Here’s one thing that every business regardless of size should get. Doing something that helps your sales team sell more.

So what’s the relationship between your blog and your sales team selling more? It’s quite straightforward. If you are not providing evidence and support for your folks in the field you are limiting their capabilities and ultimately their production. So if you start and maintain a strong business blog for ANY reason it should be to support your sales team and their efforts. Here’s a few reasons why this is critical to sales success.

• Your sales team needs back up – Sure your sales people will say they have it all under control but the fact of the matter is that in today’s online world sales folks have less control than ever. Never has it been easier to research and connect with competitors. Never has it been easier to look into the reputation of a company being bought from. Your business blog should serve as the place where prospects will find out about your company on their own time. Where they will learn more about your company philosophies and practices without the “guidance” of a completely biased sales person. Sure your blog will have bias but at least the prospect can have the freedom to object without the interruption of the company shill.

• Your sales team needs confidence – I have sold for companies that give their sales people precious few resources to sell. Companies think that sales people are supposed to sell without having anything other than their own wits and the desire to make a deal. That’s old school thinking and extremely short sighted. Any sales person who is out working for a company is looking for their next job anyway so you need to give them a reason to feel like you are there for them and they should be working hard for you. A strong corporate blog that can be pointed to by a sales team as an incredible resource for the prospect to explore goes a long way toward moving from prospect to customer.

• Your sales team needs faith – I have sold for companies that have sold me a bill of goods that was then moved out in to the marketplace with confidence that the company would deliver. When they didn’t I lost faith in the company. You can’t sell something you don’t have a measure of faith in. A strong business blog tells your sales team that you are on top of it and that you are actively seeking connection with customers and prospects. This keeps the incidence of “over promising and under delivering” to a minimum and that gives your sales team faith that you are there as advertised.

• Your sales team needs weapons – Today’s sales world is very different and if you are sending your sales people out into a gunfight with a knife, well  the outcome is almost a done deal, and it won’t be your sales team’s fault. A sales team that is well armed is confident and sells better.

The bottom line is this: Your blog is not about selling. Your business blog should be, at least in part, about the sales process. That process requires more than what most companies are willing to give these days. As a result you have a choice. You can either be like everyone else letting the chips fall as they may OR you can be different. You can provide your sales team with all the tools needed for success, not the least of which is a dynamic corporate blog that helps the sales process.

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To what degree this year’s trending points to a larger economic trend is a huge TBD (to be determined). Honestly, more people may have experimented with online purchasing to save time and money including gas and food that is part of the in-store shopping experience of a venture out on Black Friday. That’s just my thought and there is NO scientific backing on that one.

As for more ‘official’ statistics, Retailer Daily sums it up this way

Both annual consumer spending and traffic levels went up on “Cyber Monday”, according to third-party research results. Consumers’ interest in shopping online appeared to carry over from “Black Friday” last week, when e-commerce sales increased at a significantly higher rate than brick-and-mortar sales.

Here are a few highlights from the Coremetrics Cyber Monday 2009 report (PDF):

• E-commerce sales were 13.7% higher on Cyber Monday this year than they were last year
• Average dollar amount spent by consumers per online order rose 38.2%, from $130.24 to $180.03
• Apparel retailers and jewelry retailers drove this increase with 26.4% and 14.3% jumps in average dollar amount spent per online order, respectively.
• Sporting goods segment, retailers reported a nearly 55% increase in new site visitors, but a 3.1% decline in average dollar amount spent per online order.
• Department store retailers reported a 33% increase in new site visitors, but a nearly 10% decrease in the average value of each online order.
• Per order, consumers purchased 30% more items this year than they did last year.

November 2009 American Express Spending and Saving Tracker reports that this e-commerce surge may trend though the holiday season

• 79% of overall respondents plan to use the internet as a tool for holiday shopping
• 45% plan to purchase items online
• 28% will use the internet to buy hard-to-find items
• 27% will use the internet for product research
• 25% will go online for gift ideas

One particularly interesting piece of data is around the projected use of mobile in the holiday shopping experience is on the rise.

According to the Deloitte 24th Annual Holiday Survey, 19% of consumers plan to access the internet via their mobile phones while shopping to find store locations, obtain coupons and sales information, as well as research products and prices. This percentage rose to 39% in the 18 to 29 age group.

So do we dare take this information and say that the economy is truly on the rebound and rosier days are ahead for all? Probably not a good idea. I guess the solace that can be taken is that if there is one industry in the marketing world that is at least going to stay afloat during these rough times it’s the Internet marketing segment. Maybe we should just count those blessings and move on.

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While I am willing to admit that I don’t give marketers their due I think that the same needs to be considered from the marketing side of the ledger as well. So what am I saying here? If you are a marketer or someone who assists sales in any way I would love to know what our impression or view of the salesperson’s job is. I know it sounds a little odd and maybe even just plain weird but I really think that there is more of a disconnect than I ever suspected between these two supposedly linked worlds.

Marketer’s are so intent on brand and demographics and psychographics and just plain graphics that they often miss the point. For all of the marketing information and data that is at our disposal in this hyper informational world I rarely see marketers being able to produce truly qualified leads that are more than just a name, phone number, e-mail and the hint that there may be some interest in the product or service that sales is tasked with selling.

A lot of the fault of this lies on the sales side as well. Sales people can be impatient and obnoxious for sure. Of course, if your livelihood was dependent on making things happen faster than is usually possible you might be demanding and a bit obnoxious as well. Sales people tend to be ‘cowboys’ in that they are much quicker to ask for forgiveness than permission. You know why that is though? It’s because in the sales process you actually uncover what the prospect REALLY needs rather than what we have ID’d their need as.

