Selling Power Blog

Six Quick Tips for Jump-Starting Sales

With the economy still sputtering and CEOs keeping a tight lid on spending, sales managers report that paths to decision makers are blocked with obstacles. This is frustrating for the entire sales team. I recently spoke with a number of seasoned managers to get a firsthand look at their challenges and coping strategies.

1. Real opportunities are harder to identify. Most sales managers direct their salespeople to explore opportunities with companies that are doing well. But often, salespeople are not capturing these opportunities. Why? Because the decision-making process has migrated upward, and salespeople are struggling to make connections with these upper-level executives.

A solution: Higher-level executives can join in on sales calls.

2. Real solutions are harder to justify. The salesperson proposes a great solution that will do wonders for the client, but the client does not see enough benefits to justify the purchase. Why? Because many companies are still in a budget-saving mode and don’t even think beyond the current quarter.

A solution: Have your salespeople spend more time mapping the pain points earlier in the call. Ask the client to put a dollar figure next to each pain. Justify the economic wisdom of your solution by using your client’s numbers.

3. Friendly relationships are not always productive. Some salespeople work hard on making every call a pleasant experience, yet they are often surprised when a competitor calls on the client and walks away with a sale. Why? Because some salespeople have a strong need to be liked, and their need for approval prevents them from asking some of the tough questions that would advance the sale and actually help the customer make a favorable decision.

A solution: Train these salespeople to sell with the customer’s needs being priority number one. If training has no effect…move them to customer service.

4. With sales being slow, it’s more difficult to cut off problem clients. While sales managers preach that every sale counts, they often fail to count the time and expense it takes to close certain sales.

A solution: Give your sales team clear directions about when to say no to a customer.

5. When business is slow, creative ideas are harder to find. While it’s easy to say that sales problems are nothing but wake-up calls for creativity, salespeople are often hard-pressed to come up with new ideas for increasing sales. Why? Because they think that they’ve tried everything under the sun.

A solution: Pull in your top performers and list their best practices. Then ask them to mentor your sales team.

6. When business shrinks, salespeople get confused about your expectations. Why? In tough times, salespeople worry more about their job and income.

A solution: Don’t add to their stress with unrealistic expectations or ambiguous leadership. Offer a clear vision of the future and create a solid plan that leads to new opportunities.

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Why Sales Leaders Should Champion B2B Demand Generation

Today's blog post is by Jeff Ogden, award-winning B2B marketing expert, president of the sales lead generation company Find New Customers, and creator of the popular syndicated online TV show Marketing Made Simple TV. Follow him on Twitter at @fearlesscomp.

Salespeople are having a tough time nowadays. It is getting harder and harder to crack into accounts. The time has come for sales leaders to say to top management, “We need a best-practices B2B demand-generation program here ASAP!”

A very recent study by Crain’s BtoB magazine found four areas of concern:

1. The marketing mix is still not meeting the needs of the sales pipeline.
   Less than half of respondents in BtoB’s study say that their online marketing mix is addressing the needs of sales, and it has been the same for two years.
2. Brand differentiation is becoming increasingly important, but marketers struggle to achieve it.
   Sound-alike products are a huge problem for sales. If customers cannot see the differences, then sales cannot protect margins.
3. B2B marketers are not able to effectively target and engage decision makers.
   Only slightly more than 1 out of 3 believes their company is effective at engaging decision makers. So the vast majority are poor at it.
4. Marketers need better visibility into the value of their marketing programs.
   Measurement continues to be a big issue for companies. They struggle to measure the effectiveness of marketing channels, clarify the need metrics at each state, and are plagued by poor data quality.

Our conclusion is that, in many companies today, marketing is doing a poor job for sales. This is why the time has come for sales leaders to stand up and say in unison, “I’m mad as hell, and I won’t take this anymore!”

Data from a large automation-software firm showed that 1 out of 5 leads closes, whether or not you are lead nurturing; however, what about the other 4 out of 5? The data showed that you can achieve a 300 percent increase in close rates when you nurture these leads. Three hundred percent -- yes, you read that right! Don’t you want a 300 percent improvement on win rates? Would it be nice to get a lot of sales-ready leads from marketing?

It’s time to walk into the CEO’s office and tell him/her, “I want a best-practices B2B demand-generation program in this company!”

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Definitive Metrics of Sales Performance

Today's blog post is by Christopher Cabrera, CEO of Xactly Corporation, the industry leader in sales compensation automation.

