What is Sales 2.0?

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>>Gerhard Gschwandtner: Hi my name is Gerhard Gschwandtner with Selling Power TV. Today we're going to talk about Sales 2.0 and how you can benefit from it. We have here an expert Brett Wallace. He is the sales leader of new business with Forrester Research. Welcome.

>> Brett Wallace: Thank you Gerhard it's a pleasure to be with you here today.

>> Gerhard Gschwandtner: Can you help me define Sales 2.0, what does it mean?

>> Brett Wallace: It's a great question. I would define Sales 2.0 as the leverage of technology to accelerate sales in business process.

>> Gerhard Gschwandtner: My understanding is that Sales 2.0 is about merging the best practice methodology with the best technology to create a better entity that improves productivity and accelerates the sales process.

>> Brett Wallace: Let's look at an example. Recruiting: For years we've tried to leverage recruiting the old fashioned way through rolodexes, through meeting new friends, through networking and now we have technologies like Linked In where an organization like Forrester can create a linked in profile, build our brand online and leverage the power of referrals in a very fast accelerated manner to meet our hiring goals.

>> Gerhard Gschwandtner: So how many leads have you created? You are currently looking for 1 leadership position?

>> Brett Wallace: That's correct.

>> Gerhard Gschwandtner: And you have used Linked In for that?

>> Brett Wallace: That's absolutely correct in fact every leader that I've interviewed for this recent position in the last week or so I've actually gone to Linked IN and looked at their profile. I've been able to see quotes generated from users that have worked with them, customers as well as employees and their bosses and learned a little bit more about their personal backgrounds as well.

>> Gerhard Gschwandtner: How many connections do you have on Linked In?

>> Brett Wallace: I have about 300.

>> Gerhard Gschwandtner: Ok.

>> Brett Wallace: which I need to obviously increase like many other folks. I need to always spend time really with the social networking tools. I like many other folks have dipped my toe in the water and I've tried to use many of them and now it's taken them to the next level and leveraging my sales process.

>> Gerhard Gschwandtner: Right.

>> Brett Wallace: So many of our sales executives in my region are using Linked In to find new names and then reach out to those contacts with the right level of intelligence and how we can help them.

>> Gerhard Gschwandtner: What other Sales 2.0 technologies do you have in use?

>> Brett Wallace: We use Jigsaw.

>> Gerhard Gschwandtner: Ok.

>> Brett Wallace: In Forrester's world we are consistently trying to find new names and Jigsaw is a wonderful tool that helps us. In addition we use tools like Basho assumed spelling. Basho provides us with the training on how do we find the intelligence to generate attention and interest at the senior most decision making levels. We use Hoovers and DMB to stay on top of smart alerts and in addition Forrester uses its own social computing tools to help extend its brand.

>> Gerhard Gschwandtner: Do you use inaudible

>> Brett Wallace: Well from my understanding and reading their into email the real advantage is they can tip us off to key intelligence and alerts about our customers and we find we need information like that to get at the senior most decision making levels with focus.

>> Gerhard Gschwandtner: Their claim to fame is a new word called social prize where they take social information and combine it with enterprise information and so you can look at the company and you can look at the individual because all that social information comes from social networking sites.

>> Brett Wallace: Absolutely we'll have to look at them in more detail.

>> Do you use Web X or Go 2 meetings?

>> Brett Wallace: We do use Web X and use Go 2 meetings. We find as though we can save a lot of money also time by reaching high level decision makers through our Cambridge office.

>> Gerhard Gschwandtner: Brett one of your colleges has written a wonderful book called Ground Swell

>> Brett Wallace: That's correct.

>> Gerhard Gschwandtner: What I'd like you to do is can you walk me through your vision from the 35,000 foot view perspective on how you see where 2.0 and social networking and online collaboration changing the game of selling.

>> Brett Wallace: Essentially the power from the institution is being eroded by consumer activity and we're seeing social networking tools whether it be many of the ones that we discussed today and others shifting the power to consumers on how they interact with your brand, how they interact with their sales force, how they use your product, so on and so forth. From my perspective I see the social technologies really having a big impact on sales where sales professionals are now armed with more intelligence about how the organizations can help their customers be more successful in their goals.

>> Gerhard Gschwandtner: So you're using about 6 or 7 different Sales 2.0 technologies and our research shows that there are about you know more than 2,000 little technologies available.

>> Brett Wallace: That's correct.

>> Gerhard Gschwandtner: They are designed to improve sales productivity. How do you recommend that sales managers should shop for merging technologies with methodologies?

>> Brett Wallace: My recommendation is to look at these things in small manageable bite size chucks. Continue to dip your toe to water around the technologies that you feel with have the greatest impact. At any given quarter I'm looking at 3 to 4 technologies in looking at how they will impact my business and I'm asking for pilots and different ways that I can try these out. In addition it's critical to stay on top of what's changing in the industry and I think your organization Gerhard does a great job of outlining a lot of these technologies. The Selling Power videos alone you can see 1 a day on how they can influence your business within 3 minutes.

>> Gerhard Gschwandtner: Right

>> Brett Wallace: and staying ahead of the information is real critical. Talking, talking to a lot of different executives as well, making sure that you continue to build your own network and you're consistently asking people how are they successful in their roles with these technologies.

>> Gerhard Gschwandtner: Well Brett you've shared a lot of great insight. If people want to learn more about what your organization can do to help advanced internet IQ Sales 2.0 IQ

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>> Gerhard Gschwandtner: go to forrester.com. I want to thank you for your time.

>> Brett Wallace: Thanks Gerhard.

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