Social Trust

We are seeing a fundamental shift in the interactions between buyers and sellers, and indeed between all commercial entities and their customers. Attitude and preference, as they relate to how a customer thinks about a business, are more likely to be informed by peer groups than by expensive commercials or company statements.

For any network to work effectively, it has to be built on trust.  Social networks in their current manifestation deliver benefit to the participant that is directly related to the associated trust currency, a wallet that is filled by value delivered in line with a promise made, where time is donated by the recipient in exchange for value received from the donor. Trust is earned in those micro-transactions and is fundamentally based on the transparency – perceived or real – of the social network engagement.  In the Social Universe, you can develop a personality where people learn who you are, what you stand for, and whether you are, in fact, as good as your word.

Honesty and integrity as propellants of commercial energy have not necessarily been the most comfortable bedfellows with the pursuit of profit and revenue – particularly since the turn of this millennium.  Madoff, Enron, Lehman, MCI, are names that send shivers down our collective spines.

I’d suggest that honesty and integrity are two of the least understood, and most undervalued, personal and business assets – particularly when it comes to the accelerated world of the Social Universe.  Social citizens of high influence can damage a business’s reputation by a single tweet.  More importantly however, ‘average’ citizens in the Social Universe can themselves influence large corporations when wielding the tool of social media.

When Social Consumers Go Viral

In September 2011, Bank of America announced a monthly $5 debit card fee.  This announcement was poorly timed as it came during Occupy Wall Street’s protests over the bank’s $45 billion bailout.  On October 1^st, 22 year old Molly Katchpole wrote a change.org petition against the fee, and Molly’s petition reached 300,000 signatures in six days. Bank of America reversed its decision.

When domain registrar GoDaddy.com stated it was supporting SOPA – the Stop Online Piracy Act, deemed by many to be damaging to the independence of the Internet – social media sites revolted.  Reddit user selfprodigy declared December 29^th 2012 “Transfer your domain day”.  Ben Huh, CEO of Cheezburger, tweeted “We will move our 1,000 domains off @godaddy unless you drop support of SOPA.  We love you guys. But #SOPA-IS-CANCER to the free web.” Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, tweeted that Wikipedia was also “proudly” leaving goDaddy. Users pledged to transfer 82,000 domain names to other providers.  GoDaddy reversed its position on SOPA.

When it became known that fashion house Armani and Versace were using sand-blasted denim treated with chemicals that were reputed to poison the lungs of 5,000 Turkish denim workers involved in the manufacture, there were hundreds of angry posts on Facebook, and 38,000 people signed an online petition against the Italian designer’s failure to boycott sand-blasted denim. Within a month Armani and Versace publicly condemned and banned sand-blasted denim from their lines.

A reputation for being honest or having high integrity is priceless. It brings trust and openness, deeper relationships and more productive engagement.  Trust is ‘truth over time’.  Trusted is earned. It is hard to win but easy to lose.  Social media is forcing transparency, authenticity and accountability. Corporations and big banks can no longer make business deals without the scrutiny of those it impacts; the Internet, the phenomenon of Wiki leaks and the social and political climate is forcing more disclosure.

Social Trust is Fundamentally Personal

If I asked you who you might consider as your primary trusted sources, you will probably think about your family, your friends, your colleagues at work, other people in your neighborhood or people in your social circle.   It is rare that the CEO of MegaCorp or the leader of your government will spring to mind as your primary trusted source.  When it comes to picking a provider of services for your home, you are more likely to ask a friend for a recommendation for a plumber than pick one blindly from the White Pages or Craig’s List.  If you are choosing a band to play at your ‘rock-chick’ daughter’s wedding, you might ask her friends what local bands she likes, or looks for a recommendation from others that you know to make sure that the band you book is more Metallica than Manilow.

From a purely pragmatic perspective, always being honest means you never have to remember what you said or come up with different versions of the truth for different audiences, exercising your corporate PR department in increasing tangled webs of spin and counter-spin. Beyond the counter-productive nature of inadequate transparency, the reality is that what you, as a business might broadcast in your public pronouncements, is of diminishing value, and it is worth considering whether, in isolation, such expenditure is wise at all.

Lasting business relationships between the seller and the buyer, like lasting personal relationships are built on a foundation of trust that for each of us is fundamentally personal.  While always important, trust as a determining factor of business transaction efficacy increases or decreases in amplitude at different phases of the business interaction. This is because risk transfers from seller to buyer before and after the sale.  To understand how this manifests in the Social Universe, and where social network interactions are more or less necessary or powerful, it is worth considering the phases of a commercial transaction, bearing in mind that at all times, trust is fundamentally personal.

I will discuss that in the next post

If Mobile is the needle, then Social is the thread.

Mobile makes information accessible anytime, anywhere, and can make information location sensitive.  But Social weaves all of the information together, and we each get to create our own tapestry – being curators of information from multiple and varied sources, engaging and allowing us to shape, create, and co-create information in our own voice, and, amplify the voices of others – all in a global community.

Remember, it is not that long ago that we were all chained to the desk locked down by the desktop computer. In 2000, wireless networking did not exist, and social network sites had yet to emerge.  For most people, information on the Internet was consumed, but not created.

Now as a new tapestry emerges, we get the opportunity to color our own patterns.  The confluence of mobile and social has changed the dynamics of time, location and information.  As we each move our own needle, we get the opportunity to weave personal and participatory shades with an immediate and synchronous rhythm.

