Outreach Outbound Analytics (beta)

Sales Acceleration vendor Outreach is promoting its Outbound Analytics module which is currently in beta. Outreach describes itself as a complementary platform to CRMs which “triples the volume of meetings and increases qualified pipeline for front-line sales representatives.” The Account Based Sales Development vendor supports sales reps through personalized outbound programs which are logged back to the CRM. Other Outreach tools include workflow management, email templates, phone dialer, response detection, and a partner ecosystem. The system also supports integrations with Gmail, Salesforce, and Exchange.

“For far too long, sales teams have been severely underserved when it comes to their technology toolkit, with insufficient tools that act more like obstacles than accelerators,” said CEO Manny Medina. “Outreach takes a completely fresh approach to the old ‘sales as usual’ mentality, freeing up sales reps and giving them back valuable time to focus on selling. Building on the success of our core platform, we’re excited to announce Outbound Analytics that move customers a giant step forward in solving the active selling problem, giving sales reps actionable intelligence on where to spend their time and how best to engage with prospects. Combined with our automated workflows, sales reps become unstoppable.”

The new analytics module, which will be released in early 2017, supports Coaching Analytics, Prospect Intelligence and Engagement Insights.

Coaching Analytics identifies team members that are in need of mentoring as well as high performers who would make good coaches. “This eliminates the black box of sales communication by revealing insights on top performing sales techniques and providing detailed team performance measurement metrics,” said the firm.

Prospect Intelligence is gathered from Twitter, Owler, Compile, Datanyze, DiscoverOrg, and additional data vendors. The sales intelligence helps sales reps “monitor engagement and key buying signals at both the individual prospect and account levels.”

Engagement Insights are a set of recommendations which helps reps “pinpoint the most intelligent first move of engagement” whether that be phone, email or social along with the optimal time of day and content.

“The truth is out there and the question is how do you discover that and how do you put that into action,” said Chief Product Officer Andrew Kinzer. “When we look at analytics, what we’re really seeing is answers waiting to be discovered.”

Outreach Engagement Insights concerning Best Time of Day to Call.

“The best salespeople are people who are able to get into the customer’s head, empathize with the customer, and really solve a problem,” said Medina. “Our first goal in Outreach is to give them time back, so they can do more of it. Now what we are doing is we are actually taking some of the learnings that we got from being in the workflow and applying it to be more intelligent so their actions are more deliberate and more efficient.”

Medina argues that sales is becoming more outbound with reps now knowing much more about buyers that they did previously. Outreach is consolidating this online intelligence to reduce the time spent gathering information across “five to ten different websites” before returning to your “system of action to take an action.”

Outreach’s goals over the next few quarters is to build out their analytics module and have it “permeate every aspect of the product,” said Kinzer.

Outreach clients include Cloudera, CenturyLink, Pandora, Adobe and Zillow.

Outreach received a $17.5 million Series B Round in June. The firm was also recently named a Forbes 100 Cloud Rising Star.

LinkedIn InMail 2.0

I’ve never been fond of LinkedIn’s InMail service which is limited in its utility. However, InMail claims to have a 15% response rate which is 5x that of email. What’s more the top ten percent of InMail senders net a 30% response rate. According to Doug Camplejohn, Head of Products at LinkedIn, this disparity demonstrates that there are a set of best practices which improve rep response rates. LinkedIn is rolling out a 2.0 version of InMail which assists with sales rep personalization.

“The best InMailers don’t treat InMail as a SPAM cannon, they really think about it as a handwritten note,” said Camplejohn. “They take a little time to personalize things and we want to make it easy for all of you to be that good at InMail.”

li-inmail — InMail 2.0 provides full profile access, a signature block, attachment support, shared connections, icebreakers, and synch to CRM.

The first step was making the InMail box smaller so that it doesn’t cover up the recipient’s profile. Thus, it is easier for reps to identify a personal hook to the recipient. InMail is also providing a set of icebreakers (e.g. recent posts and updates) and shared connections to assist with messaging. A critical new feature is the option to synch the email to CRM, providing an audit trail for InMail communications within SFDC.

InMail 2.0 also supports a signature block, attachments, and a new Inbox with threaded messages. There is also a pending tab for tracking InMails that lack responses.

InMail is included as part of the Sales Navigator service. Professional users receive twenty InMails per month while Team accounts are granted thirty InMails per sales rep per month.

