Sales Automation + Acceleration: Packages flow.

A simple diagram of how Packages work for sales, marketing, and management.

1. Marketing creates the content.
2. Sales personalizes and sends as a 1 to 1 'personal' communication with instant read notifications.
3. Management, Marketing, and Sales can all see the results.

For Marketing

Packages give marketing capabilities they never had before.  In the past, Marketing was responsible for 'getting leads' and then handing them off to sales. It's a 'fire and forget' system that doesnt' give Marketing any feedback into what's actualy working to close deasl. But with Sendside, Marketing can design the individual, personal communications that are being used by Sales, and see exactly how they're being used, and what's working.

For Sales

For a sales rep, Sendside opens up an entirely new world. No more time waste. Instead of wasting time making endless follow-up calls to ask if a prospect has 'had a chance to take a look a those materials", every sales rep is instantly notified when a prospect opens a Package, and knows what they're looking at. The effect is dramatic. Some of our clients are seeing sales acceleration above 50%.

For Management

Sendside's reporting and analytics give sales managers insight into the individual communications that the sales team is sending. What's working. What's not. Management know has the ability to make better decisions because they can actually see how successful deals happened, and they can reproduce that exactly in the future.

via blog.sendside.com

Sales Acceleration with Sendside Packages.

Posted via web from Sendsider

For any remaining IE6 users...

Hi, if you are coming to this site via Internet Explorer 6, you might not be getting the best experience possible. Honestly, I can't even begin to think about what your entire experience on the internet must be like? (...probably like riding a bike on the highway while cars blow by you on their way to Costco to get gallons of mayonnaise and 60-inch plasma TV's). How will you ever be able to use this website?????? You wont. You're an asshole and your browser is an asshole. So look, I'm going to be honest: I kind of hate you. BUT we c-a-n make this work. Here is what I am going to need you to do: fire up your Toshiba ShitBook© that weighs about 45 pounds, wipe the Cheeto dust off the screen, download Safari, delete Internet Explorer from your computer, punch yourself in the face, and get me a pulled pork sandwich.

via newtoyork.com

Dave McClure: How to pitch a VC

Dave McClure - How to Pitch a VC (aka Startup Viagra: How to Give a VC a Hard-On)

Confusion + Information

Jessica Hagy at Indexed, says it perfectly:

The first rule of fight club is...

While this could be me after the first fight club, it's actually my eye after removal of a skin cancer. Can't say I could see much out of it. Unfortuanely, it was like this for about three days before it abated.

We'll see how others look after the next Fight Club meetup.

Reminder: Fight Club is on Twitter.

If you're a Fight Club Member, contact me and I'll add your feed.

Fight Club on Twitter

Fight Club is on Twitter: http://twitter.com/jeffbarson/fight-club

Fight Club Member? Email and I'll add your feed.

Sales Acceleration

Sendside's Sales Acceleration & Sales Automation Platform explained.

The presentation above details some of the value around Sendside's sales accleration for sales teams. The studies discussed are from MIT Sloan School of Management and Kellogg School of Management and were commissioned by insidesales.com.

If you'd like these studies, just fire off an email and we'll be happy to send them to you.

Sendside Packages: Sales Accleration + Sales Automation

We've just finished the Package below that showcases sales acceleration, sales automation, strategic marketing, and customer retention.

 

View this Package.

When you click the link above a new window will open... a Sendside Package.

You'll immediately notice that it's unlike email. It's much more like a web site.

In fact, anything that you can display through a browser can now be sent a a communication that can be controled.

Sendside Packages

Packages presents an entirely new way to respond to new leads and follow up with interested prospects. Rather than sending boring, uneventful emails that don’t offer any insights into prospect interest or delivery status, Packages allow organizations to send pre-bundled content that’s branded, personalized and interactive. Packages take sales collateral to a whole new level.

Designing User Experiences for Social Traction

Designing user experiences.

Take a look at this post from one of the founders of Posterous on how they designed their user experiences to start with interaction and only then move on to account creation:

Being able to post to Posterous without an account was something we designed for from day one, even before the name "Posterous" existed. I didn't want there to be hurdles like registration forms and email confirmations for new users.

