As mobile search overtakes desktop, is personality becoming irrelevant for the enterprise salesperson?

iphone-377887Enterprise salespeople have talked for many years about the critical points in their customer’s buying process. For most it incorporates some combination of the following: the initial realization that a problem exists, the scoping of the challenge, the search for an internal budget champion, the visualization of a solution, the long-listing of possible solutions, the early outreach to potential suppliers, their shortlisting, the internal proof-of-concept, the cost/benefit analysis, the final bake-off, the deal negotiation, and finally the sign-off.

When large sections of this process moved online a decade or more ago, many aspects changed. The timescales, the increasing number of long-listed suppliers, the lack of face-to-face time allowed for the salespeople, the fact that sales were only aware of the prospect’s interest far later in the process, etc. For ten years the majority of salespeople have struggled to adopt to this new way of working. And now the goalposts have moved again.

As online search has increasingly moved from desktop to mobile, so the buying process too has changed. Search results appear very differently on a mobile – the attention span is shorter, the search terms briefer, the convenience and immediacy more important. Online contextual text chat more relevant. Relevance and Immediacy have become watchwords. The right content, personalized, in real-time. The skills required of a salesperson are changing again.

I have a friend who’s worked as an enterprise salesperson for many years. She’s very hard-working, diligent, very engaging personality and always willing to travel. She says her skills are less valued than they once were – what’s the point of a great personality when your opportunities to display it are so reduced? When early-stage decisions have already been made on a mobile screen, only those shortlisted suppliers are now even getting to introduce themselves to the prospect. By then, impressions have already been cast – and that’s not ideal for any salesperson.

What vendors are now looking for are banks of prospect analysts, those who can watch a series of online queries and predict, then instantly supply, the information most likely to be of direct help to that enquiry. Sometimes its a real-world conversation, sometimes a relevant case study, sometimes a competitor comparison and at other times a business RoI argument. Offering the wrong option can kill the opportunity – with little hope of getting it back because you don’t know who’s doing the asking.

Mobile is certainly changing what triggers interest (and disinterest) among would-be buyers. And I think the salesperson will increasingly struggle to find a satisfying role.

Proof of the power of Peer Reviews. Some “used as blackmail”.

Buyer side Journey, Peer Reviews, Influencer Marketing, Influencer50

Fascinating news story on the BBC site about just how influential Peer Review sites can be. Plenty of ethical issues brought up by the counter-arguments in this. Should those being reviewed have the right to equal visibility replies? Should reviews with clear factual mistakes be removed? Should review sites be able to choose not to publish extreme reviews?

According to the BBC article, written by Kevin Peachey, “Businesses are ambushing rivals with fake reviews and customers are using the threat of online criticism to win discounts, research has found.

Allegations have been made of people “blackmailing” firms with poor reviews to get money off, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said.

Review sites may leave negative commentary unpublished to allow firms to resolve complaints, the CMA added.

Consumers could be unaware that some endorsements in blogs were paid for.”

For the full story, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33184207

 

Influencer50 launches new ‘exec benchmarking’ subscription service

ProgramBadges.Benchmarking

We just issued a new service allowing clients to benchmark the influence of their own execs against those of their top competitors – something we’ve been doing informally for a while now. Here’s the official announcement.

Influencer50 has launched a new subscription service by which companies can have their chosen executives benchmarked for influence against each other, or against execs from competing companies. Our new Executive Benchmarking service is based on our award-winning offline, online and social influencer methodology.

Influencer50’s approach to Influencer Identification differs from those of other ‘influencer’ companies in our focus on real-world prospect & customer influencers rather than the currently trendy ‘blogger influencers’.

Each executive is rated on seven fixed criteria – Market Reach, Frequency of Impact, Expertise, Persuasiveness, Thoroughness of (Customer) Involvement, Peer Group Citations and Online Connectedness. Each of these criteria is applied with their ‘customer influence’ potential in mind. Clients are also able to select one additional measurement criteria.

The objective is to analyze which individuals yield the most influence within the client’s marketplace, and better understand how this influence is both established and maintained. Clients are then provided with custom advice on how they can systematically improve on their influence. No criteria can be ‘gamed’ by over-eager executives or their support staff.

A single subscription spans eighteen months and allows for three separate influence reports allowing subscribers to monitor the changing trends in influence exerted by their execs. Pricing for an eighteen month subscription (one immediate reading, a second at nine months and a final report at eighteen months) is $9490 for up to five execs. or just $4990 for up to two execs. Each report includes a detailed analysis of why each executive rated as they did – and, importantly, how to improve their influence. (Pricing for higher number of execs, or for longer durations, is also available.)

“Time and time again our clients have been as interested in how their own execs fare for influence as they are in who their company’s external market influencers are. Whether for performance measurement, recruitment or marketing purposes, an executive’s personal influence has become a vital factor in how one organization can out-compete its rivals. It makes sense that we now introduce this as an affordable, stand-alone subscription service.” explains Nick Hayes, Principal at Influencer50 Inc.

Influencer50 is a leading influencer identification, engagement and measurement firm operating in the B2B and B2C marketplaces. With offices in San Francisco, London and Sydney we have conducted influencer programs in over 40 countries across four continents.

For more information go to influencer50.com/benchmarking