The Death of Sales 2.0

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It appears that the label "Sales 2.0" may have seen brighter days. In case you are not familiar with the term, "Sales 2.0 refers to the use of web enabled technologies (i.e., Web 2.0) in the business or activity of selling". (Source: www.sales10.com)

An example of such web enabling technology used in Selling would be "Video Conferencing" which allows multiple participants from various locations to interact via two-way audio/video. In the past if people from two or more locations wanted to participate in a conference or meeting travel for one or more of the participants would be required. Schedule conflicts and travel related expenses (time away from selling, airfare, etc.) often made such meetings difficult and/or costly. Video Conferencing in many cases reduces the need for such travel, which in turn can offer more choices in scheduling. When used in the business or activity of selling some people view the web-enabled technology known as "Video Conferencing" as "Sales 2.0". I do not see the need to apply such labeling but I realize others do.

I decided to search online for what others were saying about "Sales 2.0" and found a blog post by Dave Kurlan, a sales development expert, titled "Rant #2 - Sales 2.0 Stupidity".

Here are a few excerpts from that blog post:

• "It seems that outside the blogosphere, and especially the more marketing focused sites, business people have no clue what Sales 2.0 is..."
• "Except for a small percentage of sales experts, Selling Power, who hosts the Sales 2.0 Conference, and most of the inbound, customer focused marketing experts, the terms Sales 2.0 and Customer 2.0 have no legs. They aren't catching on. They don't matter. And we should stop forcing it down the throats of business..."
• "While Sales 2.0 is about getting found, it's really the art of using the new social marketing and sales tools. They're tools! Selling, even with the tools, is still selling so let's stop confusing people and talking about stuff they don't care about..."

There have been numerous member posts at SALESPRACTICE.COM (The definitive source of sales education on the Internet) on the topic of "Sales 2.0" which appear to align with Dave's comments. Given the consensus I wanted to get an idea of how many people were actually searching online for "Sales 2.0" and/or related topics so I queried the number of "Global Monthly Searches" via Google's Keyword Tool for the search term "Sales 2.0" and received the following results:

• Sales 2.0 Definition - 36
• Sales 2.0 Tools - 46
• Sales 2.0 Book - 73
• Sales 2.0 Conference - 390
• Sales 2.0 - 6,600

Compare the numbers above with the "Global Monthly Searches" for the following search terms:

• Sales Definition - 110,000
• Sales Tools - 60,500
• Sales Book - 301,000
• Sales Conference - 27,000
• Sales - 55.6M

Although the label "Sales 2.0" has been promoted intensively in the past within certain circles the results from my keyword search suggest that the label "Sales 2.0" appears be more hype than anything else. With that being said, lets not through the baby out with the bath water. "The death of Sales 2.0" refers to the death of a "label" not the use of web-enabled technologies in Selling.

Enough with the vocabulary lesson, let's go help someone!

For links to related discussions visit: The Future of Selling