I spotted this other day a post from Yorick Astier with details of a report

The report showed that Oracle was now #1 in the ERP market, report here

Can you imagine that?

After years of being number 2, here they were at number 1!

12 years ago, the world was very different in the IT space

The world was ruled by “on premise” companies and SaaS was just in its infancy

I worked for Oracle and they were launching a new SaaS Finance system

Everybody said we were mad 

(The same people that said that internet enabled apps were a fad)

Oracle decided to build from scratch a new SaaS accounting system for the age of cloud

Vs the competition who wanted to take a 40-year-old mainframe system and stick in a data centre and call it cloud?

As Oracle we didn’t see that as transformation

If it was going to be cloud, surely it should take all of the benefits of cloud?

A new ERP system for this new SaaS world

As part of the UK leadership we formed (ahead of the US) a go-to-market (GTM) plan 

Up to this point there was was no collateral, no clients, nothing …. A blank canvas

We started from the ground up

Having launched a number of products before I knew where to start

(With a nod to Geoffrey Moore and his book, “Crossing the Chasm”)

We created a total addressable market (TAM), ideal customer profile (ICP) and value proposition (VP)

We decided that we won’t use the messaging from before, it would all be new

Then with an innovative pre-sales team and Sales VP on board, an enablement plan was created

It was then Oracle HQ flew over from the US as they had heard what we had done

We were asked to present to them what we had created and they took copious notes

That was all a long time ago and there has been many a marketer and salesperson has been involved

It was nice to be there at the beginning however small the contribution

Can you drive revenue from social media?

Social selling is not about spamming people or inmails or connect and pitch

Our definition of social selling is 

"Using your presence and behavior on social media to build influence, make connections, grow relationships and trust, which leads to conversation and commercial interaction"
 

And the results?

For an AE, we can shorten sales cycles by 30%

And the average SDR will get 1 x ICP meeting a day

Which should increase your revenue by 20%

You can get these results by using our social selling methodology, that is certified by Institute of Sales Professionals (ISP)

"social selling techniques to influence buyers and changemakers - 2nd edition".

In this brand new edition, I have updated all the text, I have also got 15 practitioners, so people who are doing this already to explain how they are get (practical) business benefit. From the CEO that has been running a digital business for over 18 months to sales leaders and sales people who use social selling every day to drive revenue growth. 

Articles on how these business have and are implementing digital, from Mercer, Telstra Purple, Ring Central, Cyberhawk, Namos, Ericsson, DLA Ignite and more.

What does Mark Schaefer, Marketing guru think of the book "social selling - techniques to influence buyers and changemakers - 2nd edition"? watch the video here

It's available on Amazon worldwide.  Link to Amazon.com here and Amazon.co.uk here.