{"id":1671,"date":"2008-07-22T11:30:04","date_gmt":"2008-07-22T16:30:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2008\/07\/sales-20\/"},"modified":"2008-07-22T05:08:02","modified_gmt":"2008-07-22T10:08:02","slug":"sales-20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2008\/07\/sales-20\/","title":{"rendered":"Sales 2.0"},"content":{"rendered":"

I read often about web 2.0, recruiting 2.0 and sales 2.0.\u00a0 Math was never my forte so numbers scare me.\u00a0 But I did come across a very informative article in Sales & Marketing Management article titled A Step-By-Step Overview of Sales 2.0<\/a>.\u00a0 The first pull quote:<\/p>\n

With instant access to corporate Web sites, search and social networks, your customers have company and product information at their fingertips, which give them much more control over the sales process than they had in the day when brochures and pricing were only available from a sales rep. Many prospective customers postpone talking with a sales rep, believing that they’ll get a better deal by acquiring as much “ammunition” as possible.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Isn’t that the truth?\u00a0 I’ve seen many salespeople struggle with this transition as it is still underway.\u00a0 Heck, I’ve struggled with it.\u00a0 One change from prospects having the information has been a loss of control by the salesperson.\u00a0 I don’t view this as a bad thing, just a change.<\/p>\n
When salespeople controlled the information, they were able to qualify the prospect before supplying the catalogs\/brochures\/spec sheets.\u00a0 Those days are long gone which is why I think there is such a strong push for relationship-focused salespeople.\u00a0 Building a relationship with the prospect to get to the qualifying stage is the salesperson’s best approach today.<\/p>\n
In the end, all things equal out which brings us to sales 2.0.<\/p>\n
Sales 2.0 technologies are delivering instant information that build relationships and enable sales to be more efficient, more cost-effective and more productive that the old Willie Loman-style of selling.\u00a0 Just as the Internet allowed buyers to literally let their fingers do the walking, these new Sales 2.0 technologies are allowing the customer’s online behavior to dictate the communication – before sales does the talking.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
And that is a good summation of how selling is changing today.\u00a0 Communication has increased dramatically between prospect and salesperson.\u00a0 The next phase of selling continues the relationship sale by incorporating web-based tools to open a dialogue between the prospect and the salesperson in a new context.\u00a0 In our business, we get calls from prospects who already have a general understanding of our process, assessments, training, etc..\u00a0 The discussion starts at a point that would have taken 2 or 3 phone calls to reach just 10 years ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I read often about web 2.0, recruiting 2.0 and sales 2.0.\u00a0 Math was never my forte so numbers scare me.\u00a0 But I did come across a very informative article in Sales & Marketing Management article titled A Step-By-Step Overview of Sales 2.0.\u00a0 The first pull quote: With instant access to corporate Web sites, search and social networks, your customers have company and product information at their fingertips, which give them much more control over the sales process than they had in the day when brochures and pricing were only available from a sales rep. Many prospective customers postpone talking with a sales rep, believing that they’ll get a better deal… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14,9,5],"tags":[886,883,551,884,885],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5Oho-qX","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1671"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1671\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}