And the rhythm is being amplified, causing waves that are being felt everywhere. Becoming increasingly social through their mobile devices, 24% of US adults look to the advice of their online virtual peers as they shop in the offline world, checking out product reviews on the Internet before they make a physical purchase. More than one in five post photos and videos from their phones and about a third engage in social network sites as they roam.

Social networks are the ties that bind us, and irrespective of race, income, or gender, two-thirds of us now use social networks, primarily to reach or communicate with friends, current and re-discovered, and stay in touch with family.

These behavioral developments started in the consumer world, but quickly transitioned to the business world. Remember, not all consumers are B2B buyers, but all B2B buyers are consumers.  All business people – including both sellers and buyers – are consumers, and the lessons they learn in ‘consumer-land’ shape their thinking and expectations in ‘business-land’.

Social Business / Social Enterprise

A social enterprise used to be an organization that applied commercial strategies to maximize improvements in human and environmental well-being, rather than maximizing profits for external shareholders. This term has been hijacked in recent times – the main culprit being Marc Benioff, CEO of salesforce.com, which is perhaps interesting, given his impressive philanthropic record – to refer to the application of social media, social network, and collaboration technologies to business systems, particularly in the cloud.

Before salesforce.com appropriated the term Social Enterprise, or released Chatter, our research team had investigated how we could make our Dealmaker application ‘social’. What would be the impact if Dealmaker ‘tweeted’ (privately to you) every time there was an important change in a sales opportunity?  That was the genesis of Dealmaker Pulse – back in late 2009.

We decided that Dealmaker Pulse should provide intelligent social networking for sales, with instant objective deal alerts, and allow sales people and leaders to benefit from keeping their ‘finger on the pulse’ of their selling organization and get instant knowledge of what is happening across their teams and deals.

Since then, with the development of Chatter, Jive, Yammer, and other social enterprise tools, sales people and leaders can now elect to follow opportunities, accounts and users, and their messages (or ‘pulses’ in our language) delivered in real time.

Above all, social should be collaborative, and our focus has since evolved to how we can use the intelligence of Dealmaker to inform the other social and CRM platforms with which we integrate.

Collaboration is important as it positions all parties on the same side of the table and helps to develop a trusting relationship.  Trust needs to be at the center of the Social Universe, and I will discuss that in the next post.

The inexorable rise of mobile device ownership is one of the most significant changes in the business landscape that any of us has witnessed in our lifetimes.  In most developed economies in the world, practically everyone has a cell phone, an increasing number of which are smartphones, and the rapid growth of tablet ownership, pioneered by Apple’s iPad, is the fastest market penetration of any device we have ever seen.

The Mobile Landscape

Unless mobile is a core element of the strategic plan of any business, the business will face severe challenges over the next few short years.  For business strategists, marketers, sellers and buyers alike, mobile is becoming the hub around which business revolves.  And within the mobile landscape, we are seeing pointers to an app-centric (native or web-app) smart device with a slick user interface and multi-touch gestures as the horizon to which we are all heading.

As I write this in early 2012, it is not unreasonable to ask whether Nokia or Research in Motion (the makers of Blackberry) will survive the hyper-competitive environment that has been thrust upon them by Apple and Google (Android) devices.  Formerly titans of the cell phone market, Nokia and RIM are struggling to match the ingenuity and velocity of their more inventive competitors.

Nokia, struggling to reinvent its smartphone business around Microsoft’s Windows software, had a loss of €929 million in the first quarter of 2012 as sales plunged 29 percent because of flagging demand for its older Symbian smartphones. The loss, equivalent to $1.2 billion, contrasts with a €344 million profit a year earlier. Sales fell to €7.4 billion in the quarter from €10.4 billion a year earlier. The Nokia president and chief executive, Stephen Elop, said Nokia would accelerate its cost-cutting efforts amid what he described as a mixed response to its new Lumia smartphones with Microsoft.

For Research in Motion, it is difficult to see how they will survive as a standalone entity.  RIM’s stock declined 75% in the twelve months to April 2012, and in the enterprise, its core market, it is losing market share at a very damaging rate.  While email, instant messaging, and the other network services RIM provides its customers remain extremely popular with users and respected as first-rate technology, the company has struggled mightily to keep its BlackBerry smartphone and PlayBook tablet products relevant in the face of increased competition from Apple and Google.

The other major casualty of the rise of Apple has been Adobe’s Flash. Flash is a multimedia platform produced by Adobe.  Flash has been the standard for adding video, interactivity, and animation to websites.  According to Adobe:

• 98% of enterprises rely on Flash Player.
• 85% of the most used sites use Flash.
• 75% of web video is viewed using Flash Player.
• 70% of web games are made in Flash.

But in 2010, Steve Jobs had the courage to question the applicability of the Flash technology going forward.  Jobs made waves and enemies when he banned Flash from use on all iOS devices.  iOS is the operating system from Apple.  Jobs was almost unanimously criticized by the industry.

After a largely public battle between Apple and Adobe, the latter capitulated in November 2011 announcing that Adobe is stopping development on Flash Player for browsers on mobile and increasing their investments in HTML5, Apple’s recommended platform.

When you combine all of these data points, you can derive your own picture of how the short-term mobile landscape will evolve.  If you accept my hypothesis that mobile is in fact one of the most significant changes in the business landscape that any of us has witnessed in our lifetime, then you should consider what that might look like in terms of required capabilities for your business and the mobile platforms that will dominate.

