LionzForce

Day 1 of the Sales 2.0 conference behind me, and I am digesting the dizzying array of new information, content, ideas, sales & marketing strategies, case studies, and other queries posed by Gerhard Gschwandtner, our host and moderator for the conference to the audience. There were about 25 individual speakers, some who gave formal presentations like Brett Queener, SVP of Products for Salesforce.com who discussed colloboration using Chatter, and Michael Dunne of Gartner Group, who did a deep dive into measuring results, understanding process and sales structure (whew it was detailed) and others who participated in on-stage panels, each contributor did their best to shed light on what is Sales 2.0 is to them and their organizations.

I’m not sure anyone of us arrived at a universal definition of what Sales 2.0 is quite yet, but from my perspective as a newbie to this space the things every speaker agreed on was that the nature of dynamic and proactive institutional collaboration from within any given organization is now a fundamental TRUTH. Sales process, play books, content delivery applications, marketing automation systems, lead nurturing/scoring, were just some of the topics covered today and there is clearly a momentum to grasp and embrace these wide array of disparate systems and figure out which will yield the biggest bang so to speak.

I was impressed by the various panel speakers who, while embracing Sales 2.0 as a given also cautioned that what every firm must do is understand your internal structure first and develop strategy that leverages these structures. It’s not enough to just invest in the latest and hippest marketing automation system if you can’t clearly define what’s an inquiry, what’s a qualified lead and why? I especially liked what Ben Taft, Senior Director of Strategic Alliances for Brocade said, that in the end you have to measure success by Campaign to Cash, this is something I have always emphasized in my own lead management consulting practice.

Ben also said something I especially agreed with, don’t just take old content and wrap it up in a new shiny new Sales 2.0 package, in essence perpetuating dissemination of materials that don’t forward new insights, provide value to the sales organization and customers, and that cannot be measured from a Campaign to Cash perspective, and comments were excellent examples of Blocking and Tackling sales and marketing essentials and the results Brocaade have derived from their Sales 2.0 instance of Savo are concrete and measurable according to Ben and I believed him.

Summarizing today,

- We have to measure and understand what we are measuring
- Marketing needs to be invested in the quality of the leads they produce
- Campaign to Cash – This is what really matters

- Structure always follows Strategy

- You must know what campaigns are working and why

- Being able to Configure/Price/Quote is a huge differentiator and is essential in a competitive Sales 2.0 environment.

- As if we didn’t already know, mobile devices are driving the evolution of content and collaboration

The Sales 2.0 Conference at the Four Seasons Hotel in San Francisco is off with a bang. Umberto Milletti, CEO of InsideView focused his remarks on the necessity to synthesize lots of disparate data (company, press, contacts, key events) and serve them up in real-time as meaningful insight that is actionable in the CRM. InsideView and other “data aggregation vendors” focus on information delivery to the sales rep so that time is focused on what you need to know in order to advance the sales conversation.

In the so-called Sales 2.0 world the need to integrate disparate data into meaningful information that sales can use is now becoming a standard process and CRM integration necessity for marketers and sales to drive productivity in highly competitive markets. Companies like InsideView and OneSource, are highly visible vendors at this conference and are talking about the critical importance of getting reps knowledgeable about their territories, accounts, products etc., by serving up data that is “Actionable”. Both firms have compelling ROI statistics they site in rep productivity when using their data aggregation applications compared to not using them, and as someone who has managed inside sales teams for years, I agree that the more specific data that can be served to the rep and eliminate the need for time-wasting company research.

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