SalesVPI

Twitter -- What do you read at breakfast?

I've had several colleages ask me lately, "how do you use Twitter for your selling activities?"

Twitter is becomming a primary resource for me for listening, learning and research.

Listening

“It’s not information overload. It’s filter failure.”-- Clay Shirky

Using Twitter to listen to topic specific conversations is a skill we really need to develop. I don't have time to listen to everything. By selecting and cultivating people who share my interests, I leverage their research, insights, ideas and conversations.

I pick up themes, topics and keywords that help me further my listening, but in an efficient way.

Learning

The people I follow regularly tweet and post links to articles, reference sources and tools that provide an efficient way to learn new ideas. I've developed the habit of replacing my morning newspaper with Twitter. Using Hootsuite, or even on my Blackberry with Ubertwitter,I'm able to categorize the primary topics I'm interested in learning about. Using #hastags and Twittersearch I'm able to quickly retrieve conversations and their related links.

Research

Before working on a specific account, I search Twitter to find conversations about the company,their news and events, topics of issues and competitive landscape. Often this as uncovered new people I need to contact but who were not readily available to me. Contacting these people through Twiter has prove a much more effective technique than phone or email.

If I find people at the company who work in functions that are relevan to me, and they are on Twitter, I follow them. It's a great first step, and the next best thing, to being in direct relationship. How else can you "listen in" to what they are thinking and saying.

My Process

At breakfast, I open Ubertwitter on my Blackberry and start to review my tweets. I typically keep the application open so the app has been accumulating tweets long before I long on. As I find tweets that interest me or people in my organization, especially those with links to great resources, I simply email the tweet to myself or my colleagues.

When I have time I can review, print, or post those tweets to our wiki. I can access the resources referenced. It's a fast, easy and interesting way to expand my listening, learning and research. I'm addicted.

Inside Sales Need Visual Support

In the B2B complex sale, more selling is occurring over the telephone than ever before. Whether part of a formal inside selling function, or as direct sales people working in the early stages of the customer engagement process, phone meetings and conference calls are the norm, not the exception.

Phone-based sellers can dramatically impact their customers and their sales effectiveness by delivering visual support to voice conversations with live web meeting technology.

For a decade we've heard from companies like Webex and Citrix that web meetings can give sales people a better way to conduct sales meetings without travelling to meet with customers.

Well, maybe, but I find myself frequently quoting from Lance Armstrong's autobiography, "It's Not About the Bike." It's not about the technology.

What's required to make effective use of web conferencing technology by inside sales?

1. Content. Specifically content that supports the conversations sales people have with customers. Without the right content, the technology is useless, or worse, it can become a negative experience for customers and frustrating for sales people.
2. Easy Access. Most visual content is created and stored as PowerPoint shows -- presentations. But a sales conversation is not a presentation. We need easy access to individual slides or groups of slides to address specific customer questions, to support a complex idea, or to deliver a proof point. We need to be able to do it quickly, almost without thinking. We don't have time to remember which deck has the slides we need, which directory they're stored in and to extract them so they can be presented.




3. Training and Support. We train people to have effective sales conversations over the telephone. Sales people need training and practice to comfortably use web conferencing during their sales calls. They need technical and technique call support in the early stages. A debriefing process should regularly identify missing but required content and quickly develop and update the repository.
4. Infrastructure Support. Unlike webinars and e-learning, many sales conversations are established in an ad hoc manner. Sales people and their customers need easy, instant access to web meetings, including minimal software downloads or plug-ins.

Visuals are engaging. They help not only message delivery, but message understanding. They help people "see" what we're talking about. Appropriate visual content, used correctly, make phone conversations efficient and effective.

But this shouldn't be left to sales people to figure out. A support program will pay rich dividends.

Accessing Intelligence on Customers and Prospects

Jim Dickie's article in CustomerThink makes a strong case that good sources of content exist to help sales people better understand customers, especially the challenges they are facing.

His annual survey reveals 49.5% of participating firms surveyed reported that they needed improvement at thoroughly researching customers and prospects. His article suggests sources for assistance.

Over the past 18 months we've made significant progress in this area. Here are some of the tools our sales people use:

Landslide -- this is our basic selling environment which provides the essential contact information but more importantly, great tools to manage our selling process, activity notes, private individual portals, and great reporting and dashboards.