In our own business, we’ve committed to delivering our Dealmaker sales performance application solutions in a mobile world; and, it is possibly interesting to relate how our customers’ opinion changed during the lifecycle of our mobile project.

In late 2010 and early 2011, when we first discussed with our customers their need for an iPad enabled Dealmaker, the interest level was only moderate.  Our customers indicated that they would indeed be looking at it in the future – but that it was not generally a topic that was urgent.  We listened to our customers, but also listened to our gut instincts. We took a view that if we wanted to maintain our leadership in the sales performance application marketplace, that we should invest ahead of the (mobile) market demand, and trust our instincts.  So we ploughed ahead with the technology investment to deliver a HTML5 based web-app that would operate equally well in a web browser on a laptop as well as on iOS (from Apple) and Android (from Google) mobile platforms.

Dealmaker is a complex product with a broad range of capabilities that help sales organization to sell smarter – to win more sales opportunities – through intelligent sales process, automated deal coaching and collaboration tools, and to manage better – through accurate sales forecasts, predictive sales analytics and deep account planning and management methodologies embedded in the software.  We decided that if we were to deliver Dealmaker on a mobile platform, then should go “all in” and provide all of these capabilities in the hands of the mobile sales worker.  This was not an insignificant task.

When we first showed Dealmaker on an iPad at a customer event in November 2011, our customers were very impressed with the capability, but were singularly unimpressed or surprised by the fact that we had undertaken this initiative.  These were many of the same people who, just nine or twelve months earlier, had expressed just tepid interest in mobile solutions for their sales teams. It was a  lesson in product management and the need to balance customer input and market research with informed vision – and we were happy that we had made the right decision.  During 2011, mobile solutions, almost surreptitiously, became a baseline requirement – fueled by a ubiquity that caught many people by surprise.

The evolution of the mobile-centric economy

At the end of 2011 there were just over 327m mobile subscribers in the US.  That’s in a country of 315m people.  What are they doing with those devices, (apart from following Lady Gaga on Twitter)?

Well, for most of us, our mobile device has become an extension or part of who we are, plugged in, and always on, in an increasingly connected network.

In the first three months of 2012, Verizon Wireless, the largest cellphone services in the US, reported that fewer customers joined its service compared to the same period in 2011.  The predicament for carriers is that because most people who want a cellphone already have one, their subscriber growth has been anemic. That was the case for Verizon, which said it added 734,000 subscribers in the first quarter, 16 percent fewer than a year earlier.  However, Verizon still managed to post a profit of $1.7 billion for the quarter, largely because of the fees that customers pay to watch videos, browse the Web or play music over Verizon’s network on their smartphones and tablets. Revenues generated from mobile data services were $6.6 billion, up 21.1 percent.

According to estimates by Cisco, by 2016 there will be 10 billion mobile Internet devices in use globally in a world where the population is projected to be 7.3 billion.  In that same time-frame, smartphone traffic will grow to 50 times the size it is today, according to Cisco. To cope with this increasing demand, all the carriers say that they need more spectrum, the government-rationed radio waves that carry phone calls and wireless data.

As an example, in Verizon’s case, to get more radio waves, they made a deal in December 2011 to buy spectrum licenses from a consortium of cable companies including Time Warner, Comcast and Cox Communications, for $3.6 billion. (T-Mobile USA and Metro PCS, smaller wireless carriers, have urged the Federal Communications Commission to block the deal, claiming it would put too much spectrum in the hands of the nation’s largest carrier.)

And just in case we were unsure about mobile being the hub of future Internet traffic, Facebook paying $1 Billion dollars for Instagram is another data point to consider.  The three-day sprint to the deal started on April 5, 2012 when Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, picked up the phone and asked Kevin Systrom, CEO of Instagram to meet. At the time, Systrom was just hours from signing a deal for a $50 million venture-capital investment that would put a $500 million value on his company, which had just 13 employees and no revenue.

Instagram makes a smartphone “app” that lets people take photos, dress them up with special effects, and easily share them with friends. In the first three months of this year, its user base nearly doubled, to about 30 million, the company said at the time. After Instagram released a version of its app for phones powered by Google’s Android software on April 3, the user base shot up again, to around 35 million at the time of the Facebook deal.

Mark Zuckerberg was particularly concerned when he saw millions of people signing up for the Android app, people familiar with the matter said. One concern: Facebook was falling behind in mobile as younger start-ups were innovating more quickly.

Knowing your mobile customer

The market that we serve is business-to-business (B2B) sales organizations. The promise we make is that we can help our customers to increase revenue and gain more predictability in their business through our Dealmaker solution.  We believe the unique value we deliver is the result of combining two disciplines; (1) intelligent software applications and (2) deep sales methodologies. Innovation is at the core of our efforts and the Dealmaker intelligent software platform is the engine driving revenue growth for our customers.

To deliver on our promise, it is critical that we can view the market through the eyes of our customers – and in the context of mobile, we need to understand how our customers themselves can deploy mobile solutions, and how their customers are using mobile in their day-to-day interactions.

If you are a sales person, sales leader or business leader, then you should join me in seeking a deep understanding of how to make your sales person’s interactions with their customers more effective. How will she and her customer communicate, learn, and engage, both internally and externally?

The short answer is that the business world in which they operate is: always on, increasingly connected, and peppered by frequent interruptions.

Attention span is short.

Instant gratification carries a premium.  Information is plentiful, but effective analysis of that information is lacking.

Yesterday’s news is a valueless currency as we use our mobile devices to learn about business happenings, world events, and personal activities in a torrent of up-to-the-minute information flow.