One statistic I shared at the Sales 2.0 conference last April was that US companies spend about $800 billion a year on sales compensation – three times more than they spend on advertising and $100 million more than the government spends on national defense.

Even though the cost of compensation dwarfs national advertising spend, companies tend to constantly analyze ad performance but seldom give their comp plans the same level of scrutiny. Businesses as a whole simply don’t do a very good job of measuring, iterating, and optimizing their incentives and compensation.

Well, why not? Why would otherwise savvy businesspeople not track their compensation plans to gauge how well they motivate employees to achieve company goals?

Because, until now, there simply hasn’t been empirical data available to inform or measure compensation plans.

Traditionally, there have been two approaches to analyzing incentives, neither of which is entirely satisfactory:

1. Academic research, which tends to focus on single firms that grant researchers access to their internal information. This provides a snapshot of plans and performance but not a continuing view that would account for business changes.
2. Experiential design, which is based on the combined knowledge of consultants and employees about strategies that have worked in the past. That’s helpful information, to be sure, but it’s also subjective and not forward-looking.

The good news is that empirical data is no longer the missing leg of a figurative three-legged stool. Which ­­brings me to my topic for next month’s Sales 2.0 conference: “Real Insight on What Drives Success: The Definitive Metrics of Sales Performance.”

As the only 100 percent cloud-based, multitenant compensation software solution in the marketplace, Xactly is in a position to provide exclusive data based on an analysis of seven years’ worth of sales-performance management. Armed with these terabytes of information, we’re developing insight and benchmarks to help companies align their sales compensation with their sales strategy.

I’ll be sharing more on this topic at the upcoming Sales 2.0 Conference on April 8-9 in San Francisco, but here are a few statistics to give you an idea of the magnitude of our number crunching. We’ve analyzed compensation data from

• more than 500 companies,
• more than 100,000 sales positions,
• billions of calculations over the last seven years.

(For the record, the data is aggregated and anonymous, so no person or company is identifiable.)

We’ve always touted the advantages of automating sales compensation over calculating it manually on spreadsheet, but we also understand that automation is only part of the picture. Organizations can end up with complex calculation tools that prepare timely and accurate payroll but still lack any meaningful analysis or actionable information to inform their strategic decisions. 

That’s the gap that our ever-expanding data set will fill. By accessing this information, companies will be empowered to keep up with their peers by tapping into performance-management benchmarks. They can streamline processes to follow accepted standards and reward their teams competitively.

In short, the data we’ve compiled will provide the critical information companies need to make strategic management decisions and incent right.

I look forward to sharing more on April 9 at the Sales 2.0 Conference in San Francisco.

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The Brits Boast about Their Content-Marketing Prowess - But Not So Fast...

The Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) have recently published their report, “Content Marketing in the UK: 2013 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends.” According to this report, marketers in the United Kingdom believe that their content-marketing effort is more effective than that of their peers in the United States and Australia and that they are leading the way in this regard. 

Their belief appears to be supported by CMI and DMA’s findings that marketers in the United Kingdom currently use “a wider range of content-marketing tactics than their international counterparts” and plan to increase their content-marketing budgets by a wider margin.

CMI and DMA report that content marketing is nearly universally adopted in the United Kingdom:

• Ninety-four percent of all UK marketers use it.
• B2C marketers in the United Kingdom using content-marketing strategies total 97 percent.
• UK B2B marketers using it total 95 percent.

In contrast, according to the report, B2C marketers in North America and Australia are less likely to use content marketing than their B2B peers.

The margin by which content marketers in the United Kingdom intend to increase their budgets as compared to marketers in North American and Australia doesn’t seem to be so impressive, however:

• Sixty-four percent of UK marketers say they will increase their content-marketing budget within the next 12 months.
• More than half of marketers in North America (54 percent) say they will increase their content-marketing budget.
• In Australia, 61 percent of marketers intend to allocate more funds to content marketing.

Social media use is universal:

• Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook are the most widely used social media by all marketers everywhere.
• Overall (including in the United Kingdom), marketers use an average of four social-media platforms…
• whereas North American B2B marketers leverage the reach of five platforms.

It appears that, despite the overwhelming adoption of content marketing and their intent to allocate more funds to advance their efforts, the two biggest challenges that UK content marketers face (delivering enough content and producing engaging content) are not new, nor are they specific to UK marketers.

