Smashmouth B2B Blog: Sales & Marketing Demand Gen

5 Thoughts About Sales 2.0 Conference Opening Remarks

This morning's Sales 2.0 Conference lead off speaker was Polly Sumner of Salesforce.com.  Although she spoke about Tools, her real message wasn't about tools as much as it was about use, and ways of working.

It Gerhard Gschwandtner, the conference host,captures it with a question to Polly, "so it's about a mindset?" 

• Explore tools with an eye for how your team will adapt to it.  How they will use it. How it will change the way they work
• Challenge yourself to identify where efficiencies can be gained. Can you gain time?  Knowledge? Trigger events?
• Don't get caught up in the hype.  Look through demos and presentations, does the tool change the way you will get your job done?
• The best Sales 2.0 apps are adopted without being forced on users. Quote from a beta tester of Salesforce Chatter two weeks ago at CloudForce Boston "We just turned on Chatter, a week later we had 700 active users."
• "Failure is OK," says Polly. Don't be afraid to take risks, it's risks that can introduce change into your organization.

From our experience with Sales 2.0 tools at Green Leads, we had an immediate impact by making an extremely risky decision 18 months ago.  Instead of hiring new people and adding headcount to our appointment setting team, we took a major risk by implementing ConnectAndSell.  It allowed us to double the weekly production of our best people for about half the cost of a new hire. We didn't push it, we let our team adopt it at their own pace. It organically became a part of their daily routine.

What risks have you taken related to Sales 2.0?  Has it changed the way you work?

Jive Talkin for B2B Marketing & Sales Demand Gen Experts

Today at Enterprise 2.0 in Boston, Jive Software is rolling out a new agenda for social business that is worth a close look.

 We all wake up on Mondays to a mountain of data, feeds, and emails.  It's great to know that our best buddies "like" your latest blog article and left a comment that they miss you while they are surfing or mountain biking through your facebook fan page, or that the company we are following on LinkedIn just hired a VP of Demand Gen (nice lead for me), and that Chris Brogan just launched ManOnTheGo.com, which a colleague in sales recommends by retweeting a link from @chrisbrogan. That said, you still have hundreds of Google Reader articles to scan, a few new sales enablement presentations to review before publishing them to Slideshare, and two meetings to approve in the Appointment Setting queue...

I can go on, but you get the picture.  In the enterprise, we are flooded with internal and external data -- nuggets of information that we find valuable or our colleagues find valuable and that we need to know in order to do a stellar job.  Roll all these feeds, files, emails, tweets, micro-blogs, discussions, and public buzz into a cockpit-like environment and you have Jive What Matters, an enterprise class portal into this sea of social information that keeps us operating in real time.

My domain expertise is B2B Marketing and Sales, especially Demand Gen.  Here are some use case scenarios I see for the b2b executive:

• Competition - Aggregate feeds from multiple buzz sources. Follow keywords and specific phrases that can point you to competitive intelligence.
• Opportunities - Work sales opportunities in a team mode. Follow everything about that opportunity.  "Like" the feeds from the key account manager, feed in key words from the opportunity such as company name or project name, follow the status and feed updates from key decision makers in the social sphere.
• Sales Enablement - Monitor sales and marketing asset libraries.  Know when files change, are upgraded, or need collaboration.  Create/follow discussions focused on use case scenarios or sales tips.
• Reporting - Create feeds from certain reports that trigger when large opportunites change status, or when a company KPI changes.
• Follow Colleagues - That applications engineer from Calgary that you met last year with all the great opinions on how to demo software, follow that guy -- he's a wealth of knowledge.  
• Data - Most data sources (Jigsaw, LinkedIn, etc.) allow you to create RSS feeds on specific searches. Set some up for your best prospect titles, when a new record is created with "demand gen" or "marketing operations", and funnel that feed to your data analyst for addition to your nurturing/lead queue.
• Industry Leaders - Stay abreast of the emerging thoughts and trends in the industry.  Subscribe to the best in Lead Nurturing, Lead Generation, and B2B Marketing.
• Your Team - What better way to follow the activity of your team and key contributors.  Follow their feeds and know what they are up to, or what makes them tick.  Do the same for the execs above you.
• Buzz - Follow industry trends, keywords of interest.  Take advantage of Jives Chatter Filter [play on words?] and Jive Genius.  The two help filter and recommend only the best and relevant data for your needs.
• Social Graph - Visually see how your prospects are connected in the social network. Stunning representations.  Make that first call a warm call by knowing who they know.
• What Matters - The Chatter Filter and Jive Genius look like promising tools that can reduce the amount of non-relevant noise coming in.

