22 September 2009 | Elizabeth Vanneste

Recently I attended the Sales 2.0 Conference in Chicago.  It was a great opportunity to speak with current clients, meet some longtime Miller Heiman fans, and speak with young salespeople who are looking for ways to improve their chances for success.

Much of the conference focused on the many technologies and social media platforms which are now available to sales professionals.  Gerhard Gschwandtner, publisher of Selling Power and David Thompson, CEO of Genius.com kicked things off by talking about how the world of selling has been changed by the volume of product information that is available to customers in the Internet age.  Both Gerhard and David said that in the era of Sales 2.0, salespeople “need to be aligned with the customer’s buying process”.  Wow – great confirmation of something that Miller Heiman has been telling people for over 30 years!

An industry analyst spoke about the need for consistent process in the sales organization.  He asked the audience how many of us knew if the salespeople in our companies always prepared call plans for customer meetings.  I raised my hand, along with only one other person in the room!  I don’t know about the other person who raised his hand but call planning is a key component of the Miller Heiman methodology and every client meeting I’ve attended since I joined Miller Heiman had a Green Sheet.

There were quite a few sales managers in that audience. How do they coach their salespeople if they do not have a process for preparing for client meetings? How do they conduct post-call reviews? How do they determine if a meeting was successful?  What a great reminder that there are still a lot of sales professionals who could benefit from Conceptual Selling®.

Several great speakers explained how their organization has implemented a technology that enabled them to improve sales productivity and sales effectiveness. In fact, an impromptu speaker (Clark Owen, Miller Heiman sales vice president) was kind enough to give me his take on how companies that invested wisely in their sales organization are going to be positioned to accelerate as the market improves. You can watch the video here. Miller Heiman client, Byron Matthews of Mercer, spoke eloquently about the importance of eLearning and CRM tools in supporting the extensive sales transformation project that Mercer has undertaken over the past 18 months which involved over 4,000 consulting professionals.  It is an amazing story of how powerful and impactful our processes can be.

The last panel of the day was on Social Media and was filled with anecdotes of deals won from leads that originated through LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube. The most striking thought from that panel was Nigel Edelshein’s claim that “social calling” was eight times more effective than “cold calling.”  Quite believable based on the power of referral selling combined with viral marketing.  Is Social Media the “nail in the coffin” for cold calling?  Salespeople everywhere rejoice!  Now, if we could just get you to start preparing for client meetings….

Thanks Gerhard and Selling Power for a thought-provoking day!

photo credit: Ivan Walsh