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The Future of Sales is Social (the rise of social CRM)

Ross Dawson, November 25, 2009 9:18 PM US PT

Last week I did the keynote presentation in a webinar run by ITNews and Oracle on How to spark sales using social media apps.

My presentation was titled The Future of Sales is Social. The slides are below, and you can listen to the on demand webinar here (registration required).

Keynote: The Future of Sales is Social

View more presentations from rossdawson.

Taken in the context of many people being unsure about the value of social media for business, it is worth looking at the many ways that social media are directly applicable to the B2B sales process. Just some of those are in this slide from my presentation.

I absolutely believe that the future of sales is social, and that social media in their various forms will quickly become central to the way salespeople and sales teams work.

Given my background in high-value client relationships as well as social media I expect to be spending a lot of time over the next while exploring precisely how sales teams can best use social media in successfully engaging with their clients and prospects. I'll keep you posted.

4 Comments

Ken Brand said:

Thanks. Great stuff, I'll be sharing this with our Real Estate team. Cheers.

November 26, 2009 5:09 AM

Axel Schultze said:

Thanks for sharing this Ross. I wrote a post "telesales versus socialsales" at customer think - it's right up your alley. You may want to check http://socialrelationshipmanagement.com and I'd like to invite you to comment on SRM in the new LinkedIn Group http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2475176 Even so SRM is not only sales but I feel it has it's biggest potential to make a difference in sales.
Thanks
Axel
http://xeesm.com/AxelS
(Ways to connect with me)

November 26, 2009 10:34 AM

Brian Vellmure (@CRMStrategies) said:

Ross,

Good stuff as always.

The key is taking the tools and translating them into a process or series of process(es) that help increase sales productivity, both now and over the long term.

Social Media has helped my for both proactive pre-call planning and research, as well as finding and connecting with new prospects. In addition, by connecting with both prospects and customers, relationships can be maintained.

I'd be interested in your thoughts on my recent post The "The 5 Stages of Customer Acquisition for the Social Business" which extends the view from just sales into a modern pyramid of social marketing and sales.

Best regards,

Brian
@CRMStrategies

December 4, 2009 3:19 PM

Goji said:

Great!
Thank you.

December 9, 2009 4:10 AM

Ross Dawson is globally recognized as a leading futurist, entrepreneur, keynote speaker, strategy advisor, and bestselling author. He is Founding Chairman of four companies: professional services and venture firm Advanced Human Technologies, future and strategy consulting group Future Exploration Network, leading events firm The Insight Exchange, and influence ratings start-up Repyoot.

Ross is author most recently of Implementing Enterprise 2.0, the prescient Living Networks, which anticipated the social network revolution, and the Amazon.com bestseller Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships (click on the links for free chapter downloads). He is based in Sydney and San Francisco with his wife jewellery designer Victoria Buckley and two beautiful young daughters.