What other B2B Marketing and Sales Demand Gen use case thoughts can you find?   I'm off to their launch event in Boston for some great Jive Talkin.

 

Inside Sales Trends: Then and Now...What's Your Big Idea?

This week I presented at the AA-ISP Leadership Summit in Minneapolis.  It kicked off two days of great sessions, discussion and networking.  Thanks to everyone who attended and supported the effort.  It was great to meet everyone and share our Big Ideas.

Special thanks to Bob Perkins, Larry Reeves and others at AA-ISP for having me.

The other piece I enjoyed was meeting folks from a competing company.  Being one of just a few By Appointment Only competitors is always a challenge.  Linda and I got our demand gen start at BAO, and they are a class act with good people -- competing with them on a daily basis keeps us honest.  Henry Glickel, BAO's top recruiter, presented on best practices for Inside Sales Recruiting.  Hiring and creating good talent was a common theme during the event, and Henry's take on it ensures steady and talented inside sales professionals.

There were also the guys from Vorsight. Having read their Sales Tips Blog for quite some time, it was very informative to listen to co-founder Steve Richard present his tips on how to become a power cold calling machine.

Nothing like Co-Opetition.

Below is my keynote address: Inside Sales Trends, Then and Now...What's Your Big Idea?

 

 

 

AA-ISP Inside Sales Leadership Summit: Follow on Twitter #LS10

American Association of Inside Sales Professionals has their national Leadership Summit May 11-12 in Minneapolis.  The speakers include fantastic cast of sales/marketing leaders, with me doing my part.  Topics range from inside sales strategies, increasing performance, compensation models, hiring and managing to Sales 2.0.  If it's Inside Sales related, it's a topic.

For those of you that can't be there live, you can follow the action on twitter with hashtag #ls10.  

If you do attend, and are a follower of @damphoux, track me down and say "Hello".

@chrisbrogan's New Marketing Experience, aka Inbound Marketing Summit: 5 Tips

Next week I'll be speaking at Chris Brogan's New Marketing Experience in San Francisco.  In a recent post, @chrisbrogan talks about the event:

"One thing that’s different with my events than with other events: Every sponsor and exhibitor and speaker is someone we think has something to offer you .... We appreciate their voice in our experiences. Thus, time spent with them is also time spent learning new marketing the way we see it ... it’s a 1-day event. There’s no fluff. It’s packed with info. We can hang out."

My highlight of the week is the Hang Out part.  That's all the discussion, debate, learning and putting faces to all the "social" B2B marketing community faces I've met online -- as well as meeting new ones.

Some recommendations to those of you attending, and even to those that aren't, on how to get the most out of a live event:

• Announce that you are attending.  Post it on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and any other place your status resides.
• Live tweet or live blog from the event and include the Hashtag in all posts.  Share your take-aways.
• Mingle, mix, get to know some new tweeps.  Don't spend the breaks in the lobby on your cell phone.
  
• Collect business cards.  If you get one without a Twitter address on it, ask for it and write it down.  When you get home, or during quiet time at the event, send LinkedIn invites.
• Don't cluster.  You already know the people you know.  Unless you are using the connection to get an introduction to someone new, move on.  Meet new people.
  

