Enterprise 2.0 | A Sales Guy

Salesforce Chatter; Coming Soon

Many of you know I am a big fan of enterprise micro-blogging. Think Twitter for your company. It is by far the most efficient way to share information, exchange ideas, collaborate and engage people in your company. Enterprise micro-blogging tools make companies more agile and improve performance because they capture the invisible.

Salesforce.com is going to launch their own micro-blogging tool called Chatter (now in private beta.) Chatter will compete with Socialcast, Yammer, Socialtext and all the other microblogging tools out there today. It’s a crowded space, but they will have an advantage because of it’s integration into their Salesforce.com platform.

Chatter provides all the typical features you would expect from traditional micro-blogging tools. You can create groups, follow the people most interesting to you, filter feeds to easily find things that are important, respond to specific users directly, share documents and links and more.

But, Chatter also has a few unique features. The most interesting is, unlike Yammer, Socialcast and other pure play micro-blogging tools, Chatter gives you a home page where all of your Salesforce data and important information is laid out for you to monitor. Think of it like a business application dashboard. Another unique Chatter feature is the profile page. The Chatter profile page appears more informative than Yammer and Socialcast from what I can tell. It provides your experience, skills and other personal information so others in the organization know who you are and what you do. It has more of a Facebook profile feel.

Another unique feature Chatter has is its ability to allow you to follow a document. I like this feature a lot. You can follow a PowerPoint presentation, a spreadsheet, a word doc. anything. I like this feature because it makes updating, and managing versions super easy. It also allows you to see what others think of the information and make corrections on the fly. Beyond documents and people, Chatter allows you to follow other applications, including non-Salesforce.com applications.

Chatter also gives you the ability to bring information in from outside social networks like Twitter. The value here is you can create a Twitter search for a specific company or customer and anytime time that company or customer is mentioned on Twitter, everyone in your Chatter group can see it. This is a powerful way to manage a customer and stay ahead of the competition.

One question I do have about Chatter that concerns me is integrating an entire organization. Traditionally, only sales, and marketing and the executives use Salesforce.com If Salesforce wants it to be a ubiquitous tool for the entire company they will have to create licensing pricing that makes it worth it to have everyone in the company to use it; including those who normally don’t use Salesforce, like product, finance and HR. The real value in micro-blogging comes from connecting the entire organization. Not just a few functional groups.

If you are a Salesforce.com customer, Chatter is a compelling tool to bring your organization together. If used appropriately, it has the ability to create proposals faster, identify useful information faster, improve customers relationships, increase sales, accelerate product development and more.

Whether it’s Chatter, Socialcast, Yammer, Socialtext or any other micro-blogging tool, your organization will benefit from their use. Find one and use it. They are about more than chattering, yammering or twittering, they are about getting business done.

Salesforce Rolls Out a Facebook for Businesses (mashable.com)
Salesforce.com gets social with Chatter beta (news.cnet.com)

February 20, 2010 | Filed under: Business Performance, Customer Service, Enterprise 2.0, What I Think! | Comments |

Sales Needed at Enterprise 2.0 Boston

I need your vote:

Back in November I posted how a Sales track was conspicuously absent during Defrag. I made a note of how Enterprise 2.0 companies have a very difficult road to hoe when it comes to selling their wares to companies. Most Enterprise 2.0 companies have been started by technologists and lack the experience, knowledge and understanding of B2B sales. So rather than chirping about it, I figured I need to do something about it.

I’ve put in to do a sales session at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston. The session is called Enterprise 2.0-Someone Has To Sell This Shit.

It looks like not enough people read my earlier post, because it appears there isn’t another sales track at Enterprise 2.0 Boston.

Enterprise 2.0 isn’t like Web 2.0 or other consumer products. There is no “build it and the will come.” A decision must be made in order to penetrate a company and drive revenue. Someone has to say “yes,” I will buy your product. Getting to this stage takes effort, and strategy. With my partner in crime Paul Dunay and we will break down the sales aspect of driving Enterprise 2.0 into the enterprise.

So, do us a favor and go vote. Thanks!

If we make it, I’ll post our presentation here.

January 9, 2010 | Filed under: Enterprise 2.0, Uncategorized, Web 2.0/Social Networking, What I Think! | Comments |

Where Was Sales?

Where was sales at Defrag last week? There were some great presentations on Business Intelligence, social boundaries and monitoring, real time streams and search vs discovery. There were some great presenters. It was an all web cast of folks; Stowe Boyd, Fred Wilson, Chris Sacca, Howard Lindzon, and Brad Feld. But, sales was no where to be found.

