In this post I interview Craig Klein, CEO of SalesNexus, an innovative Sales 2.0 company. Craig shares how SalesNexus is enabling more effective contact management and why you need to “own” your contacts in a Sales 2.0 world. Craig also shares how SalesNexus uses their company blog to sell more and how he uses some of his favorite social networks to connect and create more sales opportunities.
CL: Many sales organizations are excited about the benefits of Sales 2.0 practices – what does Sales 2.0 mean to you and how does SalesNexus fit into a Sales 2.0 world?
CK: To me, Sales 2.0 means using technology and automation to deepen the relationship a business has with each customer and to enable that business to identify, engage and maintain more of those relationships without spending more money. Whether its getting more leads from your website and automating the “nurturing” of those leads or it’s “nurturing” relationships with existing customers — Sales 2.0 means using technology to treat each and every prospect or customer as if they’re your most important.
CL: The sales profession is rapidly changing with improvements in sales processes and technology – how does SalesNexus help sales organizations improve their contact management process and enable more effective selling?
CK: We help small and medium sized businesses stay engaged with more leads and prospects via email marketing and manage more active sales opportunities by making sales people more efficient and effective.
Our set up process is very “hands-on”. We help our customers tailor SalesNexus to fit their unique selling process so it’s easy for sales reps to stay focused on what matters and to do it more often. At the same time, it becomes easier for management to see the trends in the business and envision their future.
CL: What is SalesNexus’ view on contact management and where do you see some of the biggest mistakes in sales organizations today?
CK: Honestly, the biggest mistake most sales organizations are making today is that they don’t even have a centralized contact management system. That’s a huge security and competitive risk. A sales person can leave to work for the competition and he may be the only one who has contact information on his customers or prospects. Your competitors are probably leveraging technology to enable faster and more proactive sales response and customer service. If you’re not, you’re losing business.
It’s amazing I know but, many Fortune 500’s, not to mention lots of small businesses just have no system in place at all. There are so many options now and many are very affordable or free. That’s why at SalesNexus, we focus on making it easy for customers to tailor our system to their needs. I believe that lack of time and know how to do this is what stalls many contact management initiatives.
CL: What makes SalesNexus the go to company for contact management?
CK: We’re a people business founded by and staffed with sales and marketing folks. We like working closely with our customers. We just happen to be in the technology business. Many in the contact management and CRM world are technology businesses that just happen to be selling to sales people. You can’t teach and motivate a good sales person to really leverage a contact management system or CRM by sending him links to web pages. You’ve got to talk to him, understand his objectives and needs and walk him through it. We’ve got the best support in the biz. Plus, we’ve got a powerful array of capabilities for about 60% of the price of most of our competition!
CL: What do you believe will be some of the biggest changes and challenges in the sales profession over the next 5 years?
CK: Great question! Clearly, decision makers will continue to be more and more insulated from sales people and their time will become more and more precious. If you’re going to sell to them, you’ve got to know them before you ever talk to them so that you can get right to the “What’s in it for me?” in the first couple of minutes. I’m excited about the opportunities for technology to enable a sales person to put together the information they need very quickly.
Conversely, we’ll also see buyers doing more and more research online before engaging a specific vendor or sales person. We’re already seeing how companies that assist their potential customers with that research can win big! Of course, social media is at the center of all of this. I think social media is just in its infancy. There will be much progress in the next 5 years in leveraging social media to really find and build relationships with targeted prospects effectively.
CL: How does SalesNexus use your awesome blog Sell,Sell,Sell to keep your customers engaged and increase sales conversion percentages?
CK: Well, first, its just something we do because we really want to help our customers sell more and grow their businesses. So, I think the content in Sell, Sell, Sell, is genuine sales advice from guys that have been there and done that. It’s interesting and engaging for our target market – small and medium sized business owners and sales execs.
If we offer guides to use contact management to deepen relationships with existing customers or better nurture “cool” leads and warm them up using email marketing, then we’re making it easy for our customers to see their road to buying and implementing a CRM or contact management system more clearly. We’re helping them out and we’re establishing our own credibility. That’s a win for us in the long run!
CL: What are some of your favorite social networks and how do you use them – business, pleasure, or a bit of both?
CK: I can’t say I’m on the cutting edge of using social networks but, I’m using LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter pretty heavily. Just like with the blog, we can engage in discussions about sales, contact management, CRM and marketing on LinkedIn and help people do their pre-purchase research as well as establish SalesNexus as a credible resource. I’ve found Twitter a great way to promote new things we publish on our blog. We’ve released two ebooks this year, “Double Your Sales in 2009” and “Email Marketing – The Only Bailout Your Business Needs” and we’ve had unbelievable response on Twitter.
CL: Can you share a customer success story on how SalesNexus helped improve contact management at a company and some of the results?
CK: You bet! My personal favorite is a company in the staffing business that was using ACT! before they joined SalesNexus. They were doing very well but, had begun to use their website as a more integral part of finding new recruits and more of their recruiters were working from home. The technical hurdles involved in making ACT! support these strategic directions were too high. We migrated their entire ACT! database into SalesNexus, including 10+ years of notes and history with clients and recruits. They were able to further deepen their web based recruiting strategy, grew their recruiter staff much more rapidly because they could recruit from across the country and let people work from home.
Then after a few years of continuing to grow with SalesNexus, someone came in and sold them on a system designed specifically for recruiting companies that had unique features that integrated billing and things into the CRM. They decided to go with it even though it was much more expensive than SalesNexus.
We parted on great terms but, they thought they had made a smart decision. 6 months later, the CFO called me to tell me that they were in a world of hurt. They had been promised the world and the technology wasn’t living up to the promises and they were frustrated with the fact that they couldn’t get their new provider to work with them to resolve the challenges. They decided to come back to SalesNexus again. Their business had taken it in the teeth due to 6 months of disruption of their recruiting and sales processes. We had them up and running with SalesNexus in 30 days and now they’re hiring recruiters again and growing like never before!
CL: If you could have people remember one thing about SalesNexus, what would it be and why is it important?
CK: Our interests are aligned with our customers. We want our customers to be successful in growing their businesses and we’ve built our contract terms, support processes and technology with that goal in mind. We’re not “churning” subscribers that sign up and then quit a few months later. We’re building long term relationships based on mutual success.
CL: Are there any resources you recommend readers checkout if they would like to learn more about SalesNexus?
CK: Sure, you can register for our weekly webinar and demonstration here
Also, you can sign up for a free trial of SalesNexus here
And, I’d suggest any sales person, sales manager or business owner who’s looking for ideas and suggestions for taking sales to a new level check out our blog – Sell, Sell, Sell!
Thanks Craig!
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