While this research is an accurate reflection of the past, it ignores the emerging trend of employing emotional intelligence in marketing. I see more and more smart companies quietly changing their approach about content from logic to emotion. B2C companies are at the leading edge of this trend. Red Bull has done a great job of encouraging its customers to fly through the air (by base jumping, kite boarding, flying in wing suits, etc.) to drive its slogan “Gives you wings” into reality. Red Bull saved millions in marketing dollars by capturing and distributing content generated by customer advocates.

Here is another example: Joseph Tripodi, chief marketing officer of Coca-Cola, stated in an interview that Coca-Cola’s customers generate seven times more content than the company generates. Tripodi is less excited about impressions of a metric and more excited about customer expressions. He said that of the 140 million online mentions of the brand, only 20 million were created by his company. As of yesterday, Coca-Cola had 61 million likes on Facebook.

Traditional corporate content creators tend to get carried away with painting an embellished picture of reality (which often fails to lead to customer engagement). Companies are far better off investing less in content and giving their customers a paintbrush and canvas (via social-media platforms) and encouraging them to paint the true picture: the image of the brand as it is reflected in their hearts and minds.

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Seven Keys to Success

Today, salespeople carry smartphones, tote lightweight tablets, and are dialed into their organization’s network from, well, almost anywhere. No wonder that selling is now, more than ever, less a transactional endeavor and more an exercise in cultivating lasting relationships with customers. But despite the ubiquity of digital sales tools, reps who base their sales effort on a time-tested principle of work/life balance are most often the sales superstars. Here’s a list of some time-tested keys that will give you the best chance for success.

1. Work harder and play better.
Successful people know that nothing worthwhile comes easy. Hard work is important, but it is equally important to have fun. Go to any successful start-up company, and you’ll see employees blowing off steam on ping-pong tables, throwing darts, browsing books on a shelf, or playing trash-can basketball. Frolicking at work isn’t frivolous. Dispensed in small doses, it’s a powerful success medicine. Don’t be a workaholic; be a “workafrolic” instead.

2. Cultivate curiosity.
Successful people are not just curious about their chosen field, they are curious about EVERYTHING. They continually think, explore new ideas, ask dozens of questions, and always try to figure out how things work and how they could be made to work better. Curiosity is the most powerful business-improvement and personal-success engine.

3. Expand your endurance.
Push yourself mentally and physically. Successful people know how to generate and maintain positive energy 24/7. They strive to be physically fit, and at the same time they work on their psychological fitness. 

4. Turn failure into fertilizer.
Thomas Edison failed thousands of times before he found a filament that would glow in a vacuum tube, which lead to his invention of the light bulb. Winston Churchill said, “Success is not final, and failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.” 

5. Focus.
Successful people begin each day with written goals they want to achieve. They know that the onslaught of incoming emails, calls, and texts will distract them, but each time they get sidetracked, they go back to working on the next item on their list. People who start a new task every three minutes end up doing in an hour 20 small tasks that merely contribute to maintaining the status quo. It is far better to invest your complete mental focus on two or three tasks per hour and create steady forward momentum.

6. Innovate.
Successful people know that having innovative ideas is not enough. What counts is how many new ideas you can implement successfully. What holds people back is not the difficulty of implementing their ideas, but what people say when they start sharing their ideas with others. Oracle founder Larry Ellison said it best: “When you innovate, you’ve got to be prepared for everyone telling you that you’re nuts.” 

7. Manage disappointment.
Successful people realize that reaching success often depends on how they manage the inevitable disappointments that unexpectedly impact their lives. When people get disappointed, they often withdraw, and their anger turns inward. Successful people transform disappointment into a journey of self-discovery, where they reconnect with their inner strengths. Disappointment well managed will become the cradle of ambition.

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The Three Elements of an Effective Social-Business Strategy

Paul Greenberg defines social business as “the company’s response to the customer’s ownership of the conversation.” After taking the audience’s pulse at a Sales & Marketing 2.0 Conference back in 2011, I realized that Greenberg’s definition was already a traffic light behind Main Street. The rapid rate at which companies integrate social media into their business operation is astonishing. Search Engine Journal predicted that by 2012, 43 percent of companies would be using social media. Today, more than 80 percent of companies use social media for recruiting. One company represented at the conference reported that 20 percent of its new leads come from its social-business strategy. Another company reported that leads created through social media are three times more likely to close than leads generated by marketing.

