My Sales 2.0 Adventure

Well, if you are looking for a more gracious host  of an event, you would be hard pressed to beat Gerhard Gschwandtner! Previously a 2 day event , this one was filtered down to one and there were some major takeaways! Jeffery Hayzlett said, “guess what? If your business stinks off-line, then it will stink on-line! Whatever you are will just be amplified with this digital age!” Good old commen sense from the podium was convicting for me!

The arena of social media has been something that has captured my attention, imagination, and energy with clients but I will have to go back to them and say, “hey, we’ve gotta focus on the core in 2012 so that what we amplify awesomeness”.

Had a chance to speak to M ark Roberge of HubSpot and said thank you for the fabulousness that is HubSpot. Confessed that I am on their site almost daily for the free tools. Realized in speaking to him that we are just scratching the surface and will connect him to corporate to have deeper access for the team. Also, his business card cracked me up…no physical address, no city, no geographic link. Cloud living!

Then sat in the session with John Ferrara which was soulful, generous, and purposeful beyond the monetizing vibe. All of us in the room were given a reminder that life is precious, we are important, and there is work to be done. The person I sat next to was exhausted because a heartbreaking personal tragedy. It drove home the idea of what true connecting is all about.

Other pearls from the day:

• Jeff and Gerhard saying the surprise guest speaker (Jim Cathcart)  is the best of the best…talk about credentialling! He shared that a ”relationship is defined where value is exchanged. Our goal should be to exchange/bring more value. Make people glad they know you. Advance them. Upserve.” Then he sang/played the guitar with an original Power Selling song that he wrote!
• 45% of salespeople made their quota last year.
• Social media users have overtaken email users
• We are living in an era of a data tsunami.
• Amazon does 34B in sales without any sales reps
• Change is not an event, it is an activity
• Be a curator of information, trends, data, content rather than inventing everything from scratch.
• Map social strategies return on investment to revenue
• Do you have an elevator pitch down? 110 seconds is about the time that we would have in an elevator in NY to tell our story/sell our idea/share a compelling mission.
• Kodak went from 21B in film sales to 200M over time with the digital camera age. Redefining what they “sold” was essential because the “we sell film” description no longer fit. As they evolved, they did a twitter promotion and did about 400M in product.
• The customer is in charge. They always were but now they have a voice.
• Top Level Domains are coming and that includes 185K application fee, 400 pages of documentation, and a January 12, 2012 launch.
• We are in a culture of measurement but we often aren’t measuring the right things! 

Sites and tools that were referenced as essentials: Radian6, RackSpace, Klout, SlideShare, Quora, Instancy, HubSpot, Zery’s, IntroRocket, Zite, Twitterizer, InstaPaper, Bitely, and Form U Lists.

Throw in a full room of smart audience members meeting, sharing, learning, and thinking, mini-sliders on pretzel buns, amazing conference staff, and beautiful Santa Monica. What’s not to love!? Thank you, Gerhard!

PS Last years San Francisco event had a speaker who had been on the Dating Game and shared the formula for power presentations that I still abide by!

PPS if anyone wants an amazing holiday that can be  created, customized, printed, and sent at wholesale rates let me know! The power of communication with this tool is my new favorite!

Tags: sales 2.0, social business, thinkers