There's been so much crap written about "everything 2.0", yet I've seen scant discussion, that is to say that there's really been NO discussion, on what "Sales 2.0" really means for the discipline of sales and marketing.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I'm delivering a course at a local tech college on Wednesday that's titled "Better Selling Through Technology", but that's really a user-friendly name for the bigger agenda of starting to spread the word on "Sales 2.0".

What changes in Sales 2.0? Well, I think there are a few key things. Keep in mind, this is a working document, so bear with me, not everything's gonig to hold water at this point.

Sales 2.0

General themes:
- Sales reps have more control over the tools that they use; the CIO no longer makes one-size-fits-all technology decisions for the sales force
- Sales reps are taking customer communications into their own hands and to an entirely new level. Starting their own blogs, engaging in social networking and generally putting a friendlier face, theirs, on the corporate message.
- Web-app based mission critical tools such as instant messaging, salesforce.com, virtual assistants and online project management tools.
- Free or nearly free services as reliable, relied upon, enterprise tools. Free conference calls, blogging software and other free enablers, which once carried some stigma or were thought unreliable are enabling a new class of sales executive 2.0.
- Always on sales people. Broadband penetration among the ranks of sales professionals is much higher than even five years ago when we all 'dialed in' at the end of the day to check email. This opens up new possibilities for connectivity and real-time interaction
- Voice and email on par with one another. Blackberries and Treos now accompany many salespeople out into their rounds in the field. Customers have come to expect the same response time from whatever communique they send your way.
- End-user power. It's no longer just he buyer that's got influence. When innovation and ideas come from all over the enterprise, you never know when you next sale-influencer will come from.

Areas affected by Sales 2.0:
- Voice communications (VOIP, cell, Skype)
- Sales rep availability (always on)
- Conference calling (free)
- Sales force automation (web based)
- Customer communication (blogging, email)
- Customer community (wiki, jotspot)
- Project management
- Messaging
- email (mobile)
- IM (in office, sidekick, etc)
- Pre-call planning / customer research
- Collaboration (internal blogs, wikis, IM)
- Collateral (real time, PDF, POD (print on demand)
- Document authoring (web document authoring)

Sales 2.0 Vendor List:
- Storyquest
- Zimbra
- Skype
- Vonage
- Salesforce.com
- Sugar CRM
- Basecamp
- TypePad

Pre-call planning:
- I can remember back 7 years ago when it was a real novelty to research companies on the internet before a sales call. Between Yahoo and Hoovers there wasn't much you couldn't find, and it was really all you needed going in. Now, pre-call planning has moved from an episodic research endeavor to an ongoing conversation monitoring art. Sure, Hoovers is still relevant, but now we have Technorati, to keep up on the blog conversation about our customers (and us) and Google news alerts along with your prospects' RSS feeds. Now, pre call planning is not part of the evening ritual, it's an ongoing part of a sales executive's job description.

> Enablers:
- Google news alerts
- RSS feeds & aggregators
- NewsGator, Bloglines
- Technorati.com search feeds.

Availability:
- The day has arrived that customers have come to expect persistent availability. Asking customers to try your office, your cell phone, your pager or whatever other phone number you have is often too much to ask. Once only within reach of large corporations with enterprise phone systems, everyone from the medium size sales force to the solo sales rep can now take advantage of services that aggregate phone service, voicemail, call forwarding , fax and virtual PBX service for one low price.

> Enablers:
- Vonage for basic voice over IP, call forwarding and retrieving messages through emailed MP3 attachments or from anywhere via a dial in number. You can even get different vonage numbers for each local that you serve, making it a local call for your customers.
- GotVMail Communications offers an virtual PBX, fax, call forwarding and a wide array of additional virtual services such as virtual assistant starting at less than $10 per month.
- Onebox.com (J2 company...owners of Jfax)
- http://www.virtualpbx.com/

VOIP:
- Sure, Vonage is great, but it's not portable. Skype is. I recently talked to a friend who's a college recruiter working from his home office who is using Skype almost exclusively. Whether he's in a hotel, a coffee house, his own house, or visiting friends near the beach, his office phone is never more than a boot-up a way. Moreover, Skype now offers call forwarding, so if you happen to be using a cell phone or land line and don't have Skype turned on, it will forward to any number you choose.

