In this post I interview Rand Schulman, CMO of Insideview who is considered by many to be a visionary in the field of new marketing. Rand shares how Sales 2.0 is changing the sales industry and how InsideView is revolutionizing the sales game by enabling sales reps to make sense of all the digital info floating around the web so they can sell more effectively.
CL: There’s a lot of buzz surrounding Sales 2.0 and also many skeptics – what does Sales 2.0 mean to you and how can it help sales reps make more money?
RS: In short, Sales 2.0 is transforming selling from an art to a science. Productivity-enhancing technologies like InsideView’s Sales Intelligence application, SalesView, are facilitating this transition because they offer sales professionals the ability to measure their performance and gather data unlike ever before.
Sales 2.0 technologies also allow for a vastly increased level of collaboration and alignment between sales teams and customers, prospective clients, as well as their marketing counterparts. The increased collaboration comes from the ease and speed with which you can receive and share information through Web 2.0 technology.
In today’s Sales 2.0 world, salespeople just have better tools than they used to. As a result, they develop improved processes, which help them pursue richer opportunities, and collaborate more efficiently. The end result is acceleration across the board – with better technology and more intelligent processes, you close more sales faster. We’re basically in the process of going from “human” speed to “Internet” speed. Buckle up!
CL: As the CMO of Insideview how does your team use Sales 2.0 to connect, create more opportunities and increase your business?
RS: Our sales intelligence application, SalesView, is a Sales 2.0 solution, a really good one. So naturally we use it in our own sales and marketing efforts – which range from getting in touch with the companies using CRM technologies, the companies which make CRM technologies and the companies that are a part of the general enterprise solution space. So in short, we have a lot of leads and prospects across a lot of different sectors to work with, so having the most current snapshot of prospective clients is imperative – and that is a service that SalesView provides very well.
CL: I think Insideview is one of the most exciting Sales 2.0 companies. What is the most exciting aspect of Insideview to you?
RS: First off, thank you and we agree. One of the most exciting parts of being at InsideView to me is knowing that we are on the forefront of bringing together sales, content and technology in a way that has never been done before. We are really helping sales people make use of the dizzying amount of information available to them on the Web, and that is a great feeling. Information overload is a common problem because of the viral nature and extent of the Web. We’re excited about developing a solution that takes the ‘overload’ out of the research and lead generation process for sales people. For example, we just recently added a ‘Buzz Tab’ to SalesView, which integrates information from Twitter, Google Blog Search and Compete.com Web Statistics. So now when people are working in their CRM application they can have all of this highly current information directly at their finger tips, instead of having to go out and search for it.
CL: Insideview coined the term socialprise. Can you describe what the term socialprise means and how its changing the world and the sales profession.
RS: We coined the term socialprise when we first launched our Sales Intelligence tool, SalesView, in March 2007, to describe the new relationship between social media and enterprise technology that SalesView made possible. SalesView is specifically designed to fuse social data with enterprise-grade search and intelligence capabilities, which is a combination that had not previously existed and so there was a need for a new word to describe it. What’s really interesting is that there were zero results when we entered the term ‘socialprise’ into Google before the launch of SalesView and now thousands of hits come up when you search on it. Socialprise is now being used in far more situations than simply to describe SalesView, which I think is happening because it is a concrete example of the evolution that we are seeing in sales technology, or as we call it ‘Sales 2.0.’ To your latter question, socialprise is a prime example of how technology and social media are fundamentally changing the way sales organizations operate and the numerous new possibilities that are opening up.
CL: How does the Insideview team use your blog to drive traffic to your website and leads into your sales pipeline?
RS: We use the InsideView blog to provide very current news on important events and issues happening across the Sales 2.0 space. It’s one of many ways that we look to connect with people who are interested in our world – we also use Twitter and LinkedIn, host webinars and create videos that discuss Sales 2.0 and our products. All of these things are done with the purpose of connecting with continually more people and engaging and educating those that are interested to learn more about InsideView and Sales 2.0. All of our social media activities also help enrich our understanding of the Sales 2.0 space, whether its through blog comments, twitter responses, etc. Overall, our blog has been a great way to extend the conversation about Sales 2.0 and what InsideView is bringing to the space and increase the amount of people that we are engaging with on a daily basis about these subjects.
CL: What makes Insideview a must have for sales reps and sales organizations across the globe?