Improving rep messaging is a key aspect of their Navigator product strategy. LinkedIn is also working on integrating the PointDrive sales messaging service into Sales Navigator in Q1.

LinkedIn has begun rolling out InMail 2.0 to users.

LinkedIn: PointDrive-Sales Navigator Integration

LinkedIn is planning to integrate the recently acquired PointDrive sales engagement solution into Sales Navigator in Q1 2017. PointDrive, which was acquired in July, helps sales reps package, share, and track sales presentations which are distributed via the PointDrive web app or an email link. The platform then gathers viewing analytics. Content includes images, video, embedded maps, and documents which are mobile optimized for presentation.

Bill Burnett, Director of LinkedIn Sales Solutions, said that PointDrive is designed to solve two email problems: attachment laden emails lack “control over narrative” as emails provide little flow, story, and “experience for the buyer.” Also, they provide no visibility into who is viewing the email. Thus, post-demo messaging is haphazard as emails don’t communicate a story very well.

PointDrive Embedded Contact Profile

According to LinkedIn, there are 5.4 decision makers involved in the buying decision which means that there is a high probability that sales emails with rich media attachments are being forwarded to others.

Burnett stated that the goal of PointDrive is to “turn this [email] exchange into a truly more engaging experience” which provides real-time sales signals about what content decision makers are viewing. Instead of sending long emails, buyers are directed to a PointDrive landing page which allows the sales rep to control brand, content, and commentary. PointDrive was designed as a “mobile first” interface with landing pages supporting both traditional and mobile browsers.

Brand and product information are “now presented in a way that truly differentiates and engages the buyer” through personalization and organization. PointDrive also provides easy access to sales rep bios and contact information (see image on left). Each attachment is displayed in a framed box with sales rep narratives and document descriptions alongside the marketing piece. PointDrive supports embedded collateral, pricing sheets, presentation decks, multimedia, and images which are all displayed within the PointDrive landing page. Users do not need to download content or window out to other documents.

PointDrive is customized to the seller allowing firms to convey their brand identity. Burnett claims that creating a PointDrive is “as simple as creating an email.” Users upload content and grab links, videos, and Google Maps. “We’ll lay your brand and identity on top of it for you so that when you are ready to share with your leads [and] share with your connections,” said Burnett.

Sales reps have control over actions taken on PointDrive embedded content. They can block downloads, password protect the element, set expiration dates, and track forwards.

An embedded User Guide is displayed within a PointDrive page. Commentary is provided by sales reps.

Real-time alerting metrics are provided for each document view. Thus, PDF analytics indicate who viewed the document, when viewed, how much total time buyers or influencers spent viewing the document, total pages viewed, and how much time was spent on each page. It even captures the viewing browser and location of the viewer. This intelligence is available for both the original recipients and any forwarded viewers.

Burnett calls this a “new way for sellers within Sales Navigator to engage with customers and prospects much deeper into the sales funnel.” The service also provides “tremendous value for account managers or anybody inside of your organization that’s communicating on a regular basis” with customers and prospects.

The firm plans on rolling PointDrive into core Sales Navigator Team functionality at no additional cost. LinkedIn sales reps are already using PointDrive with their customers and prospects.

“The new Sales Navigator features are to enhance the overall customer experience of Sales Navigator, and to integrate it into daily workflows to get people the information they need as easily as possible,” said LinkedIn Senior Marketing Manager Derek Pando.

LinkedIn’s System of Engagement ties together email, CRM, and LinkedIn workflows. (Source: LinkedIn Sales Connect 2016)

LinkedIn Head of Products Doug Camplejohn noted that sales reps live in three applications: their email, CRM, and LinkedIn. LinkedIn’s objective is to become the “System of Engagement” that manages the workflow of sales reps. Expanded functionality such as PointDrive, connectors, and InMail 2.0 (see below) will sit between the system of communication (email) and the system of record (CRM). Thus, InMail, PointDrive, CRM uploads (InMail, Notes, Tags), email and Chrome integrations, and the CRM partnerships should be viewed as part of LinkedIn’s broader workflow strategy.

Sales messaging and analytics tools are becoming much more prevalent in sales intelligence, sales acceleration, and ABSD platforms. That will be discussed tomorrow.

RelSci Goes Freemium

Relationship Science (RelSci) from within the Salesforce AppExchange.