You see regardless of how many forms and surveys that are filled out they will always be limited in how well they can ‘categorize’ a lead. Why? It’s because in order for people to fill out a survey or give more ‘data’ they still need to be constrained by the question they are asked. Finding out whether something is ‘extremely important’ or ‘somewhat important’ to a person and their job is extremely limited in what it actually tells us. There are specific reasons why something is extremely important to someone and only somewhat (or not at all) important to another. The trouble comes with the realization that a person that answers a question one way can be just as much of a prospect as a person that answers it another way. The reality is in the details as to why they answered it differently. In many cases, people do not even realize that something should be more important than it is in their world.

Anyway, I have to say that while marketers can gather more data than ever I am not so sure we are any closer to truly understanding why people buy or walk away. We tell ourselves we are because we have so much information but we confuse information with inspiration. Information is very limited because we can’t really understand the exact nature of a person’s need until we speak to them and work with them to help them fully understand exactly what is happening in their world. This is where sales can be so interesting and yet so tricky all at once. Most folks don’t just open up and pour out their greatest business fears because of the perception of them being weak or some other very human reason. Only trust and real exploration of the situation can help reveal that. In order to get that trust there needs to be more than a survey. There needs to be more than an analysis of the ‘sufacely’ data that surveys, forms and web analytics produces.

While it sounds basic we have to remember that products and services are bought by people not behaviors. In most cases, these two things are very different. So what’s the answer? I have no idea. Until sales and marketing are completely connected at the hip there will always be this trouble. I suspect that except for the most progressive and forward thinking companies this will not happen in the near future and may never happen at all. Hate to be a sales ‘pessimist’ but the one place I live in is reality and rarely do marketing profiles and reality match up.

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The world is SO noisy right now with everyone desperate to get out of the economic morass that we are stuck in, but what I see is everyone is also afraid to make a move. There are many, many things that people can do to find those who are still ready to work with you and buy your services and I submit that hardcore “sales” is not one of them.

You see, the last thing anyone needs right now is a desperate “salesman” calling them out of the blue off of a list and telling them that they need to buy their product / service just because it is “their time.” Why is their time? Because they were next on the list, of course, but is that any reason to have to buy anything, especially in this day and age.

So what do you do? Stop trying to sell your product? Of course not. You do, however, need to do it differently. Here’s a few ideas.

1. Re-purpose your lists. Most companies have lists that they will try to “sell” from. I suggest you take those lists and try to find people in your targeted prospects to connect with via social media channels. This could be a first step toward building a real relationship that could result in business happening for both of you
2. Never use the term “close the sale” again. Closing is an old school word that has developed a bad connotation over the years. Sales people behind the scenes talk about “closing a deal” and usually chuckle after they say it, because they needed to use some manipulative tactic to finally get someone to sign on the bottom line on the salesperson’s schedule, not theirs.
3. Develop prospects like you would tend to a
   garden. You need to nurture a prospective client and not force them. Traditional selling is like putting a seed in the ground then demanding that it become the final product on your schedule (usually an incredibly stupid quarterly quota expectation) rather than letting it do what it is supposed to do in its own time
4. Forget selling. It’s not about selling anymore. It’s about developing. Developing relationships. Developing trust. Developing your product or service.

So today, while I realize just how much I need to “change,” I am still excited about the future. Why? Well, I realize that while I have been in sales for along time I have always conducted myself in a way that was not “sales-y.” At times, that got me in trouble, but it has also served me well. If my numbers weren’t where they needed to be, it was because my prospects weren’t ready yet, and I respected that.

In the end, that’s a better way to be anyway. So here’s to the future and developing win-win relationships that can help us all get out of this mess and move into the next era of business.

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Why is this the case? A lot of it has to go to the fact that the industry is still relatively new. As compared to software sales or computer hardware sales there hasn’t been much time for maturation and development of the sales professional in the Internet marketing industry.

Here are a few reasons why the industry is suffering at a point when top-notch sales help is more critical than ever.

Experience – A lot of search marketing, and I would suggest social media agencies, are using more entry-level sales people due to cost. A major drawback to this approach is ignoring just how consultative and strategic these sales actually are. When a young sales person who has little to no sales or business experience is selling these services they approach it transactionally. This means that they just are looking to close the business and move on whether it is good business or not.

Survival – Many companies are just getting started or are simply trying to survive like everyone else. One thing that is happening is that with continued layoffs there are more people providing search and social media ‘services’ who really have no business doing so but also have no choice. It is still a hot industry and there is demand so that will attract more and more lower level people to the fray. The result is more competition for work and rather than that providing better chance for the consultative folks to shine it creates a ‘closer mentality’ and the quick hit forced sale becomes the norm.

Long cycles – For the major players / prospects / customers in the space, they cannot afford to take anything lightly so there can be some considerable time in the sales cycle for decisions to be made. In instances where search and social media agencies are using a sales team to grow the business there is trouble with frustration and turnover. In most cases, companies do not pay enough base salary for a sales person to survive long enough to see these cycles come to fruition as new business. They move on because they are not making the money and have no long-term perspective or dedication to the cause.

One-dimensional sales people– The reality is that most sales people are really not that good. A great salesperson can prospect, then guide a perspective client through the process, secure the business and have an eye on the delivery living up to the talk. They do all of this without being intrusive. Most sales people are good at one thing but are not at another and the results are predictable. They are too one-dimensional then too egotistical to take coaching or advice that would help them succeed.

I have worked in transactional environments and those that are consultative in nature. I have yet to see anyone do the sales side of search and social media well. As a result the reputation of the industry has become one of distrust. In a way, I’m happy about that because it makes those of us who get it look a lot better and become more valuable.

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