Emailing to Posterous without an account is actually great for us in a couple different ways. First is the typical "try before you buy" scenario. It makes more sense for a user to *use* the service and see how great it is, before we ask them to sign up. But obviously, most of our users do eventually sign up to get access to all our advanced features.

But sign-up free posting is also great for group sites. When you setup a group Posterous site, you add contributors by adding their email address in site settings. Those people can now email post@sitename.posterous.com with no account. We do see these people engage with Posterous in the long term with no account, especially users who aren't tech savvy.

Using Posterous without an account isn't just some gimmick we did with email, it's something we believe in through and through. Registrations forms and other hurdles slow down adoption. We want to prove to you how valuable our service is *before* we ask you to sign up. That's why we allow this flow not just through email, but through our Twitter posting API and even our iPhone application.

Asymetrical Sales Acceleration & Strategic Marketing

Sales Automation & Strategic Marketing. Take a look at this image contrasting convetional and irregular warfare strategies.

If you swap 'Users' for Population and 'Management' for Military, it's a pretty good analogy of the way companies sell.

Traditionally, companies have sold into management structures who have then pushed downstream into their users. Installed software companies are a great example of this. If you buy installed software you're making a big investment and taking some risk. The sales focus is on getting the management to buy or adopt. End users usually have no say in what they end up with.

Increasingly, and espectially with SaaS models, the emphasis has changed from selling to management, to selling (through adoption) to end users. The parallels to asymetirical or irregular warfare are striking.

Fight Club is back.

What's Fight Club?

Fight Club is a networking event (usually dinner) for entrepreneurs and startup CEOs who are interested in building their network. Yeah, there are a number of other events around but Fight club is for startups to network with each other.

Why Fight Club?

Geek Dinners already taken. Besides, it's cooler to tell your wife/staff/buddies that you're going to Fight Club than have to ask strangers directions to the Geek Dinner. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

Fight Club is about connecting, not selling.

Fight Club Members are entrepreneurs and business owners who understand that people are not the sum of what they can do for you. We're organized to build introductions and relationships between entrepreneurs outside the regular business environment and without the need to immediately sell to everyone.

Read this post on Horizontal Networking for Entrepreneurs.

If you're smart, and Fight Club Members are, you build relationships that give you access to another network and have other members actively looking out for you.

How you fit in.

Fight Club is small on purpose. We want to offer an environment where people can get to know the 'person' they're talking to, before the business. Anyone can come, you just have to attend with and be invited by an existing Fight Club Member the first time.

Fight Club is not an Old Boys Network.

We're just a bunch of similarly situated guys who value semi-inteligent conversation and understand that expanding your network and being of service is also good business.

Fight Club is also about deal flow.

From time to time I expect Angels from the local community to be involved. Certainly I've found it beneficial.

Sendside gives the CW Network a staggering 14,500% ROI within 60 days.

As our client list continues to grow, so do the number of success stories we hear around Sendside's sales acceleration, sales automation, strategic marketing, and customer retention capabilities. Here's a case study detailing how the CW Networks local SL affiliate KUCW, used Sendside to close deals that they'd been unsuccessfully working on for the last five years.

The CW Network is America's fifth broadcast network and a joint venture between Warner Bros. Entertainment and CBS Corporation. The SLC affiliate KUCW came to Sendside looking to provide media-rich sales materials and access instant read notifications so that their sales force could follow up immediately. Within the first 60 days of using Sendside KUCW closed deals that they'd been unsuccessfully working on for the last 5 years.

Design. Usability. Experience.

I've been harping on design, usability and experience for longer than I care to admit. Here's some info from a CNN story on the divide between users of social networks extends through income;

A recent study found that people in more affluent demographics are 25 percent more likely to be found friending on Facebook, while the less affluent are 37 percent more likely to connect on MySpace. The wealthiest users, however, are on LinkedIn

Users with household income above $75,000
Facebook -- 41.74 percent
MySpace -- 32.38 percent
LinkedIn -- 58.35 percent
Twitter -- 43.34 percent

MySpace, on the other hand, had a "come one, come all" policy and made a mad dash towards monetization, Ostrow said. "They used a lot of banner ads without regard to the quality, and it really diminished the value [of the site] for the more tech-savvy demographic."

