Sales 2.0 Conference Recap Part 1

Yesterday, I spent a whole day emersed in a world of new tools and technologies at the sold out Sales 2.0 conference. Now that I’ve had a chance to reflect on the day and the conversations, I wanted to present some of the hightlights and my opinions of the various topics discussed.

What is Sales 2.0? I’ve already tried to answer that question once, but let me give it another try. Sales 2.0 is a change to people, process and technology that allows sales and marketing teams to do their jobs in a more intelligent way. It is either very customer or productivity focused (depending on who you ask), but probably not both at the same time.

The theories presented and tools demoed were mostly focused on enabling Sales reps with information that allows them to move closer to consultative selling. However, the final session of the day was defined by the use of ConnectandSell, a smarter version of a dialer that allows reps to efficiently communicate with lots of customers. To gain that efficiency, reps are trained to “just start talking” when they hear a beep in their ear. While that may sound efficient and is likely cost effective, it is the furthest thing from Consultative Selling I’ve ever heard of. How can you be consultative when have no idea who you are going to talk to a second before the connect? Maybe I’m missing the point, but this seemed to be contradictory to everything else discussed at the conference.

Some highlights from the agenda:

Polly Sumner, Salesforce.com’s chief adoption officer was a facinating person to listen to. Polly is a veteran of several of the technology giants and is now helping SFDC get into more places. She is passionate about the technology, and couldn’t wait to demo an iPhone version of the app to an eager group. Her description of “Chatter” led me to proclaim operational sales reporting’s death. I also came to the conclusion that SFDC will lead to more tech savvy and analytically focused sales management over time. I’m sure I’m not the first to come to that conclusion.

Polly spoke about SFDC using their own tools and publishing their best practices for all of their clients to grab. While not unique, this approach arms her adoption conversations with real experience rather than Marketing fluff. Polly showed us how she would follow an account, opportunity, contact or sales rep using chatter to understand an account. By doing so, she no longer had to waste an hour with an account review to prepare for a client meeting.

Perhaps the most important thing I learned from Polly was to take an individual focused approach to implementing CRM. Make it simple for an end user to use a couple of CRM / SFA applications, and they will be more likely to ask for more. Present too much at once, and they will be overwhelmed. She also talked about enabling C-Level executives with Dashboards allowing them to see directly into their CRM system, which could be a revolutionary step that disrupts boardrooms in the future. Imagine the CEO having better information than the Head of Sales? That would be exciting to say the least.

Up next in Part 2: My panel on Sales and Marketing and the end of IT!