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By Josh Krist, Content Manager, SalesLobby.com
Two keynote speakers of the e-Sales Management Conference and Expo share their insights on the impact of technology on sales and marketing.
Historically, management techniques and technology sometimes impede each other, sometimes help each other, but always influence each other, hopefully for the better. Enter the e-Sales Management Conference and Expo this November 5-8, in San Francisco, Calif., offering to help managers bridge the gap between what is and what could be.
"We have gotten a very positive reaction from sales leaders. Most of them say that we are filling a niche in the market," said Robert Ricchi, Program Manager at Linkage, Inc. (www.linkageinc.com), the conference organizer.
"We have combined traditional sales force training topics -- coaching, leadership, hiring, retention, and compensation with New Economy topics of CRM, multi-channel management, partnering, and online knowledge management," he said.
Ricchi said that Linkage, a conference company based in Lexington, Mass., was going to put on a more traditional sales conference when after researching they realized that there was a need to show how technology can enable high sales achievement.
Martha Rogers, co-author of the influential “The One to One Future: Building Relationships One Customer at a Time,” and co-founder of the Peppers and Rogers Group (www.1to1.com), said that technology alone won’t help a company.
"Becoming a customer-focused organization is not just about buying new technology. You can buy a bunch of new technology, but if you use Industrial Age strategies, you won't see much of a jump in profits. It's the ability to use new technology with new strategies that's at the heart of gaining significant competitive advantage," she said.
The audience for e-Sales Management includes VPs, directors, and managers of sales; sales consultants and trainers; CRM and channel managers; and business developers.
"They will walk away with an action plan to enact change in their sales force, increase efficiency, embrace technology to aid sales, work with multi-channel systems, improve relationships with customers, all while improving the bottom line," promised Ricchi.
"Through all of the benefits of the program, they will learn how to maximize their sales performance in the New Economy," he said.
Rogers agrees that there’s a need for such knowledge.
"We must learn to think of the salesperson not as finding new customers for a
product, but as finding new products for a customer - which means increasing
the value of the customer,” she said.
“That calls for a brand new method of compensation. We need to learn how to measure the value of customer equity and customer retention - pretty radical stuff in most organizations," she said.
John Dillon, President and CEO of Salesforce.com (www.salesforce.com), said that he plans on telling the audience what they probably know all too well: “Sales force automation and CRM have just been too difficult in the past and we vendors have made it too difficult for the customers,” he said in a recent phone interview.
“Enterprise applications, like sales force applications and CRM, are going to be a business service delivered via the Internet. The days are numbered of buying this stuff and installing it. These applications should be as easy to use as your favorite Web site, and the Internet should make this possible,” he said.
Dillon said we’ve only seen the “tip of the iceberg,” in Web-based enterprise software.
“You have to provide the return on investment, and for small companies, the investment is even too great to consider. And even if you make the investment, the payback is questionable, because many of the implementations have failed,” he said.
“But, there’s a future, and I say it’ll be a good one.”
Besides Martha Rogers and John Dillon, keynote speakers include: Cisco Systems VP of Worldwide Channels Tom Mitchell, “In Search of Excellence” author Tom Peters, “Spin Selling” author and Sales Strategy Institute Chairman Neil Rackham, and Miller Heiman CEO Sam Reese. Visit www.esalesmanagement.net for more information.
Josh Krist is SalesLobby.com's content manager and has worked as a journalist in the United States, Israel, and France. Contact him at (480) 998-9644, or jkrist@alexandergroupinc.com.
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