Inside View -- is integrated right into Landslide, so when working on an account or opportunity we see, with one click, summary company information, key people, key news, even job openings.

Stratascope -- for in-depth company research and simple, visual reporting on key business issues and financial realities along with competitive comparisons.

ZoomInfo -- for looking up contacts at target companies. We also use Jigsaw.

Linked-in -- getting better and better not just as a network and referral tool (VERY important), but for searching contacts at specific companies, and joining affinity groups to make referrals and company research even easier and faster.

Sales Genius -- for allowing sales to generate email campaigns quickly and easily to groups as well as individuals, and to track viewing of emails and links to programs and our websites. This helps us know who is really interested, and who (for whatever reason), never even viewed our communication.

Leadlander -- notifies sales reps when customers and prospects visit our website, and which pages they viewed. This helps us better understand areas of interest, but especially timing.

iCentera -- to manage all our documents in one central repository, and create customer and campaign portals to deploy relevant content to prospects and customers. Makes it easier than embedding content into emails, and convenient for customers to view content when they are interested. Tracks individual viewing and provides marketing aggregate data on how our content is used. Supports our "drip marketing" campaigns, and quick emails (with links to content) to individuals and groups.

These are the tools used by our selling organization and doesn't include the marketing tools.

Are you ready for the coming multimedia tsunami?

Our communication culture has shifted -- communicators and audiences alike are now demanding dynamic rather than static methods of information delivery.

This is illustrated in a recent Wall Street Journal article of March 4, 2008: The New Workplace Rules: No Video Watching. (link requires subscription)

"In December, Internet users watched more than 10 billion videos on-line, according to comScore Inc. -- one of the single heaviest months for on-line-video consumption since comScore began tracking it in 2006." 10 billion videos viewed on-line in a single month!

Shifts in culture provide opportunities or organizations to think differently and take action to create competitive advantage. This shift is no different.

Today, how does your organization use multimedia in its daily sales operation to communicate with customers?

How would you feel if you learned tomorrow that your key competitor had their sales people using multimedia on a regular basis to:

• Create executive summary multimedia proposals
• Address and respond to customer questions and objections
• Deliver customer stories in the customer voice
• Regularly communicate in personalized, tailored ways with each stakeholder in a Target Account selling model
• Get new customers engaged in conversations sooner
• Receive "voice in the helmet" sales coaching in the minutes prior to sales calls?

Consider, you use multimedia for training/e-learning and marketing (webinars/Flash). What if you had a process that made this a practical tool for sales?

And it will require a different process than that used for training and marketing. The sales use model is different. Content is different. Sales people will need support unlike that required by trainers and marketing people.

But the trend is clear. High demand for video consumption today is a pre-cursor for high demand for production tomorrow. The multimedia tsunami is coming to a computer near you. Are you ready?

Sales Communications 1.0 vs. 2.0

The upcoming Sales 2.0 conference in San Francisco October 29 & 30 has me thinking of the sales communication distinctions in this new era of selling with the web and multimedia resources.

Sales 2.0 conversations are characterized by a scientific approach to messaging, relevance through tailored messages and content, the impact of effective visual and multimedia content, and delivery using ALL appropriate delivery mechanisms.

Aligning organizations -- marketing and sales -- is best accomplished through a defined methodology. The complexity of today's sales conversations, and the flexibility required to adapt messages to stakeholders, buying stages and competive situations, necessitates a more scientific approach to sales messaging.

A defined and documented methodology makes it possible to delegate the creation of sales messaging to  individuals in marketing or cross-functional teams. It also provides a way to measure and manage quality and consistency across product or solution groups.

Burger King figured out years ago that consumers want to "have it your way". Sales professionals must address customer demands for relevant messages and content that delivers those messages.

Busy decision makers want sales professionals to simplify the delivery of complex messages. "Visual explanations" are not just to help the sales professional deliver complex messages, they help the customer "see" and understand messages. Audio explains complexity and nuance through the "voice of the expert". Together, audio and graphics help customer sponsors re-communicate important messages to colleagues.      

As communication content becomes richer, so too are the delivery vehicles: streaming multimedia shows, downloaded MP3 files, web conferencing, blogs, private websites (portals), cell phones and PDAs.

The effective execution of Sales 2.0 communication principles will distinguish professional selling organizations from those who wing it. Initially, this will be a basis for competitive advantage. In the long run, we all will have to become proficient with new communication mediums.