How can you accelerate sales in a 2.0 world?

That's the lead-off topic this morning at the Sales 2.0 conference in San Francisco

Insights from Brett Queener, SVP, Applications at salesforce.com

• Cloud computing: It's on application that everyone shares online, but each company/individual can customize. Monthly fees, not high IT costs.
  
  The result? It costs less, is more secure & reliable and has automatic update. Lots of vendors here with cloud applications such as: ZoomInfo, Jigsaw, Genius, InsideView.

• Customers have lots of input into what to develop. That's a total reversal of traditional product development. Gerhard from Selling Power highlighted that trend yesterday.

• How can the cloud help the seller be more effective? That's the key question to ask.

• Sales 2.0 is using the cloud to increase sales.

Breakout session on Sales Management 2.0

• Jeanne Glass, from Fair Isaac talking about how Miller Heiman strategy/platform making a huge difference in their sales organization
  
  Deal scoring = great tool to discover what they might be missing & what needs to be done next. Have tied sales funnel to their scorecard. Results? Increased close rates & metric-based decision making.

• Thomas Barrieau, Program Manager of IDC Sales Advisory Practice talking about five factors impacting sales productivity: metrics/reporting + talent management+ sales management + sales methodology + sales enablement.
  
  Sales enablement (my favorite area): the delivery of the right (RELEVANT) information to the right sales professional at the right time (TIME OF SALES CYCLE) in the right place to move a specific opportunity forward.
  
  Big opportunity in sales/marketing alignment. Currently it's getting worse. Having shared metrics is key to ensuring they're aligned.
  
  Key statistic: 57% reps showing up unprepared or somewhat prepared! UNBELIEVABLE in today's business environment when it takes so much work to get a meeting.

Spent time this morning talking to Matt Brezina, Founder of Xobni. If you're using Outlook right now, check them out. Xobni hooks you up to a person's LinkedIn account, Facebook account and more.

Plus, it keeps track of all your conversations with people - and enables you to get information & make connections with anyone who has ever been cc-ed on your emails. Please note: xobni is inbox backwards.

Hope you enjoyed the updates! It's almost over.

Comments

[Jack]

Thanks for sharing insights from Sales 2.0 conference in San Francisco. This is so much of a big help for me.

Please keep this up. Thanks again.

[Deep]

thanks for the information.it was useful

[mark]

Thank you for sharing the knowledge about accelerate sales in a 2.0 world...it helped me a lot...