- o – o -

A business thrives when it can influence its customers’ thinking in a positive way.  In order to do that, the business must first understand how the customer wants to interact, before the sales cycle, during the sales cycle and after the sale. To change the mind of the customer you first need to get inside it, and understand what is important to the specific profile of target buyer that you seek to influence.

According to Pew Research, smartphone usage in February 2012 is most prevalent among the 18-29 age group, 66% of whom own a smart phone, followed closely by the 30-49 age group (59%).  Other key indicators of smartphone usage are the level of household income where smartphone penetration is at 68% among the $75,000+ income group; 60% where users are college educated; and men (49%) slightly outpace women (44%) when it comes to smartphone adoption.

The accelerating pace of change

And as I mentioned earlier, the pace of change continues to accelerate. Looking just at the last ten years, we can observe the rate at which different technologies were adopted.

Starting with Apple’s iPod in 2002, it took nearly a year for Apple to reach the milestone of a million units shipped. RIM’s Blackberry actually outpaced the iPod in 2002 reaching that threshold in 300 days.  In a continuing move towards increased mobility, the world embraced netbooks in 2007 and bought one million units in just six months.  The time to achieve this level of penetration has continued to shorten and Apple’s iPhone took just 70 days in 2007.

When the iPad was released a whole new market opened up and in just one month, a million users were experiencing  new ways to consume information, browse the web and interact online.

The tablet phenomenon has outstripped everyone expectations. At this point in time (April 2012), 20% of all US adults own a tablet device. Propelled by an unparalleled user experience, increased bandwidth availability, and a drive for instant access everywhere, tablet ownership almost doubled between December 2011 and January 2012.

When the iPad 3, or New IPad as it was called, was released in March 2012, Apple shipped three million units in the launch weekend, making the time to reach a million less than one day!

The number of iPads now been sold by Apple is outstripping laptops sales from any of the traditional manufacturers.

Conclusion

As we reflect on how to equip our sales teams to interact with their increasingly mobile customers, we need to consider how they learn, how they use our business systems, collaborate, and communicate; all through the lens of a mobile worker.  Using an iPad (or other tablet) in a sales meeting changes the dynamic of the meeting. The psychological barrier that accompanies the traditional sales person presenting from behind the lid of a laptop goes away. Customers become involved and reach for the sales person’s iPad to run the presentation themselves, or, in a software demonstration, they often want to take control and see what happens as the swipe, tap and pinch.

Workers leave their iPad sitting around on their kitchen table, always on, always connected, a portal to their corporate information systems, their daily news sources, or their learning environment.  Skype or Facetime calls from iPads, iPhones or other similarly equipped devices puts video interactivity just a tap away, and new and more intimate communication norms are emerging.

As you develop your strategies for your sales force in 2012 and beyond, I’d encourage you to ask yourself if you’ve considered whether you’ve adequately factored in this unstoppable force.  Are all of your systems fully mobile-ware? Can new hires learn about your company, your products, your customers, and your target market from their mobile device?  How much have you thought about the shortening attention span of learners and users alike that accompanies the mobile mindset? When your managers seek to support and coach their direct reports, can they find the information they need on their mobile device, and collaborate with them in that mode?

Most new technologies go through two phases of adoption; the first is when we find new and better ways to do things that we already do, and the second – and definitely more exciting phase – is when we uncover things that we can now do that we could never do before.

Now is the time to Carpe Tabulam – seize the tablet.  (I’m sure the Latin scholars out there will correct any inaccuracies in my grammar.)

As ever, I’d welcome your comments.

[The next post in this series will explore the impact of Social Networks on selling.  If you want to be notified of new blog posts you can always subscribe at the top right of the blog here, or follow me on Twitter @dealmaker365]

The video has been edited to remove the Q&A and to make some of the slides easier to see. Click play to view the video. It runs about 25 minutes.

This is my first video blog, and I’d welcome any comments on the format, or comments or questions on the content.

As with many important strategic decisions, though, it becomes a question of degree.  To what degree should we enable our sales people to be on the grid when they’re mobile?  Where on the spectrum of mobile phone (low mobility) through to complete mobile replication of their office situation (high mobility) makes most sense for our business and our budgeted investment?

I offer below 6 reasons for why you should embed automated intelligence into the mobilization of your sales force.  I have taken content from our free White Paper called Intelligent Automation for Sales Mobility, which you can download here.

Productivity. Simply put, allowing your remote sales people to perform the same processing and computing tasks on the road as they do from their office helps them work smarter

Consistency. If integrating methodology and process into CRM increases adoption of best practices, then integrating into mobile CRM must do too

Responsiveness. Being able to respond quickly and authoritatively is important, and if you can do that while mobile, perhaps in front of your customer, then all the better

Collaboration. The greater the degree of interaction with your customers during meetings, the more value you both get out of their (and your) precious time

Access. If you can demonstrate your product or service to your customer on your tablet or smartphone, you also demonstrate that they can use your product service on their mobile device too

Profitability. The fully engaged, fully connected sales person greatly increases their sales velocity while reducing the cost of acquisition

We learned a lot of this when we focused on mobile as part of the recent release of Dealmaker on the iPad.  If your business is the business of involved B2B sales, then you too should consider giving your sales people the same opportunity to interact with the grid when moving as they enjoy when they’re stationary.

I started my presentation with a perspective on the current landscape and the environment in which we all seek to survive and thrive.