> Enablers:
- Skype - www.skype.com
- Also, Gizmo Project

RESOURCES:
http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=P14914_0_4_0_C
http://www.nickdenton.org/002173.html
http://www.evhead.com/2005/04/running-your-company-on-web-apps.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0
http://www.americanbusinessmedia.com/assnfe/ev.asp?MODE=&SNID=945900684&ID=77

Denis Pombriant, one of the most influential executives in the CRM industry, makes the case for a combined SFA + SM implementation, which, despite that lack of brainpower that one needs to discern that these are inextricably connected functions that underlie an effective sales strategy, is not always the norm.

Sales methodologies and sales force automation (SFA) are a combination that should be a natural fit. In practice, however, method support is poor in most current forms of SFA. Sales managers want their representatives to follow the company's defined methodology, but often salespeople veer off course, wasting time and resources. Most importantly, when salespeople go off on a tangent, their data trails leave little hint of what they have accomplished, making it harder to coach them later.

In my experience, those companies who realize and capitalize on this link are far more successful in their sales technology and sales strategy execution than those that treat SFA as software, and hold someone like the 'training department' accountable for their version of sales methodology. Looking at companies like Siebel, who have baked the Targeted Account Selling (TAS) process into the workings of their SFA/CRM package, we can get a glimpse of the future 'best-practice' where all things technology and methodology are part and parcel of a comprehensive 'sales [sales management] operating system.'

For a bit more of a 'jumpstart' on the need to embrace both technology and process, have a gander at Tom Peters' "Minimum "New Work" ... SurvivalSkills2005."

This is a 3 part article on some of the steps that companies have taken to attain world-class status in the sales technology and support realm. I've either worked at or with a handful of companies how who have all benefitted from an ongoing "Sales Technology Steering Committee" which seeks to bridge the gulf between field sales and sales leadership and IT leadership on the subject of what IT needs to be providing to sales & vice versa.

In any company, there are typically a variety of common corporate barriers that hinder the implementation of the most effective sales technology solutions for the sales team.

Sales technology implementation decisions need to be made with a realistic and holistic view of the realities of the field sales and sales leadership team, while keeping an eye on the requirements of each stakeholder group which could affect the sales team.

Some of the issues that typically befall a corporate-driven sales technology team:

• Misconceptions of technology’s role in field sales
  
• Isolation from the great corporate sales needs
  
• Limited knowledge of current and future technology capabilities
  
• Lack of competitive technology awareness and world-class technology awareness

SAP is choosing not to get into on-demand CRM, a market Siebel has attacked aggressively in recent months in response to the success of upstart hosted CRM vendor Salesforce.com. McDermott says SAP's customers want their CRM systems to be integrated with other enterprise apps and linked to business processes--and that it's only a matter of time before hosted CRM customers look at what they've got and determine it's a standalone sales-force-automation tool. He questions whether hosted CRM vendors will be able to retain their customers for long.

[via InformationWeek]

BPM Today: Social Networking Makes CRM Business Case

It is becoming clear that social networking will be -- if it is not already -- yet another methodology to be embedded in a sales operation.

The next wave of social-networking applications will have to incorporate some kind of tangible value-add to the company -- and, most likely, that will be in CRM, specifically sales and lead generation.

On Monday, Spoke Software, a hosted provider of social networking, will announce its technology for work groups, a complement to its Spoke Network for individual professionals. The work-group module, which will debut in early March, will integrate into Web-based sales-force automation and CRM applications. Spoke says there are 20 work groups lined up to implement its new product, including the Atlanta Braves, Citibank and MetLife.

Mark Organ, CEO of Eloqua, a lead-generation software provider, told CRM Daily that his company has been using Spoke Software in a similar manner. "It is an amazing tool," he enthused. "What we have done is integrate Spoke into our sales workflow."

As a result, lead generation at the company has, in effect, morphed into a two-pronged operation. "We use traditional lead generation techniques in our own software coupled with Spoke to see if there is another contact we should approach outside of the traditional campaign," Organ said.

Indeed, Spoke Software co-founder Chris Tolles says the application extends a company's CRM system instead of replacing it. "Most CRM systems track a contact's presence in a system. We, on the other hand, through communications traffic, measure and rate how well you know this contact."

A company in Wappingers Falls, NY that is searching for a Siebel Systems Administrator with Siebel 7.x call center, marketing and analytics background. Salary is 80-100JK with a 20% bonus and they will relocate someone if they have to. This is a full time permanant position.

Contact eileen at abrahamlondon dot com if you know someone, or send me an email at dana at danavan dot net.

