I spoke with Travis prior to his appearance on a panel discussing ‘Sales Lead Management 2.0′ at the Sales 2.0 Conference in Boston.

Network Solutions has expanded its offering beyond domain registration to online services in such areas as search marketing (SEM), ecommerce, website design and hosting with customers spending from $500 to $50,000 per month. Approximately 300 direct sales reps target small businesses across the US.

One of my questions to Travis concerned buyer dissatisfaction. According to a recent survey, a large issue for buyers are sales reps who make promises that are then broken when the prospect becomes a customer.

Travis admitted that Network Solutions is still working on aligning sales and service. Travis believes that buyer dissatisfaction with broken promises is a problem with most sales channels, especially those selling complex products.

At Network Solutions, a significant amount of training is conducted with sales reps on how to set customer expectations.

A wiki has been created with Salesforce.com, Network Solutions’ sales CRM system, that helps reps find answers to their questions. All collateral and training materials are posted to Salesforce.com including a one page cheat sheet with FAQ.

With Travis sitting in the middle of sales and service, he has found that he can cut through the ‘BS’ (note to reader: Travis is not referring to the balance sheet).

Network Solutions tracks all cancellations by reason and by solution. Travis’ team can quickly determine if training is the root cause of an issue.

Travis discussed with me some of the Sales 2.0 tools that have improved his team’s decision-making, lowered costs, enhanced customer value and allowed Travis to manage a widely-dispersed and mobile workforce:

For more on Travis’ panel at the Sales 2.0 Conference, tune in to this blog or my tweets at www.twitter.com/RobertLesser.

The caller spoke in fractured English and his intonation was flat. At times I was unsure if he was asking me a question or making a rhetorical comment.

The purpose of his call was to win my organization back to his firm. There was no probing as to why our organization canceled our contract. The focus of the discussion was on price.

When I explained to him that one of the reasons that we canceled was due to uncompetitive pricing, he asked us to compare pricing with our new provider.

I reluctantly agreed and suggested that he call back in a week.

One week later, my new friend called me back. I recognized his voice but unfortunately I was unfamiliar to him.

My superficial friend seemed to have suffered amnesia. He asked: Who is the decision-maker at my firm on telecommunication services ? Was he available?

Well I had heard enough. I promptly and politely ended the call.

Here is what the sarcastic B2B marketer will take away from this experience:

• If you want to shoot yourself in the foot, use the same quality of telemarketers and the same approach in B2B as you would in B2C. Focus on the offer (i.e. discounts) and don`t spend any more money on a more professional telemarketer.
• Don`t bother investing in a CRM system for B2B. There is no need to take notes from previous conversations or understand previous touch points. If the prospect gets aggravated after repeating the same conversation from the week before, no problem, there are lots of fish in the sea. Don`t worry about antagonizing people: there is no Do Not Call list for business-to-business.
• Who cares about customer churn! We can always bribe our ex-customers to win them back. They will stay with us as long as we can contractually tie their hands. So if the cycle begins the day after the contract ends, not a problem, we win these guys back (again)!

If this experience is reflective of the general state of B2B demand generation, then its time to start looking for a new vocation.

At the same time, Ann Handley was a welcome visitor to ye old blog.

A surprise for me: all of the comments were positive and relevant (except for the guy trying to sell me on doing business on Costa Rica).

Before we take a closer look at some of the comments, I wanted to share with you the question that I asked during the Forrester webinar and Laura Ramos` interesting response.

Q: Robert Lesser: It appears that smaller B2B companies are more successful with their social media marketing than large B2B marketers. Is this showing up in the data? If yes, why?

A: Laura Ramos: We have not looked at the data from this perspective, but it is possible to do so if interested in exploring this further. Anecdotally, we have seen social media and online tactics favor smaller companies in general because small companies are more agile, less constrained by legacy, and able to “look bigger” than they are in the digital realm (emphasis provided).

So it seems that we all are in agreement, at least at a conceptual level, on why small businesses are excelling at social media.

And now let`s feature some of the top reasons submitted from those who read the blog:

• Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs
  “Got passion? (Actually, this could be considered a part of the “megaphone” and “sweat equity” reasons, too.) But so many small business owners have real passion for what they are doing, and that converts into the energy and authenticity necessary to commit to doing social media right.”
• Ann Kingman, Blogger, Books on the Night Stand CEOs are the Public Face – “In most small businesses, the founder/CEO *is* the company, or there are a few key employees who play that role, and so it’s much easier to put a human face on the organization than if it were a huge multinational corporation.

• Giles Crouch, Partner & CEO, MediaBadger / Blogger, Webconomist
  “Building Loyalty: Small biz can engage customers more directly, leading to product innovations and increased loyalty through conversations.”