Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Until last week, Jill Rowley was leading an effort to train about 23,000 Oracle salespeople in "social selling."

... Rowley believes that social selling is "transforming the sleazy, slimy, slicked-back hairdo image of sales" into one where salespeople are there to help companies solve their IT problems.

It's the next big thing in the enterprise tech world because IT professionals lean heavily on social networks to research tech products and to work with vendors, research finds.

It's also really important to selling cloud-computing services. Traditional software contracts tend to be focused on closing a sale and then getting out. The opposite is needed for the cloud: Software-as-a-service is a long-term partnership thing, so sales incentives need to be structured around making customers happy so they stick around and keep paying for the service....

Business is a warzone: If you stand still, you die. No matter how good your product or service, you’re at the mercy of cause and effect. The market’s evolving needs must be met by evolving products.

...But perhaps companies like Microsoft aren’t like yours? They deal in products that constantly change and have a short shelf life; change and fluidity are normal in their particular market.
So what happens when you’re not one of these companies? How do you deal with the speed at which social media and the spread of connected devices has changed the balance of power between a company and its customers and made it difficult to market using traditional advertising tools?...

In the transition from Jerome McCarthy’s 4Ps of Product, Place, Price and Promotion to what he calls the 4Es of Experience, Everyplace, Exchange and Evangelism, we also see the morphing of traditional businesses into social ones...

[This is a really thoughtful article on how business must evolved from traditional into social business models ~ Jeff]

Burberry knows how many people want items before they've made them.

Many companies see social media as just another marketing and communications tool. A particularly effective one maybe, but just another of many.

According to Erich Joachimsthaler, founder and CEO of Vivaldi Partners, they're missing out on the biggest source of value from these platforms. In a recent report, he outlines how brands can use social media to change their entire business, not just their marketing....

[Burberry is an excellent example of social manufacturing and social marketing ~ Jeff]