A few weeks ago, Andrew Somosi described an Elevator Pitch contest at the November Sales 2.0 conference. To start the day off, Gerhard Gschwandtner, the CEO of Selling Power, asked the sponsors to present a 60-second pitch about their companies to the audience. This was serious business. There was a 60-second countdown timer at the stage, and the microphone cut-out when the time was up (which happened several times). The feedback from Andrew and from other attendees was that this was a very valuable exercise. It really forced them to super-synthesize and focus on the most important and compelling points to communicate.
Having seen the positive reactions on Twitter from the audience about the pitches, I asked Andrew to deliver an encore of his pitch for the camera.
And, congratulations to Andy Shefsky — @AndyShefsky – - from iMeet for winning the pitch contest.
At the last Sales 2.0 conference, Social Strategies in a Social and Mobile World, Andrew Somosi (Lattice Engines) gave a presentation on what social selling really means for B2B sales. Our objective was to showcase facts and research on how actual sales professionals are engaging with social media to improve their productivity, and what companies can do to extend and enhance these existing efforts. A key theme was that there is a lot more room to infuse science into the art of sales. This then led Gerhard Gschwandtner, CEO of Selling Power, to engage with Andrew in a discussion on what the future of sales might look like.
Here are some of the questions that Gerhard raised for discussion:
If science enables you to ‘predict’ what a company will need and when they will make a purchase, does the rep still have a role in the buying process?
Buyers are starting their purchase process online and are more inclined to listen to their trusted peers on social networks. How does a sales person create value in the selling process given these evolving dynamics?
What does ‘social learning’ mean for buyers and sellers in this new world?
What does B2B sales look like in 2020?
Watch the entire discussion between Gerhard and Andrew here:
View the full session presented by Andrew Somosi: ‘Social Selling: What’s Really in It for B2B Sales’ Read the whitepaper to learn how companies can operationalize a ‘social’ approach for their sales teams
There are few movies that manage to be highly entertaining and remarkably insightful. Moneyball is one of those movies.
Based on Michael Lewis’ book, the movie tells the tale of how the Oakland Athletics– under the direction of Billy Beane – managed to achieve extraordinary performance relative to their meager financial muscle. In the late 90’s, the Athletics were near the very bottom of the league in terms of their financial capacity to spend on acquiring talent. Yet, they were able to consistently make the playoffs over a number of years.
So, how did the Athletics manage to achieve this highly improbable feat?
The story focuses on Billy Beane – a lackluster ballplayer who becomes the visionary GM of the Athletics – and his Harvard-educated quant whiz kid protégé Paul DePodesta. Together, they turn the conventional wisdom of baseball upside down. Through detailed analysis of every imaginable baseball statistic, the duo uncovers the true underlying drivers of success for a baseball team. They uncover the massive inefficiency in how baseball talent is priced and are able to exploit this inefficiency to their advantage. They acquire players that every other team has rejected, and rejected for all the wrong reasons (i.e., conventional wisdom on what a great baseball player ‘looks like’). Billy and Paul discover data-driven insights about how to gauge and price the true worth of every ballplayer.
Moneyball, Sony Pictures 2011
Moneyball is a great book (and movie) for anyone who loves baseball and numbers. But it’s an exceptional must-read for B2B sales leaders. Moneyball shows that data-driven decisions result in significantly better outcomes than gut feel and intuition. B2B selling is undergoing the same transformation that baseball went through 10 years ago.
We’ve entered the age of data-driven selling . Thanks to the exponential growth in data about companies and prospects, and the ability to extract actionable customer insight through predictive analytics, it is now possible for a sales-person to achieve dramatically higher sales productivity. True sales intelligence can enable reps to know exactly whom to contact, when to contact and even how to engage. As selling time becomes a scarce resource, selling activities are all geared to maximize the return on that time.
I was heartened to see Gerhard Gschwandtner’s blog on the topic and I look forward to speaking about data-driven sales intelligence at the next Sales 2.0 conference.
We’re back after an exciting week at Dreamforce 2011. We were thrilled to have taken part in what is now the largest technology event in history (over 45,000 attendees).
The key takeaways were (i) Marc Benioff pushing the thinking forward on creating ‘the social enterprise’, and (ii) Eric Schmidt in describing how the big change ahead is ‘the ability to predict’ in all manners of our professional and personal lives. It was satisfying to hear that as our sales intelligence software is all about enabling sales people to ‘predict’ their customers’ next move.
Our presence at Dreamforce focused on accelerating sales growth and how sales intelligence software can help boost sales productivity.
View all of our our pictures from Dreamforce ’11 on Facebook.
Playing to a sold out crowd (literally, our session was completed sold out before the conference began), Lattice Engines took the stage at Dreamforce 2011. In our session, “Selling Smarter in B2B: How Predictive Sales Intelligence Accelerates Growth,” Shashi Upadhyay (Lattice Engines CEO) and Tom Miller (VP of Business Intelligence and Analytics for ADP) discussed how B2B companies like ADP are utilizing sales intelligence software to boost productivity.
Shashi highlighted why sales intelligence has become imperative for B2B sales organizations to operationalize, “Inside most companies, systems that store company data have become much more mature […] There’s a huge amount of information, especially in larger companies and increasingly in smaller companies, about what are your customers saying about you, what do they know about you, what are they interested in, what are similar people doing.”
Tom Miller stated that the power of predictive sales intelligence lies in “identifying patterns in data and allowing my sales reps to go after who they should be going after first and the adverse of that is don’t go after the people that there’s no chance of buying.” Tom further stated that his reps actively using salesPRISM “have [had] a 52% greater chance of creating an opportunity.”
You can watch the presentation in its entirety here.
During the conference, we had an opportunity to speak with some of the industry’s leading analysts including Jim Dickie of CSO Insights, Gerhard Gschwandtner of Selling Power and Peter Ostrow of Aberdeen Group, who gave us their take on what sales intelligence means for sales reps. You can view the video below:
As a company, Lattice Engines has always relied on math, data and logic to produce effective and tangible results. Not surprisingly, over the years, we chose to identify ourselves with the famous Lattice Rubik’s cube, which requires an algorithm to solve. We also enjoy the nostalgia it brings to you and the exciting challenge it presents to kids. Here’s Gerhard Gschwandtner, CEO of Selling Power, demonstrating his talent for juggling Lattice Engines Rubik’s cubes:
Want a Lattice Engines Rubik’s Cube for your office? Tweet us @lattice_engines using the hashtag #IwantmyLErubikscube and we’ll send one to the first 25 respondents!
Keeping with the theme of acceleration, visitors to our booth were entered to win one of two great prizes.
Grand Prize: The Richard Petty Driving Experience
Richard Petty Driving Experience puts you in a NASCAR race car for an adrenaline pumping thrill of a lifetime. You will get behind the wheel and experience the thrill of 600 horsepower.
Second Prize: xBox with Kinect and Joy Ride
Get in the game with xBox Kinect! Kinect™ Joy Ride brings the thrill of stunts into the world of racing, all without using a controller.
Congratulations to both winners!
Please feel free to share your experiences from Dreamforce 2011.
Lattice Engines is the leader in B2B sales intelligence software enabling Fortune 5000 companies to Sell Smarter and achieve a 6-14% increase in sales productivity.
December 9, 2011 
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