– o – o – o – o – o –

Do you ever have one of those days when you get up and hope that just for one day nothing changes?  Sometimes it feels as if we are barely hanging on, buffeted by a torrent of innovation and evolution.  But maybe today will be the day when you won’t have to adjust or adapt, reorganize or rework …

But, I don’t think so.

Things are happening more quickly than ever.  In the next 30 minutes;

• 700,000 apps will be downloaded from the AppStore,
• Users will spend 146 days on Facebook – yes, in the next 30 minutes – think about that, and
• 21,000 new Twitter accounts will be created

“But wait”, I hear you say, I’m concerned about B2B sales – should I care that Lady Gaga has 20 million followers on Twitter? (That’s about one person for every 20 people in the US, or one for every 400 in the world.)

I think we can learn from this – not just from the fact that Lady Gaga has 20 million Twitter followers – but the overall metamorphosis of human interaction that we are witnessing first hand. Because, if we observe carefully, we will see that consumers are often the first to travel the journey that businesses subsequently follow.

Consumer Behavior is a Predictor of Business Behavior

Consider the changes you’ve seen in business over the past 10 years – particularly when it comes to technology – and you will notice that consumer behavior is always a good indicator of what will happen in the business world.  Trends that you see in B2C interactions are usually followed by similar engagement in the B2B world.

As an example: Consumers were the first players in the App Economy, downloading applications from Apple’s  AppStore, only to be followed by businesses that are now both distributing and consuming applications in this self-service model.

In the software world, online application stores from new-economy players such as the AppExchange from salesforce.com, and Google’s Marketplace, now sit alongside offerings from the traditional software companies.  SAP provides the Ecohub that it describes as ‘the community-powered online solution marketplace that is your trusted source for discovering, evaluating, and buying solutions from SAP’.  Microsoft – who for a long time might have been accused of fighting the subscription economy – now has it’s own Marketplace where, as of March 2012, provided 70,000 apps, and looking to one of its main business application areas, Microsoft has made considerable investments in the Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace where it serves up ERP and CRM solutions.

HP and Oracle also jumped on the appstore bandwagon, both unveiling platforms (in late 2011) designed to help others get their own app store initiatives underway.  HP’s Storefront Portal offers a framework capable of enabling two-sided business models: wholesale and retail.  Oracle announced its own Digital Store platform, designed to help service providers manage the complete content lifecycle, spanning content submission, test and approval and storefront management of their app stores.

In April 2012, Amazon.com’s Amazon Web Services business, facing looming competition for its business of renting online data storage and computing, announced a store where customers will be able to rent business software from a number of third-party providers, including I.B.M., Microsoft and SAP. The offering appears to be something of a blend of the software as a service, or SaaS, business of companies like Salesforce.com and NetSuite, and the mobile app stores popularized by Apple and Google. Like SaaS, customers are renting their software, and can easily discontinue use in favor of another vendor, something much more difficult using traditional packaged software. And like an app store, the AWS Marketplace has several vendors, plus a means of discovery and comparison among products.

Think about this: Not all consumers are B2B buyers, but all B2B buyers are consumers. As if by osmosis, people are conditioned to new ways of thinking by the interactions they have as consumers, and begin to expect similar capability or convenience in their business connections and interplays. And it happens without any one noticing; incremental changes in behavior and expectation, satisfaction and dissatisfaction.

The fact remains that all business people – including both sellers and buyers – are consumers, and the lessons they learn in ‘consumer-land’ shape their thinking and expectations in “business-land’.

Consumers, salespeople and B2B buyers are changing, and not just in a small way. It’s almost as if we are seeing a remodeling or metamorphosis of the rules of both intrinsic and extrinsic behaviors before our eyes.  If we take the time to step back for a minute we can observe continuous evolution.  It is evident in how people connect, communicate, and collaborate, their quest for visible progress and feedback, their limited attention span, changing personal motivations, unusually peripatetic career paths, a desire for increased autonomy and self-mastery, actions more redolent of entrepreneurialism than traditional workplace obedience, a preference for where and how they work, an expectation or demand for an array of tools to apply, an acceptance of disruption and interruption, and a predilection to disrupt and interrupt.

If you’re hoping that today will be the day it doesn’t change, then I expect you are out of luck, and the best you could hope for is that the rate at which change is happening will find cause for pause, and you might get a chance to catch your breath.

On the other hand, you could choose to embrace the change, and be part of it, seeking new ways to do the tasks that are perhaps mundane or not operating optimally, and then – and here is the exciting part – you might find that there are new opportunities emerging that you never thought possible.

The post talks about the frustration that a sales person may experience when the Economic Buyer – a truly outdated concept, in my opinion – supports the sales person’s solution but can’t proceed because his team wants to go in a different direction.  The post goes on to suggest a framework to “put the power of the decision into the hands of the leader.”

This is dangerous advice.

The world where ‘top down’ decisions rule has changed, and rightly so. Finally, there is a recognition (among the enlightened) that unless any initiative has the support of those who will implement the initiative and be most impacted – then the initiative will fail.  There is great research from the Sales Executive Council that not only supports this, but also recommends that consensus driven selling is far more effective that the archaic relationship-based top-down approach. This advice is based on deep research – not just opinion.

But ‘putting the power of the decision into the hands of the leader’ is not the worst part of this blog post – not by a long way.

