more about this interesting movement, come to the conference! Here are some of the highlights:
Sales 2.0 Conference, Boston - June 28- Sales & Marketing Alignment
- Compensation & Sales Performance
- How to Create a Sales 2.0 Operation that Delivers Double-Digit Growth
- Sales Process Management and Metrics
- Keys to Sales Success in the Cloud
- Sales Triggers: How to Find Hidden Opportunities & Shorten Sales Cycles
Hope to see you there and would love to chat about your people and process to tie it all together for you!
| The Impact of Sales 2.0 Tool Report |
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Learn more about adoption, effectiveness & impact of Sales 2.0 tools for B2B Sales & Marketing groups.
Based on surveys of over 90 B2B companies. |
Posted by Trish Bertuzzi on Tue, Jun 08, 2010 @ 07:42 AM
I recently attended the American Association of Inside Sales Professionals Leadership Summit. I have to say it was one of the best events I have ever attended! The audience of 250 of Inside Sales practitioners were from companies ranging from big dogs (Oracle, Apple, FedEx, etc.) to startups/growth-stage companies. The vendors that exhibited were all relevant to Inside Sales and very well informed about how their solutions increase productivity. All in all, a great investment in time. At the Summit, we at The Bridge Group took our first foray into the world of video. I asked different members of the audience: What is your Ah Ha moment for Inside Sales in 2010?
We got some great responses. (Note: Before you watch the video, let me say this…I am not quitting my day job. Apparently if you put a camera in front of me I turn into a talking bobble head doll. I will get better I promise!)
Ah-Ha Moment for Inside Sales in 2010
So, what is your Ah Ha moment? Where is this profession going and what gets you fired up every day? We would love to hear from you!
Posted by Matt Bertuzzi on Wed, Jun 02, 2010 @ 07:48 AM
Recently I ran across a discussion on LinkedIn "What advice would you give this sales manager about customer contact?" (note: the discussion is behind a LinkedIn group gate). In it, an email is shared that a Manager sent to their team. It reads:
Subject: Call your customers
Team,
This is a great time to call back your customers. Many of you have not called all your customers for a while.
Just call and check with them how they are doing. It goes a long way in helping you get additional business.
One of the commenters offered the following advice:
If the issue is customer contact ... no you shouldn't just "check in" and see how they are doing.
Have a purpose and an objective. Have a prepared opening statement that will pique their client to want to continue the conversation.
This advice reminded me of a truly excellent whitepaper follow-up email I received a few weeks back. The email so impressed me that I immediately shared it with my team as an example of what to do.
Since Trish recently shared The Worst Sales Email EVER, I wanted to put up this email as its direct antithesis.
What I liked
- A Reference and link to the specific item that interested me
Far too often, Inside Sales Reps will make passing mention of "the whitepaper you downloaded". By being specific, it shows that the Rep is tuned in to the topic that originally got my attention and make the email instantly relevant to me.
- A conclusion based on the report
Better than a reference to the item I downloaded, Reps can share their impression, or a notable conclusion, from it. While not requiring profound analysis, these comments will set Reps apart in that they aren't simply "following up," but have some insight into why I would have downloaded the report in the first place.
- It offered addtional value
I particularly like that (at right) another related and relevant piece of content is offered to me. This isn't simply the next webinar or latest download piece, but a complimentary report to what I already responded to.
- It sells the conversation
I've shared my thoughts on that topic before. I appreciate the way that the Rep gives me the option to raise my hand and say "You know what? You seem like you might get what is is I do here. Let's talk."
So what's the takeaway?
I ran across this article from Ardath Albee Staying Top of Mind is Not the Goal for Email Marketing. To re-work her conclusion (bold being my words):
In essence, checking in must become selling the conversation. Checking in is tactical. Selling the conversation is strategic. It's a different mindset. The process of selling the conversation helps companies focus on prospects, instead of on themselves. And that's what matters to your buyers.
I am very interested in your thoughts. Please feel free to share.