RS: With the amount of information exploding across the social Web, there needs to be a solution that brings it all back to a point of relevancy and action for a sales organization. Sales reps should be getting to know their leads and prospects, but with a starting picture that connects the dots for them. Without a service like SalesView that delivers contextual, relevant research results, you’re stuck spending way too much time Googling and getting lost in the sea of unhelpful links that is much of the Internet.
CL: There is an unimaginable amount of information available on the web – how does Insideview help sales reps make sense of this information and make it actionable?
RS: You’re spot-on here, and we see the information as an asset. Our technology takes that information from across the social Web – whether it’s behind a “walled garden” or aggregated in a proprietary way or it’s user-generated (Facebook and LinkedIn) – and pops it right into a salesperson’s existing view in their CRM application. So with SalesView, if you’re looking at a contact’s record, you’ll also be looking at that contact’s ‘social’ profile, and in a way that connects the dots specifically for your purpose – whether that’s a news tidbit that’s relevant to your outreach, or the fact that that person got a promotion. The action comes when the call is made and you’re prepared to talk to that person at the right time and with the right background research.
CL: What are some of your favorite social networks and how do you use them to connect?
RS: We are very active on Twitter and LinkedIn and use both sites to foster conversations that are meaningful to our business and our customers. Both sites frequently provide great opportunities to engage with communities that are interested in Sales 2.0, whether we are responding to thoughtful discussion topics posted by others or beginning our own conversations.
CL: What do you think the sales profession will look like 5 – 10 years from now and how can Insideview help sales reps succeed?
RS: The salesperson, as with most professions, is becoming increasingly technologically sophisticated. The tools available to sales teams today to do their jobs are far more powerful in terms of their ability to collect information and the speed with which they do that. It all comes down to relevance though, just because you can get a ton of information does not necessarily make that a good thing – it needs to be useful. That is where InsideView comes in, we help salespeople filter information so that they only get what is most relevant and actionable to their business. Currently, InsideView’s technology is probably a little ahead of the curve, not all salespeople are utilizing the social Web the way that they should be to increase leads, but in the future I think we will see this type of Sales Intelligence become a pretty standard part of the research and lead generation process. Which is obviously exciting for us.
CL: What do you say to those who think Sales 2.0 is a fad and not for real?
RS: Was Web 2.0 a fad? Sales 2.0 is largely connected to the emergence of Web 2.0 technologies and the opportunities that these technologies allow for increased engagement, research, communication, and analytics measurement, among many other things. It’s quite clear that the Web is moving quickly toward a more sophisticated interactive experience and that will affect the way the sales profession operates. Sales 2.0 is the current way to describe how the profession is being impacted by the advent of technological change, the only thing temporary about it is that change will continue to happen on the Web and thus in sales and so maybe we will need to use a new term to describe that progress like…wait for it….Sales 3.0!
Thanks Rand!
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Rand is considered by many a new marketing and media pioneer and innovator. In his twenty years as a high technology executive he has led world known brands like Software Publishing/Harvard Graphics and is credited with many transformational products and solutions; from the early computer-based paint and draw systems on personal computers to creating one of the first DTP products at Island Graphics Corporation. In 1996 he founded and was CEO of Keylime Software, one of the first SaaS applications (acquired by Yahoo); was an executive at NetIQ/WebTrends, and was the CMO of WebSideStory through its 2004 IPO until 2007. Most recently he was General Manager Internet Products at Unica. He was named one of the Top 100 BtoB marketing executives by BtoB Magazine, is a regular speaker on digital marketing topics and is widely quoted in national publications. He is a founder and past board member of the Web Analytics Association, and currently sits on the board of several companies and is a partner in his consulting firm.
When not on mountain trails with his bike, which is most of the time while he’s not in the office, you will find him somewhere in or on the water, sailing off the coast or in the surf zone. Rand has a BA in English/Journalism from The University of the Pacific.
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Excellent interview, I really think InsideView’s got it right. Sales 2.o isn’t just about Saas services, outsourcing via web applications, communications through twitter etc, but also includes research to help find opportunities and better understand customers and prospects even before the first contact is made. Once contact is made, then continual information flow to keep on top of what is happening. This is a terrific application of the Social Media “listening” and “monitoring” concepts but provides real and measurable value.
Thanks for your comment Steve! Your also right on the money in that Sales 2.0 is also very much about making better sense of the information available on the web, in one central application that the sales rep accesses frequently.
The information available on social networks and the web will continue to grow in the future and InsideView can definitely help sales reps sell more effectively!