Riley led her presentation with a reminder of the POST methodology, popularized by Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff and former Forrester analyst and current Altimeter Group Partner Charlene Li in their book Groundswell.

The POST framework includes four key tenets for social media participation…

• People: The people component means going beyond where your audience is – you have to think about how your audience interacts with social media and how they would interact with your brand given the opportunity. ”Half of consumers will interact with their favorite brands using social media,” Riley said, “But favorite brands is the key point. That probably doesn’t mean Crest Whitestrips or Goodyear Tigers. Apple? Yeah. Sony? Yeah.” In other words, how sexy is your brand? Realize that audiences might not want to interact online with an insurance company the same way they would with a record label.
• Objectives: The head of your company might have shouted, “We need to be on Twitter,” after seeing a wave of competitors entering the space. Before you sign up for a new service or take on a new tool, however, you need to think about what you’ll do when you get there.
• Strategy: “You have to plan for how relationships with customers will change,” Riley said.
• Technology: Once you’ve got the first three down, it’s time to figure out what social technologies to use.

To help businesses handle the myriad considerations required by participation in social media, Riley shared with the audience seven key principles to abide by. Although emphasizing that the seven recommendations fall short of what might be considered best practices, Riley also provided examples for each of companies that have made splashes in the social space:

1. Try something new.

2. Create a single point of passion, otherwise known as the “marketer’s sweet spot.”

3. Tap into the unique benefits of your chosen tactic.

4. Make yourself indispensable.

5. Create better channels for sharing information.

6. Extend accessibility beyond the Web.

7. Use personal engagement to sell.

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Clear, effective and relevant communication is critical to building trusted and long-term customer relationships, yet many organizations-both private and public sector-struggle to manage and deliver consistent and cost-effective communications across today’s multitude of media channels. This leads to poor branding, compliance issues, higher customer care costs and, ultimately, customer attrition.

An effective customer communication management (CCM) strategy overcomes the challenges noted below through a unified approach to the creation, management and delivery of multichannel, interactive customer communications.

CCM Challenges…

• Today’s “connected” consumer-centric world is putting pressure on businesses to deliver timely, personal and compelling communications across diverse channels.
• An uncoordinated approach to customer communications has serious implications for any business.
• Many companies use multiple products to create and manage customer communications, leading to inefficiencies and increased costs of management and maintenance.
• Lack of customer knowledge is the root of communications challenges.
• The benefits of CCM are tangible, reducing costs and improving operational efficiency while enhancing the customer experience.

CONCLUSION: The negative impact of irrelevant and unclear communications cannot be underestimated. As customer interactions across media channels continue to grow, a disjointed approach to communications will have profound consequences for any business in the form of higher costs, customer loss and brand damage. Those businesses that stay ahead of the competition will be those that develop a good CCM strategy that coordinates multichannel communications, empowers business users and provides a rapid return on investment. Businesses that do will reap the benefits of lower costs, improved efficiency and greater customer loyalty.

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Over the last decade we’ve seen enormous social, economic, and technological shifts; creating an environment with new opportunities and new challenges for most companies. Despite these significant changes, management practices are still relatively the same as they have been for the past 20 years. As a result, management has become an outdated art.

Interestingly, the Harvard Business School (HBS) was created 100 years ago, a year after the 1907 Banker’s Panic, when the stock market fell nearly 50% from the previous year. What was the goal of HBS? To infuse US companies with the management skills needed for the changing US economy.

Well, it’s time to modernize corporate management once again. While execs must continue to understand core business disciplines like finance, marketing, and sales, there’s a new set of skills they must master. That’s why I’ve defined the following 6 New Management Imperatives:

1. Invest in culture as a corporate asset
2. Make listening an enterprise-wide skill
3. Turn innovation into a continuous process
4. Provide a clear and compelling purpose
5. Extend and enhance the digital fabric
6. Practice good social citizenship

The bottom line: It’s time for a management renaissance.

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In a recessionary environment, sales and marketing managers should prepare themselves for lengthened sales cycles and decreased pipeline velocity. Tried and true tactics that have always worked — e.g. month-end discounting, bundling and promotions — will begin to sound increasingly desperate as sales reps struggle to make the quotas that were set months ago in the budgeting process. Customers — those in a buying mood — will buy on their own terms, and it is increasingly unlikely that they will be “sold to.” Therefore, price erosion will take hold as vendors struggle to adapt the new competitive conditions.