The proposed framework in the post suggests an evaluation platform to ‘create some structure’ and provides some examples:

1. They have a good understanding of our business
2. They have experience in our industry
3. They have a successful track record with their solutions
4. 4. Their solution is non-disruptive (the highlighting is mine)
5. They listen well and tailored the solution to our requirements
6. They have the expertise to provide a lot of additional value

What on earth is number 4 doing here? The rest are fine, but are way too generic to have any deep value.  These are basic table steaks. But number 4 is a stick out – and suggests to me that the writer of the post must be deeply concerned about disruptive solutions disrupting his own business, and is running scared, while trying to ‘keep things the way they always were’.

There is a long list of companies who have brought disruptive solutions to the market and have delivered benefit to the customer that is orders of magnitude greater than the traditional worn-out approaches.  If the old way worked, there would be no need or opportunity for the disruption.

Examples: Salesforce.com, Google, RIM, Wikipedia, Expedia, Workday, Successfactors, Southwest Airlines, Uber, and, of course, Apple. Each of these delivered more value to the customer than the traditional approach they replaced – precisely because they were disruptive. And, the opportunity was there to exploit because the traditional approach was worn-out or flawed.

But when you think about the business of the sales trainer who posited the value of non-disruption, the crime runs even deeper.

I have long argued that sales training, as an event, is a waste of money.  For any sales effectiveness initiative to be successful, it has to disrupt the status-quo.  You should be looking to change how you do business.  Event based sales training without a focus on behavior change and disruption to the status quo, and a mechanism to support such activity, is fruitless, and unfortunately has been the norm in the industry for a very long time.  This alone could explain why 87% of the investment is wasted. Yes, it is true. On average 87% of the recipients of sales training no longer practice what they learned just 30 days after the sales training event.

Now, I am entirely biased.  When I first got involved with this industry I came from the wonderfully unencumbered position of total ignorance.  I did not have the shackles of ‘how it was always done’.  So, we had the freedom to design a new way, one that would disrupt the traditional approach to deliver long-term sustainable value to the customer – and that was the genesis of the idea that delivered Dealmaker.

I’m glad to say that our disruptive approach works.  According to Aberdeen, our customers achieve 21% greater quota attainment than all others.  But that is an example of the value of well-crafted disruption.  Investments in sales training without disruption to the status quo are entirely without merit – and so it is with most business initiatives.

You must embrace change to change.  It is as simple as that.

Now, should I call out the CEO and ask him to respond – or let him continue to advise young sales people that disruption is bad? What do you think?

The company in the case study I used achieved a dramatic revenue improvement (194%) by working the four levers that impact sales velocity. Also, because they planned, measured, and automated everything along the way, the system they used automatically produced an uncommonly accurate sales forecast.

I’ve written before about the value of sales process and the problems with sales forecasts, but I’ve never written about the issue raised by one of the members of the audience at my session.

Commit / Upside / Pipeline: The ‘Commit Theory’ of sales forecasting is as old as the hills and about as useful as an astray on a motorbike.  The theory goes that at the start of a quarter (or at some other arbitrary point within the quarter) the sales person ‘commits’ a certain deal to the sales forecast.  He is guaranteeing that the deal is going to close in the quarter.  In its worst manifestation, this commitment is an unbreakable contract between the sales person and his or her manager that this deal will close.  The theory is that the resultant pressure is enough to ensure that the sales person will get the deal.

Now, I’m all for holding people accountable, but there is so much wrong with the Commit Theory approach that, unfettered, it is dangerous. It can be the enemy of good sales practice, alienate good sales people and damage customer relationships.

Some words I could use as synonyms for ‘commitment’ are: promise, pledge, oath, contract, pact, deal, decision, and resolution.  Nowhere in here is there a reference to a plan, a process, or any measure of confidence in the ability of an individual to deliver on the commitment.

Making a commitment, without knowing how you can deliver on the commitment, is counterproductive. Expectations are misaligned and subsequent actions that are taken – based on the commitment – are built on a flawed foundation.

Here’s an analogy – and a true story.

I remember about a year ago driving in the southwest of Ireland.  I was due to pick up a colleague at Shannon airport at 11am. I had committed that I would be there when the flight landed.

It was 9:00am when I set out on my journey.  I had spent the weekend with friends in Waterville in Kerry beside one of the greatest golf courses in the world. Having not taken the route from Waterville to Shannon before, I decided I might need help from my GPS system.  Imagine my horror when I learned that the expected journey time was 2 hours and 45 minutes.  That had me arriving at the airport at 11:45am.  I had made a commitment to be there at 11:00am.  I was going to be a full 45 minutes late.  I’m not averse to occasionally driving a little over the speed limit. But in this case I would have to do some pretty unnatural things to make up that 45 minutes.  We are not talking multi-lane highway here. If I tried to deliver on my commitment I would likely end up stuck in a ditch or doing some real damage. The reality was – there was nothing I could really do about it.

The GPS system knew each step of the journey.  It knew that to get to Shannon, I had to go to Cahirciveen, then take the beautiful (and winding) coast road to Killorglin before I drove to the market town of Castleisland, on to Limerick before completing the final stage to Shannon.  You see, the GPS had the data.  It knew how long each stage of the trip would take.  It had a map, the sequence of twist and turns, and an approximate measure of the speed at which I should expect to progress through each stage.

All I had was a flight arriving at 11:00am and a commitment I had made.

Of course I should have planned better.  I could have consulted my GPS the day before.  Certainly, before I made the commitment, I should have had some basis for confidence that I could make it on time.

And so it is with sales forecasts.  Opportunities close when the customer is ready – emotionally, intellectually, and commercially – to sign the deal.  That only happens when you and your customer are aligned on the final destination, the journey to get there, and each of the checkpoints along the way.

