I have a great friend whose name is Vaughn Rachal, and I bring him up because he is a sales guru, and has worked for a number of tech companies in his career. This has given him the ability to merge his deep sales philosophies with the modern influences of areas like websites, social media, CRM systems, etc. We have been putting together a presentation that describes how the traditional sales process is now being changed by tech influences, so I thought I would share a few of the main bullet points. The first is that the word “sales” probably needs to be replaced with the concept of facilitated buying. Meaning that instead of our trying to concisely guide a prospect through a process we have built in advance that is a rigid step by step, we must now be able to facilitate the prospect getting to a buying decision without being able dictate the steps.

Which brings me to the second concept that needs to be understood, and that is that there is not a set process that a buyer goes through at this point, and we cannot control the flow of information to them. In the past, if a buyer wanted to know information about our products or what customers think of us, they had to get that data from the seller. In fact, they had to contact us and then we knew they were a prospect and we could force them into a sales process that could be rigidly guided. Today, a prospect uses the Web to start their buying process and they will find a list of possible vendors, review their Websites, and study what other people have said about the vendor before even making the first contact. This fact alone changes the sales process tremendously. Now add to this that the prospect might choose to do most of their communication through email and text messaging so that the sales person has little chance to use all the selling psychology tools we were once taught.

The third concept to consider is that buyers are not going through a traditional process of identifying needs, looking for vendors, creating an RFP, evaluating responses, etc. They are using a more socially directed buying approach. While even beginning the process of identifying needs, they are already using social networking tools to get help and advice from constituents and contacts. Then they will move on to using social networking to help identify possible vendors. Before the sale is completed, they will have used social tools to do deep research on not only the possible vendor, but also the employees they are working with. Vendors are starting to wake up to this reality as they are finding that where they could once control the delivery of information and timing, they now have no control. This brings up the crux of the issue, and that is that sellers no longer have the control they once enjoyed when they had a controllable sales process. Those days are just gone, and will not be coming back. So what should an organization do that would really like to be able influence the success of their “selling?”

The first thing is to really get the concept of facilitating buying and what your role can be. Start paying attention to your online reputation and actually invest energy into having the best online reputation possible. Make sure people are talking about you online and that what they say is positive. Work with your sales people to turn them into social networking professionals that clearly understand how to use the social tools to communicate, inform, and build relationships. Use social media tools to communicate to the Web that you are industry experts. Learn to use technology to facilitate your ability to be more human. What I mean is use the tech to better facilitate video, audio and text conversations with potential buyers on a regular basis. One last thing… We are in the middle of a model change so there are buyers that do not like tech, or use it in the course of their day, and those buyers will still be influenced by the traditional methods. I know you don’t want to hear that because it means that sales people have to have skills in both the traditional and the future sales methods. I wish I could tell you there is a one-size fits all answer, but alas, there is not. For the next ten years, we will slowly change over from the classic sales models to the new, facilitated buying model.

Scott Klososky
Scott@klososky.com

Negative economic times generally have an interesting impact on technology tools because the resources dry up and organizations have less ability to take risks and buy new toys. So they replace this with learning how to use their current tools better, and figuring out how to leverage free technology tools. A simple example of this would be that small companies decide that there is no use spending $300 on Microsoft Office when they can use Google Docs for free. Another example is that instead of buying a whole new accounting system, people try to figure out how to extend the current system they have. In many cases this is a good thing because they learn that they can get a lot done with the horse they are riding instead of trading her in on the new model. Ergo, from a vendor viewpoint, there will clearly be winners and losers.

I like Google in a down market because their model is primarily free for tools, and funding that through advertising. Sure, their advertising revenues will drop, but their usage base will go up and as soon as the economy comes back, there they will sit with millions of additional users. I do not like Oracle, SAP, HP and Dell. These are easy suppliers to cut back on because they either make expensive software, or hardware that can be delayed. What about the small or medium sized business out there. How can they leverage technology in a down market…

Well, first off, be open to using free tools where you might not have earlier. There are open source applications that can be used if you will just invest some time to learn them. There are many clever marketing and advertising options that only cost your time to learn them and experiment. Every day of every week of every year at this point I see some new, free Website or online scheme that can help you find new customers or improve the relationships with current ones. Necessity is the mother of invention I suppose, but I would rather think if it as a recession is the mother of invention The next thing to do is take some of the free time you have on your hands since many of your customers are now wringing theirs, and learn how to fully utilize the software you have already purchased.

This is a great time to take a deep breath and really take the investments you have already made and leverage them. The fact is that when things are going really well, we are too distracted to fully implement software and hardware systems, so a slow down can give us extra time to go back and really figure out how to use everything we have paid for. My observation is that software like CRM systems rarely get even 50% utilized. Even network equipment can be sitting there partially implemented. We have custom reporting software, but do not spend the time to really build all the custom reports or dashboards that we need. We have website content management systems that let us have complete control over our sites, but we don’t update them nearly as often as we should. My metaphor is that a soldier uses peacetime to clean the guns and do some target practice so that when the battle starts, they are fully prepared. The same is true for this downturn. Now is the time to evaluate all the technology you use, and invest time in learning how to fully leverage it. Then take the next step and figure out what free technology exists that you could be using. Then when the smoke clears and the economy rises like a phoenix, you will be prepared to leapfrog your competitors.

Hidden in this is a message that it is not wise to fire all your IT people in a downturn. Although they may not appear to be revenue generators directly, they are often the people that can assure you can generate that revenue in the future.

