Must read Sales Enablement tweets

In case you don’t follow me on twitter @pkralle and @SalesEnablement the following retweets might be of interest to you:

Emely Abbey ‏ @EarlyStageNQE

Companies with Mature Sales Enablement Programs Witnessing 15+ Percent Annual Growth Rates

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Paola Norambuena ‏ @panoram

Only 25% of companies actively listen to, and respond to, what consumers say about them. @jeffmancini

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@Onboardly

An #Interview With @AprilDunford, #Blogger and Vice President of #Marketing, #Huawei #Enterprise http://www.contentmarketinginstitute.com/2012/03/cm-2015-april-dunford/

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Scott Santucci ‏ @scottsantucci

Q&A with Tamara Schenk @tamaraschenk, VP of #SalesEnablement, T-Systems. #Forrester #Blogs http://blogs.forrester.com/scott_santucci/12-03-03-qa_with_tamara_schenk_vice_president_of_sales_enablement_t_systems

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@corpv

ReTooling #Sales Enablement Tools: Make the Selling Simpler via CRM Magazine
http://destinationcrm.com/Articles/Columns-Departments/ReTooling/Sales-Enablement-Tools-60853.aspx

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dgriesman ‏ @dgriesman

always fun 2 discover: RT @stevekeifer: Shadow marketing: rogue content creation by sales teams outside of corp/product marketing

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@fisiononline

“By 2017, a #CMO will spend more on #IT than the #CIO”; says #Gartner Group. #marketing #enterprise #technology

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@forrester

From Sales Enablement Forum: 86% of B2B buyers report sourcing information independent of interactions with vendor sales

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@JRSilber

Daniel West, Informatica: “18 months ago, sales enablement was nice to have, now it is recognized as a must have.”

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@JasonAndersson

#IDC Directions: Sales enablement is marketing’s job # 1.

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@julianng

Sales enablement in 2012: Buying cycle now 19 months for big-ticket IT purchases, expanded by 2 months in 2011.

List of Sales Enablement experts on Twitter – Who to follow

My blog post ‘Thought Leaders on Sales Enablement with a Twitter account’ and some accounts mentioned therein are becoming a bit outdated. Now, with lists being available on Twitter they become the natural way of finding and following domain experts. Here is my (hopefully continually curated) list of Sales Enablement experts on Twitter:

@salesenablement/sales-enablement-experts

Please let me know in the comments or on Twitter whether you are missing on this list.

Social Media Marketing for SMBs

This post is a must read for SMBs who don’t have a Social Media Marketing strategy yet:
10 Small Business Social Media Marketing Tips by Ross Kimbarovsky, from October 28th, 2009.

The following is only the introduction. Read the 10 tips and leave your comment here.

“[...] Capacity – especially to plan and execute effective marketing strategies – is a big challenge for every small business. In this post, I’ll offer 10 suggestions for how small businesses can supercharge their marketing efforts by leveraging social media. For each suggestion, I will discuss a basic strategy – for those who simply want to get their toes wet, as well as anadvanced strategy – for those who want to spend a bit more time and go a bit deeper in their social media marketing efforts. These tips are based on my experience leveraging social media marketing for my company, crowdSPRING.

I suggest you begin by outlining clear goals for your social media marketing efforts and figuring out how you’ll measure success. Once you’ve outlined your goals, let’s look at 10 great ways you can begin to leverage social media for your marketing efforts.

[...]“

Social Media Trends for 2010

HarvardBusiness.org blog post ‘Six Social Media Trends for 2010′ by David Armano (@armano) from November 2, 2009:

“In 2009 we saw exponential growth of social media. According to Nielsen Online, Twitter alone grew 1,382% year-over-year in February, [...] In 2010, social media will get even more popular, more mobile, and more exclusive — at least, that’s my guess. What are the near-term trends [...]:

1. Social media begins to look less social
With groups, lists and niche networks becoming more popular, networks could begin to feel more “exclusive.” Not everyone can fit on someone’s newly created Twitter list and as networks begin to fill with noise, it’s likely that user behavior such as “hiding” the hyperactive updaters that appear in your Facebook news feed may become more common. Perhaps it’s not actually less social, but it might seem that way as we all come to terms with getting value out of our networks — while filtering out the clutter.

