I’m delighted to be both presenting and participating in a panel discussion at the Sales 2.0 Conference in Boston on May 21^st.

Using recent research from ESR’s Sales Training Vendor Guide, I’ll talk specifically about technology-enabled learning—how technology is changing learning and why today, effective sales learning requires technology.

I’ve not been shy in voicing my concerns about the some of the hype and lofty expectations around Sales 2.0 and the distraction that it causes for some of our client companies struggling through the kinds of sales challenges that Sales 2.0 approaches and tools can’t immediately overcome.

At the same time substantive progress is being made on the technology front.  ESR has given credit to those companies who are making real contributions to sales effectiveness through technology-enabled learning and technology-enabled selling—companies like Kadient, Richardson, The TAS Group, SPI, Holden, White Springs, Primary Intelligence, The Brooks Group, Miller Heiman, LinkedIn, ZoomInfo, Jigsaw, Lucidera, and many more.

As a researcher and analyst, I’ll be in learning mode at the conference as well.  I’m looking forward to understanding more about the approaches and solutions of the companies presenting and sponsoring this event, and learning from those sales leaders who will be attending it.  Please introduce yourselves to me.

Hope to see you there.  If you can’t attend, I’ll keep you informed through Twitter.

Photo credit:  (c) 2008 Dave Stein — Boston from 7000 feet
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Donate $25 or more to the human rights charity Witness.org, email your receipt to me,
and I’ll send you the full-size jpg of this photo.  dave.stein @ ESResearch.com
Make sure your credit card number is not on the receipt, please.

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With the assistance of The TAS Group, ESR recently surveyed nearly 400 users of the following technologies to determine the effects that these new technologies in helping them win B2B sales opportunities:

• Jigsaw;
• LinkedIn;
• Twitter;
• Plaxo;
• Facebook;
• Hoover’s or OneSource.

The pace of technology development today is dizzying. It seems as though a new sales-related technology appears daily. The question is, do these new technologies produce additional sales or just consume valuable selling time and distract sales leaders and their teams from focusing on what can really improve performance?

A few specifics from the survey:

1. 35% of respondents say that LinkedIn has helped them win sometimes or often;
2. 69% of respondents say they don’t use Twitter. Of those that douse the tool, 20% say it has not helped them win;
3. 8% of respondents say that Facebook has helped them win sometimes or often.

Buy the 10-page ESR/Insight™ Brief, The New Social Media: Do They Enable B2B Selling? now.

Photo credit: © altiso – Fotolia.com

For those of you who follow the ups and downs, ins and outs of the sales training industry, here is the latest, as of today, April 1, 2009:

• Miller Heiman and furniture manufacturer Herman Miller have announced a merger.  The new business, to be called Herman Miller Heiman, will be offering a new, upgraded version of their highly popular Aeron chair.  It will be called The Silver Bullet™. Preliminary tests show that within two minutes of  a salesperson sitting in the chair (seen on the right), the phone starts ringing with people wanting to buy whatever they are selling, immediately, at any price.  An HMH spokesperson called the new chair, “The Silver Bullet that sales people have been waiting for.”
  

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• Huthwaite, Inc. has announced a new program called S.P.I.N. Stalling. Originally developed with cooperation of Procrastinators International, program participants will learn about the psychology of stalling and how best to strong-arm a reluctant customer into buying something—anything!  By the way, the 25-year-old Procrastinators International has still not scheduled their first membership meeting.
  

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• The TAS Group revealed this week that they have expanded their vision of the role technology will play in sales effectiveness and have decided to acquire Garmin, GE, and The Gap.  York Baur, The TAS Group’s CMO said, “We’re taking anytime, anywhere learning to the next logical level.  You’ll be able to get our content, learning, coaching as well as instant guidance on your deals directly, without a computer or PDA, from your Nüvi, your toaster and even your jeans.”  Baur continues, “By 2011 we’ll be licensing a TAS-chip which will be implanted just behind the left ear in a painless three-minute procedure.”   The TAS Group is negotiating with Seattle’s SEA-TAC airport to have its distance-learning video clips play 24/7 on televisions throughout the airport.
  