The booths were plenty, with most if not all being Enterprise 2.0 companies. I like to think of Enterprise 2.0 companies, as companies that sell Web 2.0 or social media products and services to other companies. Unlike the Twitters of the world, Enterprise 2.0 companies have to sell. In the enterprise world, IT departments defend their turf with abandon. Procurement will squeeze every dime they can out of you. Legal will extend the sales cycle by months until you capitulate on the word commit over “best effort”. Being successful in the Enterprise 2.0 is very different than Web 2.0; yet there was no sales, marketing or business development tracts on the Defrag agenda.

I think this was a big mistake. Most of these companies have been started by techies; really smart engineers who have little experience or knowledge on how to navigate a corporate sale. They’ve created innovative products, that in many cases the companies they are selling to are completely unaware they exist never mind understand their value. This lack of understanding of Enterprise 2.0 by most companies makes demand creation a requirement for a Enterprise 2.0 to be successful.

Enterprise 2.0 demands a strong, effective sales team, and sales process. They need to learn to engage the complex buying cycles of large companies. They need to learn account management as well as the transactional sale. The need to be able to create demand, where demand doesn’t exist.

Defrag, Enterpirse 2.0 conference and other conferences would do well by offering marketing, sales and business development. They should bring in folks like Paul Dunay author Facebook Marketing for Dummies, or Jill Konrath author of Selling to Big Companies. They need to provide more insight and information on the challenges of sales and marketing to driving revenue. It’s too critical to this budding business not to.

Enterprise 2.0 companies can’t make it without sales. These tracts will be packed, because the companies that figure it out first will win.

And everyone wants to win!

November 19, 2009 | Filed under: Business Performance, Enterprise 2.0, The Chase, Web 2.0/Social Networking, What I Think! | Comments |

Is Sales a Cost?

I’m at the Defrag conference today and tomorrow. Today, Bill Arconati from Atlassian put up this quote:

“Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two–and only two–basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs”

– Peter Drucker

Where is sales in this quote? Do you think Drucker was including it in marketing or do you think he categorizes it as a cost?

I say it’s part of marketing. It gets customers. I think if you were to ask many of the start ups at Defrag today who are targeting the enterprise they would agree.

I’m watching many of these new Enterprise 2.0 start-ups struggle with sales. They are grappling with the sales process, client profiling, getting access and overcoming objections. Most of these new companies have been started by engineers and sales is not what they know.

One of today’s “Open Space” breakout sessions led by Gist.com CEO T.A. McAnn asked the question; “How do you create sales momentum in the enterprise?” and it spawned some good conversation. The key take-aways and I fully agree were, you have to be agile and flexible. You can’t disqualify your prospects too arbitrarily or too early. Let them say no. You need to find advocates internally to help you sell. You’re going to need someone on the inside to evangelize the reward or benefit of your product. You have to create demand.

Enterprise 2.0 companies are ahead of the innovation curve. There is little to no awareness in most enterprises, therefore the sell is almost ENTIRELY demand creation. You can’t rely on or expect the customer to realize they want it. To sell in a demand creation environment, or to create demand, you must be very good at overcoming objections. You need to be good at creating access to the people that can influence the decision and you must be aggressive. Demand creation is not for the weak at heart and it doesn’t follow paint by numbers. And . . . you have to have a killer product.

Peter Drucker was right, Marketing and Innovation get you new customers. I say sales is part of marketing in his quote because it get’s customers too. Enterprise 2.0 companies have both, sales and innovation and if they are good at both they’ll get customers.

November 11, 2009 | Filed under: Business Performance, Enterprise 2.0, Sales Process, What I Think! | Comments |

The “Gist” of a New Sales Tool

I love finding good sales tools. Few things get me as excited as finding good tool to help me achieve my goals. One of the biggest areas for improvement is access to information. Sales runs on information; access to it and use of it. The best sales people are those who learn how to access information others can’t and know how to use it.

Finding information has usually meant research. Companies like Hoovers would compile all the info and we would go tearing through it looking for the tidbit to give us an edge. The problem was Hoovers controlled the info. If they couldn’t find it or chose not to add it, you didn’t get it. Google Alerts has upped the game a bit, but if you’re like me, you get a little tired of managing the tons of emails that come in everyday. I just couldn’t keep up with all the different alerts. This is why I’m excited about Gist.

Gist has the potential to be the next killer sales app. Gist is a new site that allows you to link your contact list to the web. After you sign up, you are prompted to upload your address book. Gist supports, Oulook, Vcard, Gmail, as well as LinkedIn and Facebook. Once your accounts have been set up, (you can set up more than one) Gist begins to pull all the information from the web it can and puts it into a clean dashboard by person, by company. What I like about how Gist works is I can see a client or companies entire web presence in a single click. Gist does a Google search and throws up all the relevant info on the people and companies in my contacts. It tracks the tweets, and blog posts, as well as any new web mentions. Getting information on clients has always been difficult. Gist is changing this and has taken a tremendous step into bringing sales people closer to their clients and what their clients are saying. Gist also provides the same rich information for the companies in your contacts, as it does for your contact list.

