Garth's World

Account Management 101 from a Teenager

Last week I got a lesson in sales from a most unlikely source. It all started with a “honey do” (which in my case immediately converts to a “honey sub contract” whenever possible) list item that had taken over that dreaded Defcon 5 Home Alert, nobody’s-happy-if-mamma-ain’t-happy position. Specifically, spring had arrived, my kids are 5 and 3, and we needed a play set in the backyard. So I priced the (much preferred) brand where the company delivers and constructs the thing for you, but unfortunately everyone in the family had seen an identical set at our favorite retail play land, Costco, for about $1000 less. All I had to do was find someone to put it together for me, in time for the Easter party we are having today, and I was good to go. (Note: At no point in time did I consider attempting to put this thing together myself. I ran a painting and light construction company in college, but just because I am physically able to complete a task does not even close to mean that I have any desire to spend every “spare” hour that I have stripping screws and running back and forth to Home Depot for missing parts. Besides, I had testimony from multiple Dads on my street that it took them like 50 weekend and evening hours to assemble theirs--enough said---this went out to bid.)

I called our go-to friend for all things Charlotte, our realtor, to suggest a handy man. Without any hesitation she recommended her cousin, and we arranged to have him come with his “crew” on Saturday and get it built. He had already taken the step to call the manufacturer and gave the estimate that it should take 4 hours. Done deal-see ya Saturday! Well, at the arranged time a truck shows up and three guys start unloading tools. The only problem: they all look like they are 12 years old to me.

I am a Sales 2.0 Tool

Even though my wife thinks I am busy obsessing over my fantasy baseball draft and filling out multiple NCAA brackets, in actuality I am digging out from a week in San Francisco which included the Sales 2.0 Conference. Man o man has that show gotten big. While I’m not sure that I am qualified to enter  the “has Sales 2.0 crossed the chasm” conversation on the distinguished gentleman from Canada Robert Lesser’s blog, I can report that as measured in pure number of people in attendance and sponsorship logos the Sales 2.0 franchise is kicking some serious tech marketing ass. The roster of 37 sponsors, including the big CRM guys this year, made host Gerhard Gschwandtner grow so tired listing them that he slurred all the lowly bronze level sponsors into two syllables. Over 600 sales and marketing execs were in attendance, creating standing room only sessions and thronging the hallowed halls of the Four Seasons with snappily dressed yuppies buzzing about funnel velocity and marketing alignment. What’s this about a recession, you say?

Image via CrunchBase

This isn’t going to be a “reflections on the Sales 2.0 Conference” because I’m 10 days too late (9 days behind the Twitterheads).  Also, my ADD/chatterbox personality resulted in the fact that I only sat through the first 2 hours of program content. What I can tell you is that the introductions were flawless (short a crappy microphone), Brett  Queener’s (SVP Product from Salesforce!) keynote/commercial for Chatter was very interesting to me personally (a Facebook for enterprises- right up my alley), and Jigsaw’s customer from On24 was part of the first panel on Lead Generation and we looked great- thanks for asking.

Sales Jam, Baby!

As any regular reader (there is a large handful of you-thanks, mom!) of my blog knows,  the posts where I can tear down the subject are better (at least funnier) than when I am endorsing something Jigsaw related. I like to think that I always retain an edge beyond marketing copy (OK - maybe a jagged ice pick compared to standard corporate speak), but let’s face it, Jigsaw is paying the bills and I can’t lower the boom in public on everything that strikes me as idiotic about my company.  Sometimes I have to promote a positive pose while portraying a personal product, person, partner or predicament and entertain myself in other ways - like say using as many “p” words as p-p-possible.

My topic today is one that you are going to hear about in some form every week until the event happens, because it is my baby: the 2010 Jigsaw Sales Jam. Hopefully, the fact that I am so bullish about the whole thing, which is very much a Jigsaw related gig, will not turn off the loyal Garth’s World fan.  If so, tune back in after July 13-14, when I will return to ragging on people that say “utilize” instead of “use” because they think it makes them sound more professional. Or maybe August 1^st, because I will need at least 2 weeks to recover from how flat out great this party….er….industry summit is going to be.