I know we’ve said it time and time again, and it sounds trite, but there is a lot of truth in the old mantra that, if you don’t know where you’re going, you can’t know how to get there. Here are some helpful links to inspire your planning of sales and personal success for 2010 and some advice on how to make the most from high-impact New Year’s resolutions.

• Are you motivated to get the best from next year?  A Productive Seller favourite, ZenHabits answers your top 20 questions on getting motivated and overcoming bad habits.
• Are the people around you helping or hindering your success? Now is the time to decide.
• Think about changing your working processes (trust me, process is a critical success factor, the other is activity) and becoming a more productive seller.
• Take an opportunity to think about your brand and how it is affecting your success.
• Explore ways to improve your sales effectiveness that you may have overlooked in the past.
• Get above the clutter.

High-impact New Years Resolutions

What you are looking to create for your New Years resolution is a list of top level projects (like “expand into European market”) that are underpinned by actionable items (like “write advert for French speaking telemarketer”). If you can’t sit down and do it, it isn’t an actionable item. e.g. “Write Novel” is not an actionable item, it is a project. “Research Babynames.com for main character first name” is an actionable item: providing you have the time, energy and resources available, you can begin an actionable item immediately.

The reason I mention this and underpin it with repeated examples, is that so many resolutions are broken because they contain no substance, hence are not actionable. “Get Fit” is far easier a resolution to break than “Attend gym on Monday and Thursday evenings for 1 hour workout”, providing you have – of course – defined the items that will make up your workout!

Essentially, start broad and then focus on details.  Keep the above at the front of your mind and you can’t go wrong.

Merry Christmas and a Happy and Prosperous New Year to all of you.

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Always keen on free resources, it didn’t take long for us to spot that the Aberdeen Group have released a comprehensive report comparing data on key sales metrics such as win ratios, sales cycle length, deal value and profitability of sales teams that are process-centric and use social media for selling vs sales teams that continue to sell without adopting these new approaches.

Like it or not, Sales 2.0 is here to stay, and we’re all going to have to get with the programme. Check out the report to see what all the fuss is about.

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If you’re not at one with GTD, I suggest that you check it out forthwith. Sample these excerpts from David’s newest book, ‘Making it all Work’ as a free taster.

And if that’s whet your whistle, here is a video of David talking to the boffins at Google. It’s quite long, but very informative, and of great use to us Productive Sellers.

I’ve used GTD principles as part of my personal productivity system for years. Where the challenge comes is in adapting the framework of GTD to meet your individual needs and to work with the technology that you have available. I’ll post shortly with some free on-line resources to help you manage everything, but for now here is a technologically agnostic tutorial from GTD Times to get you started on GTD for salespeople.

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One of the best ways to do that (apart from coming here of course!) is to check out the excellent Sales 2.0 by Brent Holloway and Anneke Seley(amazon link).

Check out these two free excerpts from the definitive sales 2.0 book.

Download the preface from Sales 2.0 (PDF)

Download an excerpt from Sales 2.0 (PDF)

If you want to know more, never fear, there’s a review coming soon.

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I am pleased to tell you that, if you can distill it down and cut your way through the chaff, there is some wheaty goodness to be had – albeit not always easy to find.  Get in there and get your hands on it before the waters are muddied any further (I am sponsored by the metaphor you know!)

So what is Sales 2.0?

Wikipedia’s answer is befuddling:

Sales 2.0 is a term describing changing trends in the use of World Wide Web technology and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications that aim to improve the speed, collaboration, customer engagement and accountability of the sales process. Sales 2.0 applications utilize Internet technology, now commonly known as Web 2.0, to enable new ways of interacting, collaborating, and sharing information between sales professionals and their customers and ….blah, blah, blah (are you still with us!)

So it’s using technology to enhance the sales process, drive customer and prospect interaction and blur the lines between sales and marketing –  well…that’s part of the story, but not all of it.

Hate the Name – Not the Ethos

Why do I think that Sales 2.0 is a bad name. Because it says nothing about the customer. Sure, a lot of the technology behind this is rooted in Web 2.0, but this should be about so much more than technology.

People talk about blurring the lines between marketing and sales. How about blurring the lines between you and your prospect. You may think it is purely a semantic standpoint, but I assure you, a lot of the information you will see about “Sales 2.0″ won’t mention the buyer at all….seriously.

I subscribe to the Brent Holloway view that Sales 2.0 is about utilising innovative sales practices to create value for the salesperson and the buyer, often enabled by Web 2.0 technology all underpinned by good sales process. So:

• It’s not about new technology – it’s enabled by new technology
• It’s about recognising the way different people communicate, draw influence and ultimately buy (and adapting accordingly)
• It is about blending these elements to achieve a result greater than the sum of its parts
• Without a good sales process underpinning it, it’s just terminology gone mad!

10 Great Sales 2.0 Resources

There are some fantastic resources out there, well worth investigation, but be warned, there are a lot of people jumping on the bandwagon just to associate themselves with the term.

Here are 10 great resources to help you understand and implement a Sales 2.0 approach in your organisation:

1. Landslide: Warning: Genius at work. Innovation in communication, organisation, management…..and ultimately sales productivity. It’s CRM Jim, but not as we know it.

2. Inquisix: Linkedin is dead….long live…well…Inquisix actually. I believe that Social Networking sites are devaluing themselves by propogating such casual relationships between users. Linkedin ranks users based on their number of connections! It’s like being at infants’ school, “I’ve got 235 bestest friends and you’ve only got 100!”. People want to rank highly, so they add anyone they can.  Check out Inquisix for a different approach.

3. Podtech’s Sales 2.0 Podcast helps with the practical side of Sales 2.0.  Jeff Weinberger, in charge of marketing for sales solutions at WebEx, talks with Stu Schmidt, VP of Solutions at WebEx.  It’s a three-parter that’s been around a while, but it gives you a good insight into Sales 2.0 at a leading organisation.

4. No more cold calling – Demandbase lets you identify your website visitors, connect with them and turn them into leads….and what do leads make!

5. There’s a whole heap of goodies from the Sales 2.0 Conference at their vPortal.

6. Get some more smart sales thinking at The Customer Collective like this great series on Sales Force Innefectiveness

7. Want a white paper on this stuff? Here is Christian Maurer’s Executive Briefing on Sales 2.0

8. We’ve mentioned it before and we’ll probably mention it again, because it really is that good -
Selling to Big Companies by Jill Konrath (Amazon.co.uk link) for some keen insight into cracking those big accounts.

9. Explore how you can find success with Sales 2.0 with
Sales 2.0: Improve Business Results Using Innovative Sales Practices and Technology (Amazon.co.uk link) by by Anneke Seley & Brent Holloway.

10. If cold calling is dead, this is the final nail in its coffin.  Instant light account intelligence from inside your CRM system!

Check out these resources and share you thoughts, insights and progress on Sales 2.0 with our community.

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