Are Software Sales Slow, or Is That a Tar Pit You’re Standing In?

My circle of professional friends is made up of 40 – 50 something’s, divided between the Route 128 beltway here in Boston, and Silicon Valley just outside of San Francisco. 

For the most part, we're all selling software to some of the largest companies in the world. Still in it for the passion of making a small “bit” of code known throughout the universe – or at least on Wall Street.

In his book “The World is Flat”, Thomas Friedman addressed our generation and the various projects which we worked on throughout the 80’s and 90’s – he referred to the events as “flatteners”. 

I don’t suppose we were consciously competent of it at the time, but in retrospect, wow, we did some huge deals, delivered ground breaking go-to-market programs, and launched products that literally change the world and our lives – virtually overnight.

I remember my good friend Michael Werner flying in from Redmond; he was coming to Boston to kickoff Microsoft’s first ever worldwide virtual user conference for a small project which he and his team created – they were building a network of programmers and thinking of naming it: “The Microsoft Developer Network” or MSDN -- a channel strategy to seed the world’s coding rock stars with Microsoft Visual Studio platform, hoping to displace Sun, IBM and all others.

I remember him telling me about Bill's latest "vision" on our snowy drive into Boston; of course, being the prophet that I am, I simply replied “…good luck with that one”.

The point I'm making is that in the 90’s, we laid the framework for online, real time communications, globally. We were working for tiny start-ups selling billions and billions of dollars of technology infrastructure and software to the largest companies in the world. It was intense.

I would spend hours in conversations with C-level execs at these companies, looking to gain a leg up on their competition by leveraging innovation.  Given the scale of these solutions, cost, budget allocation, complexity, and political risk; the Sales pros had to be there, on site -- relationships were the difference between winning and losing. 

The outside sales organization was not just a component of the business, in many cases it WAS the business. All of the momentum, all of the demand, all the incredible competition -- it was so crazy that many of us didn’t see the end coming, until, well, the end. 

Fast forward 25 years later and things necessarily have changed. Its a Sales 2.0 world. Yet, there still remain hangers-on: High Tech CEO’s, VP’s of Marketing, Sales Managers, and dare I say, Board Members who refuse, for whatever reason, not to see the hieroglyphics on the wall. Who even today, cling to that cost heavy, inefficient and ineffective “Outside Sales Model”.

I am not suggesting that the need to build relationships with clients is gone; that definitely is not the case. Never will this perish (and if so, I hope I’m out of here when it does – because, that is a lost art; a blog post for another time, and something drastically lacking in all of this Sales 2.0 hipness).

What I am saying, however, is that the frequency, and need of the “schmooze” has greatly diminished, and gone with it, is the requirement for the armies that once ruled the road with nothing but Buicks, massive cell phones, and enormous expense.

Certainly some of the old school prospects still look forward to a big steak, but as decision makers of this past generation retire, they will be replaced by “Gen Y” buyers (Customer 2.0), who will just as easily do a deal via their iPhone and Skype, instead of dinner and a ball game. 

Yet, generational shift is only one of two “Sales world flatteners”; in fact, it will probably be the last piece to fall into place. 

The other flattener (and ironically the higher hurdle for many first gen sales people) was created by the very infrastructure and evolution that we built our livelihoods on; from LAN, to client server applications, to the internet, which lead to the .com’s, whose failure proved which commerce models worked (and which did not); ultimately bringing us today’s fast, stable, secure SaaS applications and Cloud Service architecture.

In other words, the groundwork laid over 2 decades ago, now makes it possible for any ISV serving the enterprise to build, host, deliver and manage mission critical applications – for cheap! 

If you don’t believe me, look at the data warehouse and business intelligence space.  I was part of the original Informatica Sales Organization. We were assisting the F500, or in my case Financial 100, with the data they required to run their business.

We were the start up sales team, all 5 of us; telling the story of how you could gain access to the data in your mainframe, transform it on the fly, store it in something called a Relational Database Management System, and while migrating, become Y2K compliant; all for the low, low price of a million-dollars.

Fast forward to the fall of 2009. Here at Glance we had a need to move data from our RDBMS (SQL Server), transform it to meet real time business requirements, and insert it into our Salesforce.com instance; allowing us at any point in time to track the vitality of our business.

