The tools of the [sales] trade have changed remarkably since I began my career 20 years ago.  That fact struck me on 

Yes, sales tools have changed…Actually, sales tools have been radically transformed over the past 20 years.  Only after the day had ended, when I was eating dinner and reflecting, did I piece together just how amazing the transformation has been.

Here is a summary of the tools that I leveraged.

First, the travel itself.  I booked my trip through Travelocity, managed my trip through Tripit on my iPhone, and boarded the plane (using my mobile boarding pass of course).  In the “old days” this would have called for me collaborating with a travel agent via phone while the agent looked up options on their private terminal.  Then, I would have received physical tickets in the mail, and checked in at the airport to receive physical boarding passes.

On to the research.  I began by  the exploring the backgrounds of the clients with whom I was to meet, literally gathering more information than a team of people could have done over several days in the 1990s.  I accessed bios on each attendee of my meetings via LinkedIn, then accessed breakdowns on their company via Data.com and Google Finance.  Finally, I Checked Radian6 and HootSuite for any social media postings by or about them or their company.

Then there was the preparation of meeting materials.  While in the air for the 4 hour flight (which used to be 4 dead hours) I worked on my PowerPoint presentation, connected to the in-flight wi-fi on American Airlines, collaborated with my co-workers via Skype to complete the presentation, then emailed it to my team at the destination.

Suddenly, Radian6, my social media listening tool flagged a newly published article about another key client of mine.  Before I landed in California, I had clipped that article, emailed it with a congratulatory note the my key contacts at this important client, and landed a meeting with their CEO, all of which was neatly and automatically tracked and summarized in my cloud-based CRM system, salesforce.com.

On the way to my meeting, I called up the mobile version of salesforce.com on my iphone, downloaded a map to the meeting place, called my contact, and logged a note to remind myself of our conversation.

Amazing.  Nothing short of stunning, really.

In one day, I had leveraged “sales 2.0″ tools including:

1. Wireless internet during a flight: Go-Go in-flight internet on American Airlines (converting 4 dormant hours to productive time)
2. Cloud-based CRM: salesforce.com and integrated Outlook email
3. Online intelligence:  Data.com, Google Finance
4. Social media: Radian6, HootSuite, and LinkedIn
5. Mobile solutions: salesforce.com mobile, Google Maps,

This is such a fundamental paradigm shift for someone who began in sales at a time when the fax machine was breaking its own paradigm of physical document delivery (Remember?…”It sends the contracts over the phone lines as data and then re-assembles them on the receiving machine!”).

So, before jumping into your next big day, take a moment to reflect and appreciate the progress we’ve made.

Of course, as a famous time traveler once said,”It’s always a big day tomorrow – I’ve got a time machine; I skip the little ones!” ~The Doctor

Miller-Heiman’s Strategic Selling was a ground-breaking sales methodology that like Neil Rackham’s S.P.I.N. Selling has influenced almost all thinking on the subject since it was introduced.  In the Strategic Selling methodology, a key tenant was thinking about selling through the eyes of the buyer broken down by role or “buying influence.”

The epiphany of this model included:

1. “Selling” should really be looked at through the buyer’s eyes.  This was revolutionary and still remains a challenge in some organizations.
2. The single-sale-to-single-buyer paradigm is no longer relevant.  Buying is done by a group, either in organized or loosely federated teams.  This is a truth to this day, arguably accelerated by the internet and social media providing the opportunity for buyers to be more educated than ever, and instilling a drive to have a voice in collaborative decision-making.
3. These teams had various roles, and the roles could be grouped into common types with common business priorities:
1. Economic: The one buyer with $ authority
2. User: The person or people who will interact with the solution on a daily basis.
3. Technical: the person or people who will need to deeply understand the solution or do the care and feeding.
4. Coach: An active fan of your solution, who will help you sell it into their organization.
4. The salesperson should incorporate this into the sales strategy.

If you’re still looking at selling from the inside out, and think you have one buyer per sale, it is a very valuable exercise to dust off your copy of this book (or get digital and download it to your Kindle) and do a gut check. 

You’ll be glad you took the time to sell under the influence!

Well, this week the American Red Cross, they learned a sobering lesson (pun intended) that you better be listening.  They were, and they recovered…

There was an accidental tweet of a personal nature launched over the American Red Cross Twitter account.  It referred to a staffer partying with friends drinking Dogfish brewery’s Midas Touch beer - and it lit up the Twittersphere.  Here is a link to the full story on the Huffington Post.  Better yet, jump into the Tweet Stream on this topic and get a load of all the traffic this thing drove: http://twitter.com/#!/RedCross

With some quick thinking and some quicker action, The Red Cross has turned this potentially embarrassing gaffe into a fundraiser.

This proves once again that if you can show that you are listening in social media, and that you are a part of the community, the community will reward you with the benefit of the doubt, and maybe even some donations.  You might even say the Red Cross has the Midas Touch!

