by Karl Goldfield, an excerpt from The Sales Coach Blog 

Really it’s mainly my friend Brad, but this is the coolest thing I do of late and I am going to share. Before I dive into my Web 2.0 used for Sales 2.0 style, let me define some things for those less aware:

Sandy: An automated virtual assistant that will do anything related to your schedule including set calendar events, todos, and e-mail others on your behalf. All you have to do is e-mail her in a style she understands….FOR FREE

Twitter: A service that lets you broadcast small text like messages to people following you. They can come to your client, your e-mail, or your text tool…FOR FREE

Twhirl and Twitterific: Desktop tools for using Twitter….FREE

Jott: A tool that allows you to leave a message and have it converted to text for e-mail or text message. You can send you yourself or others…FOR FREE

How to Maximize your Sandy usage: 

First go to Iwantsandy.com and get an account.

Then go to twitter.com and join her there. If you do not have twitter, then get an account and download Twhirl or Twitterific to be able to send Tweets and follow other Tweeters.

Sandy has a Twitter account and you can Follow then Tweet Sandy.

Then sign up for a Jott account and again, add Sandy

Download the iCalendar from Sandy

How I use Sandy today, and I guarantee there is more to come:

Anytime I want to set a to do or remember an appointment I e-mail it to Sandy. This took a wee bit of getting used to, but it is faster than setting calendar Items.

When I send people e-mails for appointments, I CC Sandy the data and she sets me an appointment in my Calendar. She can also e-mail the other person the data, but I have not started that yet.

THIS ONE IS HUGE. When I am on the road, or not near a computer, I JOTT SANDY MY APPOINTMENTS AND TO DO’s. Imagine getting that call in the car and having the super important prospect say, I am in a hurry but we can meet next Tuesday at 2pm. Hang up, call jott and in your calendar it goes! AWESOME and FREE, two great words  that go great together.

As more people use Sandy, I will probably start sending her messages to forward, it has only been 45 days and already she has become part of my team. She may get a raise in only 90 days.

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by Alen Majer

Web 2.0 enables Sales 2.0 and many sales people can take customer communications into their own hands and to an entirely new level. Sales reps have more control over the tools that they use, and they can be always on, answering to customers questions in the matter of minutes and not hours or days.

Let’s take a look at what has recently happened to the salespeople in a company that has a fine record of few product and sales mistakes – Proctor & Gamble.
Proctor & Gamble manufactures a product called SK II and it was offered by its sales force to the world market. In one country there were complaints that the product when applied to the skin for the use of moistening the skin caused skin rashes.

How did the word get around? The internet. The Blogs with comments read by thousands of current and prospective customers. The company withdrew the product from the market, but not until consumer trust had been badly damaged. Like luck, the freedom of the World Wide Web can work in two opposite ways for a business and for sales.

Everyone is talking about the Web 2.0 as a second generation of web-based communities and services, such as social networking sites that facilitate collaboration and sharing between users. The phrase Web 2.0 may hint at an improved form of the World Wide Web. Advocates of the concept suggest those technologies such as blogs, social bookmarking, wikis, podcasts, RSS feeds (and other forms of many-to-many publishing), social software, and online Web services imply a significant change in web usage.

I firmly believe that is time to start talking about Sales 2.0.

Certainly there are many areas that sales people are affected with the new technology, pushing them to be more pro-active and having more control over the tools they are using.
To give a few examples: communications with the customers are affected with Sales 2.0 because many of your customers’ executives are having their own Blogs; emails are taking over the communication to a different level, many sales reps are always available due to the technology of Blackberry phones of the world, and especially internet makes it possible to do something that even decade ago was impossible – research companies before you contact them with the help of RSS feeds, online business directories, news alerts from search engines, etc.

And if technology has changed, markets are also changing by the same speed: one of the basic rules of capitalism is that in capitalism business collapses if it does not adapt to the situation on the market. Collapse of the businesses ironically benefits the system because it makes a space on the market for fresh ideas and new, better, and improved products.

Even a business collapse today can be a sales opportunity as pointed out above. There are over 3000 important cases in bankruptcy court in the U.S. at any one time these days. One of the chief examples is the airlines.
In over half of the cases the companies process through bankruptcy and reorganize successfully, becoming new customer for a variety of salespeople. It can be a huge untapped sales market, and by recognizing trigger events you can open a whole new market space for you.