For this mission critical application we evaluated the market and choose a tool from a new company in this space called SnapLogic; ironically, (ok, not ironically), whose CEO is Gaurav Dhillon; former founder of, you guessed it, Informatica. 

Here's the cool part, we got a demo from a very bright young guy named Vince Ko; no one needed to come and see us, we didn’t have to install anything locally, its SaaS, the implementation was done by SnapLogic experts from 3000 miles away, and oh yeah, we didn’t spend a million. (For proprietary reasons, let’s just say I bought a new bike this summer, and it cost more money than our SnapLogic annual subscription.)

My story is not unique. It is not a one-off-event, instead it is the rapidly accepted norm, the future of selling enterprise software, the alignment of Gen Y and Tech evolution. A shift which will retrospectively be seen as bringing to extinction the top heavy Outside Sales models of our past.

So if you’re an old guy like me, and you're still driving that Buick, or carrying that GI Joe cell phone, do yourself a favor and evolve your ways of thinking fast, before that tar pit beneath your wheels sucks you in for good.

-- Tom Scontras, VP Sales & Marketing, Glance Networks

Try Glance free for 7 days and see how doing demos-on-the-fly can boost your sales productivity.

Maximize Your Work Productivity in 12 Simple Steps | Surprisingly Astute "Must-Do's" From a Young Mind

My 11-year old twins came into the office the other day - strangely, they love to "play office" here in Glance's solar-powered, renovated mill space, usually dragging along a friend or two (obviously, they don't yet know the grind of the working world!). "Playing office" involves things like writing any and all thoughts on the whiteboard wall, making Powerpoints crammed with unusual clip art, rolling around on the swivel chairs, "leading meetings" from the conference table, and xeroxing non-paper objects. 

While the others were haggling over who got the red erasable marker, one of my daughters went off and wrote her work "to-do" list. Looking at it later, I realized that its a surprisingly wise and strategic compendium of business objectives and tasks, which if followed, will ensure workplace success:

J. G.'s To Do List

1. Make them listen to me.
2. Figure out what the company does.
3. Get party organizer.
4. Organize fundraiser.
5. Make computer work.
6. Ignore their fighting.
7. Actually do my job.
   
8. Have an opinion.
9. Talk.
10. Remind them that I'm not 21 yet.
11. Give ideas.
12. Go home.

Simple steps to a successful business: know your company mission, raise funds, brainstorm, have an opinion, communicate it, act your age, do the job, ignore petty distractions, make sure your technology works, and of course, celebrate your successes and don't forget to go home.

-- Carla Gates, Director, Marketing, Glance Networks

Follow Glance Networks on Twitter and Facebook for daily tips on Sales 2.0

The ONE Way to Lose Your Audience Before You Get Started: How to Make Your Social Media and Blog Headlines Stand Out

The New York Post does it right. Sort of. Eye-popping headlines make you stop and read (or more likely, purchase). Unfortunately, their content doesn't always deliver. But then again, I'm not sure great content is anywhere in their mission statement.

But if you're trying to gain your prospect's attention, generate leads, or provide thought leadership in social media, you need to nail the art of great content plus great headlines.

After all, you have about 1 second to grab the attention of your audience scanning the millions of blog, FB, LI, and Twitter posts every day (Twitter alone sends out 50 million updates each day!)

You'll quickly know your headlines aren't compelling if your pages don’t seem to be getting the exposure you think they deserve; readers aren't re-tweeting them, or commenting on them; and nobody seems to be linking to them from their blogs.

Here are some not-so-compelling, real post headlines that I saw online this morning. None of them made me want to click:

• Another Brick in the Paywall: I know its supposed to be a clever play-on-words, but it doesn't tell me why I should care to read it, or what it's really about.
• The Zen of PowerPoint: Again, clever oxymoron, but I have only a few minutes to read in the morning, so I need to know exactly how this post will help me. If I don't see the immediate benefit within the title, I'll move on.
• SEO Analytics 101: Sounds potentially interesting, but, gosh, with a title like that, it could be a tome! I don't have time for a tome.
• APCO Releases Reputation Study Finding: So, who is APCO, and what is a reputation study? Including one of the more interesting findings from the study, in the headline, might have drawn me in.
  