Scott Klososky
Scott@klososky.com

 You get a short amount of words to explain your current situation. Tell people where you are, tell them how you feel and why it matters.

See, all that, and I still had five characters left over, too. Why is this important, and how is it changing the Internet?   Okay, so here goes: These tiny blurbs are streaming across the ‘Net on web sites, phone applications (SMSs on older cell phones), and even on giant LCDs in Times Square and downtown Tokyo.  The blurbs, micro-objects really, are not intrusive, because you have to subscribe to a user to see their posts in your stream.  But if you want to see the entire flood of messages on a system like Identi.ca, you need only go to the home page and watch it flow past you. (Like this stream on Rejaw: http://rejaw.com/everyone or this one at Jaiku: http://jaiku.com/explore)

The majority of these micro-blogging systems are built to utilize the XMPP standard, which has been around since 1998 when the Jabber project hatched it.  XMPP stands for Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol, which is an open, XML-like protocol, that is a decentralized alternative to the centralized, corporate-owned, anachronistic instant messaging systems like AOL and MSN.  While I have nothing against corporate-owned systems per se, I am all for the decentralized platforms that take advantage of the cloud structure that the Internet is rapidly adopting.  From the open source Laconica server, which is written in the open source PHP language, to the Linux, Apache, Python, and MySQL-driven code of Pownce – open is good.  Nyet?

This cloud-like structure is amazing for a lot of reasons, but we need to focus on something that is maybe only a few months away.  Imagine your workday when your gadgets, calendars, emails, co-workers and even your car can send you XMPP messages when needed.  For these short, to the point messages, you wouldn’t dirty your email inbox; but rather they would flow into your XMPP stream as needed.  An impromptu meeting is taking place and your CTO needs you… chirp.  Your iPhone battery is complaining because you forgot to charge it last night when you collapsed in the hotel room… chirp.  Even better, your Gmail account sends you a message that it is getting close to being low on disk space… chirp.  Tivo wants you to know that the original Planet of the Apes is on tonight, chirp.  Ooh, I love this one, your refrigerator sends you a message like this one: If U want ur cereal in the AM, U betr get some milk!

If we look at XMPP like this, then we can see that there are countless uses for micro-messages.  In the corporate enterprise environment, I would like to see more integration between our CRM and ERP tools, an XMPP application could easily facilitate this for us.  A work flow would instantiate itself when a predefined criteria was met on the CRM side.  Perhaps a marketing campaign has just terminated itself and now we can evaluate the ROI.  So, the CRM dips into the back office data to scour all sales for the period the campaign was valid.  The CRM finds all coupons redeemed, slices those down to the coupons of interest for this particular campaign, runs the sales and gross margins, as well as what we might have lost for the shipping we gave away.  Once all of this is complete the CRM sends a micro-message to the ERP system.  The ERP system takes these numbers and updates the Manufacturing system, as well as the Supply Chain Management system. A predefined plan executes to spin up production on the items which sold best in the last campaign. Neat, huh?

It sounds like there is a lot of work to do, and there is, but this is a great time to be in the trenches.  So many possibilities, so many tools, and so many problems that we might be able to solve with technology — where before we have been using disparate systems, brute force, and the Sneakernet.

Links:

• Identi.ca
• Jaiku (Google owns this service)
• Laconica
• Pownce
• Rejaw
• Twitter
• XMPP server platforms
• MarkMail search on XMPP

Matt
matt (at) technologystory.com

p.s. I didn’t even get into the rich-media side of micro-messages in this article.  Sites like 12seconds.tv are pushing this faster and faster still.

If you are not familiar with the concept of electronic workflow, here is a simple primer. It is the capability of taking a process that is now done by hand and on paper and putting it on computers in a paperless environment. Then going further by building in rules and controls to automate some of the processes so that decision, tasks or routing that had been done by humans is now done by the software. There is nothing new about workflow systems, we have had them for years. Many content management software companies have workflow components, or outright ad hoc workflow platforms that allow a user to assemble any type of custom workflow they can imagine, built in directly to the platform.  The interesting thing here is that Microsoft has slowly built in this capability to Sharepoint, Office 2007, CRM 3.0 and higher, and now some of their Dynamics accounting systems. With the hooks put into these systems, any sized operation can now assemble electronic workflows to replace processes now done on paper and by hand. Well… if someone at the organization is smart enough to learn how to assemble the system. Oh… and you have to be smart enough to view your processes with an eye towards building an electronic workflow. This is easier said than done.

My experience is that people are normally so steeped in their traditional ways of doing things that they struggle with how processes can be reengineered. In fact, it takes a new skill set to be able to map an old process and retool it into a new electronic process. This is a skill organizations need to gain immediately and put to use because now that the tools are available, the smarter, faster organizations will take big steps forward by implementing workflow.

To make this even more enticing, think about the concept of White Collar Lean. This is a frame of mind that was constructed following the success of the Lean Manufacturing paradigm pioneered decades ago by Toyota. Once one can combine Lean Thinking with electronic workflow as a tool, magic things can happen in lowering back office costs and raising productivity. I promise you this, computer based workflow as a tool is a game changer and sadly, it is a bit lost in the shuffle of new tools these days. If you are reading this and have no idea what I am talking about, go to the Quask.com website and look at their products. I am not so much endorsing this products as just giving you a place to go learn how workflow can be applied simply…

Scott

Cool Website of the day is: builtwith.com – This site evaluates your Website as to the tools you are using and scores it on the Web 2.0 sophistication level. TechnologyStory.com got a 4 out of 5 by the way…