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• Selling to Big Companies author Jill Konrath told us she is increasing her productivity level for the remainder of 2009.  Each and every week she will be delivering five webinars, four videos, three white papers, two blog posts and a book for all of us to read.
  

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• The U.S. Congress is about to commence an investigation of why dozens of randomly selected sales trainers all have the same companies listed as references on their websites.  The CEOs from Oracle, Dell, IBM, Cisco, HP, Microsoft, Sun, and other technology companies are expected to testify next week as to who their sales training partners really are.
  

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• After almost a century of heated debate, two age-old questions have finally been answered unequivocally, once and for all:  “Are salespeople are born or made?” and, “Is sales art or science?”  Now we can move on to other questions such as, is cold-calling dead?
  

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• Fifty-three purchasing agents from New York City-based multinationals have been granted licenses to carry assault rifles.  They had claimed that during the current economic crisis, sales reps from New York have been even more threatening than before.  Mr. Blake, the New York chapter representative from SPA—the Sales Professionals of America—was outraged.  “If those #^%!@# buyers think they can threaten our &%$@#@$ members with AK-47’s and !#¢Æ§  Uzi’s, they can @!(*(*&@#.  And the horse they rode in on.”
  

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• Sales legend Rick Page was overheard in the Hartsfield airport in Atlanta saying,  “I really do hope I catch my flight.”
  

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• The next release of Salesforce.com will include an interface to activity sensor mini-applications on salesreps’ computers. If the salesrep is active on their computer but does not update the required data, Salesforce.com blocks access to MySpace.com, Facebook.com, YouTube.com, Ebay.com, Zillo.com, Meebo.com, Friendster.com, Orkut.com,  AdultFriendFinder.com, and Zappos.com  for 30 days.  Russian hackers are already selling software to bypass the restriction.
  

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• LinkedIn estimates that the number of sales-related groups on their site will top 1,000 by mid-year.  That will be close to one-half the number of sales-related blogs ESR expects to be live by that time.
  

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• In Silicon Valley, more than 10,000 out-of-work salespeople  paid $100 each to download a document entitled One Hundred Foolproof Ways to Hide Gaps in Your Resume. Another site was discovered last week already boasting 12,000 downloads of, How to Enlist Estranged Family Members As References.  You may remember that just one year ago today the video, How to Forge a W-2 and Other Income Verification Documentation surfaced on YouTube.  There have been more than one millions views.
  

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• With promotional webinar attendance down in 2009, WebEx is recommending that companies prospecting for customers pay them for attending the one-hour webinars.  A senior executive at WebEx said, “If you pay them, they will come.”
  

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• Following a number of snarking incidents Robin Fray Carey of SocialMediaToday.com has decided to change the name of The Customer Collective to the more appropriate The Customer Invective.
  

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• Well-respected, prolific, and seriously dapper UK sales top sales expert Jonathan Farrington has some explaining to do.  He recently dropped his signature eyeglasses whilst at London’s Heathrow airport, Terminal 1.  Coincidentally, a local ophthalmologist happened to be standing there, recovered the glasses and, after a moment’s inspection, noted that the lenses were, in fact, clear glass.
  

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• The Harvard and Stanford Business Schools announced today that they will be offering fully accredited Masters of Professional Selling degrees beginning in 2012.  Harvard’s Chancellor I. Kangettitforu Holsael said, “We’re thirty years behind the times.  With more than 7 million salespeople in the U.S. alone, and sales productivity at an all time low, we are taking a bold step.  We want our B-school to be relevant to the business community. Sales is not marketing.  It finally needs to be respected and supported.”
  

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• Immediately following the Obama administration’s announcement this morning of an investigation of plagiarism and pirating among sales trainers, as many as thirty popular sales tips websites were taken down, with “Under Construction” showing up on home pages.
  

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• A recent survey of eBay sales shows that a sales training shingle can be purchased for as little as $3.00.  Clever names for new sales approaches have leveled off at $1.03.  Names using acronyms are going for a dollar more.
  

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• Responding to the financial crisis, IBM issued new guidelines.  Their coveted top performer sales award club will be held at the Admiral’s Club at O’Hare airport later this month.  Each attendee will be given a voucher for a meal at the food court.  Tickets for short-term parking will be validated.
  