There are a few features I really enjoy. One is the ability to dial up or down the importance of a contact or company. The more important a contact, the higher on the dashboard you can make them show up. This gives you control on who gets more attention your watch list. Gist also syncs with your email account for better organization of all your account information. Gist gives you the ability to share contacts with other Gist users and merge contacts into a single view. (ex: multiple contacts at a single company.)

I have been using it for a few weeks and have just scratched the surface. I uploaded my entire contact list, not sure I’d do that again. There are too many people I just don’t care to watch. Gist does integrate with Salesforce.com. Which was a good move. I haven’t played with that feature yet. I am curious on how it’ll work.

Gist is headed in the right direction. As more and more people come online, via Twitter, Blogs, LinkedIn etc, Gist will provide you immediate information that can be used in the sales process, relationship building and a myriad of other business needs.

Gist is easy to use and easy to set up. I don’t see any barrier to adoption. Go sign up and tell me what you think. Playing with it is the only true way to find out how something works. Come back and give us your two cents.

October 21, 2009 | Filed under: Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0/Social Networking, What I Think! | Comments |

Yes, No You Can’t See It

I was talking with a good friend the other day about Enterprise 2.0 and the impact social media is having on the enterprise. What we were most blown away by in our discussion, is just how difficult it is for companies to embrace a culture of information sharing. There is still a persuasive “fear” that information can get into the wrong hands and therefore needs to be controlled.

Our conversation reminded me of an old post, Companies are Control Freaks. In it I talk about the evolutionary stages companies move through, from retention of information to encouraging the creation of information. What struck me most about our conversation was a story he told about a risk assessment his company had done. He told me his company had announced they had done a risk assessment to determine their risk profile in achieving their goals. Great effort, great initiative. He told me the assessment identified almost 50 varying risks, of which 6 were labeled as critical. Curious he asked to see for the report as it wasn’t part of the company announcement. He was sent the report outlining the risks with a note that asked him NOT to distribute it externally OR internally. When asked why he couldn’t forward to his co-workers, this is was the response:

The reason I indicated not to distribute internally is to try to keep a level of control over who gets the more detailed information. We intentionally did not provide this one page slide with the article as that would mean that 15,000 people would have it and it would be impossible to control whose hands may get it. Due to the nature of the information included in the risk profile, it is easier for me to distribute it internally rather than allowing anyone else to do it to try to keep it from getting into the wrong hands. Thanks for asking. I hope this helps to clarify.

Notice use of the word control twice. This is typical 1980’s corporate retain information leadership.

It’s the employees who will ultimately mitigate these risks, or magnify them. Yet his company feels they can march forward without actually sharing with all 15,000 people what they are at risk for and what they need to do fix it.

Imagine an encourage information leadership approach to this. It would have 15,000 people poised and ready to help fix the issues, not operate oblivious to them.

It takes a lot for companies to change, to give up control. Especially when control is all they know.

I wonder if being too hierarchical and controlling is one of the risks?

October 13, 2009 | Filed under: Business Performance, Enterprise 2.0 | Comments |

Is There A Future in Enterprise Micro-Blogging?

I have been a BIG fan of enterprise micro-blogging for the enterprise. Think Twitter for businesses. We use enterprise micro-blogging tool Yammer at Avaya and it’s been a great tool for collaboration and interaction, especially for an international company with a large virtual workforce. I use it everyday. It’s part of my work flow.

I expect micro-blogging within enterprises will be as common place as IM and email with in the next 5 years. Companies won’t be able to run their businesses with out them. (why? is a different post) Micro-Blogging for business is here to stay.

Despite my optimistic outlook for the platform. I think the space is in trouble. There are too many players; Yammer, SocialText, SocialCast, Rypple, Obayoo and more. Here is a list of the top ten. Beyond there being too many players, the barrier to entry is too low. It’s too easy for new players to enter the space. This is evident based on the large number of existing players so early in the game. There isn’t enough room in the space to support so many companies. The business models are too similar. There is little differentiation.

Adding to the pressure to survive, the pricing model has been pushed to zero by SocialCast who announced a freemium model for unlimited users with full administrative control. Add all these up and it’s hard to see how anymore than one, and maybe two of the players can make it. Even then, I’m having trouble seeing anyone make it due to the freemium model with out a substantial paying option.

If this isn’t enough to crush this budding industry, then the launch of Microsoft’s Sharepoint 2010 due out the end of this year and Google Wave due out next year will be. Sharepoint 2010 is expected to have a substantial number of Web 2.0 tools attached, including a micro-blogging tool. Although not traditionally considered an enterprise software company, Google Wave, in conjunction with Google Docs, and Google Voice are a compelling suite of tools for small to midsized business. The introduction of Sharepoint 2010 and Google Wave make it difficult for IT departments to justify supporting a one off platform for one purpose. There isn’t a significant enough value in the current micro-blogging tools to support their one off use, when you have the same feature already integrated with your existing collaboration, communication tools.