Relationship Science (RelSci) rolled out a freemium offering for their social networking service this week. A free edition provides ten profile views while the Professional edition is priced at $49.99 per month and supports contact synching, relationship finding, news alerts, power searching, and a mobile app. The full feature set is shown on their pricing page.

While the professional edition does not yet support networking, the feature is in development for single users.

RelSci is designed for investors (e.g. PE, VC, Wealth Managers), fund raisers, and business development professionals. It works best at companies where relationships are highly prized for reaching top executives, directors, and donors. The firm marries your contact network with a database of 5 million “movers and shakers” across 1 1/2 million organizations. The enterprise edition allows users to leverage the relationships across their firm, providing a powerful research and networking tool.

Along with standard company and executive profiles, you will find nonprofit board and association memberships, nonprofit and political donations, investments, and news alerts. What you won’t find is emails and direct dial phone numbers. The system is designed for introductions, not cold calling.

The product offers an elegant user interface combined with powerful prospecting tools. Along with standard prospecting, there are screens which assist with trip planning, donor searching, and identifying potential investors.

So how does RelSci stack up vs. LinkedIn Sales Navigator? A recent DiscoverOrg survey found that one quarter of top level executives are not LinkedIn members so RelSci has a distinct advantage there. Furthermore, RelSci brings in intelligence not found within LinkedIn such as rich company profiles (LinkedIn’s are basically warmed over marketing materials from the website and Facebook), donations, and investments.

However, Sales Navigator offers InMail with recommended names to drop while RelSci forces users to request introductions through their network. This could be a potential bottleneck at firms where the strongest networks go through top level execs and the firms’ rainmakers.

Also, if your focus is more directors and managers, you many not find sufficient depth within RelSci. An ABM strategy could stall out due to lack of executive depth in RelSci. For those companies, I’d recommend a full sales intelligence offering (e.g. Avention, Hoover’s, DiscoverOrg, RainKing) in conjunction with free LinkedIn.

RelSci offers powerful screening and visualization tools tied to an elegant user interface. For professional networkers aiming at the upper echelons of companies and boards, RelSci is a superior option to LinkedIn.

InsideSales.com: Essentials for SMBs

InsideSales.com Notifications and Activity Tracking

InsideSales.com is now offering “InsideSales Essentials,” a cloud-based sales acceleration service for SMBs (I have generally classified companies like this as Account Based Sales Development [ABSD], but Sales Acceleration is also a descriptor used by vendors in this category). The new offering supports email tracking and analytics, integrated dialer, email templates, call recording and monitoring, and automated voicemails. The service also bundles in local call number display in the top twenty-five metro areas. InsideSales claims that local number presentation improves contact rates by up to 38%.

“InsideSales has mastered sales across the enterprise, powering companies like Microsoft, ADP, and Groupon to increase revenue growth by up to 30 percent. With this new package, we’re taking what’s proven to work for some of the biggest brands and tailoring it for small business needs,” said Gabe Larsen, director of InsideSales.com Labs. “Essentials gives small and medium-sized businesses the power to sell smarter and help expand their company through strategic sales plays.”

InsideSales Essentials begins at $5,000 for five seats.

“Our mission is to leverage big data and cloud capabilities to unlock human potential through predictive analytics and machine learning,” said InsideSales CEO Dave Elkington. “We are building an Amazon-style recommendation engine for business — a system capable of intelligently analyzing billions of data points in real-time and recommending the optimal next steps for almost any application or business process. This lays the groundwork for a future where predictive technology can be applied, not just to sales organizations but also to government, healthcare, retail and beyond.”

The firm was also just named to Forbes Cloud 100, placing it amongst the top private cloud companies in the world.

ABSD / Sales Acceleration is a rapidly growing field as firms look to formalize ABM processes amongst their sales development teams. I have seen such rapid growth amongst ABSD firms that I am including profiles of four ABSD vendors (QuotaFactory, KiteDesk, Outreach, and SalesLoft) in the next edition of my Field Guide to Sales Intelligence Vendors. Inclusion is based upon the existence of a partner ecosystem which includes sales intelligence vendors. Because InsideSales.com does not offer such an ecosystem, they did not make the cut. However, the firm has seen rapid growth and would be considered amongst the leaders in this burgeoning field.