With reduced headcount and frozen budgets, organizations may be tempted to put technology and capabilities investments on hold. However, now is the time to act; below are some low- or no-cost actions organizations can immediately take to retain a competitive edge though tough times…

1. Get marketing and sales aligned through the establishment of unified goals, common metrics and aligned compensation plans. All too often, objectives and metrics are departmentally aligned. If marketing is incentivized to do one thing (such as increase quantity of leads) and sales something entirely different (focus on highest value leads), the organization is ultimately going to get what it pays for — i.e., disharmony and angst. In this tough environment, sales and marketing leadership needs to agree on a common set of organizational objectives (e.g. revenue, profit, market share, cross-selling, etc.). More specifically, sales and marketing leaders need to create and agree upon a cross-departmental definition of what constitutes a “lead.”

2. Profile both successes and failures. In a November survey conducted by the Aberdeen Group, respondents recognized a top (51 percent) strategic action as the ability to identify high-value prospects by analyzing and segmenting the characteristics of desirable customers. If the organization is not already doing so, it should immediately create processes to identify and focus resources on the most promising leads based on the newly aligned goals and objectives.

3. Go collaborative. Next, the organization should establish an iterative feedback loop between departments to continually refine the lead definition and prospect profiles. This includes putting mechanisms into place for team members to provide feedback and rate the quality leads and campaigns based on the organizational objectives and the lead definition outlined above. In the same November study referenced earlier, more than a quarter (26 percent) of the respondents had already implemented internal social media capabilities (such as a wiki) to facilitate this type of knowledge sharing. Whatever the mechanism, employees should be encouraged and incentivized to share best practices, tips and success stories. Creating an alignment and a knowledge-sharing culture will teach the organization to repeat successes and avoid mistakes of the past.

Aberdeen is currently conducting its annual State of the Market survey of key business challenges, competitive threats and technology trends for 2009. Click Here to participate.

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About the only thing I’d add is that I believe that it’s critical that representatives from the sales organization, (both management and staff) be integrally involved in the SFA technology selection process. Also, once you’ve narrowed down the SFA technology alternatives to two or three finalists, the sales organization should have the opportunity to compare and contrast the usability of each. They will be expected to use the solution every day. So, you want them to be happy with (and excited about using) the solution you choose.

An SFA (Sales Force Automation) effort is only as good as its implementation— and its implementation is only as good as the degree to which the sales staff, CSRs (customer service representatives) and others use it.

The old apothegm “Technology is easy, people are hard” is never more true than in SFA. If your people don’t buy into your SFA effort, it will at best be only a partial success.

The proof is easy to find. Another old CRM truism holds that the majority of SFA efforts fall short of success — more than two-thirds of them, by some studies. According to those same studies, the most common reason for poor performance is the problem of getting employees to adopt SFA.

The reason for resistance is simple. SFA is not a technology. It uses technology, but at its core SFA is about business processes. SFA changes the way salespeople operate in a business, or at least it tries to. If the people who execute the process refuse to change or only change halfheartedly, then you have a problem.

Another fundamental problem for SFA adoption is temperament. Salespeople are independent by nature. Indeed, one of the things that attracts people to a career in outside sales is the freedom from oversight. With SFA, sales reps can feel like they’ve got someone looking over their shoulders or riding along in their pockets.

While there’s a strong psychological component in making the transition to SFA, most of what supervisors need to do is direct and practical. They have to manage the transition and the ongoing SFA effort to their and their salespeople’s benefit. What’s equally important, managers have to convince their sales staff that SFA will benefit them, and that they can in fact use it.

The key is to show the sales force how SFA benefits them without unduly burdening them. This is one part management, one part good planning and one part execution.

Sell SFA

Assuming you’re using a viable product for your SFA effort, you’ve got to sell that product to your sales staff and others in your organization. This is just like selling to your customers, except here you’re selling to people inside the organization.

Involve the Sales Force

You need to involve the sales staff in planning and implementing SFA for two reasons. The first is that their knowledge is a vital part of making SFA successful.

The second reason is that if the sales staff is consulted and involved they’re going to feel a sense of ownership toward the SFA effort.

Produce Champions

The salespeople who are directly involved in planning and implementing your SFA project not only provide invaluable feedback, but they also become champions for SFA to their fellow sales representatives.

Respect the Culture While Changing It

SFA, like CRM in general, is about changing your company’s culture to make sales more profitable and customer-focused. However, that doesn’t mean that you want to do away with your company’s culture. While some operations and practices are going to change, others shouldn’t. After all, you’re undoubtedly doing a lot of things right, even if you can benefit big-time from SFA.

It’s All About the Benjamins

Fundamentally, SFA comes down to money— money in your sales staff’s pockets. A well-designed SFA program makes it easier for your sales staff to do their job — which is to make money for themselves and for you.

SFA is Not an Option

It’s also important to make sure the sales force understands that SFA is an ongoing effort. It’s not a one-time set of changes, but a series of processes that is going to remain in force in following years.

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