Chris Brogan | A Sales Guy

How Much is Chris Brogan’s Online Presence Worth?

Chris Brogan posted this on his blog a month ago –

“The time has come. I have a favor to ask. If you’re interested in our book, if you support all that I’ve given you over the past several years, if you want to buy a friend (or an entire small village) a gift, I’d like to request that you buy Trust Agents from your favorite online source. This request itself is a social media experiment in trust (or I’m just asking you to buy books) . . . Here’s the exact needle we have to move: 768. We need 768 more sales between now and Saturday night. That’s a lot of books, but I’m only asking you to buy one. (Well, if you’re a company, I’m asking you to buy hundreds.)”

By the end of the day, Chris’s book Trust Agents had reached number #55 of ALL books on Amazon.com and by the end of the week Trust Agents had reached the New York Times best seller list.

How much do you think Chris’s Online presence is worth? If we assume he reached his goal of 768 books, then it was worth at least $12,650 dollars on Aug. 17th. If you assume he sold more, a good assumption due to making the NY Times Best Seller list, then it’s worth far more than that. Assume he sold 1500 books that week, his online presence was worth $25,300 dollars that week alone. This is real money, making Chris’s online presence a real asset. Add up all the business it creates for him. Add up the relationships it creates. Add up the information it supplies. Add up the speaking engagements, exposure opportunities, and the powerful brand it has created and the Chris Brogan online property is a very, VERY valuable asset.

Chris Brogan was never a celebrity. Less than 10 years ago he worked in telecommunications. He was an average Joe. He didn’t have some big following when he started blogging over 5 years ago. He wasn’t a household name. Overtime, day by day, person by person he has built a solid, respectful, informative, and engaging online presence. A presence that has substantial value.

In the not too distant future, having an online presence will be the price to play. The person you marry, the job you have, the college you attend, the neighborhood you live in and the friends you have will ALL correlate to the value of your online presence. Your online presence; your social graph will be at the center of your life, impacting every aspect of it.

How much is Chris Brogan’s online presence worth? I have no idea. I wouldn’t even begin to put a number on it. But it’s for sure a valuable property. The better question is what is your online presence worth? Soon our online presence will be our most valuable asset, in many cases more valuable than our home.

Have you started investing in yours? You should!

September 17, 2009 | Filed under: Personal Brand,Web 2.0/Social Networking,What I Think! | View Comments |

The Community Blog vs. The Information Blog

There are two types of blogs. There are community blogs, where readers leave lots of comments and the discussion in the comments can be as interesting and informative as the actual blog itself. Then, there are information blogs, where the destination is about the information. Community blogs have lots of comments. The discussion is often happening between those leaving comments rather than with the author. Fred Wilson and Chris Brogan are excellent examples of community blogs. Information blogs are destination blogs, where people visit for the content. They read, they leave. They rarely leave comments and there is little dialog happening on the site.

I like community blogs better. I love the interaction. I dig the dissent and conversation. Community blogs do just that, they create community. Community blogs improve the content and promote interaction through the dialogue. Community is what makes blogs better.

I was talking to a reader of this blog today, and asked him why he doesn’t leave a comment. He couldn’t tell me why. He wasn’t sure. He said he shares the information with his non blogosphere network, but he doesn’t leave comments and he didn’t know why. He committed to think about it and get back to me. I’ll update this post with his thoughts when I hear back from him. Or, maybe he’ll leave them in the comments.

What do you think? What makes a community blog a community blog? What happens, that turns an information blog into a community blog? When do you comment and when don’t you? Why? I’d love your thoughts, you can leave them in the comments.

September 1, 2009 | Filed under: Web 2.0/Social Networking,What I Think! | View Comments |

Social Media: Are You Marketing or Selling? Part II

Yesterday I talked about Chris Brogran’s post The Best Fits for Social Media in the Sales Cycle. Chris’s suggestions were spot on. Social media gives us new tools to drive sales and accelerate the process.

Although good, I think Chris’s definition sales process was too marketing heavy

In my post I added two sales stages; the opportunity stage and the close stage to what Chris had already described.

1-Create Awareness (Marketing)
2-Identify Prospects (Marketing)
3-Generate Leads (Marketing)
4-Opportunity Pursuit (Sales)
5-The Close (Sales)
6-Customer (Sales and Marketing)
7-Evangelist (Marketing and Product)

Opportunity Pursuit is the process of moving a customer or lead to close. Opportunity pursuits include;

Assessment – what is happening in the client or buyers environment? What problem(s) are they struggling with that my product or service can solve?

Solution Identification – What solution am I offering? What is the value of my solution and how well does it deliver on the pain/problem of my customer/prospect?

Strategy – What is my approach to positioning my solution? How am I going to attack the process, what resources do I need, how will execute on the strategy?

Relationship – Who is responsible for the decision? How well do I know them? What is my relationship with them? What position am I in to influence their decision?

Getting to Yes – Every sales process is made up of a series of yes’s. Each yes, brings you closer to the closing the deal. The opportunity pursuit is all about getting to yes, and driving the deal to close.

The Close is the culmination of the above. It’s not a process, but a transition. Getting to the close depends on the opportunity pursuit. I give “The Close” it’s own place in the process, because of it’s culmination of the pursuit. Nothing happens with out it.

As Chris described, Social Media can help a sales cycle.

Social Media fits well into a sales process. As within a marketing cycle you have to know when and how to use them.

