Tuesday, December 3rd, 2024

Bill Kenower, author of the novel, One Year in Jeopardy, and editor-in-chief of Author magazine, says the essence of humanity is to be creative and that we are the most creative, productive, and successful when we focus exclusively on the experience of the moment. By continuously asking ourselves, “What can I make?” and “What can […]

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Melissa Jurcan, CSEP, western region vice president of the International Special Events Society, has been a part of several major events, including Super Bowl XLII, 2001 MLB All Star Game, Tostitos Fiesta Bowl and BCS National Championship Game, international soccer and more. Melissa says, “Gone are the days that we advertise and simply repeat our […]

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Male Speaker: The actuationzone.combrought to you by changeleadershipgroup.com. Brett Clay: Hi.This is Brett Clay. I’m here with Gerhard Gschwandtner the CEOSelling Power Magazine and the conference host of the Sales 2.0 Conference here in– that was held just now in San Francisco, California.Hi, Gerhard. Gerhard Gschwandtner: Hi, Brett. Brett Clay: Gerhard, tell us what do you — what’s the biggest change that’shappening in sales today? Gerhard Gschwandtner: There are a lot ofchanges and everybody’s a little bit worried about what will happento them in the future. Let me let the cat out of the bag.Of the 18 million sales people that are employed across the United States today,those jobs will more often transform and what we have been doing todayis going to disappear. And by 2020 there will be only about3 million sales jobs left. Brett Clay: So those are three millionof the 18 million jobs that exist today. Gerhard Gschwandtner: Right.Brett Clay: And so of the people that doing what they’re doing today onlythree million will be left. The other 15 million willbe doing something else. Gerhard Gschwandtner: Absolutely, andthere’s a new breed of sales person of which I called Sales 2.0 Person.Sales people need to move up online and they need to be very skilled inusing the web, using social media. And 70 percent of all purchasing decisionsare already made online before they actually see a sales person. So the big challenge is if sales peopleare not where the customers are which is on the web, then you’re going to lose. Brett Clay: So what were the big ideas that– you’ve been running the Sales 2.0 Conference for three years now, I believe,so now it’s sort of getting mature in a way. What are the new ideas this year versus,say, last year? Gerhard Gschwandtner: Well, I wouldn’tsay that Sales 2.0 is an immature state. I think that as everything we are evolvingand we have unprecedented growth compared to last year’s conference hasgrown by over 50 percent, and we don’t know how that accelerationcontinues and what will happen next year. All I know is that year over year,every time we do it, we see that there’s a dramaticshift in the way sales leaders are thinking about the sales organization.By that I mean this year the biggest change is the shift from operationalefficiency towards creating a customer centric enterprise.Brett Clay: Okay, excellent. So what is it — what are some of thecritical success factors and how do you define creating a customercentric enterprise? Gerhard Gschwandtner: Well, the bigchallenges for an enterprise to realize that the silos that stand in the way ofserving the customer need to come down. And last year we have talked about howto align sales with marketing and now we wanna align sales marketing and serviceand later we wanna align the entire company and design it around the customer.Just think about how many touch points customers experience in theirjourney towards buying. So they experience the website, the insidesales team, the outside sales team, the credit department, the finance department,the invoicing department, the contract department, the trainingdepartments, service, delivery. So the — in an average sale there are atleast 18 different touch points so what you wanna do is identifythose touch points. Secondly, associate each touch point witha metric that is driven by the customer where you know how you’re performing inthe eyes of the customer and not in your own eyes.And then you need to have a technology where it gives everybody in the companya unified view and vision of where the customer’s at. Brett Clay: Great.Well, thank you so much, Gerhard. Great conference and we look forward toa lot of growth and adoption as the world of sales changes dramatically.Gerhard Gschwandtner: Awesome. Thank you, Brett.It’s a pleasure. Brett Clay: Signing off from Sales 2.0with Brett Clay and Gerhard Gschwandtner. Male Speaker: The actuationzone.combrought to you by changeleadershipgroup.com.Copyright 2010 Brett Clay. All rights reserved.

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Willis Turner, president and CEO of Sales and Marketing Executives International (SMEI), a professional society, says salespeople and marketers need to strive for excellence in their professions through continuous learning and education. Listen as Willis talks about driving sales and marketing excellence in the “sales 2.0” world. www.SMEI.org For recaps of the Sales 2.0 Conference, […]

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Anneke Seley, author of Sales 2.0, and CEO of Phone Works, a sales consulting company, says the sales profession is moving into a new era referred to as “sales 2.0”. She says inside sales and sales operations organizations are at the forefront of these changes and can provide dramatic improvements in both top-line revenue growth […]

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Brett Clay joins Jim Blasingame to discuss some of the concerns of cloud computing, like security and hosting, plus untapped cloud opportunities such as backup and virtual PBX. www.SmallBusinessAdvocate.com    

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The power of cloud computing is enormous for small business. Brett Clay joins Jim Blasingame to reveal how cloud computing has miniaturized processing power, applications and price for the scale of small businesses, while making it easier to compete globally. www.SmallBusinessAdvocate.com  

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Wayne Breitbarth, author, The Power Formula for LinkedIn Success: Kick-Start Your Business, Brand, and Job Search, has trained nearly 10,000 businesspeople on how to effectively use LinkedIn. Listen as he gives some great tips and demonstrates that most of us haven’t even begun to tap the power of LinkedIn to grow our businesses and careers! […]

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