What Is Sales 2.0, and Why Should You Care?

Sales 2.0 isn’t a buzzword; it’s become a professional discipline. It’s not a passing fad, but a massive shift in the sales culture. It’s not about sales or marketing tools, but about a business transformation that delivers better results. Sales 2.0 will play a vital role in the future of selling. And, as the old ways of selling are fading away and salespeople and sales managers are educated about the increased risk of becoming victims of change, I want to reassure old-school salespeople that the core of selling will never change. That core is the ability to create, expand, and enhance relationships, face-to-face and online. The good news is that Sales 2.0 will not make B2B salespeople obsolete. It will make them a lot more productive and effective. What is Sales 2.0? It’s the use of best-practice sales processes enabled by technology to improve speed, accountability, collaboration, and customer engagement. Sales 2.0 is a more efficient and effective way of selling and buying. The economic pressures in our business environment demand that sales organizations become ruthlessly efficient. Warren Buffett reminds us that efficiency is not enough: “We are tempted to see where the arrow of performance lands and then draw a bull’s eye around it.” We need greater effectiveness, which means we need to stop trying to improve processes that don’t deliver value. It means that we deliver greater value in the context of the sales rep’s world. The equation is simple: Deliver more value to the sales force so that it can deliver more value to the customer. Sales 2.0’s mission is to create the right results – what we value most – in the most economical way. The other good news is that Sales 2.0 solutions bring more science into the sales office, which allows companies to create a culture of measurement in which value takes center stage. For example, Xerox recently enlisted the help of Lean Six Sigma methodologies to improve its fundamental operations. Results include improved processes that have shortened the learning curve for new sales reps, allowing them to be productive as soon as possible.Another example: At Ariba, sales and marketing are no longer working in separate silos. The sales and marketing teams collaborated to define a sales lead in a universally acceptable manner. Today, marketing can hold sales accountable for sales closed, and marketing is accountable for lead scoring, lead nurturing, and delivering sales-ready leads to the sales force. With the right set of Sales 2.0 tools, sales managers will enjoy productivity gains and increased sales while making fewer decisions based on hunches and more decisions based on science. Salespeople will benefit from a level playing field, where their professional sales talent will pay off in greater dividends. CSO Insights recently concluded its 2010 Sales Performance Optimization survey and found that Sales 2.0 companies overachieve, compared to less efficient organizations. In Sales 2.0 companies, a higher percentage of salespeople are making quota (15 percent more), and 11 percent more salespeople close deals that they forecast. Isn’t it time to step up to Sales 2.0 so you can avoid becoming a victim of change?