While individual social-media tools add little value and offer no ROI, a social-business strategy leads to quantifiable results. Here is my definition of social business: the alignment of content, conversations, and collaboration with the company’s business strategy.

On a tactical level, a social-business strategy relies on three core elements:

Content. Ownership of a product or service is always preceded by ownership of the related content. Content is a currency that companies share to earn interest in the marketplace. Good content leads to better conversations. Good content educates customers. Good content catches customers. For example, at HubSpot, all salespeople are asked to create and maintain a blog. The results: more traffic to the company’s Website, higher search-engine optimization ratings, and unprecedented sales growth year over year.

Conversation. In the world of social business, the sales pitch has been replaced by a fluid conversation between equal partners. The focus is on situational fluency. If the prospect has already completed 80 percent of the fact finding in the purchase process, it’s the salesperson’s job to deliver the remaining 20 percent within the allocated time frame set aside for the conversation. In their one to many conversations, smart companies have shifted their strategy from thought leadership to community leadership. Good community leaders set conversational boundaries that prevent members from going on rabbit trails or engaging in Wild West behavior. It takes a well-managed community with clear boundaries to close more business.

Collaboration. Social CRM tools have given companies the opportunity to collaborate across the organization, eliminating silos while maintaining a steady focus on business at hand. Smart companies extend the collaboration pipeline to include their customers. By elevating customers to the status of equal partner, companies can co-create their future.

While the benefits of transforming a company into a social business are clear, what’s not clear is the path to get there. While the Internet has the potential to replicate on a screen our mind’s agility, the number of available tools to create an effective social-media strategy is staggering.

Success doesn’t depend on choosing the right program like Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, but on business leaders’ embracing the fact that social media isn’t a choice, it’s a mandate for business survival.

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Who Should Be Responsible for Sales Enablement Content - Sales or Marketing?

Today's blog post is by Jeff Ogden, award-winning B2B marketing expert, president of the sales lead generation company Find New Customers, and creator of the very popular and syndicated online TV show Marketing Made Simple TV.  

 

What is a Buyer Persona™ Buyer personas tell you exactly how and why a representative buyer makes the decision to buy the products, services, or solutions that you market. While buyer personas may include other details, the 5 Rings of Insight are their most overlooked and essential aspect, clarifying decisions for persuasive messaging, content marketing, product or solution launches, campaigns, and sales alignment. Priority Initiatives Success Factors Perceived Barriers Buying Process Decision Criteria The Five Rings of Insight and the ebook is owned by the Buyer Persona Institute.

When Gerhard Gschwandtner asked me that question in our recent video interview, I was dumbfounded for a moment. Sales? Marketing? Whom?

My first instinct was to answer yes, because marketing and sales have to work together.

I believe the lines separating sales and marketing need to end. He asked how those groups could unite. I told him those leaders need to get together and spend some quality time. Gerhard joked, “Are you saying a few beers can bring these teams together?” Yes, Gerhard, marketing and sales leaders are just people. If they spend quality time getting to know each other, things will go swimmingly. That means a lunch meeting or even a few beers after work.

In this guest post, I want to explore how sales and marketing can work together to create effective sales enablement content.

How to Create Truly Useful Sales Enablement Content

If one thinks about it, the role of content is to answer buyer questions needed to facilitate a purchase.  Only after you answer their questions can buyers become comfortable enough to sign with you. That means we need to first think about the questions that need answering.

Where can we learn these questions? We should talk to salespeople and even do some unstructured interviews of won and lost deals.  (Note: Download a free e-book on Buyer Personas here.)

Let’s use an example to illustrate: say the company trying to win a sale is “Acme Financial Solutions.” Acme offers a SaaS software product to enable marketing leaders to close faster.  A senior salesperson with Acme – let’s call him “Tom” – has a meeting with a VP of finance at a large financial services firm in New York City.

Tom meets with the VP and shows him a demonstration of the financial software. Then they sketch out on a whiteboard how the financial processes will change. The VP is impressed. But he says to Tom, “I’m concerned about our ability to successfully implement this software. I’m not sure we have the right talents in-house or know how to make the needed changes to use your software.”

Tom does a song and dance and tries to assure the buyer that Acme will help his company through these changes. Acme has done nothing to arm Tom for questions like this; however, if Acme had thought through the question ahead of time and the salespeople have been asked this question before, then the company could craft content to answer the question.

