Modern B2B Marketing

March 8, 2010

Sales 2.0: Sell Faster, Better, and Smarter

Posted by Maria Pergolino

The Sales 2.0 Conference in San Francisco has kicked off with quite a big start.  Hosted at the Four Seasons in San Francisco, over 700 attendees including big names like Brett Queener from Salesforce, Jeffrey Hayzlett of Kodak, Mark Woollen of Oracle, and Clara Shih of Hearsay Labs and author of The Facebook Era have all filled a room to discuss Sales 2.0.  More specifically, the event is bringing together sales and marketing leaders to leverage sales-oriented SaaS technologies so their teams can sell faster, better, and smarter. 

The Basics of Sales 2.0
The day kicked off with Gerhard Gschwandtner of Selling Power magazine and Umberto Milletti, CEO of InsideView who discussed how to achieve sales success.  They both brought great insight, sharing how people, process and technology all need to work together to achieve success.   Some of the top tweets during their talks include:

• MillerHeiman: "If value is the True North, then the customer is the real True North – since the customer determines value." http://bit.ly/9hBfX9
• Sales20Conf: "First align business, then focus on innovating"
• jepc: "Our core business strategy must be aligned with the revolutionary trends that transform our world-or we will become victim of change"
• Sales20Conf: The biggest threat to providing value is the Internet — @gerhard20
• jepc: "value threats: innovators, competitors, tough buyers, slow economy, internet"
• marketo: Great pic from the sales 2.0 conference #s20c of attendees trying to find the 'true north' http://bit.ly/cC1Qqf
• jill_rowley: Magazines and newspapers need to hire interneters, not better editors. The internet has changed how we consume media.
• PAKRAGames: Are you afraid that your salespersons will be distracted by social media? Are you using targeted social media for lead generation?
• annekeseley: @umbertom Parting words: Act. Demand results of Sales 2.0 practices and technology. Deliver results (Vendors and service providers.)

Corporate collaboration with Salesforce.com Chatter
The event continued with Brett Queener, SVP of Products at Salesforce talking about Chatter.  What’s important to note from his session is that while Chatter is a product, the idea he was really discussing was collaboration and communication.  Tweets to note from his session of note:

• milesaustin: Brett Queener-Salesforce.com "Cloud computing ver 2 is all about about collaboration"
• InboundMarketer: Brett Queener, SVP Products at Salesforce.com giving a demo on chatter (See it here: http://bit.ly/94FJl1 pic: http://bit.ly/dqzAbS
• milesaustin: Chatter is real-time Enterprise Collaboration that is secure, private and trusted.
• jepc: "If you have used Facebook, you know how to use Chatter"
• Sales20Conf: "There's a weird psychology to Facebook or Twitter — you don't mind being interrupted as much" – Brett Queener [agree?]
• milesaustin: Hierarchies are coming down as well-chatter across the barriers of old. Up and down feedback activity.
• Rinidas: Private beta with 1000 customers by Salesforce.com for Chatter is on.
• ziayusuf: Bret Queener-SVP SF.com made interesting comment that Chatter could become UI paradigm for partner apps. Could it?
• milesaustin: People are getting real-time feedback-is your organization prepared?
• damphoux: question though, is chatter really for the Enterprise? Security? Enterprise links?
• jepc: Brett: "with Chatter, people spend 120% more time in Salesforce.com"
• kapriforce: Majority of internet access will come from a mobile device currently Facebook & YouTube 50% of internet traffic.

Demand Generation & Customer Acquisition
Craig  Rosenberg was quite the entertainer during his session, but that doesn’t mean that great discussion was lacking.  Craig talked about the importance of demand generation (and opportunity generation), and how it is critical to the success of an organization.  Tweets did a good job summarizing the hot topics from this session:

• jepc: Panel introduction: Laura Guntren (Intuit), Tom Masotto (ON24) and Suzette Godwin Romer (ADP) & speaker Ken Osborn (Trinet)
• Sales20Conf: You'll never meet anyone who says, 'Yeah, I don't need any more opportunities." (re: lead gen) #s20c via @funnelholic
• jepc: Craig: "today is about lead/demandgen, think of this as opportunity generation"
• jepc: Ken: "The more value we can provide to the sales people, the more value we can provide to our clients"
• Rinidas: Lots of discussion on how-to be more efficient in data mining filtering the noise & how-to increase effectiveness among sales folks
• Genius_com: All panelists are using Marketing Automation for better insights about customers & lead nurturing
• agaffney: just in time sales and marketing. actionable insights part of the discussion at panel discussion.
• MillerHeiman: The value of collaboration and the tool(s) is measured by the customer…
• jepc: For nurturing, @On24 uses webcast as the main offer. Based on lead's responses they are sent to sales, or back to nurturing

Many of the tweets have come from conversations led by Gerhard who has made it clear that this event is more than just presentations.  He has opened up the room to questions, had impromptu discussions on stage, and is ending the day with an open cocktail hour. 

Finally, I need to mention my favorite tweet from the Sales20Conf.  They happened to grab a pic of me displaying some company pride.  Here is their Tweet about my purple sparkly nailpolish:

• Sales20Conf: Nothing says #sales20 like Star Wars-inspired nail polish, right @marketo? #s20c http://ow.ly/i/Fki