What is Sales 2.0?

Some of you may have heard the term “Sales 2.0” and wondered what is meant by the term. Chances are that many of you reading this blog post have been moving in the direction of a Sales 2.0 model without being aware of it. You just know that what you used to do is not working as well as it did before, and you are trying new things.

The short definition of Sales 2.0 is that you separate the Prospecting/Lead Generation function and the Selling Function into two distinct business roles. In other words, the Sales reps don’t make the cold calls and do the prospecting, another group does that role; the Sales reps are only responsible for completing the sale.

Some traditionalist may look at this and sneer. That’s understandable, in the minds of many people in sales, the very definition of a “good Sales rep” is someone that can handle cold calling, and prospecting, and is good at it. Unfortunately, there are problems with this thinking:

1. Relatively few Sales Reps are good cold callers and prospectors, and finding and hiring these individuals is difficult.
2. The Sales Reps that are good prospectors are often unable to do it consistently enough to maintain a steady deal flow. They get busy working on deals, and building relationships with clients, and don’t keep up with prospecting.
3. Hiring Sales reps can be incredibly costly, and mistakes in hiring are common which increases the cost even more. So from a pure business management stand point, it may  not be wise to grow your company by just hiring more Sales Reps.

So the basic idea behind Sales 2.0 is to improve sales efficiency by turning Prospecting and Lead Generation into a separate role and maintaining that business process in a consistent fashion that will produce predictable results. This makes it possible for good Sales Reps to spend more time Selling and Closing Sales, and less time prospecting, i.e. you make more money off of your best reps.

In the case of Small Businesses, wherein the owner does most of the selling, this means the business owner can earn more from their selling time.

Some of the other elements of “Sales 2.0” are Tools/Systems, Content and Lead Nurturing. Part of what makes Sales 2.0 work, is not just handing off the job of hammering out cold calls to someone else. You also deploy better tools and business processes to make the whole thing work a lot better.

In my next posts, I will delve into how these other elements are deployed to really accelerate your sales growth with the Sales 2.0 Methodology.

Until then, happy selling.

– Matt