Posted by Gail Milton on Tue, May 25, 2010 @ 07:36 AM
Earlier this month I attended the AA-ISP Leadership Summit in Minneapolis. I came away with pages of notes, picked up some great new ideas and learned about a lot of interesting technology. It was also great to get confirmation on best practices from the thought leaders that I respect and follow and, lucky for me, they were there! On a personal note, the highlight for The Bridge Group was Trish receiving the Special Recognition Lifetime Contribution Award! That really meant a lot to her. In fact, I think I might have noticed a tear or two when she came back to the table. So, I wanted to share a bit about what I found most interesting from the Summit:
Tools, Tools, Tools Josiane Feigon and Nancy Nardin ran a very concise session on technologies that support the Inside Sales effort. You can download their ebook on Smart Selling Tools to learn more about where various tools fit in the buying cycle.
Summer Reading I added some books to my summer reading list. Has anyone out there read these? What did you think? What else should I add to my list?
Email Best Practice I’ve shortened my emails to keep pace with smart phones, but Mike Damphousse of Green Leads says to make them even shorter! I’ll give it a try. Here is his suggestion: - Only write 3 sentences
- Make the last sentence a question.
Sales and Marketing Alignment Mark Roberge, Hubspot's VP of Sales used a great expression to describe the consequences of not having Sales & Marketing in alignment. He called it “Sales Numbness”. Common Sales complaints are: “The marketing leads are terrible” and “The qualified leads I get from my inside teams are terrible”. Mark cautions that 10 poor quality leads will ruin the reputation of the entire lot and cause “Sales numbness”. He suggests you create a contract between Sales & Marketing to gain agreement and eliminate the problem.
Best Practices Hiring Here's a great question to ask yourself when making hiring decisions: “Would you want this person to leave voice mail or have a conversation with your CEO?” It is a simple yes or no question but very powerful! In Anneke Seley’s breakout session she was joined by Richard Steinhart of Informatica. Here is a piece of his hiring process: Preparation: Send the candidate a link to a webinar you have published and send them a PowerPoint presentation on your product. Ask the candidate to cut your PPT down to 4 or 5 slides. At Informatica, they use this early in the hiring process (I would adjust this slightly and use it after they made the 1st cut). Then either as a phone screen or as part of the face to face meeting have them present to you and qualify you as if you were a prospect. Interesting, eh?
Summary There were so many breakout sessions and discussions going on, it was impossible to take it all in. I will tell you this though, if you are an Inside Sales executive or practitioner this is a MUST attend conference for next year. Stay tuned to the AA-ISP for upcoming details.
Posted by Trish Bertuzzi on Tue, May 18, 2010 @ 08:01 AM
There is so much great information being published that I feel compelled to share what I find interesting. Here are a few really intriguing pieces that made me stop and say hmmm. ------- ------- I hope you found these useful and interesting! Please post comments and share your thoughts. Your contributions always make us stop and say hmmm….
Posted by Matt Bertuzzi on Fri, May 07, 2010 @ 07:22 AM
Last week LinkedIn rolled out a new feature: “Follow Company”. My initial reaction was that this would just add to the information clutter problems that we’re all facing.
After a week of limited use, I can say my first impression was dead wrong. This tool should be added to the Inside Sales arsenal today.
What it does LinkedIn describes the feature as follows: Starting today, you can be in the loop on new developments, potential business opportunities or even job opportunities by following companies of interest to you Here is how my LinkedIn homepage looked this morning (you can see 2 examples of companies I’ve chosen to follow).
What it gives Reps On this blog and in conversation with clients, we stress the importance of trigger events and delivering timely, relevant & compelling messaging in outbound prospecting efforts. “Follow Company” gives your Reps a stream of potentially relevant trigger events that use changes in the buyer’s environment to potentially engage in conversation. For example: - Departures and/or new hires in target roles
- New job opening in target departments
- Internal role changes that might spur re-engagement
Now, I’m sensitive to the difficult balancing act between crafting buyer-centric messaging and establishing & meeting Inside Sales productivity goals. The reason for my bullishness on this tool is that it’s native to LinkedIn and doesn’t add to the growing list of applications & sites that are involved in pre-call planning.
