Sales Advocate Newsletter

Using Relationships to Optimize Sales: A Look at “Social Networking” Technology

October 2004

Successful sales managers know that their company’s employees are their most valuable resource. They realize that arming employees with the right tools for success will multiply this value, while the wrong tools may actually reduce it. The tools for sales success have changed drastically in the last few decades. In the past, sales departments were equipped with only the basics: a phonebook and a telephone. Today, multitudes of sales tools and applications are available to assist and contract the sales process, from research tools to web conferencing software to Customer Relationship Management applications (CRM). In this article, we explore “Social networking” technology and its effectiveness in helping companies sell more easily, more rapidly, and more successfully.

Social Networking Solutions Help You Get in the Door

While the promise of many tools and technologies is to provide reps with more information about companies in their pipeline, an essential part of the sales process has been left out: getting in the door. Enter Social Networking solutions. This new breed of software seeks to help sales reps utilize relationships to sell faster, with higher close rates and enlarged deal sizes, all by using the power of the referral.

Social networking has been around as long as cocktail parties and golf. The new spin, however, is to accelerate this age-old networking process with machine intelligence in an emerging area known as Enterprise Relationship Management (ERM). ERM solutions take unstructured data already present in the enterprise, such as email, CRM databases, and address books, and turn it into actionable intelligence for business use. Tapping into who your company knows can help your reps turn cold leads into hot opportunities, and close sales deals more often and more quickly.

When selecting an ERM solution, it is important to focus on the features that will provide the most value for your ERM dollar. The ERM solution should be clean, fast, and effective. “Clean” means a quick rollout that enables fast ROI and a low total cost of ownership (TCO). A “fast” system lets employees access pertinent information in as timely a fashion as possible. And most important, the chosen ERM system should be “effective,” designed to encourage adoption and ensure that reps can pull value from it immediately.

Clean Implementation: Quick Rollout, Fast ROI

With IT budgets tight, low TCO and immediate ROI are held at a premium. It is important to look for a solution that ducks the issue of long implementation cycles and messy plug-ins that invariably conflict with existing systems-more work your IT staff doesn’t need. Software delivered as a service is a good approach to fast implementation with minimal involvement of your company’s IT resources.

Fast Access to Pertinent Information

Desirable ERM systems should be designed to integrate effortlessly into your company’s sales workflow. Introductions and referrals should be quickly attainable. Forget about the theory of six-degrees-of-separation. If you need to involve six people, good luck getting through the door in a timely fashion, if at all. Systems that give a sales rep immediate access to the relationship-holder will produce better results. While it’s nice to know that you have a path to Bill Gates, your quota will pass you by while you wait to hear back.

Effective Integration Encourages Adoption, Produces Results

ERM tools are meant to help your company sell, and do so effectively. That means reps need to adopt it and embrace it. To encourage adoption, there should be no data entry required. Data should upload so ERM systems can infer relationships automatically. Look for ERM systems that have an incentive and tracking system built in to encourage usage: show employees the carrot, and they’ll go for it. Self-regulation is also key for keeping a network healthy. Thus, a closed-loop feedback process is important to ensure accountability.

Summary

So much of business is built on relationships. Only now are we able to use the power of technology to facilitate the kind of successful relationship selling that has, time and again, been proven effective. The right kind of ERM system can make the difference for your sales organization to uncover previously hidden stores of value. A system that has a clean implementation, allows fast access to timely relationship information, and effectively integrates into your organization’s workflow will prove its value as quickly as your sales teams can leverage it.

This article was written by BranchIt Corporation, the leader in Enterprise Relationship Management (ERM) solutions. BranchIt Corporation builds and delivers enterprise applications as scalable online services. The company’s award-winning ERM solution helps companies uncover relationships held by their employees so they can be leveraged by the sales organization to gain access to a prospect with a warm lead rather than a cold call. The result is a faster sales cycle, higher close rates, and larger deal sizes. With BranchIt Corporation, there is no software to purchase, install, upgrade or maintain, and companies see impressive return on investment within months. Visit www.BranchItCorp.com for more information.

Through BranchIt’s partnership with Phone Works, these services are now available to all Phone Works clients, partners and prospects. Contact Sally Duby, Phone Works President and COO, at 510.749.9073 to discuss.

This newsletter is provided as a complimentary service from Phone Works, Inc., the San Francisco Bay Area's leading sales consulting firm. Phone Works helps technology firms increase revenue, shorten sales cycles and implement successful, repeatable sales models. The industry's largest technology companies and newest start-ups turn to Phone Works for lead-generation, lead-qualification, telesales and sales-productivity programs.

You can reach Phone Works at 510.749.9073.