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• Social media advocate Axel Schultze announced today that he is upgrading his dial-up modem. “Present technology supports considerably faster communication.  1200 baud just doesn’t do it for me.  I know if I move to 9600 baud, everyone will quickly follow.”  You may remember that Axel was in the news last month after having convinced senior executives at Wal-Mart to have all their in-store sales associates spend 50% of their time at work on Twitter to prospect for additional business.
  

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• The interest around Sales 2.0 is expected to continue gather momentum.  The term has proved to be such a money maker for some, that Chrysler, who owns the Jeep brand, is making a Sales 2.0 model of their venerable Wrangler, in an attempt to duplicate the success of their Eddie Bauer model.  Celebrity Cruise lines is even considering a four week “Sales 2.0 Cruise to Nowhere.”
  

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Thanks to Jonathan Farrington for his early opinion this post, with his real glasses.
My sincere respect and appreciation for many Sales 2.0 vendors and, especially, Nigel Edelshein.
Photo credit:  Herman Miller Heiman

I’ve been involved in a number of posts on The Customer Collective where there have been some personal attacks by a few social media zealots against some of us that have a more balanced view of the capabilities and tools required for effective B2B selling going forward in this new(est) economy.   Jonathan Farrington¹, Dave Brock, Niall Devitt, and I have a somewhat similar opinion of the role of social media.  (These are smart guys.  I recommend you subscribe to their blogs.)

The four of us had an email exchange today after some comments to one of Jonathan’s posts.  The comments sounded like sweeping indictments of “old school,” and the four of us as well.

What’s really worth considering, as Dave Brock pointed out in the email thread, is that people are attacking the four of us for being old school, when we’re all entrenched in the new social media: blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, virtual meetings, and much of the rest.  Are they attacking our not being immersed in the new social media, which you would think might be their mission? No.  They’re attacking us for the opinions we voice about the social media from within the social media environment.² We’re not outside observers.

Here is an edited slice of my thoughts on the subject of social media zealotry and “old school” from that thread:

ESR has studied the issue of inter-generational selling. It’s a big challenge for companies and for consultants and trainers. It will become even more challenging. How do we “experts” stay relevant to younger salespeople, managers and CEOs is one question. The bigger question is how will younger salespeople become relevant to serious corporate buyers?

Here are a few more questions: The Millennials (Y’ers) show considerably less willingness to follow convention (read process) than those who are older—a generalization, I admit. Salespeople in general have less discipline and process-orientation than professionals, which compounds the problem. B2B customer buying patterns and practices are getting tougher, requiring more discipline, process, strategy, etc. on the part of those who sell to them. So how will the Millennials, many of whom are rejecting much of what has come before, wind up selling though this capability gap? Answer: Many will not! Companies will have to tighten up their profile for B2B salespeople and a boatload of soft skills with little else won’t be a desired characteristic—not in the kind of serious B2B selling that drives the economy. So the pure social media types will have that to play with that in their spare time, or lock on to a subset of buyers in corporations who may be open to that stuff.

A client of ours went into a very tough negotiation with a well-known company yesterday.  Big, big bucks! They were meeting with a senior strategic procurement executive. Facebook? Twitter? Blogs? Virtual or online anything?  No. Weeks of research, customer profiling, political positioning, testing approaches, strategizing, number crunching, competitive positioning, collaborative brainstorming and one very, very important face-to-face meeting. Is that model going to change in the next few years? Sure, in some sales environments, but not in mission critical areas of most companies over $200 million in sales.

With all this being said, with respect to the business side of my life, I’ll listen to and consider anyone’s opinion on any subject, so long as they can express their opinion clearly and succinctly and don’t resort to manipulation, games, or personal attacks.  I believe passion is good.  So is being a zealot, if your goal is benevolent as well as your means of getting there.  I confess:  I’m a sales effectiveness zealot.

Notes:

1. Jonathan Farrington is hosting the kick-off event for the Top Sales Experts Roundtable:  The Future of Professional Selling on Tuesday, April 14th, 2009 at 1.00 pm EDT.  I’ll be a panel member.  With Jonathan in charge, it’ll be worth your investment.
2. ESR will be publishing the findings from our recent survey on the new social media’s role in B2B selling next week.  If you’d like to be notified of the publication of this report, subscribe to this blog or the ESR/Alert^TM.