A promise you can’t keep is worse than no promise.  A promise with a plan to deliver has value.

That is why I have a problem with commitment.

But it is time to get back to the blog.

The big news in the mobile market in March was the launch of the new iPad. Notwithstanding the fact Apple’s new tablet is a bit lacking in the nomenclature department – I wish they had called it the iPad SJ, as was rumored – the iPad is the dominant tablet in the enterprise, boasting a 96% share of this important market, and smart mobile devices are beginning to outsell laptops. In Tim Cook’s words, we are in a post-pc era.

I’ve been using an iPad pretty extensively since the first one came out.  But in anticipation of our new iPad version of Dealmaker, I made a concerted effort to shut down the laptop and use the iPad as frequently as I could.  I used it to navigate and update Dealmaker, use our CRM, read and compose email, browse the web, write some blog posts, manage my calendar, and read books.

The iPad is extremely easy to use, and I needed to return to the laptop rarely. But as with all new ways of working, there are tips and tricks, or better ways to do a task, and there are new tasks that you can do that you would not have thought of before.  You can only learn these things over time.

Here are some of the lessons I have learned, and would suggest you might consider if you are using your iPad with a customer to demo a product, run a presentation, or just show some documents.

1. Keep It Clean: All those taps, swipes and pinches with greasy fingers smear your screen. It’s not hard to keep the iPad clean. A dirty screen shows the customer that you don’t really care too much about what they think.

2. Keep Work & Play Separate: Nearly everyone I know who uses an iPad for business will also use it for pleasure. In many cases the ‘work iPad’ is shared as the ‘family iPad’ and apps like Angry Birds, Cut the Rope, Scrabble and Monopoly inevitably appear on the iPad.  Accepting this reality, you need to separate the work apps from the home apps.  I’d recommend having the serious work apps on one or more screens and the home or fun apps on separate screens.

3. Lock the Screen Orientation: In most cases in a presentation you will want to display the screen in either portrait or landscape mode. It is distracting if your iPad keeps rotating the screen orientation as you move it around. Pick the orientation you need and use the screen lock to keep it in place.  (This is usually accomplished by flicking the switch on the top-right beside the volume buttons.

4. Open Multiple Apps: If you want to show your customer content from more than one app, you should open the apps before you start your meeting.  Press the Home button twice and you can access the apps that are open and easily switch back and forth between them.  You should of course shut down any apps that you don’t plan to use in the meeting.

5. Using Safari: If you’re planning on displaying content from the web, you will almost certainly use Safari to access it.  (There are other browsers available from the AppStore.)  Safari’s default behavior is to keep multiple tabs open at any time and you can use that to navigate multiple websites quickly if you set it up beforehand. You should also make sure that you close any sites that are not part of what you want to show.

6. Content on the iPad: The easiest way to get content on your iPad is to email it to yourself.  Be prepared for some problems if the incoming document is Word, PowerPoint or Excel.  Even if you have installed Pages, Keynote and Numbers (the Apple Apps) on your iPad it is likely that when opening the document on the iPad you will see some font, layout, or graphic problems.  The simple answer if to create a PDF of the doc and email it to yourself.  In my experience this has always resulted in faithful reproduction.  Then you can open the PDF and store it in iBooks where you can build up a library of material.  (I am now using Keynote on both my laptop and iPad – but this PDF path was definitely the quick and easy way to get started.)

7. Don’t Pinch Too Hard: Because the iPad is really good at panning and zooming, and pinching and stretching, it can be tempting to do too much movement during your presentation.  Keep movement to a minimum to minimize the distraction.

8. Turn Off Notifications: When presenting on your laptop you don’t want your emails or Skype messages popping up on screen. It is the same with the iPad.  Make sure you have switched off any notifications that might appear on screen.

9. Passcode Lock: Keep it secure. Because it is so mobile, you are more likely to lose your iPad than your laptop. You will leave it in a restaurant, or misplace it under a stack of papers, or it might be stolen. If that happens you will at least want to know that your information is secure.  In Settings, turn on Passcode Lock and create a four-digit code.

10. Get the VGA Adaptor: If you want more than a couple of people to be able to see what is on your iPad you will need to connect to an external display device. To do so, you will need to get an appropriate adapter.  I use the $29 Apple VGA Adapter which plugs into the iPad on one end and the projector on the other.  It has worked well for me so far.  There are other options you can use like the $39 Apple Digital AV Adapter (for displays with HDMI inputs) – but the VGA adapter has done the job each time for me so far.

11. WiFi or Cellular: Wi-Fi is often faster than a cellular data network – but not always. If you need to be online during the meeting prepare before your meeting to determine which you are going to use. WiFi is usually preferable.  It is typically faster, and when you are connected to it you are not eating up all your data plan capacity.

12. Webinars: This is a problem area for me. I’ve tried Webex, GotoMeeting and Adobe Connect on my iPad and they each allow me to join a meeting as a participant.  I’ve not yet found a way to use my iPad in presenter mode on a webinar.  I’d love someone to tell me if they have found one.  (I’m not talking about the professional quality AV hardware solutions that I have seen available, but rather something that your average mobile worker can use.)