Even the tragic case of Enron where fraud ruled the roost; they have turned around and with one of their energy company’s regained health again: new products, new services needed and new sales.

A lot of “motivational” preaching books have it backwards that urge salespeople to simply swim against the current. And it looks as if that’s what winners are doing. But winners have identified the future direction of the river current and swim vigorously in that direction.

With trigger events you will learn in which direction are your customers swimming, and nothing else is needed from you but to join them.

We sales people are in the business of asking our clients to make a major change. If we are unwilling to change ourselves, how can we ask our prospects to?

Read more about Sales 2.0 and about Trigger Events (where to find them and how to use them) in my book “Trigger Events – How to Find Your Next Customer”.

Alen Majer consults businesses on a variety of topics ranging from improving sales processes and developing better customer relationships to improving internal sales forces skills. He knows the secret of sales and is sharing it, and after over 15 years in sales he still believes this is the most exciting, best payable, and most secure job position in the world!

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by Rich Baker is the founder and CEO of Glance Networks (www.glance.net)

It was well past my kids’ bedtime, about a decade ago. I was at the PC in my home office just outside Boston, watching a group of about 300 trade show attendees in Sydney, Australia, where it was already past noon the next day.

I had just finished my 20-minute pitch on “The Future of Desktop Videoconferencing” and could see them gazing up between mouthfuls of dessert at a 20-foot wide projected view of the screen on the PC at their location. I appeared in one window, with my “Q&A” slide in a second.

That morning I had pitched a handful of technologists from home, while they sat in their conference room at a major bank in New York. In the afternoon I “met with” some of our sales people at a training session in their San Francisco office. And now tonight I was the luncheon speaker at a trade show happening the “next day” in Sydney.

I had never left my home.

What a blast! This was several years before broadband, streaming video, web cams and web conferencing. I was living a future most people only dreamed of – digitally “jetting” around the world, but without the jetlag.

As I fielded the second question from the audience, I noticed the door to my office opening slowly. In shuffled my four-year-old red-headed daughter, dressed in her PJs. Quietly climbing into my lap, she murmured, “Daddy, I can’t get to sleep.”

Then looking up at the screen, she pointed at the window filled with people, eyeing her from half-way around the world, and asked, “Who are they?”

I pointed down at the office floor. “They’re way down there. And they’re watching us. Isn’t that neat?” Her timid wave at the screen brought a sigh from the audience. And then applause.

Forget the slides. This is what it’s all about.

Minutes later, we both waved good-bye. “Thanks for the chance to be with you,” I said. “But now, it’s time to tuck my daughter back into bed.”

Fast forward

That George Jetson scene I lived nine years ago is now within nearly everyone’s reach. Back then, I had to add a $5,000 card and fancy camera to my PC and plug it into an arcane switched-digital telephony network called ISDN. Calls cost about $1 a minute (up to $5/min or more overseas). Anyone connecting to me needed an equally pricey PC or videoconferencing room system tied into ISDN.

Web conferencing technology, fast PCs and the Internet have changed the game. Today you and your guests just need any broadband-connected computer that’s less than about five years old, a phone and (only if you care) a webcam. A variety of web conferencing services are available for as little as a few dollars per day.

The payback to your business can be immediate. Here are my top reasons why you should build web conferencing into your business processes.

1. Look bigger than you are. You’ve seen the New Yorker cartoon: “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” With today’s prices, even the smallest SOHO can now host web conferences, just like the big boys.
2. Multiply your number of sales demos & pitches per day. A bag-carrying direct sales person on the road might visit a few customers a day. But an inside sales person doing live web demos over the phone often can pitch that many in just an hour.
3. Train your new customers. Host a live weekly mini-webinar for them, so they get a warm hug from your staff while learning how to make the best use of your product or service. Post archived versions as a complete “on line training” course they can review anytime.
4. Improve your lifestyle. Just as I was “in Sydney,” yet tucked my daughter into bed that same night, web conferencing can mean fewer trips away from home, family and friends.

I can easily list ten more, because the payback is so high. Aside from the phone and email, I can’t think of another technology that can deliver so much business value for so few dollars. My daughter appreciates the last one most.

Rich Baker is the founder and CEO of Glance Networks (www.glance.net) , which provides a simple, dependable screen sharing service for non-technical people. Baker was formerly vice president and CTO for PictureTel Corporation and an assistant professor of electrical engineering at UCLA. He has published more than 25 technical papers and co-authored the book Digital Compression for Multimedia.

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