This report in and of itself is interesting. However, when you frame it in the context of the efficiency and effectivness argument posited by sales automation gurus, there are REAL TANGIBLE benefits at stake here. As a former traveling sales rep, I can attest to what 55 minutes of productivity time could have done for me.

A Study by The Radicati Group, "Enterprise Wireless Email Market Trends, 2003-2007," Shows That Wireless Email Access has Increased the Amount of Time That Employees Can Put Into Their Work. (Thanks to MediaPost for this)

Research indicates that employees using wireless email will have put in an extra 55 minutes of work per day.

"In a world where time is of the essence, and an increasing number of tasks are mission-critical, wireless email and other soon-to-come applications will pave the way for a truly global mobile business landscape." , says Sara Radicati

Email is only one tool. We can also use IM and SMS for short messages, telephone and voice mail when we are on the move and shared workspaces for complex and rich communications. Robin Bloor examined all messaging options.

No one else was going to do it, so why not me. Check it out.

Here's what I'm thinking the blog will offer you, the reader:

- First hand experiences with sales technology as a sales technology director in a major company
- The impact of sales technology on the mobile workforce
- pros, cons, how it helps/hinders getting the job done
- The migration from standalone application based SFA and CRM system to web-based tools
- The trials and tribulations of sales technology adoption
- The use of effective marketing in driving adoption of SFA & CRM tools
- Emerging trends in SFA, such as handheld & voice activated SFA, and the new security concerns surrounding wireless.
- Side-by-side comparisons of available SFA tools such as Siebel, Sales Force.com, Sales Net, etc...

Anything else that matters? Let me know!

We're coming up on another subtle convergence point in the realm of personal technology where the PDA is combining with the cell phone to make 'smart phones'. Smart phones signal the dealth of the PDA as we know it, according to Bill Bennett in the Austrailian news article on the topic.

Personally, I can't wait for the day, and I'm betting that there are a large percentage of sales people out there who are saying the same thing. Imagine the following scenario:

Your client leaves you a voicemail "Hey Bob, just wondering where we stand on getting those machine parts in...".

The connected sales rep pulls up the client's information from his local address book in his phone, based on the customer's phone number on the caller ID, and connects to the company's XML enabled order status system to check on the client's request. The sales person then takes that data, and through an "email this information" link, submits exactly what's in the order status system, to his client, via email.

Problem solved - next voicemail please. Better still - this entire process could have taken place in a voice activated manner, or via a keypad, the system doesn't care.

More quotes from the article...

Hand-held computers were always meant to be mobile communications devices. Almost a decade ago Apple's marketing for the original Newton PDA showed young professionals sitting in cafes, wirelessly transmitting data to and from each other. The Newton came and went, however, long before that dream became a practical reality.

...Mobile-connected computing won't really take off until 3G networks are in place... In theory, 3G networks can run at 2Mbps, though few users will see anything like that. More realistically, users can expect to see a few hundred Kbps.

My mantra for 2004 on the Sales Technology front is to "meet our reps in their medium." Simply put, any application or applicance that you can use to access electronic information shall be used to access relevent sales data.

I'm not alone in thinking this. Look what the folks @ IBM are saying:

"With the added capabilities of IBM's WebSphere Everyplace Access, salespeople, for example, can wirelessly access enterprise sales applications, such as Sales Force Automation (SFA), via their BlackBerry handheld to request prices, enter orders, determine available inventory and confirm shipments. Salespeople can also check calendars, make phone calls, send and receive e-mails, and use instant messaging applications such as IBM Lotus' Sametime Everyplace, allowing them to respond more quickly and efficiently to their customer needs. Field service groups and executives can also benefit from push-based, timely access to relevant information from back-end corporate applications, including service requests and sales reports, thereby helping to minimize the need to be in the office and enabling them to be in the field with customers and colleagues."

There are times that I really wonder if everyone has forgotten about sales force automation as a topic. Am I behind the times in not getting everything roped into the CRM corral, or is specialization the key in this field? There are so few of us doing pure SFA (not that it's that pure anyway - SFA is about communication and collaboration with other depts, not silo building) that I find myself explaining SFA and its benefits to nearly everyone.

One thing that tells me that SFA is a discipline unto itself is the recent announcement that salesforce.com CTO Dave Moellenhoff has been selected as a Top '25 Innovator' by CMP Media's CRN.

"Salesforce.com has replaced software with low cost, low risk software-as-service for more than 100,000 subscribers worldwide," said Moellenhoff. "Everything we have achieved -- from Web services breakthroughs to profitable operations -- is a direct result of our total focus on customer success.