2. Corporations look to scale
There are relatively few big companies that have scaled social initiatives beyond one-off marketing or communications initiatives. Best Buy’s Twelpforce leverages hundreds of employees who provide customer support on Twitter. The employees are managed through a custom built system that keeps track of who participates. This is a sign of things to come over the next year as more companies look to uncover cost savings or serve customers more effectively through leveraging social technology.

3. Social business becomes serious play
Relatively new networks such as Foursquare are touted for the focus on making networked activity local and mobile. However, it also has a game-like quality to it which brings out the competitor in the user. Participants are incentivized and rewarded through higher participation levels. And push technology is there to remind you that your friends are one step away from stealing your coveted “mayorship.” As businesses look to incentivize activity within their internal or external networks, they may include carrots that encourage a bit of friendly competition.

4. Your company will have a social media policy (and it might actually be enforced)
If the company you work for doesn’t already have a social media policy in place with specific rules of engagement across multiple networks, it just might in the next year. From how to conduct yourself as an employee to what’s considered competition, it’s likely that you’ll see something formalized about how the company views social media and your participation in it.

5. Mobile becomes a social media lifeline
With approximately 70 percent of organizations banning social networks and, simultaneously, sales of smartphones on the rise, it’s likely that employees will seek to feed their social media addictions on their mobile devices. What used to be cigarette breaks could turn into “social media breaks” as long as there is a clear signal and IT isn’t looking. As a result, we may see more and/or better mobile versions of our favorite social drug of choice.

6. Sharing no longer means e-mail
The New York Times iPhone application recently added sharing functionality which allows a user to easily broadcast an article across networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Many websites already support this functionality, but it’s likely that we will see an increase in user behavior as it becomes more mainstream for people to share with networks what they used to do with e-mail lists. And content providers will be all too happy to help them distribute any way they choose.

[...]

David Armano [@armano] is part of the founding team at Dachis Group, an Austin based consultancy delivering social business design services. He is both an active practitioner and thinker in the worlds of digital marketing, experience design, and the social web. [...]“

Comment by Daniel:

“One thing you missed, David: People will use lifestreaming platforms to add more context to their content. For instance, you may post that you’re eating a hamburger via Twitter — alas, the dreaded “what I ate” tweet — but if you were to use a lifestream platform such as Brightkite or Foursquare, you can add dimension to your content so it actually helps others.

But this is one part of lifestreaming. The other, you see, is aggregation ['Don't waste time with visiting twitter.com or blogs - Aggregate everything via rss'].

Look for companies to develop storystreaming platforms that enable brands — and individuals — to stream in content from the social web. Since content curation is a key part of this, look for this year’s “killer app” to be a tool that enables power users (brand managers, agencies, community managers, etc.) to fine-tune the content that gets pulled in. [...]“

Comment by Jason:

“Social media will become more global in 2010.

With Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter all gear up on their language translation capabilities, we will see an interesting growth of international users on all these platforms.

Social media will become an increasingly important medium for global brands to market toward oversea consumers. It will be interesting to see how multi-national brand managers can tap into rich social data and engagement oversea without having to leave the corporate headquarter.”

David Armano’s response to comments:

“Seems that the most common, high value use of social media mechanisms is to bypass bad operating designs (service models).”

Yes. Yes. Yes. Social service design possibly? The signs are here, this will probably get traction in the next year in a more formalized way. Again, Twelpforce is an early indicator.

Jason, Global is a good point.

Other themes here that I think would emerge is the popularity of anything that can support the real time Web or as we call “dynamic signals” As Daniel eludes to , storytelling in a real time Web becomes storystreaming. Brands and content providers will have tremendous opportunities here if leadership can persuade the lawyers.