So which social networks provide the most value and have the highest potential for revenue? It's never going to be MySpace, that boat has sailed.

LinkedIn and Twitter are delivering on their promise to the greatest extent... largely because they're both constrained in what they are designed to do. Twitter as a 'what's happening right now' and LinkedIn as a business network.

Facebook has a harder time of it. Fbook's huge user base is such a conglomeration that it's difficult to find a real niche that Facebook can attack other than 'everyone's connected to everyone else'.

Here's my ratings for Design, Usability, and User Experience for the big four:

Design: 

Facebook -- B- Decent, but the addition of so many applications on user pages makes for a cluttered experience.
MySpace -- D Terrible UI and even worse design. The only reason I can't actually fail MySpace is that they acually have millions of users.
LinkedIn -- B Again, like Facebook, a decent UI. It's always difficult to keep large data-sets distinct while maintaining usability.
Twitter -- A- Simple and clean.

Usability: 

Facebook -- C The default page is clean but that falls apart on individual pages.
MySpace -- C Myspace gets a C since it's proven that even MySpace users can eventually navigate the site.
LinkedIn -- B Better get in before they really start with the monitization.
Twitter -- B+ Leading the pack since there are so few options. Simple = usibility.

User Experience: 

Facebook -- B This is where there's a split. Facebook's need for content generation starts to saturate it's usefullness as any real communication tool.
MySpace -- C Last place again. Seems like a state fair game.
LinkedIn -- B+ Tied for first. LinkedIn doesn't get heavy until you're an experienced user.
Twitter -- B+ Tied for first. Simple means that Twitter is easy. (Unless you're following a crowd.)

Most effective lead generation

From Ken Krogue's Blog comes this, '17 Most Effective Lead Generation Methods' which is great.

I believe that the best methods are those that are most Effective, but least Popular.  So look for a low number on Effective, and a high number on Variance:

Lead Generation Method	Effective	Popular	Variance
Executive Seminars	1	8	7
Inside Sales	2	9	7
Search Marketing	3	6	3
Webinars	4	10	6
Tradeshows	5	3	-2
TV Advertising	6	17	11
Email	7	1	-6
Radio	8	15	7
PR	9	2	-7
Online video / podcasts/ rich media	10	12	2
Direct Mail	11	4	-7
Blogs	12	13	1
Sponsorships	13	7	-6
Online Ads	14	11	-3
Other Web 2.0	15	14	-1
Outdoor	16	16	0
Print	17	5	-12

Popular isn’t necessarily good, it just means everyone else is doing it (email for example is ranked 1st as most popular, but ranked 7th in actual effectiveness.)  Take especial note of the degree of variance and whether it is positive or negative.  High positive variance shows extreme effectiveness that is relatively unused or unknown by your competition.

Jazz Bet on Sendside Sales Acceleration

The Utah Jazz is the first NBA team to begin using Sendside for sales acceleration. Of course, they're not the only ones. We have a growing number of clients who are using Sendside of sales automation, strategic marketing and customer retention.

In addition to being an NBA franchise, the Jazz sales team have a lot of sales to make... an NBA team, a stadium, a race track, movie theaters, concerts and events... that's a lot of inventory to move and speeding up the sales cycle is the way to do it.

Sendside gives the sales reps, sales management and marketing, the ability to craft their messages and be notified when they're opened. For high-value sales prospects that gives you an amazing ability to follow up while your content is fresh in a prospects mind and they're thinking about you.

For my part I love having the Jazz on Sendside. In fact, I have a personal side bet with the Jazz management. If the Jazz sales team is able to meet a revenue goal that's directly attributable to Sendside (completely at the discretion of the Jazz managment), we'll get four corporate season tickets.

We're pretty sure that using Sendside the Jazz can beat that goal pretty easily so I'm looking forward to watching a lot of Jazz games from court-side next season.