Bonus:

• Be there virtually.  If you aren't at the event, follow it on Twitter and the live blogs (links will be on Twitter).  Follow the hashtag.  Or better yet, make a last minute decision and REGISTER HERE with a 50% Discount Code GREEN50.

@damphoux: So a shout out to all the attendees next week -- find my icon in the crowd and come say "hello".

 

Speakers List on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#/list/damphoux/ims-speakers

Lead Generation Tips: Business Card Data Entry For Free | Dreamforce Special

How many business cards do you have laying around in one of the current states?

 1. On your desktop in a pile
 2. Wrapped in a rubber band
 3. In a ziplock bag
 4. Distributed in the inside pockets of four blazers
 5. In the bottom of your computer bag

If you answer is more than 10 cards, then you have leads laying around that are going untapped.

Green Leads has just introduced a new complementary service where the sales reps we support from our appointment setting clients can have up to 100 business cards a month entered into a spreadsheet for free.  All they have to do is send them to us. A week later, they get a spreadsheet with all the data -- perfect for importing into Outlook, Salesforce.com or other CRM systems.

The process:

1. Send business cards to Green Leads, wait a week
   
2. Leads are returned in spreadsheet format
3. Leads can be imported into Outlook, LinkedIn, Salesforce or other CRM or Marketing Automation systems
4. Business cards are returned or recycled
   

To celebrate all the networking, business card exchanges and great relationship building that will happen at Dreamforce this week, Green Leads is offering a limited version of the service to non-clients for FREE. Send us up to 100 of your Dreamforce business cards and we'll send them back to you in a spreadsheet. The only catch ... you subscribe to our B2B Blog: Smashmouth Sales & Marketing.

Get instructions now >> 100 business card leads.

 

Lead Gen Tips: How to Produce A Successful Webinar

I had the pleasure today of participating in the Richardson Connect webinar series.  Nigel Edelshain of Sales 2.0 and I were both panelists discussing:

Linked, Tweeted, and Profiled:Using the Power of Social Media to Generate Sales Leads and Expand Client Relationships

Despite a minor glitch from the webinar hosting provider during the first minute, the event was successful due to Richardson's impeccable planning process.  This sales training company is all about preparation, execution and communication -- which led to a great event.  Let me outline that procedure ramping up to a webinar, focusing not on presentation tips but on the production of the webinar itself.

• Initial Planning - Identify speakers, topics and goals of the webinar
• Messaging - Get all participants and constituents together to brainstorm messaging, expectations, schedule and action items
• Content Creation - Three weeks prior.  Involve all participants in the content creation process and solicit comments constantly.
• First Review - Two weeks prior.  Participants walk through the slide deck, talk about what each can contribute and what cues might be used for transition.
• Dry Runs and Rehersals - Use the actual webinar hosting software so that everyone involved is familiar with operations.
• Dry Run #1 - Week prior. Casual run-through with some designated critics that are not intimately involved with the content.  Feedback as needed during the dry run.  Edits.
  
• Dry Run #2 - Three days prior. Formal run-through with critics, refined content review and attempt at real-time flow and timing.  Feedback after the dry run.  Final edits.
  
• Dress Rehersal - Day prior. The whole presentation, as it will play out.  No stops.  Feedback after.  OK, more final edits ;)
• Prep - 30 minutes prior.  Get presenters to log in early.  Test everything for going live and use tech support if necessary to fix any glitches.
• Go Live - At start time, announce that the webinar will begin shortly.  This gives stragglers a couple minutes to log on.  Then jump right in.
• Q&A - Make sure to allow enough time for questions, and then after the event answer any open questions in an email to the participants.
• Followup - Send a prompt followup with calls to action and link to the replay.
  

The number of reviews and dry runs might seem like overkill.  In fact, this presenter originally complained it was too much, but Jim & Lori ... I take it back.  This level of preparation was perfect. 

Thanks to Richardson for producing a great event and inspiring this contribution to the Smashmouth Lead Gen Tips collection. As always, thanks to Nigel for being a great sidekick and colleague. The two of us are never at a loss for words.