In contrast, here are some online posts from this morning, that I clicked on right away:

• 7 Steps to Creating a Successful Online Business: Success in 7 steps?! That sounds right up my alley! And since I'm in online marketing, this post might have something I could use for my job.
• 7 Ways to Start Building Your Personal Brand for Free: Not sure why good things are coming in 7's today, but its a manageable number. Plus, this headline tells me exactly what will happen if I follow the 7 steps, and oh, by the way, they don't cost any money!
• The Most Important Hiring Trait, Period. Do You Have It?: 'Nuf said. We all need to hire and get hired. You're crazy if you don't read this one. (And talk about inducing career paranoia! That second little sentence makes the headline.)
• Is Social Media Failing to Produce Business Leads?: Oh gosh, I hope not, since I'm the Social Media Strategist for my SaaS company. I better read this.
• Help: "Our Closing Ratio Dropped by 50% in the last Quarter!" I know exactly what this post is about, its got a real problem in it, and purports to offer a solution. Probably worth my time to read.
  

So, what's the difference? Good headlines tell you, succinctly, what the article is about, and why you'll benefit from reading it. And they use controversy, mystery, energy, guidance, and fun to engage your interest and stand out from the pack.

Bad headlines are broad, general, boring, unspecific, and company-centric (as opposed to being reader-centric).

Nick Usborne advises using "catchy headlines, but applied intelligently, and always followed by great content." 

Need help writing your headlines? Tiffany Monhollon has some great suggestions in 57 Power Words for Writing Brilliant Headlines (and btw, that is a great headline, following all the right rules!)

-- Carla Gates, Director, Marketing, Glance Networks

Follow Glance Networks on Twitter and Facebook for daily tips on Sales 2.0 (and hopefully, some very compelling headlines!)

5 Selling Lessons Learned from 5th Grade Entrepreneur Day

Last week, my twin daughters held an "Entrepreneur Day" in their 5th grade classroom. Parents were invited to browse the marketplace full of interesting kid-made products and services, ranging from tie-dyed tee-shirts to zen gardens-in-a-box to origami polyhedra. One young business pro even offered to write a song based on a customer's favorite topic.

Leading up to this day, they wrote business plans, budgeted funds (in this case, the currency was dried beans), purchased materials, manufactured products, and planned packaging and storefronts.

Shopping the 5th grade emporium, I realized that best practices in sales work universally across all marketplaces, and just like in real life, best practices correlated with successful vendors.

Here's what the 5th graders can teach us about selling:

1. Pay attention to packaging and display. Those 5th graders who highlighted their products neatly, on simple, yet color-coordinated displays, and who dressed well, looked pleasant, and paid lots of attention to each potential customer, attracted the most buyers and sold the most products.
2. Price right, or to put it in the words of one student, "don't overprice and don't underprice". Students who priced their products very cheaply, often got questioned on why their product "is priced so low?" And often the suspicious questioner would walk away without purchasing. Students who priced extremely high also lost sales, as we all had a limited number of beans to spend and wanted to be able to purchase as many interesting products as possible.
3. Clearly label products and prices. Its surprising how many sales were lost as parents passed by a desk (storefront) where it wasn't clear what the product or its price was, i.e., no signage, no price labels, products stored in unopened boxes, missing salesperson, etc.  One handsome young entrepreneur was doing fabulous outreach as we walked by, telling us he would "even take orders if he ran out of the items we wanted" - trouble was, we couldn't tell what he was selling.
4. Always watch for upsell opportunities. One student had made beautiful, little origami boxes for holding jewelry. She priced the boxes well, and then just as customers dug out their beans to pay her, she'd offer a cotton insert "to cushion your fragile jewelry" for a small additional charge. Of course, we all took it.
5. Be willing to make a deal. As the customers ran out of beans, some students realized that the way to "sell out" (which became the goal toward the end of the marketplace) was to offer products for discount. For example, I'd look wistfully at a product, but tell the seller, I "only had 50 more beans"...smart students would deal; others would hold out, and ended up with unsold product. Who was more successful in the end?