Sparklane: Sales Triggers and Hidden Opportunities

I posted a blog yesterday on the Sparklane website discussing sales triggers as a tool for identifying new opportunities. Triggers provide a mechanism for warming up cold calls with of-the-moment talking points. Current triggers signal to prospects that you have conducted some research on the company and aren’t calling blindly into the firm. They also help account reps stay abreast of what is happening at their key customers and prospects. Sales Triggers are a key component of social selling and Account Based Marketing strategies.

Sparklane is a French Sales Intelligence solution which provides elements of predictive lead scoring around target companies. They are readying to enter the UK market with an English language service in the coming weeks. Their goal is to revisit the Battle of Hastings (1066) and “conquer the UK” (OK, I’m overstating their marketing claim, but there is nothing wrong with bold objectives).

Sparklane has had significant success in the French market with fifty percent annual growth since launching seven years ago. Last year they posted five million euros in revenue with a goal of eight million euros this year ($9 million). Clients include Samsung, Oracle, Jaguar, Capgemini, and SAS.

We have entered into a new era. The era of smart data. Basic data has less and less value. Sparklane is the first player on this market to propose a true predictive lead scoring solution. Sparklane’s main benefit is to improve quickly the sales performance of its clients.

Sparklane CEO Frédéric PICHARD

Just last week, I blogged about Contify, an Indian social selling vendor, which is focusing on news + social awareness. I have also recently written about Artesian Solutions which opened a Boston office and is rolling out a North American social selling offering. Their Artesian Ready app is the most advanced sales intelligence mobile offering I’ve seen on the market.

It is wonderful to see the market continue to heat up with new competitors and approaches. Competition catalyzes product development and helps goose innovation. It focuses the mind of competitors and helps keep complacency at bay. I look forward to seeing what ideas the French have around social selling when they launch their UK service in a few weeks.

Contify: Social Intelligence within SFDC

Social Selling vendor Contify rolled out a Salesforce.com connector for their account based social intelligence service. Contify intelligence is displayed within Lead and Opportunity record I-frames. The display is split into two tabs: News & Mentions and Social Updates. Both tabs may be filtered by topic.

The Social Updates feed combines account intelligence from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube. The company “only shows social media updates which have relevant sales triggers associated with it.” Thus users are not “bombarded with a stream of updates that aren’t relevant to you.

News triggers are set to thirty days, but may be adjusted by users.

The Indian vendor provides fourteen sales triggers mined from the web and social platforms. Triggers are delivered as alerts and within the subscription service. Users may share triggers via Chatter, email, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Users may also save triggers as bookmarks for later review. A separate triggers list is included within the record. Contify also offers Custom Triggers which may be created from within SFDC. Custom Triggers consist of a set of search and stop keywords. Contify begins delivering customer trigger results within fifteen minutes.

Trigger categories are similar to those found in other products. This is not to fault Contify as there are a set of common events which have been deemed to be most valuable by B2B sales reps. These include Funding Activity, M&A, Management Changes, Partnerships, and New Offerings.

Triggers may also be setup as tasks which are saved as open activities. Trigger information is stored within the Comments field of the task.

Contify triggers may be flagged as tasks for alter action.

If users are unable to find the correct company, they can submit the URL to Contify’s editors who will create a company profile within 24 hours.

The service is priced at $49.95 per user per month billed annually.

The firm has over 10,000 users.

Sales Intelligence Vendors Still Don’t Get Social

For some reason, sales intelligence vendors have never properly understood social selling and how to integrate social media into their products. This has long amazed me. Instead of building an integrated social media viewing tool with sharing and feedback, they all seem to nibble around the edges. You’ll find social hyperlinks directly from company or contact profiles, but these simply window out to the social media site. Also fairly common is the inclusion of corporate blogs into their news and sales trigger feeds, but fully integrated social media tools have yet to be offered by vendors.

The closest any of them have come is InsideView which added a Buzz Tab about five years ago to its InsideView for Sales product. The Buzz Tab provides a consolidated view of blogs, Facebook, and Twitter feeds. However, the social content remains segregated from their other discovery tools and the population of Facebook and Twitter feeds is limited. Other social tools include a Who Knows Who “Six Degrees” tool and the inclusion of Personal Tweets from business executives in their alerts.

The InsideView buzz tab supports keyword searching and filtering for company blogs, Facebook, and Twitter.

There are also a set of social selling tools that focus on social media, blogs, and news but which are light on company and contact information. As these tools improve, one of the sales intelligence vendors is going to make a build vs. buy decision and either OEM the upcoming service or buy a social selling service outright.

