Sales 2.0 – Are You ready?
Are you Sales 2.0 licensed yet?
Can you imagine if every sales person had to get a license to sell? Maybe it would look like this?
As Sales 2.0 starts to heat up in the market place – there will be a lot of changes in the ways that we find and sell to customers. If you look at the Sales 2.0 conference that took place in San Francisco last week – you can see that this change is starting to happen. Panel discussions included; Sales Process 2.0, Customer Engagement 2.0 and even Compensation 2.0!
The real question for any busy sales person is - “What the heck is Sales 2.0?” and “Can it save me time and make me money?“
Enter the Sales 2.0 tools world and we’re starting to see a new level of sales enablement to drive and deliver the early principles of Sales 2.0. For me, It’s all about increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of a sales process – let me get my job done as quickly as I can and maximize the end results for both my customer, my company and myself. I like win-win and that should core value for anyone involved in sales.
So, why do we need Sales 2.0? Simply put – the Sales 1.0 model is completely broken. Take a look at the enterprise software space. Mix together the the availability of information/standards groups/events/webinars/blogs on the Internet, throw in open source (cheap), software-as-a-service (no commitment required), and finish with web 2.0 consumer applications (sexy, cool, free). It leaves the whole enterprise software space gasping for a new model and process to adjust to a heavily educated and consumer influenced customer. Today’s customers are faster, smarter and have a ton of choices. Sales cycles are compressing, deals sizes are falling, and everyone wants to chop the cost of sales – it tells me that it is time to change the model.
Over the next few posts – I will start sharing my thoughts on Sales 2.0. Certainly, the idea of collaboration, leveraging and monetizing shared expertise is certainly on the top of my mind. As we evolve Connectize – you will see features that reinforce this direction in our service.
This week’s product update:
- New site design
- Network grouping using tags
- Group messaging
- My Website for blog/company/personal promotion
- Additional email address/log-in support
Next week we start work on team and private group capabilities. Think of private marketplaces for internal sales teams or business groups and you start to see where Collaboration 2.0 meets Sales 2.0…
Let’s talk about marketplaces! We’re all familiar with 
Wow – it seems like all you need is a white board and some markers to get started! We thought you might want to see the early days of Connectize and see what was going through our heads as we began the planning stages. It’s really important to have a lot of different colors and a camera to keep track of everything!!