I am much looking forward to the Sales 2.0 conference in San Francisco next week.
Here are 10 Sales 2.0 Leaders I hope to meet at the conference and why:
1. Jim Cyb, Vice President, Sales, Americas, ZenDesk
2. Pete Eppele, VP Product Management, Zilliant
3. Steve Patrizi, Chief Revenue Officer, Bunchball
4. Kevin Akeroyd, SVP, Field Operations, Badgeville
5. Kirk Mosher, Vice President, CRM Product Marketing, Oracle
6. Mike Derezin, Global Head of Sales, Sales Solutions, LinkedIn
7. Robert Pease, Founder & CEO, Nearstream
8. Jill Rowley, Director of Key Accounts, Eloqua
9. Paul Melchiorre, Global Vice President, Ariba
10. Anneke Seley, Founder Phoneworks, co-author Sales 2.0 book
They are all speaking about some of the most important trends in Sales 2.0:
Sales analytics
Big data is changing the way products are being bought and sold. It has been called sales metrics, sales analytics, predictive sales analytics and sales intelligence. The bottom line is that there is much talk this year about a more data-driven approach to sales. Jim Cyb, Vice President, Sales for Americas at ZenDesk will be on a panel and talk about ZenDesk’s move from a zero touch sales to a low touch sales organization. His company, which now has 15,000 customers, started life without a sales team. Pete Eppele, VP Product Management, Zilliant will be presenting interesting new technology that can uncover where you can sell more, sell other products and win back wallet share that competitors have taken.
Gamification
Both Steve Patrizi, Chief Revenue Officer from Bunchball and Kevin Akeroyd, SVP Field Operations from Badgeville will be speaking on how to use gamification or Behavior Lifecycle Management (BLM) as Kevin calls it, can be used to motivate your sales team. I always thought that gamification was used primarily to drive usage and adoption of your products and services by customers. However, both of these sales leaders are eating their own dog food and will share how they get their own teams to use sales best practices and tools by throwing in some fun and games. It should be an interesting duel!
Customer success
I was pleasantly surprised to see that Kirk Mosher, VP CRM Product Marketing from Oracle will be speaking about “customer success” (a concept Totango deeply cares about). I still of Oracle as the classic Sales 1.0 company: bully customers into signing seven-figure deals, adding another seven-figure professional services engagement and then counting on the fact that customers won’t switch ever to a competitor because they have invested so much money with you. However, it seems that things have changed!
Social selling
Everybody recognizes that social selling has huge potential but in the real-world sales haven’t yet embraced all new possibilities. There are a large number of sessions (again) at this Sales 2.0 conference to help sales teams learn. Mike Derezin, Global Head of Sales, Sales Solutions at LinkedIn, will break down his social selling tips by lifecycle stage. Robert Pease, Founder & CEO of Nearstream, will cover tactics for identifying buying signals on social media networks, essentially capturing demand that’s already out there rather than generating leads.
Lead management
Jill Rowley, Director of Key Accounts, Eloqua has been an evangelist for the lead management automation space since its inception. She is a leading commentator on social media and one of the top networkers in the space. She was the winner of 20 Women to Watch in Lead Management last year. More importantly, my friend Matt Childs from Dreamsimplicity tells I absolutely have to meet Jill while at Sales 2.0. She will be on a panel about, what else, nurturing revenue-generating prospects to close.
Sales effectiveness
In Silicon Valley we love technology and I am a tech-girl guilty myself so last but not least I am much looking forward to the talk by Paul Melchiorre, Global Vice President, Ariba and Anneke Seley, Founder Phoneworks and co-author Sales 2.0 book which both focus on “getting real”. Does all this technology really pay off in terms of sales effectiveness?
A full agenda and lots of people to meet!
If you are going to be at the Sales 2.0 conference, give us a shout on Twitter @totango #sales20 and we are looking forward to connect! I will even buy you a beer!
