As a sales trainer, I find most of our work over the years to be skill related. You know…sales strategies…selling skills…closing skills etc., But a few years ago, that started to change. Clients were bringing us in to deal with “revenue problems” not just sales problems. These are not just semantic differences–and stuff of another post.
But there is seismic shift happening in the world of B2B selling that we’re seeing. And it has to do with how people find information. And it may not affect your selling skills–but it will affect your revenue skills.
Mark Zuckerberg (Founder of Facebook), was on CBS’ 60 Minutes last night and talked about how social media was changing the face of the web–and how information is disseminated. He’s right. And I sense that not too many companies are on to this–I know our company isn’t.
Google recently offerred a preposterous sum of money for Facebook (in the billions). It was rebuffed.
And Bill Gates just sent a check to Facebook for $240,000,000, which represented 1.6% of Facebook’s market value (which puts the value at tens of billions). So why are these guys so into ‘facebook?’
Do They Know Something You Don’t?
Because they know the web is becoming a social media phenomena. When you Google things these days, are you noticing how many more entries are from social media sites (Squidoo, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, others)? What that means is that more and more of your reputation is being built on social media sites.
That means that when someone Googles your keywords, it won’t be your site coming up. It’ll be someone talking about you and your products. Are you ready for that?
An Assignment From Someone Who Doesn’t Even Know You
It might be useful for you to spend a couple of hours in the next few weeks researching the social media phenomena. I’d been thinking about it–but when I saw the Diane Sawyer interview, it jolted me out of my oblivion. Some things that are hard to understand really need to be understood. And if you’re going to play in the B2B game, then this might be worth a few hours of your time.
In fact, go to Stompernet and watch their video. It’s about 50 minutes. I have nothing to do with that company other than I trust them for insight on the web. It’s quite eye opening.
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