I was introduced to a new service this week called SoftwareShortlist. This service aims to change the information dynamic around software from vendor-led to customer-led. Given one of our goals is to help SME’s make the right software decision based on their needs – this service appealed to me. This YouTube video gives you a good intro:
Having dealt with many dozens of SME’s over the years one of the complaints we’d often here is that vendor sales reps were more focused on punching out deals and maximising their revenue/commission rather than solving customer problems in a meaningful way. As Axel Schulze from Social Media Academy rightly pointed out earlier this year – the world is changing and the sales profession needs to change or find itself marginalised if not redundant. I agree with Axel – though I’m more optimistic that sales will adjust.
In my opinion, SoftwareShortlist is another example of how the world is changing for sales people. Using Web 2.0 technologies the service is going to take information control away from the vendor and the sales person and put it in the hands of the crowd – the information is being democratised. As customers use SoftwareShortlist and develop their own opinions and needs away from the control of the vendor the challenge therefore is how the sales team adapts to this new world.
What will the sales person be doing that couldn’t be done by an inside sales person? Or the vendors active contribution to the community’s knowledge pool?
SoftwareShortlist is still in Beta, but for now the idea has merit and I hope we see the service grow quickly in the future.
I’ve been a fan of Jack Daly for a few years now. I really like his simple approach to sales and his infectious energy. He’s also what I consider to be one of the real gentlemen in sales.
He published two good lists a few days ago that I want to share with you as he’s encouraging us to have a thrive mindset (as opposed to a survive mindset). I’ve taken the top 10 points from each list
SALES MANAGEMENT CHECKLIST
Rank sales staff performance and deal with poor performers
One on Ones with each Sales Professional minimum monthly
Sales Meetings twice monthly min
Recruiting basket of at least 20 we are courting
Recruiting courting process built around a touch system
Inspect the baskets (pipeline mgt) min monthly
Inspect key activities of Sales Professionals
Training, training, training: to include role practice, joint calls, training calls, coaching calls and building a success guide
Key account focus
New hire orientation
SALES PROFESSIONALS CHECK LIST
Goal setting
Key activities tracking
Touch system design and maintenance
Data base management
Sales meeting participation
One on ones with Sales Manager
Inspect the baskets prep (pipeline mgmt)
Training, training, training: Role practice, joint calls, training calls, coaching calls
Web 2.0/social sites proactivity
Model the masters
Bottom line is in any market, the key is proactivity and having your head in a positive place. If we wake up each morning deflated and defeated, don’t expect the day to get any better. Fret less about the results and stay focused on consistently doing the right activities, and the business will come. The question to be asked is who is ensuring that these checklists get done? Don’t expect people to be cheering about doing all of this, and having people “in their stuff”. Very few players on sports teams “enjoy” the coaches “in their stuff” during practices, yet all celebrate the victories. It’s time we went about posting some victories!
Jack makes some good points with these lists. Simple stuff, but it’s how well we do the simple stuff that counts
I continue to spend time working on our strategy and product offering around social media for the B2B world. Having evolved our business from the CRM space, we keep a close eye on what some of the big dicks are doing and I continue to be profoundly disappointed at what I’m seeing. And whilst it dismays me that I have to mention SFDC twice in the one month, it is necessary as yet again, the propaganda from SFDC has hit the airwaves without anyone being critical of what it all means.
Firstly, this initiative is not ground breaking. I commented on this recently in another blog post and stand by those comments and this additional post.
The article in question goes to great lengths to promote the failings of the social media monitoring tools (even mentioning the thought leaders like Radian6 and Techrigy) creating in my opinion a Benioff-esque tone of “they’re not a CRM so clearly they can’t be any good” as well as promoting a “jump in with jack boots” approach to interacting with the community
Example #1
After all, monitoring a conversation is one thing, but responding to it is another entirely — the domain of CRM, something Salesforce knows better than almost anyone else.
Monitoring or listening is one of the most fundamental activities of any company wanting to harness the power of the groundswell (with due credit to Li and Bernoff).
SFDC’s strategy seems to not so much put them on a collision course with the community monitoring start ups but puts you the customer on a collision course with your own community. I can’t help but feel SFDC are rushing into this space with grand plans about how you can use their platform to “respond” to social media activity yet they haven’t given a second of time to understanding the strategy that MUST reside behind the use of web 2.0 tools.