Let’s put Tom back in the meeting with the VP of finance. He’s again asked about the need for the right talents and processes. Tom pulls out an iPad and pops up a video. In this video, an existing Acme client talks about the implementation and what was learned about training and process change. Tom’s prospect has an answer from a trusted source and signs on the spot.

Conclusion: Sales and Marketing Need to Work Together

How do sales and marketing become one and create truly useful content like Tom’s?

I think there’s no secret formula; it requires people who genuinely care. People who care spend time talking and really listening to the point of view of the other person. If both sales and marketing teams feel the other has its best interest at heart, the icy distrust will thaw.

Next, sales and marketing need to come up with a list of buyer questions. These come from past sales experiences and unstructured buyer interviews. (Download a free e-book on Buyer Personas here.) Sit down for a meeting and get these questions documented. Once the questions are compiled, then start thinking about how best to answer those questions.

Perhaps you could record a video or audio interview of an existing client. Or you could create some other form of useful content. No matter what, sales and marketing can create great content – together.

A few pints of good beer can solve everything, I think.

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6 Tips to Write More Profitable Prospecting Emails

Today's blog post is by Sue Hershkowitz-Coore, author of Power Sales Writing: Using Communication to Turn Prospects into Clients (Second Edition) which appeared on the Selling Power Best Books for Sales Success in 2013 list.

Every day people forward awful sales emails to me. A recent favorite opened with, "I just wanted to take a moment to personally introduce myself as your sole contact for XYX company! I am truly excited to be put in this position as I am very proud and passionate about … etc." 

It seems reasonable to assume that the salesperson who crafted that email also has her own email account, doesn’t it?  Would she take her valuable time to respond to an email like that? 

What can you do to ensure your emails don't end up on the "Can You Beat This?" segment of my Facebook page? How do you write a selling message that engages buyers and creates sales potential?

Here is the most important thing to remember: prospects are just not that into you. As awesome as your product or service most assuredly is, no one will care about a cheesy, self-involved, features dump. Here’s a hint. If your email begins with the word "I," you've just put yourself in the reader’s delete zone. 

Prospects are twice as busy as you are. Treat them that way. Show value for their time and eliminate all the parts of an email that no one ever reads anyway. From my book, Power Sales Writing: Using Communication to Turn Prospects into Clients (Second Edition), here are six practical tips to help you write more exciting, appealing, profitable prospecting messages:

1. Know why you’re writing the email. Most salespeople think the purpose of an initial prospecting email is to introduce themselves. Dead wrong! You’re writing to get the prospect excited or pique her interest about how she might do the best job. So why are you writing? Plan it out.

2. Be authentic and transparent. Opening your message with: Your name was given to me because you plan meetings... is respectful and quick. It may not be earth shattering, but at least you haven't turned off your potential lead with a phony or self-serving statement. By beginning with a simple truth, you've started the groundwork for a trusting relationship. Of course, if you have a referral, always start there ("Sophie Spaniel suggested I contact you … ”).

3. Paint a picture of your prospect's success. Instead of going into sales-kill mode, think about what the prospect gains by talking with you. Let's say you're a hotelier representing a luxury brand writing to a meeting professional.  Use words that evoke a positive emotion to help the prospect feel what she can gain from talking with you. For example, “Your name was given to because you plan meetings and when you're looking for a beautiful backdrop for your event -- one that creates a relaxing, positive learning environment - we may have an awesome option for you.”

4. Explain the next step. Depending on your brand and complexity of the sale, you might either explain how you'll take the next step or ask permission to do so. You might write, “I'll plan to phone you Tuesday morning to learn more about what ensures a productive event for you. If another time is more convenient, I'll follow-up as you suggest.”

5. Don't use pressure tactics. If the prospect wants to buy right away, she’ll tell you. In the meantime, avoid phrases that make you sounds overbearing. Instead, try saying, "when the time is right." This reduces pressure and sounds less pushy. 

6. Use a subject line that gets to the point. The best subject lines accurately reflect the main point of the email. If you're writing to request a phone call, the subject line could be, “Action request: Phone call Tuesday.” When you want your message to get opened, especially when you don't yet have a relationship with the reader, use a subject line that doesn't sell and quickly explains the essence of the message.

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What's in a Next-Gen Sales Pro's Toolbox?

Today's blog post is by Jacco van der Kooij, sales leader at Harmonic Inc. 

 

 

Traditional focus: internal tools that power the sales process

Over the last decade, marketing and sales processes have been very focused on understanding and managing the transactional part of the business. These include processes that focus on lead generation, demand generation, opportunity creation, demo/trial conversion, closing, order processing, account management, and so forth.