Any other webinar tips you want to share?  Add them as a comment.

B2B University: Top 15 Tweets

Today's B2B University, sponsored by Silverpop, was a great turnout.  My estimate was 150 or so.  Great networking and information sharing.  Glad to have met everyone I met.  If we didn't meet but you wanted to...shoot me a message.

During the session (despite the wireless being up and down all afternoon) I collected what I thought were the top 20 tweets from the crowd: 

 

abneedles: The room at #B2BUniversity Boston is seriously packed. Awesome, guys. http://pic.gd/1d57d0

MarketingSherpa Marketing Summit, Richard Fouts of Gartner talks Social Media and Communications

In the fourth of a series of Thought Leader interviews for MarketingSherpa's 6th Annual B2B Marketing Summit 2009, we talk to Richard Fouts, research director at Gartner, Inc., an information technology research and advisory company. Fouts presented yesterday in Boston.

Mike: You're presenting on the use of social media in communications. (I'm assuming you are talking Marcom?) I've noticed lately that if you have the right media contacts connected with you on Twitter and Linkedin, you can almost get your word out through those channels as opposed to the standard techniques. Are traditional media outlets dying?

Richard: It's not just marcom, rather all communications ... corporate communications, employee communications, PR, and investor communications. But to answer your question: If I had a dollar for every time someone predicted the death of traditional media -- for example, print -- I'd be rich. Michael, do you know the invention of the bicycle actually predicted the death of the book industry? Yes indeed, one view is that we'd all be riding our bicycles instead of reading books. There's no question that as dollars move toward electronic media, they move away from traditional media at the same pace. But things go in cycles. Amazon still sells plenty of books, and BW, Harvard Business Review, and the Economist still sell lots of magazines and journals (especially when they do special editions on things like social computing). I tell clients all the time, "There's a lot less noise in print right now ... and the rates are lower. So you'll actually get higher ROI in print today than you did before -- due to less noise, and less competition for eyeballs, at lower cost." Besides, we all know from experience that the best campaigns engage prospects over time, with multiple media. And from what I can see, traditional media outlets aren't dying, but they are adapting. Every television commercial for IBM tells you to go to their web site. The web site shows their TV ads ... or tells you to watch for their ad campaign on television, or to watch for them at an upcoming trade show. PR is being aggressive in its use of social media in their traditional reputation management services. Many events in the physical world, like meetups and house parties, start with Twitter. It's old media meets new media - not a question of what's surviving and what's dying - rather how things are evolving, converging, and maturing.

Mike: Blogging seems to be the communications platform of the future. In fact, our new site's press section will basically be a blog. Our focus with blogging, though, is to spread prolific content about demand gen and appointment setting. It brings value to our readers and credits for SEO. Are there other benefits?

Richard: Sure, there are a range of benefits to blogging that inform all phases of what we at Gartner call the marketing activity cycle. New media and Web 2.0 are changing everything, but the fundamentals of marketing haven't changed. You still need to study and research the market, develop products, plan, execute, communicate, and evaluate. Blogging, like many social and professional interaction platforms, informs all of these phases, not just the communication phase. For example, blogs help us solicit input about new products ... and they help marketers and salespeople have conversations, not just engage in one-way messaging. Press sections today don't have mechanisms for people to respond to a press release, to ask questions. By making your press room a blog, you open up robust and informational conversations, not just one way messaging that ends in a vacuum. You're able to make more informed decisions. You reduce the guesswork because you know more .. and you know it faster.

Mike: What should we look out for when combining social media and communications?

