Well, I’m back from the Sales 2.0 conference held earlier this week in San Francisco. And now I can say that I survived an earthquake, albeit a minor one and certainly not on my to-do list. As I mentioned previously, the definition of Sales 2.0, as quoted from the website, is “…Sales 2.0 means integrating the power of Web 2.0 technologies with proven sales techniques to increase sales velocity and volume.” Conceived by genius.com, there were plenty of vendors talking the Sales 2.0 hype, from Oracle and Webex to JigSaw, Brainshark, Spoke and ZoomInfo. Some of the big names of the speaker circuit, including Moira Gunn, Geoffrey Moore and Michael Bosworth, presented their thoughts on Sales 2.0. And the turnout was quite successful as over 400 people attended the event.
So why do I call it version 0.5? Although it was well attended, the ratio of sponsors + vendors vs attendees seemed very high. I spoke with lots of people attending to learn more about the hype and to see if they’d sponsor a future event. But actual attendees? Rather few, I believe. So there’s work and socializing to see if “Sales 2.0” is a buzzword worth hyping. My opinion – yes, it is.
Interesting people I enjoyed meeting at the conference:
– Joanne Black, author of “No More Cold Calling” and fellow attendee. The ideal book to complement the Inquisix solution and vice versa.
– Katie Bruno, VP of Sales at Visible Path – we worked together at Sybase over 10 years ago and she has the same enthusiasm and energy as ever. Great to see you again!
– Jim Burns, President of Avitage – a fellow Boston entrepreneur/blogger and yet we had to meet for the first time (but surely not the last) in San Francisco.
– Razi Imam, CEO of Landslide, a sales solution designed for the sales person first and the VP second. He was genuinely surprised when the Webex keynote speaker mentioned his company’s use of Landslide to prove a point.
– Steve Burrows of Quantum, who spoke in length about the challenges of integrating two sales teams with differing cultures.
More about Sales 2.0 and my thoughts on the presentations in a future blog.
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