The Next Generation of B2B Social Networking 0 comments

Over the past year, social networking applications have proliferated across many departments in the corporation. Sales departments especially are groups where "who you know" can mean the difference between success and failure. Let's take that thought to the next logical level - it's not just who you know, but who you and your colleagues know that will enable your pipeline to grow. It's the first piece of what we now call "social selling"- being aware of every person to whom we're connected and having the information that tells us when they may be ready to buy (a trigger). This article covers how to find that elusive connection through social networking.

Designed to help salespeople quickly identify the best path to connect with prospects, social networking tools leverage the contacts of employees across the company, revealing connections to important decision makers. Unlike consumer alternatives, B2B social networking combines the base power of "who you know" with the breadth of business contacts listed in public databases and contacts in an organization's in-house email and CRM systems - who "your colleagues know".

Original Story on destination CRM: The Next Generation of B2B Social Networking

Who Manages your Online Sales? 1 comments

In many B2B companies the online marketing tasks are handled by the IT department. Brian made addressed this issue in his recent post Big 80s marketing will not return big online conversions saying:

...you need to change the culture, just ask your IT manager to write a press release for you. You’ll probably get a blank stare. It’s equally absurd to have them handling your company’s most valuable communications tool – your Web site.

The marketing department of a company should be the holding the pole position as far as the non technical issues of website are considered. The online marketing strategy has to be in coherence with the overall marketing strategy.

As per a study done some time back nearly 67% of people said that their online search was a result of the offline marketing channels. This necessitates a certain degree of integration between online and offline marketing campaigns which cannot be possible till the time the online marketing is handled by dedicated marketing department.