By Dennis D. McDonald

THIS SURVEY IS NOW CLOSED. STAY TUNED FOR THE WHITE PAPER. PRELIMINARY SURVEY RESULTS ARE HERE AND WILL BE DISCUSSED AT THE FOLLOWING WEBCAST SPONSORED BY ORACLE CORPORATION:

• “Social Selling: Live Q&A on Selling with Web 2.0”
• 11 a.m. PST / 2 p.m. EST March 31, 2009
• Registration information is here. 

With sponsorship from Social Media Today LLC (SMT) and Oracle Corporation, I developed a brief online survey for sales managers who have responsibility for a team of sales people.

The online survey, now closed, was designed to help discover where modern “web 2.0” tools will have the most impact on the sales process. This is from the introduction:

You may already be familiar with popular web based systems such as Facebook, Wikipedia, Linkedin, and personal “blogs.” Similar tools can be applied to the sales process to help manage work associated with sales-related content, communication, and collaboration. The question is, where in the sales process will these tools have the most impact?

The “sales process” was defined as follows:

1. PROSPECTING: Prospecting for customers.
2. QUALIFYING: Determining if prospects are qualified to be customers.
3. PRICING: Developing a price for the products or services being sold.
4. PROPOSING: Presenting an offer and pricing to the prospective customer.
5. NEGOTIATING: Negotiating terms of the offer.
6. CLOSING: Agreeing with the customer on final terms of the offer.
7. DELIVERING: Delivering the products or services to the customer.
8. SERVICING: Servicing the customer following the sale

In addition to the survey I’ll be conducting interviews with sales managers. I’ll then use the survey and interview results to support development of a “white paper” to be published by SMT.

Thanks to everyone for your help!