-- Carla Gates, Director, Marketing, Glance Networks

Follow Glance Networks on Twitter and Facebook for daily tips on Sales 2.0.

4 BIG Reasons to Align Your Sales and Marketing Organizations (or, Sales 2.0 + Marketing 2.0 = Smarketing = Business Success)

Over a year ago I took over the Sales and Marketing organizations here at Glance. The first thought that came to my mind was, “Cool: Smarketing!”

It’s been damn crazy ever since.

For all of you VPs of Marketing who look at Sales Management and say “…you have no clue what I am doing over here”; and, all of you VPs of Sales who return the favor: “…you have no idea what it takes to fill our funnel”; I am here to tell you that you are both right!

The predominant part of my career has been on the Sales side, so at the start of all of this, I naturally drifted towards the Sales mentality;  I hadn’t a clue, particularly in today’s world, how hard it is to generate leads; to put it my Sales Guys terms - it’s a bitch. 

And I don’t mean for the market-leading, well-funded, everyone-knows-your-brand companies -- I mean for the majority of us, the working stiffs; tied in more ways than one, to the promise of hitting it big. So if you’re reading this, and your focused on one or the other, I feel you man!

In all seriousness I would strongly recommend to any CEO, to break down the cubicles, be innovative, and build a Smarketing Department. Allow me to provide some insight as to how this approach has benefited Glance (and how it will benefit you):

1. Seamless Selling: As a SAAS company, it’s all about demand gen, downloads, and conversion rates. These functions are inseparable; our marketing message and our sales scripts must be one and the same. Integration of the two departments allows feedback to flow from customers mouths, to our sales ears, directly and immediately to our promotional minds; and then immediately back out to market via Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and the like.  There is neither gap nor debate about how, when, or why to respond. It is all simply seamless.
2. Cohesive Culture: Marketing sits intermingled within the Sales department here, each is part of the others' meetings. Marketing needs to understand the Sales effort, and Sales needs to understand the lead gen effort. For us, this cohesive Smarketing culture serves two distinct purposes: it removes ego, and it allows the lead gen side to understand the Sales world, i.e. the audience we are ALL selling to.
3. Fail Forward Fast: Decision-making is no longer hindered by opinion and ego; "what do the Sales Guys want", versus, "what do the Marketing MBA’s think"; of course there is some of that, there should be, its healthy; but in the end, because of our structure, the perspectives are not nearly as skewed as I have seen in a “standard” organization.
4. Mutual Respect: Let’s call a spade a spade: some Marketing folks think they are smarter than Sales people; we can change this by showing Marketing how difficult a day in the life of a Sales Pro can be. And with Sales, they hear the demands made by management, the sheer volume of work placed upon their Marketing cousins, and recognize that there is much more that goes into lead gen than meets the eye. Close physical proximity allows an upfront and personal experience in everyone's trenches, resulting in a deeper understanding and respect for all.

In the end, as the Sales 2.0 market comes into its “early majority” state;  we see marketing tools integrating with Sales, sales tools to marketing, seamless analysis of the entire cycle, social networks turning into business networks, and awards for top tools, top producers, and top influencers. The lines have blurred -- who can tell where marketing ends and sales begins anymore? Simply put, it’s come completely together -- so we have adjusted our internal functions to reflect the market, its interactions, expectations, and patterns.

Maybe we’re too smart for our own good, but no big deal, I can always blame the guy that runs Sales!

-- Tom Scontras, VP, Sales and Marketing

Follow Glance Networks on Twitter and Facebook for daily tips on Sales and Marketing 2.0.

Before Sales 2.0 there was Cycling 2.0 | Maximizing Sales Success with Metrics

Cycling is a relatively unknown sport here in the U.S. -– recently made hip by seven-time Tour de France winner, Lance Armstrong.

What many people don’t know, however, is that Lance changed cycling forever with his revolutionary and sometimes ridiculed training techniques, which included integrating technology and supporting tools, all geared to maximize his chances of winning the Tour.