Assessment

The better the assessment of your customers environment, the challenges they face and the resources available to them, the better the chances to win the deal. Social Media can do wonders here. Finding and following employees from the company on Twitter will provide you with insight to what they are working on and the challenges they have. Following your customers competitors can give you visibility into positioning. It will point you to industry research comparing the companies and outlining their strengths and weaknesses. Industry Analyst blogs are killer for calling out industry gaps, player analysis and future opportunities.

This information gleaned from Social Media can give you a substantial leg up in framing your strategy and understanding your customers world.

Solution Identification

Because of it’s proprietary nature traditional Social Media is less effective here, however a crop of new Enterprise 2.0 applications, such as Socialcast and Yammer, are popping up, accelerating the movement of information within companies. A Socialcast type application allows you to quickly corral your company experts, brainstorm ideas, and share information in real time, therefore creating bigger, better, faster solutions.

Strategy

Blogs, LinkedIn, Industry Analysts via Twitter etc. provide tremendous amounts of company, industry, competitor, and solution oriented information. Grabbing this information and gleaning the subtle messages will help you understand the best approach to position your solution. Strategy heavily relies on assessment. Social Media makes a big impact here. Use it to ask questions on Twitter, find White Papers, Engage Analysts, or find former employees or your competitors who are willing to give you insight.

Don’t be shy to leverage Social Media for information to influence your strategy development

Relationships

This is an easy one. Use LinkedIn to find and learn about your buyers. Follow the tweets of the buyers. Become aware of your individual customers social graph, where do they live, what do they talk about, who are they friends with. Once you find them, listen, engage. Comment on their blog, retweet their tweets, comment on their LinkedIn status, join the forum they are on etc. By understanding their online presence, the offline becomes much easier.

Getting to “Yes”

Getting to “Yes” is understanding the unique gates or objections required to demonstrate increasing value of your solution. In the beginning of an opportunity pursuit, getting a “yes” to meet is your first yes. Using LinkedIn to find a contact of yours that can create an introduction will accelerate the process. Getting to “yes” is different in every sales process, across every opportunity. Social media is key in shortening the effort curve.

Blogs, Twitter, Socialcast, Yammer, Facebook, LinkedIn, RSS, etc, like any set of tools they each have their own value, solving different problems in different ways. The key to getting the most of Social Media in a sales process is to know what tools are available to you and wield them appropriately.

How are you using social media in your sales and marketing cycles? Share in the comments and I will post them.

May 13, 2009 | Filed under: Enterprise 2.0,Marketing,Sales Process,The Chase,Web 2.0/Social Networking | View Comments |

Social Media; Are You Marketing or Selling?

Marketing is not sales and sales is not marketing. Marketing is the stick, sales is the sharp end. They’re both good, because if done well, they make you money. Consider them a couple, that if working well together create beautiful children.

Chris Brogan had cool post yesterday talking about the “Best Fits for Social Media in The Sales Cycle”. Social Media fits well into the sales cycle and it also fits VERY well into marketing cycle. Chris hit some key points on how social media can help the sales cycle, however, his definition of a sales cycle is more marketing and less sales.

Chris describes the sales process like this:

1-Prospects
2-Awareness
3-Leads
4-Customers
5-Evangelists

This definition is mostly a marketing process, the actual “Sales Process” is left out.

Marketing creates prospects, increases awareness, and generates leads. Sales takes those leads and turns them into customers. The sale is the interactive, personal engagement between the sales person (team) and the buyer (company). The sales process is the steps and effort required to convert the lead to a deal or customer. This is no small effort. Deals are won/lost on the ability of a sales team to effectively manage a true “Sales Process”.

I think a marketing – sales process looks more like this:

Notice marketing on the front end, the stick, creates awareness, filters through the stuff, brings the prospects in, turns them into leads at which point sales takes over, the sharp end. Sales takes the leads turns them into opportunities, and then closes the opportunities, generating the moola. Marketing is the marco; broad messages and value propositions targeting large groups of potential customers. Sales is the micro; narrow messages targeted to the specific, unique needs of a specific company or person.

The chase, or opportunity pursuit and the close, is the sales process. I think Chris missed this component in his assessment. The sales process consists of a number of key components critical to getting the customer to yes.

A successful sales process requires:

1-Identification of a problem. A real business issue or personal problem has to exist. Sales has to find it.
2-Link to a measurable return. The benefit or return for buying has to be recognized and measurable. Sales must make sure they get it
3-Solving the problem. A solution of value must be present and articulated. Sales must deliver value by solving the problem (in best cases, they identify an unforeseen problem and then solve it. Provocative Base Selling)
4-Understanding of the buying process. Sales has to know who the decision makers are and what their key decision criteria are; why will they buy?
5-Gaining Access, Getting to the decision makers and power brokers who can make or break the sale is a must. If sales can’t do this they are dead in the water
6-Acceptance, This is the close. Sales has to get the prospect to say yes to the offer, product, solution. This requires agreement or vision match. Sales solution and outcome matches the vision of the prospect.

Social Media has it’s place in a true sales process as well as in a marketing process. You just have to understand what part of the process your in.

. . . I will give you my two cents in my next post on how social media can enable the above definition of a sales process. If you have ideas leave them in the comments and I will include them in my post.

May 12, 2009 | Filed under: Sales Process,The Chase,Web 2.0/Social Networking | View Comments |