How ‘Social’ is your Sales Team?
In the past few months, I’ve had a number of interesting conversations & debates on benefits of Social CRM to sales organizations. I’m jotting down a few fundamental thoughts gathered from these discussions on ‘Social Sales’ vis-à-vis traditional sales here.
The business case for Social Sales is the same as that of traditional version. What are the costs versus increase in top line, profits, sales team productivity and customer experience? You will go about answering these questions in exactly the same way – using business improvement metrics and justifications for costs involved. The methodologies you will employ for coming up with the business case and roadmap are the same. This first step will help answer the question if your organization really needs a social sales platform. (By the way, if I were forced to put my money on the most likely CRM question to spring up in any company over the next 2 years, it is this one).
However, the similarities end there. Social Sales is not about process automation, pipeline visibility, contact/calendar management or mobility. To put it even more bluntly, if your SFA program is not meeting expectations, Social Sales is not your silver bullet. It is a harmonizing component that uses two different sales team measures that have not been used before – collaboration and innovation. When you embark on a Social Sales initiative, you will note how little a role your existing sales process diagrams will play. This fact is important to understand right at the beginning.
I had an interesting conversation on this topic with a friend of mine who happens to be a wealth manager in the US. The point of discussion was how to incentivize the sales team to adapt to Social Sales. One key aspect of Social Sales is going to be imbibing the culture of ‘information contribution’. We even debated the possibility of collaboration and innovation as measures that might eventually play a role in the next generation sales team’s compensation (you now have an extended imaginary sales territory over which you have a higher span of influence and material impact). However high sounding this may be, it sounds very real and feasible. We agreed that change management for the sales force needs to be spot on for Social Sales to succeed. A very high degree of understanding and adoption is essential for the sales team to succeed here.
What does this all mean to SFA products and services from a technology standpoint? Technologically, 3 dimensions will be looked at clearly. 1. Cloud, 2. Ease of use (2.0) and 3. Scalability. Especially with the presence of SAAS CRM providers, all these 3 dimensions are well understood and can be architected effectively. One key factor is going to be that Social Sales is not just going to be a functionally stable, utilitarian tool but also needs to be flamboyant. Accordingly, the technology skill-sets will be quite different.
From a roadmap perspective, Social Sales is going to be a very good pilot initiative before attempting the more complex collaboration, innovation and co-creation alongside the customer (especially in B2B situations). It is going to be a leading indicator for the success of your Social CRM experiment.
However, the similarities end there. Social Sales is not about process automation, pipeline visibility, contact/calendar management or mobility. To put it even more bluntly, if your SFA program is not meeting expectations, Social Sales is not your silver bullet. It is a harmonizing component that uses two different sales team measures that have not been used before – collaboration and innovation. When you embark on a Social Sales initiative, you will note how little a role your existing sales process diagrams will play. This fact is important to understand right at the beginning.
I had an interesting conversation on this topic with a friend of mine who happens to be a wealth manager in the US. The point of discussion was how to incentivize the sales team to adapt to Social Sales. One key aspect of Social Sales is going to be imbibing the culture of ‘information contribution’. We even debated the possibility of collaboration and innovation as measures that might eventually play a role in the next generation sales team’s compensation (you now have an extended imaginary sales territory over which you have a higher span of influence and material impact). However high sounding this may be, it sounds very real and feasible. We agreed that change management for the sales force needs to be spot on for Social Sales to succeed. A very high degree of understanding and adoption is essential for the sales team to succeed here.
What does this all mean to SFA products and services from a technology standpoint? Technologically, 3 dimensions will be looked at clearly. 1. Cloud, 2. Ease of use (2.0) and 3. Scalability. Especially with the presence of SAAS CRM providers, all these 3 dimensions are well understood and can be architected effectively. One key factor is going to be that Social Sales is not just going to be a functionally stable, utilitarian tool but also needs to be flamboyant. Accordingly, the technology skill-sets will be quite different.
From a roadmap perspective, Social Sales is going to be a very good pilot initiative before attempting the more complex collaboration, innovation and co-creation alongside the customer (especially in B2B situations). It is going to be a leading indicator for the success of your Social CRM experiment.
Comments
I agree.
Posted by: namrata | January 29, 2009 10:23 AM
Great insight. Thanks!
Posted by: RichApps | February 10, 2009 3:18 PM
What kills a curious monkey - curiosity? What kills a sales team - Sale ability? What kills the Sale ability – sociability? No. Likeability of sales force.
There is a lot of difference between Sociability and Likeability even though they are goodwill commodities that are to be combined to be effective.
It is important to take the concept of ‘force’ to mean ‘energy’. The connections can be made and relationships can be built. But they can get destroyed as energy of Contribution replaces energy of Greed. The customers need to be rewarded for their strengths while protecting their weaknesses.
Hence the strength of the Sales team contributing to the strengths of the customers yield rewarding relationships and increased trust. Sociability follows naturally because of the comfort level experienced by both the customer and the sales team. However good the CRM tool may be to provide the profile of a customer, the tool will fall short at the hands of a sales team who cannot create the goodwill of Likeability.
Posted by: bala ajjampur | February 23, 2009 5:36 PM
The relationship between the customer and sales team can be enhanced with social media platforms. Social media butts in whether you like it or not. It is very important to have communication and collaboration with your customers through social media tools. What about your sales team? Don't you think that your sales team could imbibe more knowledge through knowledge exchange which can be done through social media tools? This is where knowledge sharing and salebility can be carried out through socializing. Indian companies are increasingly using online social platforms to connect a dispersed workforce as well as reach out to elusive customers in multiple markets. While most information technology (IT) firms are in the lead, mainly to foster internal communications, social media platforms are neglected for social sales to customers.
Posted by: Prema P Nair | February 25, 2009 4:36 PM