The Sales 2.0 Conference was held last week in Chicago (where I tweeted and published photos).
The day long event featured provocative presentations and success stories on innovative approaches for sales to better meet the advanced needs of buyers and lower the cost of lead generation and selling.
Geoffrey James, blogger of the Sales Machine, proved his mettle as the ‘Blogging Machine’ by publishing a ‘running update’ of the conference. Check out this unbelievable recap of the Sales 2.0 Conference.
In the afternoon, I sat at the blogging table (distinguished by having its own power supply) with Ardath Albee who authored these two posts on the conference: here and here.
By the end of the day, the bar was open and David Thompson, co-founder/CEO Genius was doing stand-up Sales 2.0 comedy (read David’s post on the success of this Conference series).
As we were packing up, Ardath and I reflected on the challenges that attendees will face in implementing many of the compelling ideas.
It’s with this in mind, that I thought I would share a perspective on making the most from this thought-provoking conference:
Make sure the basics are covered – Sales & marketing alignment continues to be a thorn in the side of Sales 2.0. Ensure that sales and marketing agree on target marketing, messaging, lead definitions, SLAs, key metrics and demand generation workflow.
Fit to Strategy – How do these tools and practices fit to your organization’s strategy? Increase sales conversion? Lower costs? Given that many of the Sales 2.0 tools are SaaS based and easy to deploy, there are few obstacles to get up & running. Fit to strategy will be the one of key considerations.
The best ideas can be mapped on a grid with High Impact on one axis and Ease of Deployment on another. This will help prioritize what might be a lengthy list and plan for a rollout of your ideas over a longer term.
Customer Insight – It all starts with the customer and now the customer is in the driver’s seat. Without customer insight, we substitute our personal opinion as a proxy for that of the customer leading to inappropriate conclusions and costly mistakes.
Culture – This may be the most substantial obstacle. With this economy, many organizations may be unwilling to experiment or innovate or do anything that will take away from lead generation and closing deals.
Or perhaps senior management will not buy into Sales 2.0 and refrain from providing the top down momentum to drive Sales 2.0 realignment.
Scott Santucci, Senior Analyst Forrester and speaker at Sales 2.0 San Francisco, wrote this recent post on the significant issues that sales leaders face in instituting change. As a follow-up to the Sales 2.0 Conference, don’t forget to register for Scott’s complimentary teleconference “Are you Mounting a Value-Selling Engine on a Product Selling Chassis?”
The best of success to you in rolling out your Sales 2.0 initiatives!
Photo Credits: Robert Lesser
Top Photo: Chicago skyline from Millennium Park
Middle Photo: Dave Fitzgerald, VP Sales, Brainshark & Dan Demko, President, SBTV.com
Bottom Photo: Kevin Hooper, VP, Technology Solutions Group, Hewlett-Packard Company
One Comment
Hi Robert,
It was great to meet you in person at the Sales 2.0 Conference!
You present some great takeaways from the conference. The most important issue I came away with (aside from customer focus) was the dire need for marketing and sales alignment.
The idea that 72% of companies have sales doing nurturing hinders the efficiency and effectiveness of Sales 2.0 – in my opinion. And, it could be seen as taking sales away from selling – not a grand way to gain further adoption.
This said, it was interesting to see the progress that some companies are making with their Sales 2.0 initiatives.
I look forward to blogging with you again at the next conference we both attend!
Ardath