Comments on: Sales 2.0 — Marketing and Sales Unite To Increase Revenue

By: gauravjha83

gauravjha83 — Thu, 13 May 2010 18:38:35 +0000

Hey Chad, good post. I work for a company which strongly believes in the values set firth by the tenets of Sales 2.0. We've developed our product offering around this ideology, and are helping organizations leverage it to their advantage.

I talk about some ways in which Sales guys can and are leveraging information on multiple Social Media platforms to connect better with their customers and prospects in my blog post:http://blog.insideview.com/2010/04/27/connecting-...

By: Corsi marketing e vendita

Corsi marketing e vendita — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 16:42:56 +0000

[...] 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, [...]

By: Chad Levitt

Chad Levitt — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 17:01:51 +0000

@ Larry thanks for posting your comment here and on The Customer Collective. Your right on the money with your perspective and agreement that driving sales and marketing together is the goal for successful Sales 2.0 companies.

Keep reading the New Sales Economy blog and I hope you’ve subscribed.

By: Larry Kilbourne

Larry Kilbourne — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:57:04 +0000

Chad- Right on target! A lot of lead generation related problems are the result of sales and marketing silos within companies; exacerbated by the fact that the two seem to be at war more often than operating as allies. In a recent blog, Webinar Follow-up: Why Leads Don’t Become Customers, I noted that the disconnect between sales and marketing often means that well-attended webinars (and thus successes from a marketing perspective) often don’t translate into new customer acquisition (thus are flops from a sales perspective). Why? Because often sales is out of the loop completely in the lead generation process – in this case the webinar – so that they are suspicious of the quality of the leads marketing hands off to them and thus often don’t follow-up with folks who have sat through an hour-long webinar and have been thoroughly ‘dipped in’ the company’s service or product.

You hit the nail on the head when you say that the goal should be driving together sales and marketing!

By: Chad Levitt

Chad Levitt — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 18:56:11 +0000

@Michele You correctly point out that without a clearly defined process technology will not help much. One of the requirements for Sales 2.0 to work is to have a clearly defined sales process that creates predictable and sustainable revenue. The whole point of the Sales 2.0 methodology is to leverage the right people, processes and technology to create more revenue at a lower cost of sales driving higher profit margins and value for the business. Not to mention if your a sales rep you will make more money!

Thanks for your thoughts.

By: Michele

Michele — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 18:05:33 +0000

I’m all for technology enablement to bridge the sales and marketing divide. I built a career on it. But, if you don’t have a clearly defined process and agreed upon goals, all the technology in the world won’t help. Look at how SFA is really just a contact tool for sales in most organizations. Sales won’t get insight from 2.0 unless clarity exists in the dialogue, process, and objectives that sales and marketing agree to.

I’m not sure that Geoffrey James is completely off the market. What I think he gets at in the post is that Marketing sees itself at the head of the sales engagement/lead funnel versus being part of the sales engagement process. They want to start a dialogue and clear the way for sales to close the deal. Marketers that get it are actually part of the sales process right beside sales closing the deal- with S2.0 or not.

By: Chad Levitt

Chad Levitt — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 14:01:44 +0000

@Geoffrey I agree Sales 2.0 makes the marketing and sales silos within a company more accountable for their results. This facet of Sales 2.0 is one of the major benefits gained from being a Sales 2.0 organization. Everything needs to be measured quantitatively as you point out and mapped back to revenue. If your not using metrics to gauge results your not using Sales 2.0 correctly.

You point out a very true fact in that about 99% of all U.S. companies are NOT using Sales 2.0. This is to their detriment. And therein lies the massive opportunity to crush your competition by implementing Sales 2.0 and creating a competitive advantage! Move now before it’s too late.

Great comment!

By: Geoffrey James

Geoffrey James — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 13:38:48 +0000

I’m all in favor of Sales 2.0 because it makes marketing more measurable and (more importantly) measurable in a quantitative, objective manner, with the metrics tied to actual sales. Absent such measurement, however, marketing becomes dysfunctional or worse, takes on inappropriate airs. Example: the expression “marketing drives sales” — a blatant attempt to take credit for the work of another group. You must remember that Sales 2.0 implementations are in place at perhaps 1 percent of U.S. companies (and that’s probably a high estimate). The great unwashed are still measuring marketing using bogus concepts like “brand equity” – and wasting time and money in the process.