Not too long ago I traded emails with Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures about how Twitter could make money in the enterprise. He emphatically stated this was not a direction Twitter was going. I see why. Microsoft owns the desktop, companies like Cisco, Avaya and IBM could quickly add it to their Unified Communications platforms, Google Wave is attractive to small business, the business model has been pushed to free, and it’s a crowded field.

There is no future for the pioneers of enterprise micro-blogging. A lucky one or two will be bought within the next 18 months. The rest . . . RIP.

The good news, micro-blogging is here to stay and for that I am very excited.

July 23, 2009 | Filed under: Business Performance, Enterprise 2.0, What I Think! | Comments |

We Don’t Eat at Restaurants Because We’re Hungry!

We don’t pay to eat out because we are hungry. We have food in the fridge. (college kids, or bachelors are the exception). We don’t buy books because we want to read. We can get them at the library for free. We don’t pay for cable because we want to watch T.V. We can get the local channels for free. We don’t pay for radio to listen to music. We can listen to music on the radio for free. Prostitutes don’t flourish, because we need sex. Most people have a spouse or significant other that provides that service for free. There are things in life that are free or almost free yet we continually choose to pay for them. Why?

It’s because we almost never buy things for one reason. We rarely spend our money for a singular purpose. Buying is a complex process. If we only bought cars to get from point A to point B, then we wouldn’t have so many different types of cars. If we only bought food to eat, then there wouldn’t be so many different restaurants. If we only spent our money for the utility of things, there wouldn’t be any reason for much of anything else.

Chris Anderson’s book Free just came out. Fred Wilson just wrote an intriguing post on the idea of freemium business models and SocialCast an enterprise 2.0 company just announced their service is totally free to an unlimited number of users. The discussions around the idea of freemium services is interesting with many detractors. I think they are looking at it the wrong way. They are looking at it from the eyes of what was, not what can be. And unfortunately, that is even wrong.

A good sales person understands the buying process is complex and people rarely buy things for one, obvious, clear reason. We buy for a number of unique, individual, and varying reasons. The cable companies figured this out and now none of us could even imagine NOT paying for T.V. Restaurants figured this out and most of us have looked at a our monthly budgets and made commitments to stop eating out only to do it just as much next month. Radio was as free as a bird just a few years ago, now most of us are paying for XM/Sirus or HD radio and didn’t blink an eyelash at it.

Good sales people learn to identify the true buying motives. They pry, evaluate, assess and discover what it is that will motivate buyers and then capitalize on it. I think the freemium model could learn something from sales people. It’s not what your product does that we pay for. It’s what it does for us that excites us to pay. Give your product away all day long and while your doing it ask yourself what WILL my customers pay for? Because they will pay, you just have to figure it out.

July 6, 2009 | Filed under: Enterprise 2.0, Sales Process, Uncategorized, Web 2.0/Social Networking | Comments |

Yammer; You’re Yammering Too Much

Yammer is a microblogging tool for the enterprise. Think Twitter for business.We use Yammer at Avaya. It’s been a good product for us. Yammer is arguably the leader in its space. I like Yammer. It’s been a good tool for me. I use it everyday and it’s part of my work flow. Unfortunately Yammer broke the cardinal rule of Internet marketing. Not being authentic.

Yammer took a post by Former Forrester Analyst Gil Yahuda and made a case study out of it without Gil’s or Forrester’s permission. According to Gil’s post, Yammer went so far as to misrepresent him and give the impression he was endorsing their product. This is not the only time Yammer has taken liberties such as this.

Yammer has a good product. They are a leader in their space. Breaking the cardinal sin is the worse thing they could have done.

Authenticity is critical today. We are constantly bombarded by information, people, and companies. We rely on people being true, honest and reliable to weed through it all. We need to know that our online relationships are real. When this is violated our trust is undermined.

Build your online presence with good content, great products, and strong engagement, but most importantly be authentic. Online; there is nothing more valuable.

Yammer, stop Yammering and let your community tell the story. You’re not very good at it.

June 11, 2009 | Filed under: Business Performance, Enterprise 2.0, Marketing, What I Think! | Comments |

A Sales Guy

Keenan 411

Salesforce Chatter; Coming Soon

Sales Needed at Enterprise 2.0 Boston

Where Was Sales?

Is Sales a Cost?

The “Gist” of a New Sales Tool

Yes, No You Can’t See It

Is There A Future in Enterprise Micro-Blogging?

We Don’t Eat at Restaurants Because We’re Hungry!

Yammer; You’re Yammering Too Much

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