Following on my colleague Don Bulmer’s excellent post this week, our discussion revolves around the new knowledge platforms that Web 2.0 provides today’s modern day sales person. Before the coming of the Internet, selling and marketing often involved a difficult and painstaking task that involved what salespeople called “hard rock mining.” What that meant was doing the research and networking to find the person with the stroke, the decision maker. Pre-Internet selling actually meant getting on the telephone and talking to people and hitting the road for onsite visits and, of course, attending any conference that was relevant. This was an expensive and time consuming process that dramatically increased the cost of sales. However, there was really no way around it. The value of conferences was not just in networking but, in those days, it was the only way to scope out the competition, their customers and products.

One method we always employed was leveraging our company champion into the process -- champion meaning someone who is inside the company that you are selling to already who likes your brand, product and services. And, of course, we didn’t always have one to rely on so that meant a lot of mining. Champions and/or friends are a great way to help you figure out the organization chart and where to apply your valuable time. I am sure that most of you already know this. One of my favorite moves against the competition during site visits would be to chat up the receptionist so that she would let me read the visitors log. I still find myself doing this today because of my competitive nature.

I see the Web 2.0 platforms as knowledge repositories and as the hard rock mining tools of the new millennium. They can and are providing tremendous insight into the networks of sales prospects. Facebook is now not just a social network for you and your friends, I know sales people who are scoping out their prospects on the site. At the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco we saw new connecting tools that automatically populate CRM platforms with relevant hard rock data gleaned from Facebook. If you think about it there is nothing really new about these social networks; they are all about peer groups and as my dear mother used to say “birds of a feather flock together.”

Several years ago I conducted primary market research that not only evaluated the social network of buyers within companies, but also assessed the key influential mediums that influenced buyers. Mediums included the (company) brand, the analyst; the business press, the industry specific press and peer groups were some among the top twenty four. What impressed us most about the findings was how high in the rankings peer groups scored -- they were one of the top ten purchasing decision mediums! We all know in small business its all about domain expertise; where have you done this before, how much does it cost and how long does it take? This is the mantra of small business, and guess where I am going to go to get ideas in my industry, a peer group and/or a conference of peers? Now, and in the future, more increasingly online in a social network.

The new Web 2.0 platforms are quickly breaking out into peer groups, often by industry and by professional association. Sites including LinkedIn, Naymz, Plaxo and Xing are now prime hunting grounds for any salesperson looking for a prospect and what peer groups they are part of. This also helps marketing pave the way for sales activities around these groups. Facebook is rapidly blurring the lines of your social and work life. I personally don’t like discussing work on my Facebook wall, and my profile photo shows me holding a giant starfish, but many of my colleagues are already doing it. What do you think? Do you want work and social life intertwined? This convergence of life and work will challenge many HR professionals in the years. I am sure that recruiters and HR people are already looking at you on Facebook and making judgments on your suitability and/or cultural fit in a company.

Personality profiling began with the CIA and FBI, but now can be easily done by simply looking at your friends, the groups you belong to and your postings on this site. Not great for those that want to join the CIA, but great information and insights into your sales prospects and their networks is just a click away. That is if your prospects are members of these sites, and today more than likely they are. Hard rock mining just got easier, but now the prospects will expect sales people to do their homework. As I have said before, sales and business is war, use all the weapons available to you to gain competitive advantage.

Personality of Fish: Giant Blue Fin Tuna at 100 Feet

One of my most memorable marine biology experiences involved a Johnson Sealink submersible dive and a school of Giant Blue Fin Tuna. We had just been released by the robotic arm of the Edwin Link and began to bobble on the surface of the Georges Bank like a wine cork. There is actually nothing worse at sea then being in a small submarine on the surface rocking and rolling and pitching and heaving. The motion soon sends the best of us into waves of nausea and that is why we always carried half gallon zip lock bags in our back pockets. On this particular dive I was lucky enough to sit in the front Plexiglas bubble with the pilot and could look above.

As we started descending I noticed a large school of fish approaching over my right shoulder and had no idea it was Thunnus thynnus, the Giant Blue Fin tuna. At around 30 meters I looked up and watched in amazement as the Blue Fins gracefully swam by undulating their bodies in what is called a carangiform swimming motion. This swimming motion is one of the most energy efficient of all swimming types, the other two means of propulsion by fish are anguilliform (eel like) and ostraciform (fins only trigger fish). In the eerie light of the deep the tuna looked almost prehistoric and their movements appeared almost effortless. These tuna follow the Gulf Stream as it emerges off of West Africa and migrate with it all the way up to Canada, spending months eating their way up the US eastern seaboard.