Network Solutions levers Sales 2.0 for a 360 degree customer view

Travis Fore is in a unique position to profit from Sales 2.0. As SVP of Sales, Service and Product Delivery, Travis is responsible for the breadth of customer experience at Network Solutions.

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:

• Salesgenie.com has been instrumental in enabling segmentation by vertical and on-the-fly geographical proximity. A key data point provided by Salesgenie is the spend on local advertising.

• CallEffect is a click-to-call and call logger that is integrated with Salesforce.com

• An internally developed tool that generates a proposal based on an evaluation of the prospect's website - SEM, ecommerce, security etc.
  

• Online contract management software
  

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