Sales Tools

From Jill Konrath:

Update: Sales 2.0 Tools You Can Use

Posted: 30 Jul 2009 09:48 AM PDT

To be successful in selling today, you need to be using Sales 2.0* tools. In short, these productivity-enhancing technologies and processes help you speed up your sales cycle, quality leads, drive more profitable deals and reduce competition.

DISCLAIMER: These Sales 2.0 tools do NOT take the place of good selling skills. Instead, they enhance them. You need both to excel.

That being said, I've decided to keep you updated on the various Sales 2.0 tools you can use.

InsideView is one of my favorite tools because it alerts you when trigger events occur - enabling you to act quickly and get the first mover advantage. They minimize the need to spend hours online researching customers or prospects.

As of today, InsideView is now expanding their information-provider network to include: Thomson Reuters, Capital IQ (a Standard & Poor’s company), Cortera and NetProspex. This is in addition to recent alliances with Jigsaw, D&B, Hoovers, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and over 20,000 online news sources. This makes InsideView even more valuable for sellers.

GENIUS tools span both sales/marketing. They do email marketing, lead nurturing, lead scoring, website tracking, instant alerts, and closed-loop reporting capabilities.

As a seller, I've always loved how they give you the ability to track who clicked through on your email campaigns/messages. That way you know who's most interested and can take immediate action.

Genius has just come out GURLS, which are url shorteners that allow you to track prospect's interest on social media sites like Twitter. In their beta testing, they discovered that lead conversions they achieve through Twitter turn into qualified leads at a faster rate.

For more information, I recommend checking out:

• Genius is Bringing GURLS to the Social Party: Ardath Albee gives a great analysis of how the GURLS work and the impact on your business.

• Marketing Automation Meet Social Media: Genius CEO David Thomson talks about the GURLS and what they mean to you.

When these Sales 2.0 tools are coupled with excellent selling skills, you become unbeatable.

*Sales 2.0 is a registered trademark of Sales 2.0 LLC.

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