Anneke Seley

Still think Social Selling is a lot of hype?

While large and small companies alike continue to puzzle over the impact of social media on sales, these giants in our industry are here to say it’s here to stay.  What giants?  IBM and Microsoft.  And they have the stories to back it up.

A few weeks ago I had a conversation with executives from IBM and Microsoft about their social initiatives.  Their results should help convince the most skeptical of executives about the virility of social to produce measurable revenue results.  Joining me in the conversation, which was hosted by The Customer Collective (many thanks!), were Bill Patterson (@bpatter), Product Planning and Strategy Lead for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and Doug...

All because of someone I met on LinkedIn  

I was recently engaged in a passionate discussion with a new friend of mine, Kenny Madden, about the importance of understanding sales from the buyer’s perspective. He said something like “Who cares how a bunch of salespeople are defining Sales 2.0; the buyer has no clue what that is and doesn’t care. They just want us to do a better job selling.”  

You might think I would be offended, as co-author of the book, Sales 2.0.  On the contrary, I couldn’t have agreed more, because...

In the Sales 1.0 era, prospects had to talk to those of us in Sales in order to get information about our products and services. Today, they check out our websites first, quickly forming a first impression.  And, if we’ve done our jobs well, our websites become their “go to” resource throughout the buying cycle and often beyond.

As prospects turn to online media as their primary source of information, sales leaders practicing Sales 2.0 are realizing that their colleagues in Marketing are critical to their success– including those responsible for website design and content.  In short, Sales is recognizing that Marketing has a great deal of influence over who ends up in their pipeline and who ends up in someone else’s.  And that brings us to four reasons why sales leaders should work with Marketing to create the best possible website for engaging, tracking and analyzing customers and their activity on your website.

1. Your website can help generate prospects and...

I’m publishing a series of Q&A excerpts from my interviews with Sales 2.0 leaders. This is the second of three excerpts from my interview with Sharon Little, director of field marketing communications for VMware.

Anneke: Everyone I talk to is excited about the potential of video content. How are you incorporating video into your portal?

Sharon: We’ve noticed video has really taken off in the past year. Within VM Vault, we’ve created VM Video Vault, which is based on technology from Altus. All content is searchable by spoken word and can be downloaded to a phone or other mobile device. This creates a great training tool. It’s very beneficial when learning a pitch to see someone else give the presentation. Our non-English-speaking reps appreciate the ability to read the words and view materials at the same time....