What tools such as Artesian Software, Owler, Contify, and Trapit do isn’t revolutionary. They basically provide a unified view of news and social content. Users can filter the feeds and interact with the posts. If a free service such as Owler can build such functionality, why can’t the sales intelligence vendors? Core functionality could provide the following features:

A deep set of direct links for companies and executives to LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, G+, etc.
A unified view of the corporate social media content across Twitter, Facebook, SlideShare, YouTube, Vimeo, corporate blogs, business blogs, etc. This view would be easily filterable by source, date, keyword, etc.
Social Media Metrics for a company charted over time. If the company is also selling into the marketing department, then comparative metrics should be available.
When filtering Twitter, allow the user to see both the Tweets from a company and mentions (these are separate options).
Support basic widgets from the major social media vendors. These are small applets that display key statistics along with a brief description and logo/headshot.
Allow any news article, sales trigger, or social media post to be shared via social media, enterprise social (e.g. Chatter, Yammer), and email.
Support expanded alerts that include targeted social media alongside sales triggers. Thus, an alert could consist of the half dozen most important sales trigger topics, Twitter posts from the company, Blog headlines, and YouTube / Vimeo uploads.
Executive alerts based upon social media posts and news mentions.

Who Know Who Six degree tools are also worth considering, but this functionality is so well locked up by LinkedIn that relationship discovery tools have remained a standalone category. Amongst Sales Intelligence vendors, only InsideView and DueDil Connect have built relationship finder tools in competition with LinkedIn.

To be fair, the sales intelligence vendors all understood early on that they needed to work with LinkedIn. Most of them adopted the LinkedIn widget or the LinkedIn API to provide relationship and executive intelligence into their service. But then LinkedIn decided it was going to offer its own sales intelligence service called Sales Navigator and began blocking sales intelligence vendor access to LinkedIn. Since then, with the exception of InsideView, the sales intelligence firms have done little to integrate social content into their services. Hopefully, the vendors begin to see this gap in their offerings and begin to address it.

Artesian Solutions’ Social Selling Enhancements

Artesian Solutions combines company and market (industry) Watchlists with a broad set of social sharing, emailing, and bookmarking tools. — Artesian Solutions combines company and market (industry) Watchlists with a broad set of social sharing (Twitter, LinkedIn, Chatter), emailing, calendaring, and bookmarking tools.

UK Social Selling vendor Artesian Solutions announced a set of enhancements to its social selling platform. Amongst the improvements are an improved CRM connector, “fully customisable” triggers, market sector alerts, employee display filters, and an update to their Ready mobile app. They are also in the midst of soft launching a US edition with a comparable set of social selling features.

The enhanced CRM connectors for Salesforce.com and Microsoft Dynamics “drive a more dynamic connection between interaction information, business information and market insight for more intuitive and contextualised sales and marketing.” Among the features are sales trigger filtering by topic and trigger sharing by email, social media, and Chatter.

A new employees page allows users to filter employees by job function and level and set priorities by executive role and level. The firm has also expanded the depth of executive content including executive overviews and social media links.

Along with market alerts, Artesian has increased the granularity of its market views. Market alerts may be filtered by industry and country and are delivered weekly.

Artesian also rolled out version 2.3 of its Ready mobile app which provides company and executive insights synched with the mobile calendar. The service also supports collaborative note taking and a “360° comprehensive profile of customers and prospects.”

New Ready features include Twitter timelines and Twitter sharing (see image on left), social links (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, AngelList, Crunchbase, Klout), job information, and a data quality form for reporting incorrect information.

Rachel Oldroyd, Artesian Product Manager for Mobile commented that Ready “delivers the latest social profile insight straight to users’ fingertips, right up to the very second they go through the meeting room door, for the ultimate in readiness and customer engagement. Its summer launch is very timely, offering a real opportunity to brush off the dust, re-invigorate meetings with new ideas and fresh thinking, and get back into gear ahead of September.”

Ready is available for both Android and iOS devices.

Artesian is priced at $99 per user per month in the US and £89 per user per month in the UK with volume discounting available at higher seat counts. This pricing is in line with other social selling products such as InsideView and LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Ready and CRM integrations are included as part of the core service offering along with onboarding, training, and social selling scores. The firm strongly believes that sales training is key to user adoption so does not charge for custom training sessions.

