I just returned from the Sales 2.0 Conference in San Francisco.
I was stationed at the bloggers table with Geoffrey James, amongst others. For a great recap of the event and some candid comments, check out Geoffrey’s posts on the Sales Machine blog.
Jim Fisher, Director Sales Effectiveness at Bluewolf, a Cloud Computing consulting organization, spoke at the Conference on how Bluewolf targets their market.
Unlike Bluewolf, most organizations define their market based on industry, size of organization and geography.
Bluewolf selects their customers based on their approach to embracing innovation. Two of the criteria are notable:
- Prospects who are willing to evolve and embrace a vision.
- Prospects whose culture embraces experimentation and accepts constant change.
That prompted me to ask the question of Jim:
What you have described is an early adopter market that is traditionally a narrow slice of the market. Is this segment sizable enough to meet Bluewolf’s requirements?
Jim responded that Bluewolf has more than enough target accounts to pursue.
What does this imply about technology adoption and where innovative, Cloud applications (aka Sales 2.0 tools) fall on the bell curve?
It has been almost 50 years since Diffusion of Innovations was published by Everett Rogers and just shy of 20 years since Geoffrey Moore adapted this thinking around innovations to disruptive technology adoption with the release of his book Crossing the Chasm – the revered tome of tech marketers.
BlueWolf’s target prospects seem like visionaries: early adopters who take risks on a new-to-market solution and unlike the pragmatists of the early majority, do not demand customer references or proven ROI in their evaluation.
What are your thoughts on the subject?
- Have Sales 2.0 tools crossed the chasm to the stage of the early majority?
- Do these low risk, user-friendly tools accelerate the adoption of technology?
- Similarly, have these tools changed the shape of the bell curve by enlarging the size of the early adopter phase?
Like a digital smoke signal picked up the watchful eyes of social media monitors, I would like to invite the folks listed below to weigh in on these questions.
Over the past year at the Sales 2.0 Conferences, I have had some great discussions with each (sorry if I missed anyone):
- Gerhard Gschwandtner, Selling Power
- Jim Dickie, CSO Insights
- Barry Trailer, CSO Insights
- Laura Ramos, Forrester Research
- Scott Santucci, Forrester Research
- Joe Galvin, SiriusDecisions
- Umberto Milletti, InsideView
- Garth Moulton, Jigsaw
- Peter Poulin, Hoovers
- David Thompson, Genius
- Anneke Seley, PhoneWorks
- Trish Bertuzzi, The Bridge Group
- Pelin Wood Thorogood, The Aegean Group
- Mac McIntosh, Mac McIntosh Inc.
- Miles Austin, Fill the Funnel
- Nigel Edelshain, Sales 2.0 LLC
- Jeb Castelein, LeadSloth
Further Reading:
9 Comments
Hi Robert, Thanks for including my blog under the “Further Reading” section.
Best, Paul
Great post Rober. Let me weigh in with my opinion…
“Have Sales 2.0 tools crossed the chasm to the stage of the early majority?” Nope, they have moved from innovator to early adopter though. Here is the problem with people like us… we have drunk the KoolAid and assume everyone else has as well. I had a few clients sponsor the 2.0 conferences and here is their feedback. The Sales 2.0 conferences are awesome but most of the attendees are not sales and marketing execs trying to figure this out. Most of the attendees are vendors, vendor customers, consultants, press and analysts. So, we walk away energized with our hair on fire but the rest of the world is taking a more cautious approach. Those companies who move quickly will have a competitive edge but that tipping point is not here yet.
“Do these low risk, user-friendly tools accelerate the adoption of technology?” I don’t believe that the tools are accelerating adoption as much as the SaaS delivery model. With such a low barrier to entry why wouldn’t you give innovation a go?
“Similarly, have these tools changed the shape of the bell curve by enlarging the size of the early adopter phase?” Same as above…is it the tools or the delivery platform that is enlarging this phase?
People need to figure all this out. My favorite new saying about Sales 2.0 is “A fool with a tool is still a fool”. It applies to many situations but this one specifically. Build a solid platform that integrates people and process then slowly add technology. Makes sense right?
Thanks for asking and thanks for listening!
Robert,
Great to see you at the conference! Thanks for inviting me to comment.