Photo credit: © Carsten Reisinger – Fotolia.com

Update (12/15/08): Too view the results of the survey, click “View Results” on survey tool.

I’ve been using LinkedIn a lot recently.  I’ve been recommending it to clients as well.

In my blog post What’s In Your Salesreps’ LinkedIn Profiles? I suggested that salespeople should use LinkedIn, not as an online resume, but as a chronological accounting of the value they’ve delivered to their customers and markets.  That’s what I’ve done on my LinkedIn profile.  That personal branding should serve to differentiate them from their competition through articulation of their business value.

That salesrep would build a profile that was customer-value oriented instead.  They would list the companies (or profiles of companies if confidentiality were an issue) to which they had sold their products and services to in the past.  The rep’s profile would outline initiatives, projects, etc.  The reps would get recommendations from people in those accounts who would acclaim the rep’s honesty, business savvy, determination, and desire to see the customer succeed.  Once a rep had developed a LinkedIn profile like that, they would attach the “See My LinkedIn Profile” button to their email signature, inviting customers to click on it.

Well, right now (at least when I wrote this) LinkedIn is having some technical problems.  It’s been going on for well over a week.  I feel for them.  I really do.  But searches often don’t work.  And updating my profile has been a nightmare.

So, while I was waiting for LinkedIn to resolve their technical problems, I spent a bit of time on Plaxo.  I’ve been getting invited to connect by colleagues and friends for a while now.  I can’t see maintaining both.

I’m interested in your preference for business/social networking.  Please vote and then tell us which you prefer and why in a comment…

I subscribe to Chris Brogan’s blog.  His recent post about LinkedIn applications compelled me to spend a bit of time on the site.

In the past I’ve been very possessive about presentations I’ve done.  Now I’ve decided to share a bit more.  One of the new LinkedIn apps allows me to do just that.  There are a few limitations with the presentation-sharing application at this point.  For example, I can’t provide you with a link directly to the presentation within LinkedIn.  I can do so with a link to Slideshare.net, which is the embedded technology LinkedIn uses, but I figure that since LinkedIn went to all this trouble, I might as well direct you there…

So, to see the presentation, first you have to be a LinkedIn member.  There are few reasons not to become a LinkedIn member.  It’s free. 

Once you’re logged on, to LinkedIn.  Go to Dave Stein’s profile.  Look over on the rightand click on “full profile.”  When that page comes up, scroll down a bit, and you’ll see a section with Dave Stein’s Presentations (it will look like the graphic in the upper right).  The presentation I posted supported the keynote speech I gave last week at the Richardson Client Forum 2008. 

The other applications include embedding your blog and/or RSS feeds in your profile as well as your favorite (Amazon) books.  

I’ve been using LinkedIn more and more.  I can see from the requests I’m getting that a lot of other people are as well, especially job seekers. 

Are you still wondering what Sales 2.0 is?  Well, LinkedIn is a perfect example of a widely-used Sales 2.0 application.

A lot has been written about how potential new employers look at a candidate’s Facebook or MySpace page.  Walter McConnell made a terrific point about a different flavor of web presence in a comment recently on the Sales 2.0 Network Blog.  Walter is talking about customers seeing a sales rep’s bio or profile on the web:

It’s widely accepted now that there is more value in being a trusted advisor with your customers than being a salesperson who competes purely on price and feature sets. What better place to advertise your expert status than a “web presence” that reflects your expertise! Having a website/blog is an obvious one here, but having a populated profile on some of the more popular web 2.0 sites is a damn good start. Having a web presence will also make others more comfortable to collaborate with you.

Yesterday: A Reference Letter. Today: The Web.

I used to recommend to sales people that they solicit reference letters from their successful customers and selectively use those with new prospects to depict the personal value they have delivered in the past. It worked for many of them.  These days, why shouldn’t a salesperson have a presence on the web?  (OK, I know a lot of reasons, but play along with me here for a minute…) Personal capital can be an effective differentiator.  Sales leaders and other executives have biographies on corporate websites or their blogs to convey their value to the customers who would buy from their companies.  Those bios project personal capital to the viewer.  Salespeople seek differentiation and credibility at the customer’s executive level.  Why shouldn’t they project their connections, experience, uniqueness and value—their personal capital—to their customers also?