And most definitely social commerce. I already know of a few players planning these initiatives.”

Comment by Loraine Antrim:

“One trend in social media as we approach 2010 is that the “media” aspect will increase dramatically. Video is exploding on the web; more and more blogs include links to video content and as mobile devices expand the use of video, we will see even more video content in all aspects of social media. Also, the idea of “Social” will take second seat to corporations’ use of social media, but the real trend is the increase of SMBs who will start to use social media as a strategy for attraction and retention of customers. [...]“

Sales Enablement slide show gets some love

A recently published slide show on Sales Enablement by SVA BizSphere AG (@BizSphere) is getting a lot of attention on Twitter, on SlideShare and amongst Sales Enablement experts.

Gerhard Gschwandtner (@gerhard20) from SellingPower.com commented on it:

“Great presentation! I think that this solution is head and shoulders ahead of some of your competitors I’ve written about recently in this post ‘Is Sales Enablement just Lipstick on a Knowledge Management Pig?’“

Even SlideShare – where the document can be downloaded – recognized its success:

“BizSphere Sales Enablement – 2009Q4″ is being tweeted more than any other document on SlideShare right now. So we’ve put it on the homepage of SlideShare.net (in the “Hot on Twitter” section).

Job opening – Sales Enablement Community Manager

[Sales Enablement] Community Manager – Job opening on monster.com

Job Summary

“Location: Telecommute
Industries: Business Services – Other
Job Type: Full Time, Temporary/Contract/Project, Employee
Relevant Work Experience: 5+ to 7 Years
Education Level: Bachelor’s Degree
Career Level: Manager (Manager/Supervisor of Staff)

About the Job
We are a sales enablement company and are looking to build a content rich social network for sales professionals. We are looking for a Community Manager that will help us build, launch and grow this network which will bring together training/coaching and collaboration for all things sales.

An overview of the position:

Collect, edit, and publish content on our site. Manage outbound messaging programs that deliver broader (# of subscribers/fans) and deeper (frequency of engagement) connections with community members and prospects. Activities to include: editorial responsibility for our site, development and management of email program plans and content, development and management of outbound messaging plans and content on social media platforms.

Responsibilities:

· Ensure that the best, most current, most compelling content is available for community members based on analysis of trends and activity on the site/forums etc.

· Create / implement a content plan.

· Work with key contributors / outside SMEs / contributing editors to identify the best content and provide it to consumers via the site and outbound messaging platforms (email, facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.).

· Customize the user experience based on preferred content

· Set time frames for publishing and goals for engagement experience.

· Set time frames for publishing and goals for views/engagement in outbound messaging platforms including but not limited to: email, facebook, Twitter etc.

· Develop broader (# of subscribers/fans) and deeper (frequency of engagement) connections between community members via effective program design and content selection/editing.

· Consult with teammates regarding frequency of communications on social platforms considering quality of content, fan/subscriber engagement, and fan/subscriber growth or attrition.

· Oversee report production, develop action plans for improvement, and distribute to managers and executive team.

· Create dashboards, oversee report production, develop action plans for improvement and distribute to managers and executive team.

· Recruit guest contributors

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

· Dynamic publishing and/or outbound messaging professional with at least 5 years of experience

· Editorial sense (Being the digital “Editor in Chief”)->content and story developer with specific skill in digital communications.

· Self directed. Able to create plans, execute, and achieve results with little specific direction.

· Natural entrepreneurial instinct and ability to succeed in variety of situations and political environments

· Strong marketing understanding and excellent analytical skills

· Excellent production knowledge: use of content management systems, publishing workflows, approval cycles, publishing to multiple platforms

· Extensive knowledge of at least one robust content management platform used to power a large-scale site

· Knowledge of one or more of the following will be a plus: search engines, analytics applications, ad-serving technology and email systems.