13. Buy Some Apps to Create: If you want to really get comfortable with the iPad, then you’re going to need to start creating some documents on it.  Purchase Pages, Keynote or Numbers and start using them. These are relatively cheap at $9.99 each. If you have a Mac you can also buy these apps on your Mac at $79 for the three – bundled together as iWork.  Alternatively you could purchase iMovie ($4.99) or iPhoto ($4.99) and unleash your creative side.  These two apps were released on March 7, 2012 with the launch of the new iPad, and they are truly fantastic.

The iPad is a joy to work with and hopefully there is something here that might be helpful to you.  I’d love to hear any thoughts or tips you have.

Now, if only someone could help with the webinar problem …

I liked very much what Dave had to say, and with his permission I have included his thoughts here. The comments in [italics] are my additions.

In Dave’s words …

• I use LinkedIn to help clients with blind reference checking of candidates for sales and sales executive positions.  Recently a client took my advice by looking at who I was connected to that might, in turn, be connected to a VP of Sales candidate they were getting close to hiring.  Bingo.  I was able to introduce the CEO with a number of close contacts who generously spent a lot of time with my client. The candidate never knew the conversations took place.  He was hired last week.? [It is always very important to check references, and LinkedIn is great place to select references you might want to check, other than those offered by the candidate.]
• I always look someone up on LinkedIn before speaking with them the first time, or after not speaking with them after a long time. Amazing how things change for people. New company, new position, new contacts. Conversations are so much more productive when you get a fix on the other person’s perspective.?[I’d suggest that to really get inside someone’s head, Twitter is a better place to get a feeling for who someone is.  LinkedIn tends to be less spontaneous, and consequently provides less insight.]
• When someone I know contacts me to network their way into a new position, I’ll often suggest they look through my connections.  I’m generally willing to make introductions, although recommending them is out of the question for me if I haven’t worked with them directly.  The book makes another point. Don’t wait to start networking when you’re looking for a job.  Take the time to build a network based on mutual value before that need arises. I completely agree with that.
• I cull my connections regularly.  I’m not a collector of connections on LinkedIn.  In fact I think those that are miss the point of real networking. I believe it’s the quality of the relationships that determine how networked you are, not the number of names you can collect.  For that reason I don’t accept connections from those whom I don’t know, have not been recommended to me, or with whom I don’t have something in common.  I (almost always) send a reply which explains my position, assuring them that my unwillingness to connect with them isn’t personal. I expect some get offended anyway, or think I’m odd.?[I couldn’t agree more – it’s about connections, not contacts.  If those who you link with have a massive network, but you are not really connected to them, then it dilutes the value of your network, as they keep popping up as the link, and that sometimes gets in the way of people who you really now, and who might really help.]
• I feel the system is being abused when someone wants to connect with me, but can’t take one minute to overwrite the ubiquitous, “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.” Take a minute and tell me what I can do for you, or even better, what you can do for me, or even better than that, what we both can do for someone else. ?[LinkedIn’s recent practice of continuously suggesting new people to connect with is partly to blame for this I think, but if someone does not write a personal message, then I’m with Dave here.]
• Salespeople who are not looking for a job should construct their LinkedIn profiles centered on the value they have delivered for their customers through each of the positions they have held. [I think there is an opportunity to provide a quick overview of the value your current company provides, or how you can provide value to customers based on your current company's offerings.] Those who are looking for a job should stress sales performance.
• I’m not big on recommendations. I have a few that are important to me, but I don’t publish others. I think they are, for many, part of a profile-expanding quid pro quo approach. In those cases, I don’t even read the recommendations.?[It is amusing sometimes when Fred recommends Jane, and Jane recommends Fred – but I don't know who Fred and Jane think they are kidding.  Seriously though, recommendations are typically solicited, and are not reviews, but compliments that are asked for, and as such have little value.]
• I’m a little miffed at LinkedIn.  There is no iPad app. I don’t keep up with iPad app development news. I wonder when the iPad app will happen.  Anyone know??[I found this LinkedIn iPad app.  Can’t comment on it though, I’ve not used it.]
• I’ve used both LinkedIn ads and job postings. The job posting facility worked very well when ESR was searching for another analyst last year.? [I’ve used LinkedIn for job postings regularly as we have found some great candidates that way. However, you do have to trawl through a lot of chaff.]
• The groups and discussions are all over the map.  Some groups are tightly controlled.  That’s good. Others are like the wild West.  If I want to get updates on new discussions from some groups, I get barraged with spam. If I turn off the notices, I’ll surely miss that occasional important discussion I need to know about.  With all that said, I spend some time each week commenting on others’ posts.?[Much of the activity on groups seems to be consultants selling to consultants, or vendors promoting their wares.  Occasionally though you can find good groups that are tightly controlled and conversations are more meaningful.]
• By all means, have someone read through your profile. I have a problem with professional profiles that contain very noticeable grammatical errors and misspellings.  I’ve seen some profiles where the names of companies have been misspelled by those that worked there.
• I don’t quite get it when people don’t include a photo in their profile.  Do they know how to import one?  Do they have a photo?  Do they care?
• Finally, if you’re going to ask me for a favor, please don’t include me on a Linked in (or any other) distribution list. Especially don’t begin the mass email with, “Since you are someone I trust and respect…”

Beyond Dave’s excellent points, there are few questions I’d ask …

1. Should you always try to connect on LinkedIn with new prospects?  If your competitors are watching you, you might need to be careful.
2. Should companies enforce a standard description of the company for all of their employees, or is LinkedIn more personal?
3. Is there an optimum number of connections you should have on LinkedIn?  Can you really have ‘connections’ with 5000 people?

As ever, I’d welcome your thoughts and comments.