Wait a Second… Couldn’t You Use LinkedIn?

How about this?  Let’s say a salesrep were to populate their profile on LinkedIn so their prospects could learn about them before they considered buying from them.  I’m not talking about prospects finding them on LinkedIn.  Just reading their profile to “check them out.”  If this were to happen, the reps wouldn’t want their profile to mirror their resume, as almost all salesreps’ profiles do now.  (A sales performance-centric view would be of little interest to their prospective customers.  In fact, it might turn those customers away.) 

That salesrep would build a profile that was customer-value oriented instead.  They would list the companies (or profiles of companies if confidentiality were an issue) to which they had sold their products and services to in the past.  The rep’s profile would outline initiatives, projects, etc.  The reps would get recommendations from people in those accounts who would acclaim the rep’s honesty, business savvy, determination, and desire to see the customer succeed.  Once a rep had developed a LinkedIn profile like that, they would attach the “See My LinkedIn Profile” button to their email signature, inviting customers to click on it.

Of course using LinkedIn as you would a static web page would defeat the purpose.  So, what if the salesrep’s LinkedIn connections were much more skewed towards people in their customer organizations with considerably fewer sales types, friends, etc.?  That salesrep now would begin to leverage his relationships to help him sell, introducing his best customers and clients to each other.  That’s a critical capability for serious rainmakers.  

What do you think?

Karl Goldfield contacted me the other day.  illumio flagged one of his posts, so I read it. 

In this post, Karl goes on a rant about technology and sales training.  Here is my favorite part of his (unedited) challenge to sales trainers:

If you are not tweeting your blog posts and sending newsletters to keep your mind trust strong in the frontal lobe of your prospects and customers; if you are not joining groups and connecting on Linked In or E-cademy, Facebook or Plaxo; if you are not using Jigsaw or Salesconx to find your the top level prospects; if you do not set up google alerts and research news aggregators for trigger events; if you do not use Genius or Leadlander, then Landslide or another Process driven tool to manage your lead cultivation, what on earth are you doing? I don’t mean to get on a rant here (Thank you Dennis), but it is 2008 and if you are not using VOIP and SAAS, or this whole paragraph is in a new language, get off the soap box and go back to the classroom. It is time to learn a new game, then teach others. Go, now, get moving!

I love it!  Karl is absolutely right.  Sales trainers who procrastinate, waiting for their clients to drag them into the Sales 2.0 era are going to lose any competitive edge they might currently have.  Sales trainers need to understand, embrace, and integrate sales-enablement and learning technologies into their IP (intellectual property) and the delivery of their IP. 

I like LinkedIn.  I’ve been using it more and more. It’s really good Sales 2.0 technology. I’ve even joined a few of the special interest groups.  Some smart people like Jill Konrath have written about getting the most from the tool.

What do I like about it?  I’m in the research business and I can do informal surveys to get a sense of what people are thinking.  I can get recommendations about vendors to consider evaluating for our clients.  I like to read the Questions to see what is on people’s minds and the Answers to see who’s got a new view of an old thing.  I get introductions to people I’d like to connect with.  I provide introductions for the people in my network.  That’s what it LinkedIn was designed to do.

I get a fair number of invitations to connect from people I don’t know. If I don’t remember having met the person, I reply, asking them to remind me how we know each other.  If we don’t actually know each other and we having nothing in common, I decline.  As graciously as possible.  Today I got a request for an endorsement from someone I’ve never directly worked with.  Knowing that kind of takes the credibility out of seeing a long list of endorsements for someone, right?

So what’s up with these people who collect MANY THOUSANDS of connections?  I don’t get it.  This is from one person’s profile:  “As a master rainmaker and leading networker with over 16,500 direct business connections on LinkedIn alone…”

Would someone tell me what having 16,500 direct business connections on LinkedIn does for someone? I’ve got an open mind.  I’m also interested in how many hours it would take someone to accumulate 16,500 direct business connections. 

Maybe I’m missing something.