Who it's best for There are some limitations to which types of organizations can or should be followed. Follow Company works best for: - Companies that are large enough to have formal LinkedIn Company profiles
I've found 3 person shops that have claimed their profiles and much larger organizations that have not.
- Companies that aren't so large as to inundate you with information
Netflix, for example, had 1 role change, 8 job postings & 4 employee departures all within the last 7 days.
But what do you think? How do we walk the fine line between preparation and activity?
Can this tool be useful in your Reps’ prospecting efforts? Also, here’s a great write-up on the how to use Follow Company. Thanks for listening
Posted by Trish Bertuzzi on Wed, May 05, 2010 @ 07:03 AM
 I am throwing down a gauntlet and asking you dear readers to take it up. Every day I have conversations with vendors, consultants, analysts and clients about Sales & Marketing alignment. You can’t swing a cat without finding some blog or another talking about the very same thing. But, when does the rubber meets the road? Yes, we can get all cerebral and plan, strategize, define and measure but if you really want your Sales & Marketing organizations to understand each other’s challenges – they need to walk a mile in each other’s shoes. So, here is my “put your money where your mouth is” challenge: If you are a Marketing Executive, are you willing to take 100 random leads that you generated and jump on the phone to qualify them? Track the process you used, the time it took and the results you derived and then report back to Sales. All the meetings and brainstorming sessions in the world will not give you the same level of visibility into the quality of your leads that this exercise will. Oh, and if you are fortunate enough to have a staff, they have to grab 100 as well. If you are a Sales Executive, you have to design a marketing campaign and execute it. You have to target the audience, write the message/offer and pick the medium for communication. You also have to track the process you used, the time it took and the results you derived and then report back to Marketing. Oh, and everyone who ever used the words “I need more leads or these leads stink”, they have to design campaigns as well. So, who will volunteer for this? If you volunteer it would be our pleasure to post the results and what you learned about each other through the process. C’mon, a mile isn't so far is it? (Image credit: Watt_Dabney)
Posted by Trish Bertuzzi on Wed, Apr 28, 2010 @ 07:35 AM
OK, this is a rant so read on only if you are in the mood.
Yesterday I received the following email. Please take a peek:
----
Subject: XYZCo. - bridgegroupinc Partnership
Hi Trish,
Hope is all well.
This is Couldn't Care-less from XYZCo. I am reaching out to explore possibility of partnership between us. Let me know if this could be of interest and if we can set up 30 minutes call in next 2 weeks.
XYZCo. is the real time, truly integrated lead generation, marketing automation, and sales enablement platform that significantly increases sales and marketing productivity, and improves alignment between the two groups. Over 200 companies are already benefiting from XYZCo. today.
Thanks
Couldn't Care-less
Director, Business Development
www.XYZCo.com
----
On Style
Are you kidding me? How much time, effort and energy was put into this communication?
Typos, spacing mistakes, mismatched fonts & sizes, no call to action and no phone number.
On Substance
There is absolutely nothing in this email to show that the sender took the time to learn anything about me or my business. There are no like-customer references, no acknowledgement of my role or business challenges and the email is filled with marketing speak.
Also, the subject line referrences our domain "bridgegroupinc" and not our company name "The Bridge Group, Inc.". This demonstrates the sender's unwillingness to expend 1 click and 5 seconds on the most basic pre-call planning.
On What's In It For Me
So, let me get this straight, you want to talk to me about lead generation, marketing automation and sales enablement and yet your Sales & Marketing processes obviously suck lemons?
Dude, I don't care if your technology could take me to the moon, the only thing you did today was make me feel bad for you and take the time out of my day to write this post on how you sent me the worst email I have EVER received.
Did this come out of the text book for ineffective sales communication? And, to make matters worse, no initial phone call. Just this one-off spam email.
What I'm Asking You to Do
Run don't walk over to your Inside Sales organization and ask to see the last 10 messages they sent to prospects - and that includes those sent via your marketing automation system. You may get a rude awakening!
And end rant - off to do something productive with Clients who care how they are perceived in the market.
PS - If you have recently received a horrendous email and would like to add it to this post, feel free to cut and paste it into a comment. I bet this one will still win the prize!
