This is similar to the ROI approach I examined earlier where you take the average time saving and extrapolate it across an organisation.  Does it really make sense to talk about 12 seconds worth of savings?  Do those 12 seconds really add up to enough time for an individual to do something else more useful for your company – or do they take an extra minute on their coffee break?

Social tagging’s benefit is not that it helps you find information more quickly, but that it helps you find things that otherwise you would be unable to find

From a company such as IBM’s perspective, the benefit is not that a sales rep can find a compelling reference 12 seconds faster, it’s that they can actually find that compelling reference at all!

The productivity gain is less about how quickly you find information but the quality of information you find, which leads to a more compelling sales proposal which means you win the deal that otherwise you would have lost.

Extrapolate that across the company and you may end up with much more than $4.6m

I’d recently had a similar conversation with a colleague who almost took offence at the concept that their ‘art’ of sales could be trained. Having gone through gruelling IBM sales school training myself I have certainly seen individuals who have a natural flair for the role but also tools and techniques that can be used by anyone to improve their success rate.

There is certainly something about individuals who come across as ‘natural’ sales people – outgoing, pushy, always seem to end up convincing their friends to go to their favourite bar or eat at their favourite restaurant. But my view, and that expressed at the event, is that as naturally charismatic as someone is, at the Enterprise sales level the ability to manage the sales process and ensure there is alignment at all levels (from executive to technical) within the customer is far more important. Not only that but the software business is moving away from the second had car sales approach, and more of a consultative model – understanding the customer’s business problem better than the customer themselves, and aligning the suppliers product at all levels in the organisation to the business issues.

That opens up another challenge – how do you gauge this and identify the skills required to be a good sales individual in a 60 minute interview? This was another question posed to the panel but the answer will wait for another post…