By Suaad Sait December 16, 2010

The most important aspect in sales used to be lead generation, which meant identifying and connecting your prospective customers by any means necessary.

Thankfully, the tools and technologies of today’s “sales 2.0” environment have largely alleviated the most burdensome and inefficient methods of casting the lead gen net, killing the cold call (thank goodness) and allowing sales professionals to effectively target the most promising new customers through better information and communication.

Information empowers, cuts inefficiency, and increases the relevancy of sales professionals’ efforts, likewise increasing their effectiveness and the company’s customer base.

The growth of technologies to enable marketing to do a better job of lead generation has enabled a better top of the funnel effect for both inbound and outbound marketing.  We need to apply that same level of innovation and information empowerment to the rest of the sales funnel and its various touchpoints, increasing communication and awareness across the company to help close deals and share relevant information. In the same way we have increased precision and relevance for lead generation, we now need to foster the necessary analytical and coordination culture to secure the follow-through and victory.

What does that mean?

It means giving everyone in your organization the information to understand and help by enabling them to proactively listen to the target prospect, customer or partner.

Such is a shift in understanding to recognize that within the company, sales is a team sport.  It used to be that marketers brought volume to the top, sales vetted and sold through to TQL’s, and management came in for a bit of superhero work at the very end (a combo of POC and glad-handing).

Today, as a prospective customer begins to move through the sales channels and further down the funnel, a wide variety departments and roles beyond the sales force necessarily need to be aware of the acquisition. This is not only because they may have valuable insights and potential relationship networks to help close the deal, hedge any potential conflicts or identify possible synergies within the company’s activities, but also simply to better serve the customer, whose needs and expectations have themselves changed.

Sales, of course, doesn’t end with lead gen identification, or even the acquisition of the new customer, but is rather a continuous effort to best serve.

“Sales” is now a core competency across any organization, no matter the department.

At workstreamer we believe that all business professionals need a holistic view into the companies with which they interact, because all functions – whether that’s marketing,sales, bizdev or customer service – now permeate across traditional lines.

Is Sales a team sport in your company?  If so, we’d love to hear how you are teaming up to WIN!

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 16th, 2010 at 12:12 pm and is filed under business listening, sales intelligence, social business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.