PPSS - On the flip side, if you think your team does a great job with email communication, pick your favorite and post it in the comments as well. It's OK to brag so give them the kudos they deserve!
Posted by Trish Bertuzzi on Wed, Apr 21, 2010 @ 10:31 AM
There is so much great information being published that I feel compelled to share what I find interesting. Here are a few really intriguing pieces that made me stop and say hmmm. ------- Is Demo Short for Demolition? Author: Dave Stein of Dave Stein's BlogSummary: There are a lot of things to think about when formulating your company’s demo strategy. For a technology company, this is a critical component of building an effective sales process. Doing a demo as an unplanned reaction to a customer request (or demand) is never the right approach. Neither is letting your salespeople lead with a demo because they don’t know how to carry on a discussion with the right people about the customer’s business. Emergence Capital: Profitable Lessons From Freemium Business Models Author: Tom Foremski of Silicon Valley WatcherSummary: A freemium model means that you offer a free version of your online service and try to convert some of those users to premium subscribers through offering additional features and value. Lots of great quotes from 5 freemium model CEO’s. Just Like Russian Roulette, Freemium is a Numbers Game Author: Lincoln Murphy of 16 VenturesSummary: Sparked by Ning killing their free version… So what does this mean for the "Freemium model?" Like most marketing tactics, some will find success with it and others will fail miserably. If you understand that it is simply a marketing ploy and don't build your "business" around Freemium, when it doesn't work, you will be in a better position to recover. If you spend all of your time, money, and resources up front attempting to collect some "critical mass" of users thinking that you'll convert them later when you "turn on the revenue tap" you might have a big, negative surprise waiting for you. -------
So, dear readers, I hope you found these useful and interesting! Please post comments and share your thoughts. Your contributions always make us stop and say hmmm….
Posted by Trish Bertuzzi on Thu, Apr 15, 2010 @ 07:12 AM
OneSource recently conducted the first in a series of B2B SalesPulse surveys. They were kind enough to share a preliminary look at their data with me. What I found most interesting was the divergence of opinion between what is being talked about as best practices around developing pipeline in the "blog/twitter sphere" and what the "feet on the street" think about the same practices.
Let me give you a specific example from the OneSource data:
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From which sources do you get the most qualified opportunities?
(1=Least, 5-Most)
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Channel
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Score
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Outbound Prospecting
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3.7
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Website
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2.9
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Inbound Calls
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2.6
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Email Campaigns
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2.6
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Events & Tradeshows
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2.5
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Social Networking Sites
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2.1
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Direct Mail
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2.1
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Webinars
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1.8
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Here is what I found interesting about this data set:
- Outbound Prospecting is ranked 1st.
Every day I read about how outbound prospecting is dead. Now personally I believe an intelligent combination (with both inbound & outbound strategies) is the way to go, but I am just telling you what I read. It data suggest that Sales Organizations are in agreement with me.
- Inbound calls and email campaigns are tied for 3rd.
This suggests to me that a prospect who picks up the phone and calls is not necessarily, in the long run, any more qualified than someone who responds to an email campaign.
- Events and tradeshows sit pretty much in the middle of the pack.
I expected this category would have had its butt kicked by Social Networking Sites, but I guess not yet.
- Webinars are ranked as the lowest source of Opportunities.
Let me see... how many invitations to webinars do I receive on a daily basis? Answer: dozens. If Sales Organizations don't consider them a good source of leads, why are we doing them? Is this scenario yet another case of confusing "activity" with "opportunity"?
So, what is up with this data? Are we so busy talking to each other about the newest trends that we are forgetting to have real conversations with the people who actually live and die by the pipeline sword? I know that we all track the data in our CRM. Leadsource is tied to every Opportunity and the debate rages on around "how many leads does it take to change a light bulb". But, there is perception and there is reality - so maybe we need to ask the feet on the street (or on the phone as the case may be). So c'mon Sales Guys. Give us your take:
PS - If you are an inbound marketing, email marketing or marketing automation vendor.... we get it.... We'd like to hear from just regular old sales people who are out there pounding the pavement and/or the phones.
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