Lance's results have produced a now-mainstream training process and integrated technology (called a PowerTap) which practically every professional cyclist and many amateurs now use religiously to deliver winning results. The core process is all about capturing and analyzing data to improve:

• Power: the amount of wattage delivered with each pedal stroke to the rear wheel;
• Cadence: the number of pedal strokes in a minute; and
• VO2max: the highest heart rate where your body can maintain performance by removing lactic acid from your legs at an equal or greater rate than which it is created.

(I think I got that right.  Hopefully one of my cycling-geek Sales 2.0 mates –- like Umberto Milletti at InsideView -- will correct me!)

CYCLIST'S FIELD TEST

In this new era, cyclists perform something called a field test; they vary, but essentially these consist of three all-out 8 minute efforts – brief snapshots of work, but at maximum intensity.  Performance data from each marker is analyzed to determine the current condition of the cyclist and where any room for improvement may lie.

Only with this data can a detailed action plan be created, by providing the athlete with a very specific set of activities to be performed on each and every ride. No longer does a top professional pedal without a plan.  Otherwise, he’s just wasting his time (something in cycling known as junk miles).

At the end of every long day in the saddle, output from each key performance indicator is reviewed to measure actual performance against that days' goal. The ultimate objective is to find the perfect blend of production in all three areas in order to yield the optimal result.

Lance Armstrong pioneered this approach to cycling. He and his coach studied every one of the 21 stages of the Tour de France.  They looked at their nearest competitor’s results from the previous years and determined that if Lance could complete the entire race within a certain time, then he would win. 

Once they knew the ultimate target to beat, they simply reversed-engineered his daily activities, built his program, and began to execute the plan.  Get where I'm going?

SALES 2.0's FIELD TEST

With the onset of Sales 2.0, delivering top performance revenue results is no different.

As an elite Sales Pro, if you know what you did last year, and you have the sales tools and data to support it, then you should be able to, with pinpoint accuracy, determine precise sales activities which when delivered each day will produce winning results.

Here is what we measure at Glance:

• Marketing Power: spend and lead-gen activity needed to stimulate required demand. This is critical; no power out, no power in. Our success this year has been predicated by our continual analysis of our output (SEO, PPC, Drip, social media, etc.) and the results it generates.  Realizing there is always room for improvement, we need the ability to make changes on the fly.  That’s why we recently became a Hubspot customer.  Hubspot serves as our very own “marketing power tap”, helping us to determine if or when to shift gears.
• Sales Cadence: daily sales activity required in converting leads to closure. If our Marketing Power output is optimal, then the difference between delivering sales or not depends upon our Sales Cadence. How many times do we need to touch our prospects in a 7-day trial period?  Our lead nurturing campaigns? During smart dials?  How do we manage our multi-point customer relationships and deliver sales demos in an instant?  That’s why we have partnered with Fishnet Media, leverage InsideView, LinkedIn, track key contacts via social media with Gist and of course, use Glance.  
• Organizational VO2max: this is the point of peak performance, which lies just beneath maximum output -- where effective demand generation and efficient sales output (demand, number of reps, closure rates, average deal size, average sales cycle, etc.) can maintain a pace to hit target in a consistent manner, also known as euphoria.  Rarely do organizations hit this riders' high.  Here, we’re dialing it in through strong sales and marketing analytics.  We use Hubspot Reports and Salesforce.com dashboards to monitor SEO results, social media success, daily trials, outbound sales activity, conversion rates, and more.

Recently I have read some criticism of Sales 2.0 process, tools, etc.  Who knows, maybe this sales 2.0 revolution is over the top, non-pure, and breaks with tradition.  Maybe we’re too serious about all of this measurement stuff.  I mean, is Sales 2.0 just a fad?

Just like they said about Lance, right? 

-- Tom Scontras, VP, Sales & Marketing

Fail. Forward. Fast. | The Key to Success in Sales, Business, or Life is to Overcome Fear and Act Boldly

When Tom, our VP of Sales and Marketing, began working here at Glance, he started pushing a new mantra: "Fail. Forward. Fast." Most of you may know this as a well-known Tom Peters "buzz phrase" meaning that its better to try new things frequently, risk temporary failure, and thereby arrive at success more quickly, than to stay immobilized, fearing failure.

