In this post I interview Kipp Bodnar, Social Media Marketing Manager, co-author of the Ad Age Power 150 Social Media B2B blog, and thought leader on using B2B social media strategies. In this interview Kipp shares why sales reps need to become better marketers, how social media is changing the B2B marketplace, and why social media is more than the responsibility of the marketing department at your company.
Chad: What are some of the major shifts you are seeing in the B2B marketplace with the innovation of social media platforms?
Here is a solid video by Clay Shirky at TED that explains the great power shift taking place in media and the marketplace.
The message is simple.
The rise of social networks and their users have turned all conventional thought upside down. Right before our eyes, we are seeing changes in the way we communicate and share information. Social Media, the network effect and social selling has changed the B2B marketplace and will continue to change it in 2010. For B2B sales reps, the changes will continue to happen steadily, until the entire profession and marketplace has changed.
Will you be ready?
For those of you that don’t know — I’m a contributing author each Saturday over at the Personal Brand Blog, a top 50 AdAge ranked blog. I believe building, promoting and monitoring your personal brand is essential in our Web 2.0 world and especially important for sales reps.
Here is my post from this Saturday — it was a pretty popular post. Enjoy!
Have you ever considered whether you should create your personal brand? Have you been procrastinating? Are you thinking that 2010 will be the year you jump on the personal branding band wagon?
Maybe you should read this first before you take the plunge.
Are you ready to navigate the coming decade of 10% unemployment? The days ahead are going to bring more competition for sales reps — this post will provide you with 9 ways to differentiate yourself from your competition with your personal brand.
First some background on the unemployment picture.
The jobless rate is at its highest level since 1983 at 10%, this is known as the U3 unemployment rate. An even more comprehensive measure of unemployment, known as the U6, which includes all marginally attached workers, puts the unemployment rate at 17.2%. That leaves about 1 in every 5 Americans without a job.
The politicians will tell you there will be a healthier job market when the economy rebounds and that unemployment will trend down to more normalized levels. The reality is that nobody, including politicians and economists really knows what the job market will look like in the years ahead.
It is a fool’s game to try and predict what the job market will look like in the next 10 years — there are too many moving factors and variables in our global economy. Those that will have you believe that “full employment”, widely accepted to be at 5% unemployment, is achievable within the next four years may be overly optimistic.
This post will detail how using an on-demand ROI/TCO sales 2.0 tool can help you sell more, at a higher ASP, with a shorter sales cycle and get your customers to “own the deal”.
Now that is sales 2.0!
Here is a true story.
The largest deal so far this year at EMC Corp. is for $23 million dollars. The reason this deal closed was because of an invaluable selling tool — an ROI/TCO web-based tool that is made available to all account teams.
Without the ROI/TCO tool this $23 million dollar deal would not have closed because the IT group initially shot the deal down with cost objections.
Case Study: A leading virtualization solution provider needed to create an easy to use ROI Tool for customer self-assessments, channel partners and sales professional use. Alinean ported and integrated three existing spreadsheet models into a powerful online tool which is directly responsible for over 1,000 qualified leads per month with record high campaign conversion rates.
The sales game has changed — now more than ever you are the CEO of your own company — the company called You Inc. The best opportunities and commission checks will increasingly go to the sales reps with the most credible and powerful personal brands.
Tom Peters’ bedrock article on personal branding entitled: The Brand Called You is chock full of great insights that you can use to propel your sales career. I believe knowledge is a tool and this one article contains enough knowledge to guide any sales rep, or person for that matter, to success.
Twitter is for business! Surprisingly Twitter conversations are much more business oriented than Facebook. Many business executives and their staffs use Twitter to converse with each other, listen to customer conversations on their brand and have dialogs with industry partners who are on the go.
Once your account is activated, you start building your friends. Your friends list, is composed of people you listen to (follow) and your prospective customers. As an example, if you are in the business of selling Bank teller software, you would listen to CIO’s at major banks or Directors of operations at Banks. You can easily find these people by doing a people search on Twitter .
The following was written by Matt Bertuzzi over at the Inside Sales Expert Blog. Also, make sure to checkout the Prospecting 2.0: Bridging the Sales & Marketing Chasm at 2pm today with Trish Bertuzzi. You can find the registration link at the end of this post.
Here is Matt Bertuzzi’s blog post below — I love his reference to theNew Sales Economy(I coined that term).
I was just catching up on some blogs & tweets from last week’s Sales 2.0 Conference in Chicago. At the conference, Lee Levitt of IDC’s Sales Advisory Practice, stated, “The 4th Quarter of 2009 is the most important quarter of the decade.” Wow – no pressure!
There is and will continue to be significant discussion about Sales 2.0 (and its implications), the New Sales Economy and how much selling has changed. But, it is not just the science of selling that has changed but also the basic art of prospecting.
Very interesting video from Erik Qualman over at socialnomics.net that highlights how social media is changing the ways companies do business and ultimately the world economy.
What does this have to do with the sales profession? Well, everything.
Check out the video!
Is social media changing the sales game? Does it matter? Please share your thoughts in the comments.
For more on the social media revolution make sure to head over to www.socialnomics.net.