Here’s an example: Aaron Lee, who is a great “Tweeter” on social media topics, “Re-Tweeted” (forwarded)   Jay Oatway‘s tweet about the info-graphic above in November.  It’s posted on pop-culture blog TopCultured and captures your learning curve better than anything I’ve found out there.  Without Twitter, I would never have known it existed.  He breaks it down into 4 Stages:

 Stage 1: You begin - “Crazy morons…”  and “…I tried it for a day, it’s stupid!” 
Stage 2: You will progress to being curious: “…I had a burger today.”
Stage 3: The light bulb comes on: “…I think, therefor I am.”
Stage 4: You are a full convert:  “Hey, @Tim_Kocher – Thx for re-tweeting!”

 Once you get there, you’ll find Twitter can be your most valuable source of targeted, real-time, and interactive information.  It’s like a cable TV channel that you build over time with the most relevant and up-to-date information that exists for you. 

So get started, you have a few stages to work through!

…He sees you when your sleepin’… You may think you’re getting away with it when you are dogging it at work in a sales role.  You may even pull one over on your boss.  But, your clients will notice.  In a world where product differentiation provides only the slimmest advantage, responsiveness and even proactivity remain your key strategic differentiators.  If you slow down, your clients will sense it. There is a great book on this concept called “Selling the Invisible,” by Harry Beckwith.  Read it.

..He knows when you’re awake…If you are a solution-maker for your client, you will get their attention.  If not, you’re toast. You need to work on these relationships in earnest.  What have you done for your client that is truly different or better than anyone else?  What has your firm done to stand out as leaders in your industry? What are you doing to show that you’re awake?

…He knows if you’ve been bad or good…It used to be that your customer would need to try your product/service and let you succeed or fail a few times before learning if you were bad or good.  What’s changed?  The internet and  Social media are the new norm.  You don’t go car shopping without knowing the VIN#, invoice price, and full specifications of the car your buying, and your client doesn’t buy from you without knowing your offerings as well or better than you know your own.  They now also know what your other customers think about you- BEFORE they even contact you.  Better be on your toes!

I hope your year is winding down to a successful end this week.  The next 10 days are a good time to reflect on 2010 and prepare for an even better 2011. 

…So be good for goodness sake!  Happy Holidays

Many of us are processing social media’s evolution through the tools that we are using: blogs, twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. but seldom stepping back and viewing the forest for the trees.  It is a very valuable exercise.

Denise shares her vision of these “ubertrends” in her recent article published today in iMedia Connection, “Social media trends to watch for 2011.”  

Social Monetization, she says,  is the use of social apps that drive revenue and ROI.  Social Ubiquity is the proliferation and convergence of the social web.

These two ubertrends and the subtrends that comprise them are driving much of what we’re living through in social media today.

This article is a great read and frames some of the issues of the day (including privacy) in a larger context.  You should definitely give it a try.

Want to do a quick exam of your digital lungs?  Just type your name into www.google.com and see what comes back.  

Then you should take some steps to ensure the patient isn’t barely breathing.

Before you jump in, there are a few things you need to know:

1. It’s a LOT HARDER THAN YOU THINK!   This takes planning, organizational alignment, rigorous scheduling, and new processes to start,  and – most importantly –  discipline to maintain.
2. It’s a LOT SIMPLER THAN YOU THINK!  The tools available to support your efforts in this area were simply inconceivable only a few years ago.  Now they enable you to do this complex job more efficiently and effectively.
3. It’s about WILL POWER!  Focus and tenacity are the hurdles here.  If you have them, you can be winning with content marketing in very short order.

What are the benefits?  “Brand Stickiness,” “Google Juice,” - whatever you want to call it, will bring recognition>leads>business!

The graph displayed here is an image from an excellent research piece done by Roy Young of  Marketing Profs and Joe Pulizzi of  Junta 42 “(B2B Content Marketing, 2010 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends” [download here] that will give you an overview of the major components of a content marketing effort, along with some very useful statistics.

Some highlights:

• Nine out of 10 B2B marketers are using content marketing to grow their businesses.
• Enthusiasm for content marketing is high; however, marketers are still unsure about the effectiveness and impact
• Content marketing deployment is high across industries, with no single industry reporting below 78% adoption
• Web traffic is the most widely used success metric (56%) followed by direct sales (49%)
• On average, B2B marketers allocate approximately 26% of their total budgets to content marketing initiatives
• The largest challenge is “producing the kind of content that engages prospects and customers” (36% of respondents
• Social media and article posting are the most popular tactics and are currently used by 79% and 78% of B2B marketers

Get this paper and digest it today!

Here is an interesting post of his from this summer.  It is from his blog readers’ perspective.  The focus is what they have found “most newsworthy and topical in the last 90 days.” 

Summary:

1. 30 Things You Should Not Share On Social Media
2. The 7 Secrets to Ford’s Social Media Marketing Success
3. 20 Things You Should Share On Social Media
4. Twitter Reveals 11 New Facts on its Traffic and Usage
5. How To Use Twitter For Business: 5 More Incredibly Interesting Case Studies

As usual, great stuff.  Thanks, Jeff!

I’m still just processing this list (for the first time) on a simpler level.  I am simply struck at how different these values are from most of the generic, boring, homogenized core values in corporate America.   While reading them I asked myself (and urge you to do the same) how much better would my (or any) company be if we focused on these unique values?

Have a look and let me know your thoughts.  Here is a link and the list: