Sales Blog with Sales Tips

Something very interesting is occurring in web-based online research. This phenomenon directly affects sales because we all know it is important to research prospective customers – and decision makers – prior to contacting them. The web is one of our primary tools for gathering that information.

Some Preliminary Data
Facebook’s user base is over 250,000,000 and the 35+ age group (i.e. potential buyers, decision makers and purchasing managers) is one of its fastest growing demographics. That’s huge. Twitter doesn’t publish its user base numbers, but it is estimated to be in the hundreds of millions (probably more users than Facebook at this time). LinkedIn claims over 40 million users. The growth rates of all three are staggering. With each new user, we’re beginning to see a shift.

An Unexpected Change
Historically, most sales professionals have turned to Google to begin the process of ferreting out information about prospects and decision makers. But, there is something missing in Google’s search results that is critical when gathering sales information. Relationship data. There’s nothing personal about the results returned from a search engine like Google.

As a result, Google is beginning to lose ground to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter when it comes to individuals researching companies and people. As Mr. Spock used to say, “fascinating.” Why is this? Social media tools have the ability to add personal data to the results; Google provides nothing more than facts and figures. This added dimension is something everyone can appreciate, but it’s especially important to sales professionals.

Sales Tips For Searching Beyond Google
The next time you’re preparing to contact a prospect for the first time, take advantage of social media and add a new, and extremely important, dimension to your information gathering: personal data. The additional information you’ll glean from these sites is likely to be the most important you’ll add to your knowledge basket before making that first contact.

©2010 Scott R. Sheaffer

It’s a marketing axiom; everything must reinvent itself to stay “fresh.” Brand managers are certainly aware of this. It’s an irony that one of the last professions to latch on to this concept is sales.

In medicine, proctologists are now branded as gastroenterologists. See how effective this can be?

Let’s face it, we are essentially still teaching and using sales techniques from the 1950’s. Frankly, the sales profession could use some rebranding.

Sales Two Dot Oh!
The new branding is known as Sales 2.0. It is a concept that is about three years old and the hippest trend in sales. In short, it addresses the integration of CRM (Customer Relationship Management), social media (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter) and new data resources (e.g. Jigsaw) into the sales process.

More Details Please
I’ll admit that Sales 2.0 is catchy sounding, but no one has been able to successfully define it. If you google “Sales 2.0″ you’ll get over 100,000 hits. It seems each site is either trying to define Sales 2.0 or attempting to sell you something because it’s somehow related to Sales 2.0. Sales professionals know that everyone prefers to buy whatever is stylish at the moment.

Selling Power magazine interviewed a group of industry experts (whatever “industry experts” means in sales) and they came up with the following definition late last year for Sales 2.0:

“Sales 2.0 brings together customer-focused methodologies and productivity-enhancing technologies that transform selling from an art to a science. Sales 2.0 relies on a repeatable, collaborative and customer-enabled process that runs through the sales and marketing organization, resulting in improved productivity, predictable ROI and superior performance.”

Is it just me, or is this definition missing something? Substance, for example. It reminds me of the end result of a long meeting to put together a corporation’s mission statement. Those can run into the wee hours and always produce the kind of cloudy results we see above.

Basic Sales Tips On Sales 2.0
It’s still early in the game. Here’s what you need to know right now about Sales 2.0:

1. Sales 2.0 is ripped off from the term “Web 2.0.” Web 2.0 can be as confusing as Sales 2.0 and many of their elements are interchangeable.

2. Sales 2.0 hasn’t turned out to be a game changer. I’m a big cheerleader for updating how sales professionals approach their craft, but I’m not sure a name change and some ambiguous concepts are the answer. But, it is a start.

3. CRM is a great idea, but the reality is that the majority of installations have been less than fruitful. Getting CRM successfully integrated into more companies with a demonstrable ROI (Return on Investment) would be a good starting place for Sales 2.0 to shore up its credibility. If CRM is to be considered one of the foundational elements of Sales 2.0, it needs to clean up its act.

4. Social media (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter) have come a long way in the last two to three years, especially with the 35+ crowd. Most companies and individuals haven’t quite figured out how to use Facebook and Twitter to make money. LinkedIn is a different animal in that it focuses on professional relationships instead of the “I’m eating a ham sandwich” status update crowd. LinkedIn may be a dark horse here.

There are enough social media “experts” available for hire that the roofing industry is running out of shingles for these charlatans to hang outside their office doors. Clearly, most don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.

5. The sleeper of the entire Sales 2.0 branding exercise is the new data resources that are evolving, the best example being Jigsaw. Jigsaw is revolutionizing how information is gathered prior to making the first call to a prospect. Collaboration is the name of the game. The information disadvantage the sales professional used to deal with vis-à-vis the prospect is being eliminated. “Cold calling” is becoming outdated. This is a part of Sales 2.0 that has teeth and can change how we approach sales.

Sales Blog Epilogue: The Future Of Sales 2.0
I think Sales 2.0 as a branding exercise will be short lived. However, as is true with all trendy concepts (e.g. Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Emotional IQ, etc.), the best elements will persevere and become part of our profession.

Those elements will most likely be:

• CRM systems that actually serve a purpose other than a “we should have this software because everyone says we should” exercise
• LinkedIn (if they don’t cave in to the “I’m eating a ham sandwich” status update crowd)
• Jigsaw and other websites that provide current and relevant contact information

©2010 Scott R. Sheaffer

If you want to keep up with the latest information about any of the items listed below, I want to introduce you to a tool that is powerful, free, easy to use and completely automatic. Once you set things up – which is easy – you don’t have to do anything else except wait for relevant information to come to you.

1. Your customers
2. Targeted prospects
3. Specific decision makers at customers/prospects
4. Competitors
5. Industry trends

In short, this tool will enable you to stay on top of the latest breaking news about your customers and your industry.

What’s The Tool?
The tool I’m talking about is Google Alerts. Google didn’t design Google Alerts with the sales professional in mind, but after using it for a few weeks, you’ll swear they did. You simply set up the terms you want Google Alerts to monitor and it does the rest (e.g. XYZ Co., Debbie Smith, smartphone, etc.). Any time there is new information about the terms you specified, you will be notified. How cool is that?

Some Quick FAQs about Google Alerts
1. Can I set up multiple alerts? Yes. You can set up to 1,000 of them.
2. How can I receive these alerts? Email or RSS feed.
3. Can I specify where I want Google to look for these alerts? Yes.

• A “News” alert contains the latest news articles with the search terms of your choice that appear in the top ten results of Google’s News search.
• A “Web” alert contains the latest web pages that include the search terms you chose that appear in the top twenty results of Google’s Web search.
• A “Blogs” alert contains the latest blog posts with your search terms that appear in the top ten results of Google’s Blog search.
• A “Video” alert contains the latest videos that include the search terms you’ve chosen that appear in the top ten results of Google’s Video search.
• A “Groups” alert contains new posts with the search terms you’ve provided that appear in the top fifty results of Google’s Groups search.
• A “Comprehensive” alert contains the latest results from multiple sources (e.g. News, Web, Blogs, etc.) into a single Email or RSS feed.

4. Can I specify how often I get these alerts? Yes. Immediate, daily or weekly.
5. Do I need to have a Google account? Yes. You’ll need to set up a Google account before using this tool. If you are already using one of Google’s other services, you already have an account.

Sales Tips When Using Google Alerts
I have four quick sales tips that will make Google Alerts work better for you.

1. Don’t overdo it at first. Yes, you can set up to 1,000 alerts and you can have them come to you immediately. You’ll be overwhelmed with the information. Start out with a few alerts and grow from there.
2. Set up the frequency of your various alerts by how critical they are. Information about industry trends could be seen once a week while information about a critical decision maker might need to be seen immediately.
3. When setting up your search terms you can use a dash (e.g. “-wholesale”) immediately in front of a search term to tell Google Alerts not to include any information with that term. This can filter out extraneous information you don’t care about.
4. Set up a Google Alert on your company, your boss and the relevant hierarchy where you work. This is especially important if your company is publicly traded. Rank and file employees are the last to find out about breaking news when it comes to their own publicly traded company.

Sales Blog Wrap Up
I am a fan of this tool because it automatically puts us in control of targeted sales information we could not possibly have assimilated in the past.

©2010 Scott R. Sheaffer