The following (unsolicited) post appeared last week on Laurent Pacalin’s blog. Laurent is SVP and CMO at FICO and a current Phone Works client. For those of you who have an interest in improving your sales process, I highly recommend Anneke Seley’s book Sales 2.0, available at booksellers including Amazon. Having rolled out the first…
Bruce Cleveland, a partner at the venture capital firm InterWest, gets it — Sales 2.0, that is. Last week, Bruce invited me to deliver a Sales 2.0 workshop for management team members of the portfolio companies he and his colleague, Doug Pepper, have funded. Bruce and Doug are representative of forward-thinking VCs who understand that…
I just got back from the incomparable TED (Technology, Education and Design) conference in Long Beach, Calif., exhausted but inspired. At my first TED five years ago, I ran into Paul Holland, general partner at the VC firm Foundation Capital (and an early Phone Works client at Pure Software, now IBM Rational Software), who described…
Communities — and not just the online varieties — seem to be in vogue. As our world changes, buying and selling practices evolve, and our jobs become harder and more competitive, Sales 2.0 leaders realize they don’t have all the answers — there is a lot to learn by looking outside one’s own company and…
Thanks to all who attended last week’s webinars. We had great audience participation, but lots of questions went unanswered, so I want to respond to a few more great questions. I’m doing an experiment by taking the extended Q&A session online. Let me know what you think! If your question is still not addressed in…
This is an excerpt from my interview with social-media selling expert and super-blogger Chad Levitt. The full interview will be published in my upcoming book … stay tuned! Chad Levitt is a model Sales 2.0 guy. He recently accepted a sales role at HubSpot, which makes inbound marketing software. At the time of this interview,…
Brian Corey! Congratulations, Brian! Thanks to everyone who joined Dan Freund, VP and General Manager of OracleDirect, and me on yesterday’s webinar hosted by Jigsaw. During the web event, I announced that one lucky participant would receive a signed copy of the book. Besides having some fun with the contest, I hope we met our…
Compensation is a critical component of business strategy, and sales incentives are especially important to get right. In his new book, Drive, Daniel Pink professes that most people are motivated by autonomy, mastery and purpose rather than carrots and sticks. When it comes to sales reps, though, I disagree: Most great salespeople I know are…
InsideView compiled a list of the “top 20 sales professionals who make great use of social media.” Not only am I proud to be named one of the “InsideView 20,” but it reinforces a key conversation we’ve been having with our customers about the role of social-media tools in Sales 2.0. Phone Works is successfully…
Optimization and productivity have been high priorities in business this year, especially in sales. Since the end of the year tends to be a time of reflection, I’ve been asking myself how I can be more productive personally next year as well as how I can manage my consulting business to achieve maximum productivity while…