These “monitoring tools” deliver far more value than they are given credit for. Tools like Radian6 and Techrigy have a rich set of features that if used properly will allow a company to quickly and easily tap into the true feeling of the community. And it’s not just the “I’m interesting” bit that you should be tracking. Why not use these tools to keep an ear to what the community is saying about your strategic customers. Can you imagine going to one of your major customers with a solution to a problem that you unearthed via Radian6 when they probably don’t even know the problem exists? How can you use this information to deliver innovation to a major customer? I’m sorry but SFDC isn’t going to do that for you…
Example #2
But monitoring thousands of conversations across Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube and blog comments is only part of the challenge. You still have to respond to them.
Absolute rubbish. If anyone goes into this thinking they need to respond to every piece of social noise about their company or products then they will fail quickly (and spectacularly).
This is what you’ll be doing if you follow what the author and SFDC are suggesting:
Due credit to Marta Zagan
Let me repeat something else Marta Zagan suggests – “The goal is not to control the conversation”.
In simple terms, the goal of using social network analytics is to watch, listen, and share some information with your community.
Don’t ever think you can skip the listen bit. And without tools like Radian6 or Techrigy you won’t be listening properly. Brian Solis (Social Media Manifesto) commented – “It’s about conversations, and the best communicators start as the best listeners”. Think about that for a minute. Isn’t this suggesting we step back and listen, then contribute? Not jump in boots and all with a human-being charged with responding and controlling?
Don’t go jumping in thinking you can communicate. You will need humans involved, but more importantly you need to have everyone understanding what the strategy is and what effort and commitment is required. Because this social media stuff isn’t easy. Get your VP of Sales in and let them see the data, let the Exec’s see what people are saying, in fact, make it a priority to have non-sales and marketing people looking at some of this information so that you can gain insights into the information.
CRM will have a role to play in how you engage with your communities, but it can’t be the driving force behind this. You must have everyone understanding how you as a company will harness these tools to deliver a dialogue and engagement. And you must also confront the problem of whether you even want this data in the CRM in the first place.
And just so you know, there are some CRM vendors doing some far more interesting work in this space than SFDC. RightNow is really ahead of the curve when it comes to customer experience management and SugarCRM are miles ahead in terms of how they are harnessing the power of open source with these great new web 2.0 tools.
One of my many Google Alerts arrived this evening and a particular entry caught my eye. Despite the fact the first part of the blog post was really good, it went on to propose a resolution to a sales reporting problem that has sent me into a quiet rage.
As much as I support and promote the use of Wiki’s in organisations, suggestions like those contained in this post make me angry as it’s an example of technology being used outside its traditional scope to fix a problem that has been caused by technology being misapplied, and then reinforced by a major dose of general corporate incompetence.
Whilst Stewart’s idea has merit, in essence, he’s suggesting the customer accept a band-aid solution rather than confronting the real issues and working towards a long term, sustainable, best practice outcome. And this is before I even start on the sad fact that this type of ‘work around’ has to be proposed for a terribly archaic reporting structure.
The information presented in the post outlines (at least) two fundamental business issues – and I’m not convinced that a Wiki is an acceptable solution on its own (though I will propose that a well resourced Wiki will help engage and deliver corporate change).
Problem #1
I get the feeling they are using a CRM solution and that it clearly hasn’t be configured to suit the needs of the organisation. Call me a sceptic but I’d say they are probably using Salesforce.com and engaged Salesforce.com PS team to configure the solution – so they have a beautifully configured CRM that does nothing to help them sell more effectively. Based on our experience of sales automation projects I’d suggest the VP of Sales was rail roaded by the Salesforce.com sales reps via their typical colour, light, and movement sales presentation and probably never thought to consult the people for whom the system relies on – the field sales person.
Resolution? Stop listening to your CRM vendor and actually listen to your sales team. Look at your sales processes and start understanding your sales data. A Wiki is not going to do this for you but can become a central knowledge repository for specific sales, process, and how-to guides
Problem #2
Stewart’s proposal that a sales reporting Wiki might eventually allow the VP of Sales to analyse data ‘perhaps twice a week’ is fundamentally flawed. In fact it’s wrong.
Resolution? Get serious about your CRM use and how you report sales information. Implement a solution like Cloud9 Analytics. Cloud9 would provide this VP of Sales with the opportunity to take immediate action to improve sales performance and drive revenues.And by immediate I mean she could focus on the forecast breakers, the major customer deals and have any significant events delivered to her via a dashboard or directly to her BlackBerry.