As Tom and I talked more about this philosophy, I realized that its always been my own personal M.O. As a marketer, I believe that in order to achieve lead generation success you have to constantly try out new tactics and re-invent old ones -- basically keep moving forward at a fast pace. Even if I fail, each failed attempt is a learning experience that allows me to adjust my approach, take new action, and experience new outcomes. If I sit still and do nothing, or worse, "wait for the perfect marketing tactic" to drop into my lap, then my product's voice is lost in the noise of my competitors' advertising.

Fail. Forward. Fast. works in life too. You've heard the backstories of these highly successful individuals before, but they're worth re-reading...Walt Disney went bankrupt several times; Thomas Edison experimented with 6000 possible light bulb filament materials before he found one that worked; Winston Churchill failed 6th grade; Michael Jordan didn't make the high school varsity basketball team his sophmore year...and the list goes on.

And because I'm a fan of top-notch acting, I'll point you to this transcendent scene from Good Will Hunting, as Robin Williams talks to Matt Damon about fear of failure and risking everything in order to achieve great happiness. Watch it and be inspired today!

Are you in sales, marketing, or business? Want to start failing forward fast? Here are Carla's Top 5 Ways to Break Through Your Inertia and Start Moving Forward Today:

1. Take bold, decisive action. To overcome fear of failure, you must act. Close your eyes and jump. If it doesn't work out, do something else. But, do something. It is easy to get caught up in the endless tinkering and perfecting of a project,
2. Don't give up. Re-read the list about successful individuals two paragraphs above. Try a different approach. Instead of trying something else, most people stop doing anything at all, and this guarantees they'll be unsuccessful.
3. Don't take failure personally. Failure is about behavior, outcomes and results, not about you.
4. Treat the experience as an opportunity to learn. Why was it a mistake? Why did it happen? How could you do it differently next time? What do you need to do to dramatically alter your results?
5. Aim to double your failure rate. You'll succeed faster as long as you treat failure as feedback and the chance to learn, grow and improve.

-- Carla Gates, Director, Marketing, Glance Networks

Follow Glance Networks on Twitter and Facebook for daily tips on Sales and Marketing 2.0.

What’s in My Sales Stack? | From Bill Rice's Better Closer blog

Kaleidico CEO, Founder, and Chief Sales Officer, Bill Rice, is also one of our favorite Sales 2.0 bloggers. We regularly read Bill's thoughtful posts, tweets, and thought leadership from Better Closer discussing social selling and competitive intelligence. 

So we were honored when Bill's recent post featured Glance as a key tool in his recommended sales 2.0 stack (or toolkit) - a concept we live and breathe in our own selling processes here at Glance.

Here's Bill's post:

"Glance, one of the software tools in my Sales Stack, introduced a very interesting Sales 2.0 concept in  their post on Building a Custom Sales 2.0 Toolkit. They framed it in the analogy of the more traditional software stack. My simple definition: the combination of multiple software to create a full-featured, consistent, and stable platform on which you can build solutions.

I think they created a very useful analogy. It structures our thinking on how to enable our sales objectives, not just chase hope-filled sales tools. Using this framework you can quickly identify and setup your sales 2.0 platform and get to selling, confident you have the tools and the platform you need to win..." Read the rest of the post at Bill's blog.

--Carla Gates, Director, Marketing

You CAN (and Should) Use Twitter for Sales Leads

A recent survey on Twitter usage in the US by Edison Research/Arbitron Internet shows that your prospects and customers are out there on Twitter, and if you're not, you're missing an opportunity!

Twitter Usage in America: 2010, conducted this past February and released last month, concludes that Twitter is more of a broadcast channel than many realize. The majority of users don't post...but they are definitely reading and clicking.

Highlights of Twitter usage include:

• 87% of all Americans are now aware of Twitter (the percentage of Americans who are aware of Twitter actually supersedes the percentage of those who have Internet access (85%))!
• That 87% is compared to just 26% who knew about Twitter's existence last year. (By comparison, Facebook had 88% awareness among those surveyed, with 41% saying they had a profile.) 
• 42% of respondents are using Twitter to learn more about products and services, and 41% are using it to swap reviews.
• 28% are using Twitter to look for discounts and sales, and 21% are using it to purchase products and services.
• 19% of Twitter users are out there seeking customer support.
• When asked "Do you follow any brands or companies on social networks", 51% said they follow brands on Twitter.