Social Selling Scores are similar to LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index. These scores introduce a gamification element to the service helping encourage best practices and ongoing use by sales reps. Artesian bases its scores on targeting, connecting, and sharing.

Artesian Solutions provides a Social Selling Score Dashboard on the home page to encourage broad usage of their service.

Artesian opened a Boston office at the beginning of this year and recently soft launched their US edition. The firm has not disclosed their primary US vendor but it is a credible source of company and contact information. The US version supports 4.2 million companies and 400,000 Canadian firms. Social Selling functionality is similar to the UK product with the exception of filed data not available in the US (e.g. registered company financials; directors and shareholders; mortgages and charges; and Companies House images). Key features in both services include social selling alerts and sharing, company prospecting, watchlists, and social selling scores.

Social Selling Benefits

Sales Research company CSO Insights and Seismic, a sales enablement vendor, asked 400 global B2B professionals about the benefits of social selling tools. These tools include sales enablement, social listening, and social marketing solutions. A full 38% weren’t sure of the benefits of these tools speaking to a need for vendors to better explain their value and provide user metrics.

The problem of value attribution has long been an issue with sales intelligence services as well, but as sales intelligence has become more tightly tied into the overall sales and marketing process, clear benefits such as reduced time spent keying and maintaining account information and the direct display of account intelligence within CRM I-frames have helped validate sales intelligence tools.

Likewise, B2B professionals found the biggest benefits of social selling tools to be reduced account / contact research time (39%), an increase in the number of leads (33%) and deeper client relationships (31%). Broader process improvements were noted at lower rates with improved lead conversion (24%), shorter sales cycles (14%), and increased win rates on forecasted deals (13%) rounding out the benefits.

However, when the sub-group of professionals at firms which have aligned their social marketing and selling strategies was assessed, CSO Insights found a sixteen percent improvement in win rates. Furthermore, the benefits were better understood with 57% enjoying more leads and 56% found deeper client relationships. Amongst this group, only 18% were unsure about the benefits of social selling tools. Thus, CSO Insights concluded that the high percentage of B2B professionals doubting the value of social selling tools was due to “a lack of maturity.”

CSO Insights defined social engagement as “equipping salespeople with skills, tools, and content to successfully navigate the change, decision, and value dynamics along the entire customer’s journey by leveraging social media.” I find this definition a bit limiting operationally for vendors as it focuses exclusively on social media. Both social selling and sales intelligence vendors have made the mistake of ignoring each other. There are a few exceptions such as LinkedIn Sales Navigator adding a news feed and InsideView’s integrated social media Buzz tab, but most vendors either focus on profiles and news alerts/triggers or social monitoring and messaging. The lack of fully integrated social monitoring and messaging tools within sales intelligence platforms remains a missed opportunity to improve sales intelligence products.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator offers Lead (executive) and company news alongside LinkedIn updates. Sales reps can filter for news or shares. — LinkedIn Sales Navigator offers Lead (executive) and Company News alongside LinkedIn updates. Sales reps can filter for news or shares.

A 2015 CSO Insights study of sales reps found that 33% felt social selling training was in need of a major redesign and 31% felt the training needs improvement. CSO Insights warns against reducing social selling training to LinkedIn or Twitter training. Research Director Tamara Schenk cautions that lessons from CRM training were not transferred to social selling training. “Salespeople are again asked to take tool training when at the same time the tool and the required skills have not yet been integrated into the current sales system, methodologies and processes. The result is the same. The new tool, social selling, is then considered as a time-consuming add-on rather than an effective enabler to create more and better business.”

Schenk noted that social strategy needs to be defined with marketing. “An organization’s social strategy has to be aligned along the customer’s journey. [Sales] Enablement leaders are in an ideal position to orchestrate this process. After that, social selling skills have to be integrated in the current methodologies, engagement principles, and processes. Only then, not earlier, can social selling training services be designed and provided. And using the technology effectively is just one element. Another key element is the content challenge. Relevant and valuable content to attract prospects has to be made available for salespeople, ideally on the sales enablement platform with no further internal obstacles to access this content.”

The CSO Insights research was conducted in July by Schenk and Strategic Advisor Jim Dickie. The study was based upon responses from B2B sales managers (61%), sales ops (21%), marketing (8%) and other roles located in North America (59%) and rest of world (41%).

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