· Excellent planning and project management competencies

· Strong knowledge of or background in Sales would be great”

Enterprise 2.0

I just discovered the blog sachachua.com where @sachac – Enterprise 2.0 consultant at IBM – has been blogging for many years.




On June 30, 2009, Sarah Lacy @sarahcuda wrote the following post on Techcrunch (I’m posting it here mainly because it led me to the Sales 2.0 case studies “Dell Makes $3 Million From Twitter-Related Sales” and “Comcast’s Twitter Guru Speaks”):




“I still think “Enterprise 2.0” is a meh business trend with a horrible name. It’s not that social media/collaboration tools don’t have a role in business, and I agree there are some situations where consumer tools aren’t the right fit. A great example is Twitter versus Yammer. (Oh, if you only saw the conversations that happen on TechCrunch’s Yammer feed…)

But I don’t see Enterprise 2.0 becoming a big area of corporate spending. The tools are too cheap and easy to replicate with tons of free alternatives, and many of the vendors are just not ready for prime time. One exception might be blogging software, but don’t most companies who want a corporate blog have one by now? Rather than the next Oracle (who by the way was one of the study’s underwriters) or even Salesforce.com emerging from this space, I’m betting that existing software-as-a-service companies incorporate the functionality themselves or you get a lot of built-in-house code.

There’s also the problem that nearly 20% of executives have no idea what “Enterprise 2.0″ is. That comes from a new study that’s actually talking up the adoption of Enterprise 2.0. It points out that 40% didn’t know what it was at the beginning of the year, so at least that’s progress. What’s more it says that 50% of those surveyed consider enterprise 2.0 to be “very important” to their business success. (Of course, I think working out everyday is “very important” to my weight loss goals…doesn’t mean I actually do it.)

Still, given that number is so high, it stunned me that the study also said only 7% of people over the age of 45 think that Twitter is an important rapid-feedback tool for business. Sadly, it’s not much better among younger folks: Only 27% of those between the ages of 18-30 say Twitter is an important rapid-feedback tool for business. What? Really? You may think we obsess about Twitter too much on TechCrunch, but clearly most business folks aren’t getting the memo.

Let’s put aside for a moment that there are pretty well proven test cases on how Twitter utilization has helped companies like Dell and Comcast. Paying for outreach or collaboration tools without first checking out what a free, easy tool like Twitter could do is missing the entire point of the cheap flexibility and ubiquity of social media. Put another way (and to paraphrase James Carville): It’s a recession, stupid. Try the free tools first.”

Discuss Sarah Lacy’s blog post on Techcrunch.

Here are all my blog posts on Sales 2.0

Here are all my blog posts on Twitter

Twitter for Product Marketers

What I like about Twitter I described in
This has been said about Google and might be said about Twitter soon: What you can’t find via its search doesn’t happen.

Via rocketwatcher.com, I’m subscribed to, I found “7 Reasons Why Good Product Managers Must Be On Twitter”:

1. Connect with other PMs [...]
2. Get in touch with (potential) clients [...]
3. Listen to customer feedback [...]
4. Locate the experts [...]
5. Share good and relevant articles [...]
6. Grow your online-reputation [...]
7. Let people know about your product [...]

Read the full blog post at webproductblog.com

Here is the response “5 Not Obvious Reasons Product Marketers Should Twitter” from rocketwatcher.com:

“Thomas Fuchs Martin over at webproductblog.com had a great post called “the 7 reasons why good product managers must be on Twitter” which covers the big reasons like listening to customer feedback and connecting with other PM’s. This then got me thinking about other perhaps less pressing reasons to be on Twitter and I give you…

5 non-obvious reasons product marketers should Twitter:

1. Communicate Bad News [...]
2. Spy on the Other Guys [...]
3. Get inside the heads of Analysts and Experts [...]
4. Find People you Want to Hire (and some you don’t) [...]
5. Prove you’re human (so people cut your company some slack when you screw up) [...]“

Read the fullblog post “5 Not Obvious Reasons Product Marketers Should Twitter”.