I think you are asking two different questions here: “Has Sales 2.0 crossed the chasm? and “Have Sales 2.0 TOOLS crossed the chasm?” I agree with Trish’s response to the second question. However, if you view Sales 2.0 as I do (“a more efficient and effective way of selling for both the salesperson AND the buyer that is enabled by technology”), then the answer in my opinion to the first question is “yes”. Practically every company is looking at sales optimization or “how to do more with less.” Different companies are at different points on the Sales 2.0 continuum. Some are starting with fundamentals: implementing inside (phone/Web) sales functions, defining measurable sales processes mapped to buying processes (typically supported by a CRM system), embracing new communications media (which for some companies means e-mail and voice mail, not Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter). While we who attend the Sales 2.0 conference may not think of these basic technologies as “Sales 2.0 tools”, some sales executives are embracing them for the first time and they are transforming the way they sell. In my book, this still constitutes “Sales 2.0″.
What do YOU think?
@Trish – With almost all Sales 2.0 tools delivered in the Cloud, the SaaS delivery model is the defining charateristic of Sales 2.0 thus accelerating the pace of innovation.
I agree with you that the attendees of the Sales 2.0 Conference, especially in high tech San Francisco, are not representative of the market. However, I am seeing signs that some of these tools are crossing the chasm (the subject of a future post).
For this post, I have focused on the tools but Sales 2.0 (per Anneke’s comments) is much broader. Technology doesn’t solve problems but accelerates solutions.
@Anneke – Great to see you in San Francisco!
I struggle with how to gauge whether an organization has truly adopted Sales 2.0 or whether tools are being adopted willy-nilly.
It seems to me that that the easiest point of measurement is to understand if the account has deployed a Sales 2.0 technology as part of a strategic sales plan. So the deployment of a Sales 2.0 tool is the most visible sign of Sales 2.0 but without a strategic underpinning, the path taken is not Sales 2.0.
Robert, Trish & Anneke: great post, and great comments!
I agree that processes are the core of Sales 2.0, not the tools. I’m still meeting a lot of old-fashioned high-touch sales people who don’t believe in phone/web but want to go out and meet in person (even for relatively low-cost SaaS products). A tool is easy to adopt, but a mentality is much harder to change: my gut feeling is that it’s going to take 10+ years before Sales 2.0 practices are mainstream (essentially until a new generation of sales leaders arrive).
Regarding the tools: several panelists mentioned they were using 15+ Sales 2.0 tools. In my opinion, if you have to patch together so many tools, we’re still in the early adopter phase. Only when more integrated solutions are available, it’s really going to cross the chasm.
Great post and follow-up comments. A few things that I take away:
Jep – completely agree that the mentality is one of the hardest things to change. Our focus as an organization is to assist early stage software vendors looking to enter the US market avoid the mistakes associated with the high cost/high touch sales model. We are always surprised at just how quickly an organization will look to go to this model without fully understanding their own value proposition, ASP and preferred sales model just because it is what they know best.
Process vs. Tools – I’m not sure that I agree on this one. I read a great post by Mike Damphousse earlier today that called up the MIT study on the best times and day of the week to prospect. Included are great statistics on web leads and the significant drop-off in conversion rates depending on response times. If we are most effective in converting these web leads by following up within 5 minutes, surely we need to be deploying the right tools in support of our process?
Thanks again for the great post and comments.
Robert,
I don’t know if a movement & a mindset crosses the chasm like products do. What I know is a sales organization that has not implemented ANY of the processes enabled by sales 2.0 technology, and still living in the 1.0 world, they are already in the late majority and very soon will be laggards. In other words, they will lose deals to their competitors, their best people and fade from the market.
I already see this as some of our customers who are ahead of this curve are squeezing out their competitors in the market.
I see the key areas of sales 2.0 technology as:
- forecasting
- analytics/reporting
- marketing automaton
- sales intelligence
- sales compensation & incentives
- process playbooks
- quoting/configuration for complex offerings
For many customers, what comes in their SFA in these areas is enough, others need more. The idea of assembling 15 third-party solutions on top of a CRM gives me a headache to just think about.
Lastly, it’s easy for a multitude of 1.0 vendors to say: We are Sales 2.0; the same way enterprise software companies now have “cloud offerings” because it’s convenient. Like I said on stage, if you’re not getting visible business benefit in any of these important areas, look for a better solution.
Umberto
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Really interesting reading! I’m only just catching up with the sales 2.0 phenomena and this post has really intrigued me! You might all be interested in some interviews coming up this week on Meet the Boss TV that will be highlighting the importance of ‘Sales 2.0′ and ways to properly integrate it into your business, should be very useful http://bit.ly/bXrkzg