We call it “a process,” which is pretty accurate considering the striking similarities to a production line at a car manufacturing plant, where robots make sure all cars look 100 percent the same.

What tools did we deploy to help our clients and facilitate the role sales plays? 

So what happened to the sales professional in the field? Well, most of us still tap out a couple hundred emails a day on our smartphone while accumulating frequent-flyer points traveling to a client to deliver an in-person death-by-PowerPoint experience. Or if the client’s lucky, we just drown him or her in white papers.

SaaS created a demand for NEW sales tools.

Fast forward to SaaS solutions. With its lower ASP, traditional selling simply became too expensive. Hundreds and perhaps thousands of small companies needed a new class of tools that could help them make transactional sales at a fraction of the cost (no travel), at a higher quality (engaging), and 24/7 (online).

After a couple of years, these tools have matured, and together with key developments that make them compatible with the iPad, they are now ready for deployment in the more complex B2B sale. The one who masters new tools first wins first.

New tools are externally focused on client experience.

It is important to recognize that, unlike CRM tools, the new marketing and Sales 2.0 tools were not built or designed to fill the requirements of a few large corporations. Instead, they were born to fill the needs of hundreds of small, often start-up companies. Most of the smaller companies flourish as they lack irrelevant processes and focus on the client.

These businesses live and die by a great and personal client experience. The very same tools that SaaS companies have used to scale their success are now changing the way we do business. Not only are the solution and consultative sale impacted, but the strategic sale is impacted also. Below is an overview of the tools I’m using these days, and I’ve separated them into categories.

1. Infrastructure 

• iPad mini in a Moko case is my preferred “delivery” tool and “consumption” device. For content creation I use a Mac to develop engaging content that wows clients.
• Because I move back forth between devices, I need everything to be in the Cloud, allowing me to instantly share with my clients.
• I use an iPhone with an additional PhoneSuit battery pack with service through Verizon, because I need a hotspot to connect into my AppleTV. I never depend on clients' networks.
• I also use AppleTV connected through HDMI to a projector or TV. I use the screen sharing to show Websites and apps and to play YouTube videos.
• SalesOpShop is my network place to exchange ideas and learn from others.
• I really appreciate SFDC and love Chatter. My main issue is with how it is deployed by most companies.  You can file that under "Using a Ferrari as a Lawnmower."

2. Social-Media Tools That Provide Scalability 

• With LinkedIn as the portal, I only do at most one very relevant update on my “day job” per day.

◦ I use SlideShare to present business ideas and share points of view.

◦ I like InMail for contextual cold calls andleveraging shared connections.

◦ I distribute a personalized newsletter relevant to my market (technology within media and entertainment).

• My Twitter infrastructure works as follows:

◦ I use Twitter as a newsletter and feed with approximately three messages per day. In the morning, I prefer to send out stats; in the afternoon,I like to send out photos; and at night,my tweets are of a social nature.

◦ I use TweetDeck on my PC and HootSuite on my iPad to monitor for content that may be of use to my clients.

◦ BufferApp loaded on all my devices and in my browsers serves as a workflow system for my status updates and tweets.

• I have a WordPress blog that serves as my FAQ resource and provides a reference site for my clients.
• I use YouTube for relevant videos. Sometimes a little “kapow” can change a block of text.
• Pinterest – I’m still figuring things out on this, but I do love it.
• I use Google+ to share very specific information targeting the engineer.
• And yes, I disconnected from Facebook (which goes beyond the scope of this post).

3. Other Cloud Tools

• Evernote is my notebook. I never thought I would use it so much.
• Box.net is my public file-sharing system. I can then upload docs and share them in a Twitter feed or LinkedIn update.
• I use abunch of Google tools (e.g., Google Voice and Google Docs).

4. Content-Creation Tools

• I use Prezi for remote whiteboard sessions and creating super-engaging content.
• SlideRocketis my tool for holding virtual Webinars and tracking viewer stats in detail.
• I use WeVideo to create simple online videosand Apple iMovie for more complicated ones.
• I still use PowerPoint but drastically less. It is more of an API to other platforms.
• I license my visual artwork via iStockphoto.

5. Communication Tools

• I use join.me for instant online meetings, and it allows me to very easily share my desktop.
• I use Skype on all my devices for multiparty, international video conferencing.
• I’ve also started to use VSee. It' superior in many respects, such as in high-definition multisource recording.
• Google Voice is my screening service.