Richard: Look out for "herding cats syndrome" because as a communications professional, you'll never herd all the cats who are wandering around the great social media chessboard. You need to accept the fact that you're relinquishing control, at least the kind you've become accustomed to. This is the toughest thing for communications people to hear. Their entire discipline has been turned upside down because they no longer create and shoot one-way messages to stakeholders. And they aren't the only originators of the message. Dell for example, woke up one day to a crisis situation due to an angry blogger named Jeff Jarvis, who lambasted Dell for its lousy customer service. Within hours, boatloads of consumers sympathetic to Jarvis' arguments posted comments on his blog as well as their own, creating a firestorm of negativity through the blogosphere. It took awhile, but Dell executives finally joined the online conversation and began to slowly rebuild the company's tarnished image. Dell learned a valuable lesson from this experience. It launched its own blog and put it to good use when another potential crisis erupted - that it nipped in the bud -- over a battery recall. Dell's chief blogger, Lionel Menchaca, addressed the issue in a straightforward, no-nonsense manner and let customers freely comment. Later, Michael Dell launched IdeaStorm.com and begged customers to give his company advice (and he still gets plenty of it, which he welcomes with open arms). The proof is in the pudding: metrics show that Dell's customer service rating has risen significantly. So the message is, don't try to herd the cats -- become part of the movement. In some cases you may even feel like you're part of the chaos, part of the noise, but you need to just go with it. Let it play out. Transparency is everything these days, and if you fight it, you're done. PR people learned this long ago when they realized the words "no comment" would brew even more suspicion.

Mike: If you had just 5 minutes with someone and they asked you for the takeaways from your presentation, what would they be?

Richard: The chief takeaway is simple: Don't forget the fundamentals of marketing in your desire to understand social media and its game changing, revolutionary qualities. Sure, social media changes everything but there's no substitute for good marketing. You still need to respond to the gaps in the market and exploit your competitors' weaknesses. And social media can help. But you can't wait. You need to join the movement, make some mistakes, learn from them, and go on. This isn't one of those "wait and see" things where you think you can let other people make mistakes for you, then join in with the perfect plan. You need to experiment, you need to engage in the conversation, learn the beauty of crowdsourcing, tweeting, blogging, and listening to your Facebook fans, both the good and the bad. Customers don't want you to market to them, they want you to market with them.

Mike: OK, last question, the B2B Marketing Thought Leaders Curry Poll. Do you prefer red, yellow or green curry?

Richard: That's easy: Green

MarketingSherpa Marketing Summit, Aaron Dun of Ness Technologies - "Think Like the CFO"

Another of the speakers at MarketingSherpa's 6th Annual B2B Marketing Summit 2009 is Aaron Dun, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Ness Technologies, a global IT services provider. This is the third in a series of Thought Leader Interviews for Marketing Sherpa.

Mike: Aaron, you're speaking at MarketingSherpa about "How to Build a Program -- When Every Dollar Counts Twice." It seems to not only be about the dollars, but about the resources. What would you share with those one-person marketing departments that are out there?

Aaron: Run, fast? Just kidding, of course. I think oftentimes the resource issue is wildly overlooked. You have to be realistic about what you can do with the team that you have available to you, whether it's 10 people or just one person. At a previous company, we expected to be able to knock out a regular set of campaigns in a given quarter, but instead it took all of our energy to roll out two. That was the effective maximum capability that we had and we need to acknowledge and plan for that.

As for specific advice, I would offer the following:

1. Surround yourself with a great network of freelancers and partners. Have at least one go-to person for each discipline, cultivate them and bring them into your planning process as if they are on your team. If they have visibility into your strategy and can do consistent work for you, they will be that much more effective. The sad reality of the recent downturn is there are some fantastic resources working as freelancers or striking out on their own. (To be clear however, this isn't "good talent on sale!")
   
   
2. Maximize everything you are doing. If you write a whitepaper, what are you going to do with it? Have a strategy to get the maximum value of that asset from posting it on your site, in your social communities, syndicating it out, etc.
   
   
3. Be ruthless in your measurement. If you don't know if something is working or not, figure out how to measure it or stop doing it. (and yes, you CAN measure PR! )
   

Mike: Some companies are still acting as if they are in economic crisis mode. We're all doing more for less. What can a frugal marketer say or do for their management teams that can free up the much-needed budgets?

