Enterprise Selling- Not Just for the Salesperson Anymore

Great thinking from Sameer Patel on Saleforce.com acquisition of Radian6 and discussion of implications for Customer Experience Management (CEM).

Most relevant points/learning for me in the article that resonate with my own experience in selling enterprise solutions:

• Customers now come informed before they are ready to buy
• This is pushing a shift in marketing which requires involvement of entire organizations, not just sales/marketing (marketing fluff won’t cut it with these educated prospects).  Note: just because this is needed doesn’t necessarily mean that this is what the selling organizations are offering
•  This is in turn driving increased need for all parts of the organization (not just sales) to be listening and engaged in the discussion with customers- and where social networking tools can provide additional value
• The combination of Radian6/Salesforce.com provides an opportunity to begin to manage and mine these interactions, but it has a ways to do this before the vision is realized

One hole in the “stack” that Patel points out in the combined offering is the ability to generate leads.  He coyly suggests Marketo/Hubspot as solutions for this, but my question here is how effectively an application can do this.  In my view applications help manage the lead generation process, not execute it. If anyone has experience in the effectiveness of these tools or has come across resources which point to the success of these tools, I’d welcome your thoughts and input.

Link to the article here:

http://bit.ly/f9aSIT