What tools are you using, why did you choose them, and what do they do really well for you?

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Selling with 360-degree Visibility: Dream or Reality?

Today's blog post is by Louis Tetu, CEO of Coveo, a company that digs insight out of the many corporate data repositories to help salespeople look smart when they deal with customers.

 A sales professional’s greatest asset is knowledge. The more you know about a prospect, the more relevant you are to your prospect and the easier it is to close a deal – and then a bigger deal. But faced with information fragmentation and a proliferation of information clutter, sales teams often fail to effectively and efficiently mine the knowledge they need to make better selling decisions; instead, they constantly reinvent the wheel. The long-promised, 360-degree view of the customer was never quite delivered, mainly because there is no such a thing as “the” 360-degree view that can be captured in a single system.

The “cloud” fuels this problem of fragmented information. When salesforce.com brought cloud computing to the forefront of selling professionals’ minds, it was – and still is – a revolutionary tool due to its scalability, flexibility, and freedom to collect and track sales activities and house many parts of an account. But the proliferation of cloud-based applications and their ease of adoption also add systems of knowledge to an already crowded picture of applications, databases, and online resources – other systems where knowledge can be lost. Cloud platforms such as Salesforce are themselves scattered a bit, requiring users to look in many different areas – and click and scroll a lot – to see the information they need. Then they have to remember it while they look for more information.

In sales, power equals relevance to prospects’ or customers’ exact needs and situations and an ability to challenge their views, if necessary. For sales executives to be highly relevant and credible challengers and perceived as bringing added value, it takes real-time and comprehensive intelligence. It starts with understanding the prospect’s context – and that context is multifaceted, with information about it stored anywhere and everywhere – certainly far beyond the scope of CRM systems. Add to the equation all of the tools your company has created to ensure that your sales executives can be effective. Where does all of this information reside, and how does sales discern which content is most appropriate and relevant for each prospect?

Information about your prospects and customers plus all sales tools and customer/prospect interaction reside in a multitude of systems and formats: social media, CRM, financial systems, engineering, service, communities, email, call transcripts, Websites, and more. Add to that examples of similar customers and their products and history, the right presentations, product literature, blogs, and all customer/prospect communications and interaction. Then add knowledge from colleagues and even former colleagues – people who have expertise about that prospect or customer or about the applicability of your products to that prospect. Next add other sales execs who may be selling into the same company at the same time across the world.  Don’t forget products from your company the customer may already own and his or her experiences with them.

How can a single sales executive know all of that for each customer during each encounter? Until recently, one of the biggest pain points that sales agents faced was having to leave a CRM such as salesforce.com to access information from multiple other systems, in addition to running around the company to reach people who possess the right information.

Advanced indexing technology is the way forward. In this model, fragments of information are assembled on demand and served up to users. Take a look at how Google and Yahoo! have transformed the consumer world in aggregating, consolidating, and unifying into one index information from the world’s Websites. Now think about the same paradigm but across the enterprise IT clutter.

Advanced indexing technology can perform securely in the same manner within the vast variety of systems – email, databases, CRM, ERP, social media, documents. The technology is available to securely index those sources, unify that information in a central index, normalize the information, then perform mash-ups on demand. Think of a world in which every document a sales executive needs on any platform is instantly organized, indexed, and recommended at the right time and for the right prospect or customer. Think of a world where every sales executive gets the complete and best contextually relevant information for the prospect’s needs and situation. 

Sales and CRM teams around the world have used this technology to their advantage:

• CA Technologies is a global software company with 400 products and 13 million documents relevant to its sales and CRM teams. CA is able to index, correlate, and utilize relevant information from these systems instantaneously, allowing its marketing teams to solve cases 15 percent faster.
• Tokyo Electron is a global manufacturer of high-tech semiconductor products. When its field service teams need to solve a complex case, they’re able to index information across multiple systems instantaneously. They increased their post-sales revenue without any additional travel or personnel costs.
• L’Oreal equips its sales and customer service agents in the field with the ability to index customer information across millions of documents. As a result, they’re able to see all relevant information about a customer or prospect, allowing them to close deals faster and keep customers happy.

While many technologists still chase the impossible dream of integration, we are leading the way with a federation of information through advanced indexing technology so that we can help salespeople benefit from 360-degree, instantaneous visibility of all relevant data. 

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