Problem #3
Either the VP of Sales is in way over her head or she’s been given a charter to be mediocre. The role of a VP of Sales is to be a Sales Leader, not the resident reports monkey. The role of the VP of Sales is to reduce revenue risk, increase team productivity and facilitate collaboration. At a minimum the company needs to invest in a sales coaching tool like Private Sales Coach. This would allow the sales reps to take greater ownership of the progress of their opportunities and allow the VP of Sales more time to spend being a sales coach and sales leader.
A wiki will help this company but not as a sales reporting tool. If the company wants to mature into a true Sales 2.0 organisation then they need to do more than just put a wiki in place.
I’ve been a close follower of Dave Stein’s blog for a while now. In fact, one of his posts mentioned Avitage and Private Sales Coach and because of this, we’re in deep negotiations with Jim Burns to bring his products into the APAC market.
If you want to understand the power of Social Media then have a look at this post from Dave’s blog. Whilst its disappointing that these thought leaders are being ripped off and are having to invest so much time chasing this – losing productive time, it’s a very powerful example of how Social Media works. If you follow the links and have a look at how this has developed, you’ll realise that many many people are affected .
Dave also makes a really good suggestion about Google Alerts. We have on average around 13 alerts going at any one time. We follow companies we’re interested in, technologies we believe in or promote, along with our partners and competitors. Like Dave, we strongly recommend you use this free service from Google.
Another tool you should be using is the Google Toolbar. When installed, it allows you to select any text on a web page, right-click and either drop this text straight into Google Notepad or send directly to Gmail. I use the send to email option as it includes the URL you were on at the time. So basically I can collect snippets of data including the URL and store this in a Gmail account for future reference.
I’ve just left Chicago having had the opportunity to attend the Selling Power Sales Leadership conference on Monday. Selling Power assembled a brilliant list of speakers including Neil Rackham – author of SPIN Selling; and one of the founding fathers of modern sales thinking.
With such a stellar cast of thought leaders, I was really looking forward to the event and also using my Livescribe Pulse Smartpen to capture the audio. Starting with Gerhard Gschwandtner’s opening address, I was able to capture each session and across the day captured over 6 hours of notes and audio. Each session has its own page and includes key comments, illustrations and audience questions. In a large room, distant from the speakers, Livescribe really shows its worth.
Given the uncertain times we’re faced with and the climate of fear being propagated by the press mongrels from around the world, Gerhard gave an inspiring address to the audience. It’s a fantastic example of the power of positive leadership – something lacking in political leaders everywhere at the moment. I’m going to upload the opening remarks of Gerhard to the Livescribe website and make the file available by invitation. If you’d like to listen, post a comment and I’ll add you to the access list on Livescribe
Three of the presentations really stand out as being incredibly valuable and I’m extremely happy to have captured them:
1.Malcolm Rees – Global Head of Sales for DHL Express. Managing a sales group of 6,000 is not without it’s challenges and Malcolm gave a really interesting, detailed insight into how he extracts maximum performance from his global team
2.Mary Delany – CSO at CareerBuilder.com. Mary chaired a panel discussion on Coaching Salespeople. Her opening remarks were a real highlight of the conference and she went on to chair a very interesting panel discussion on coaching.
3.Neil Rackham – Author of SPIN Selling. Neil is one of the founding fathers of modern sales leadership thinking. Neil’s comments were very interesting an quite an inspired take on the current situation we’re all facing.
The audio is a bit scratchy at times, primarily as I was on a noisy table, but overall, the quality is sufficient for someone to create transcripts if required.
I’ve just arrived in Chicago for the Selling Power Sales Leadership Conference. I came up from Australia back in March for their Las Vegas event and found it so relevant and informative that I’ve made the effort to come back for this event.
The agenda looks really interesting and I’m pleased it’s got a strong focus on leadership and culture. I spend a lot of time on these two topics as I find they are always at the heart of the issues and challenges that we are engaged to deal with for our customers. I’ve noticed that Sales 2.0 seems to have really taken hold in the US, but is still virtually unknown in Australia or APAC for that matter.
This event kicks off two weeks in North America for me. I’m hitting Atlanta, Boston, and San Mateo also – speaking to a range of vendors and potential partners. A number of these are really exciting and represent the opportunity to work with some really smart, innovative people.
Hopefully I’ll have some downtime to catch up with my buddies in Boston, maybe catch a Patriots game and get re-acquainted with my good fried Sam Adams.
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