Highlights of Twitter demographics include:

• Twitter users are well-educated (30% attended a four-year college, compared to 19% of the general population; 63% have a college degree) and relatively well-off (nearly half have a yearly household income above $50,000.)
• Twitter users index very highly for technology ownership (49% own iPods, 23% own iPhones, and 28% own a Blackberry).
• 53% of Twitter users are women; compared to 47% men.

In summary, although the name is goofy, and the channel is often disparaged for it’s frivolous number of tweets, the fact remains that many intelligent, well-educated consumers are leveraging Twitter for their buying decisions. Buyers are consuming information on Twitter as an alternative to traditional channels;  and this shift is a huge sales opportunity.

(And BTW, if Twitter is still a black hole to you, go to amazon.com and buy this book right now, title not necessary to mention.)

- Carla Gates, Director, Marketing, Glance Networks

Follow Glance Networks on Twitter and Facebook for daily tips on Sales and Marketing 2.0.

Communication Pro Tells How to Cut Through Distractions, Demands, and Data-Dumping to Get Real Results | Book Review

Communication is one of the greatest challenges in business today, and miscommunication may be costing us all thousands...

I just read "Talk Less. Say More. Three Habits to Influence Others and Make Things Happen" by Connie Dieken. In this impactful, short (157 page) book, Connie Dieken explains how to grab attention, gain clarity, and sway others to make things happen, in 3 simple steps:

1. Connect: Give people what they want and value, so they'll tune in.
2. Convey: Use "portion control" to get your points across with clarity, not confusion.
3. Convince: Create commitment to influence decisions, actions and results.

In this book, Connie describes good habits like: contributing to meetings, inviting opposing viewpoints, and sounding decisive. And bad habits like: habitual back-pedaling, qualifying your statements, and data-dumping.

I found the book an easy, organized read, and best of all, it made it reasonably simple for me to make some powerful, actionable changes in the way I communicate.

From Connie's web site, come her Top 10 Talking Blunders:

• Failing to frontload. Most of us are more long-winded than we think. We lose people at hello by burying the most important, actionable ideas or requests too deeply into our messages.
• Using your own personal P-MOC. (Preferred Method of Communication.) By using your favorite method (e-mail, phone, text) instead of the receiver's, you lose opportunities to connect and get a favorable response.
• Failing the TV Guide test. Can you boil your message down to a few pithy sentences? If not, most people will tune you out in today's fast-paced world.
• Convoluted messages. Do you force people to wade through messy messages that veer off track? If you force them to work hard to figure out the point you're trying to convey, you'll confuse them or lose them completely.
• Electronic oblivion. Don't you hate it when people ignore live human conversation in favor of non- urgent cell phone calls and e-mail pings? Do you do it, too? If so, people may silently seethe.
• Allowing "meeting creep." Do your meetings run on forever with boring laundry list reviews and side talk? Better to reserve the meeting table for actionable items to prevent wall-to-wall meeting mania.
• Not listening. Blocking out others' viewpoints, fading in and out, or preparing your reply while the other person is still speaking are common listening errors.
• EUI. (E-mailing under the influence) Don't confuse personal with private. Nothing's private on the internet. You know to cool down before hitting the "send" button, but do you do it?
• Jumping in too quickly. You inadvertently trigger more trouble when you interrupt to make a snappy comment or answer a question before you know the other person's full intent. Fight the urge to interrupt and instead, make notes to reply more thoughtfully.
• Morphing into Simon Cowell. Borderline cruelty is creeping into the workplace. Co-workers are lobbing sarcastic barbs and openly demoralizing others, leading to mutiny.

Whether you're a sales or marketing pro, a blogger, a creative, a coach/trainer, or a business leader,  this book's a great read: Be more influential. Make things happen in this distracted, attention-deficit world. Connie's got some great (and simple) changes to upgrade your communication style today.

-- Carla Gates, Director, Marketing, Glance Networks

Follow Glance Networks on Twitter and Facebook for more daily tips on Sales and Marketing 2.0.