Aaron: Paralysis works both ways, unfortunately. But I think the answer lies in the maturity of the organization. If you have been running a strong program and have a good foundation, come to the table with a strong idea that takes advantage of either a market opportunity, a competitor's sudden weakness, or a unique opportunity that wasn't there before. Link the activity to a business outcome you have successfully driven before.

Conversely, if your marketing organization is less mature, you have to show how inaction is delaying opportunity. In this case, it takes a certain amount of time to ramp up the machine and turn marketing efforts into business opportunities. The longer you wait, the longer the payoff takes to kick in.

But the same rigor on metrics applies. Propose something as a Proof-of-Concept first. Rather than suggesting a three-webinar series for $100k, show how you negotiated a pilot for just $15k with an option for future campaigns and articulate the expected value and the steps you are going to take to achieve the goal. Most importantly though, pull the plug if it doesn't work. Willingness to walk away from an idea gone wrong will show that you will spend money wisely and can be trusted with the company's money.

Lastly, think like the CFO. The CFO has many choices for spending your budget. They can invest that money in marketing, or they can invest it in something else or the market. If you show that you can drive a business return with their investment in your budget, they will be more likely to invest more.

Mike: Social Media. It seems to be all the buzz. It also seems to be an inexpensive way to pull off some effective marketing. What are your thoughts here?

Aaron: Yes and no. If you have a consumer product, it's interesting of course. But on the B2B side the value prop is a bit less clear still. I wrote about this issue a bit on my blog. I was one of the early B2B brands advertising on LinkedIn when they launched their advertising platform. We were targeting senior marketing folks and their segmentation capability is pretty amazing. But you always have to ask yourself even if they are on the platform, are they there to engage with you? Or are they there for some other purpose?

You also need to consider your internal audience. It's not a stretch to say that many senior executives are not entirely clear on what social media can do for the organization. I have a hard enough time getting budget and bandwidth for the things I know are going to drive business, I am not sure that I want to hinge my program on the channel today.

But you clearly have to be in the game. Our strategy is to be fast followers. We are dabbling in our "20% innovation time" (to borrow Google's term) to build our presence and test. We are looking to use the channel to "get outside the four walls of our web site," so to speak. I personally went from 0 to 60 on Twitter in just 36 hours at a conference a few months ago; clearly others have as well. With that comes opportunity, but as a B2B service, we can afford to wait and see how things develop.

Mike: So, for a takeaway as it pertains to b2b demand gen, the ultimate goal is putting a prospect in the hands of a sales rep. What programs are you hot on right now? Inbound Marketing? Outbound Marketing? Qualified Lead Gen? Appointment Setting? Web Events? Social Media?

Aaron: This might sound a little strange but my answer is all of the above. While our campaigns tend to be led or focused on a particular tactic, we are trying to run truly "interactive campaigns" that encompass as many channels as possible around a particular theme. This year we set out to do just three themes. We have done single-threaded activities around meeting setting or email or web campaigns, but we prefer to mix together the right set of activities to achieve the desired result.

This has a couple of advantages. First it de-risks your efforts. If you run a meeting-setting campaign and you miss your target, you missed. But if you run an email campaign on a topic, back that up with a web event and layer in your meeting-setting effort against the respondents and previously warm contacts -- you then measure the campaign on the aggregate. If one area falters the others will pick it up. Surely, you need to measure the individual activities and understand any failures, but at least your whole campaign didn't tank.
Second, by committing a series of activities around a particular concept or theme, you can gain economies of scale around your efforts and tell a more complete story. Hosting a web event gives your telesales team another hook to the message, more punch to your web efforts, a boost for your syndication campaign, more assets to drive up SEO hits or run PPC campaigns against, etc. So while they take a bit more effort and at times, budget, when you have limited resources it's far better to multiply those any way you can.

Mike: Last question, it's the B2B Thought Leaders Curry Poll. Do you like Red, Green or Yellow Curry?

Aaron: Sorry to disappoint. As my daughter says, "Don't yuck my yum" so let's just say that Curry is not my favorite!