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The Future of Sales 

Understanding Information as a currency!

"We are moving from a world in which the big eat the small, to a world in which the fast eat the slow.”

Klaus Schwab - Founder and Executive 

Chairman of The World Economic Forum

The Purpose of This Talk

  1. How sales works now vs how it will work in the future

  2. Understanding information as a currency

  3. How you can use your website to stay ahead of the social sales curve. 

Let's Get Started

  The 5 Steps to Every Sale

  1. Intro - Win My Attention
  2. Short Story - Captivate me
  3. Build Trust - Reassure me
  4. Close - Take control
  5. Deliver - Follow through/Do the thing

What is a sale?

  • An Idea

  • A Product

  • A Service 

  • Your Time

This means... That every interaction you have with another human being could be considered a sale or purchase of one of the following... 

Sales is simply the PROCESS of exchanging information; 

humans add intent.

Which means: Sales = Life

Many businesses have forgotten that relationships are part of the sales process

It was easy for them [sales professionals] to take advantage of us [the consumer]. 

Old New
Interrupt Attract
Sell Inform
Trick Trust
Profit Purpose
Products People

Old School Vs New School

Social selling rarely begins until after the initial transaction is complete. 

A Brief History of the Internet & Social Media

The road to a more social sales process

1994

  • The internet is born

1995

  • Newsweek Article: The internet is a fad

1997

  • Blogging is born

  • 1 Million websites

  • AOL Instant messenger

 

1998

  • Google

 

2000

  • 70 Million connected computers 

  • .com collapse!

 

2001

  • Wikipedia

  • iPods

 

2003

  • WordPress (yay!)

  • MySpace

  • Second Life

  • LinkedIn

  • 3 Billion Websites

  • iTunes

 

2004

  • Facebook

  • Podcasting

 

2005

  • YouTube

2006

  • Twitter

  • 25 Billion Websites

  • 400 Million Search queries per day on Google

2007

  • iPhone

2009

  • Facebook = 200MM users

  • Unfriend becomes a real word 

  • 25% of earths population is online

  • 27-58 Billion websites - Almost impossible to count

 

2010

  • Facebook = 400MM users

  • iPad

  • Internet surpases the newspaper as primary place where people get their news

 

2011

  • 65 Million tweets per day

  • 2 Billion views each day on YouTube

  • 90 Million LinkedIn users

  • Privacy starts to become an issue

 

The Age of YouTube

  • 800 Million users monthly

  • 1 Trillion annual video views

  • Thats 140 views per person on the planet

  • 70% of YouTube traffic from outside US

  • 72 Hours of video uploaded every minute

  • 4 Billion hours watched each month

2013

  • Facebook = 1.1B users

  • Twitter 500MM users

  • 156 Million blogs online

  • Dropbox 100MM users/1B files uploaded daily

  • LinkedIn 225MM users

 

Things are changing in the world of sales, online or otherwise. 

And things are only going to speed up!

Every time a new method of communication is introduced to society, it increases the total volume of information exponentially. 

  • Grunts/Signals/Songs
  • Language
  • Print
  • Radio
  • Television
  • Internet
  • ????

It's becoming increasingly difficult to fight for your piece of the online pie. 

Industrial Revolution

Information is the 21st century fossil fuel

By 2029, computers will have emotional intelligence and be convincing as people.

Ray Kurzweil - Director of Enginnering at Google and Futurist 

Why are Google, Facebook and Twitter so powerful?

Because they own all the data Information!

More specifically, they control the flow of information across the internet. 

Why is SnapChat worth $16Billion with $0 in Revenue?

Because they grew faster than any other social network...

400 million snaps per day 

and they own a ton of data information

Everything we do revolves around the exchange of information.

Just think about how we buy things

Which brings up a good question...

What is a currency?

  • Money
  • Words?
  • Information?
  • Social Influence? 

Understanding Information as a Currency

  As the world moves closer towards digital commerce as a standard, the importance of building online influence becomes more and more important. 

 

But having a website is no longer enough...

What does this mean for your website? 

  • WordPress is a good start because you own the data!
  • Your website should be the hub for your online interactions. 
  • Leverage social media to help sell more stuff, not to build brand value for the social platforms themselves.
  • Look for new ways to create immersive online experiences
  • Leverage all that data you collect. 

  Why should someone vist/explore to your website?

Ask this:

Be honest

  Think of social selling as the process of building a technological trust fund

  Once you invest enough into the consumers experience, then you can begin to make withdrawals on that currency.

How You Do That

  1. Solve my problem

  2. Answer My questions

  3. Get out of my way

 

Online sales relationships should be built with a selfish consumer in mind. 

Just think about how you use the internet. 

Examples of how to put people first when building a digital product

  • Showcase User generated content
  • Let me try it freemium
  • Be transparent about what you are doing with my data.
  • Allow me to easily revoke trust at any time. 
  • Basically, give me something of value before asking for something in return. 

Benefiting from the connected web

SEO is no longer optional!

But complete web optimization is more important. 

How SEO used to work

Hint: It was kind of stupid

  • web bots would crawl and look for keywords
  • black hat SEO
  • keyword stuffing
  • Very unintuitive

How it Works now

 

Hint: It's very smart

  • Context - recency and relevance
  • Keywords are still relevant
  • Social influence
  • Web authority
  • Inbound links
  • Content - Buzzword

How it will work moving forward

Hint: It's scary as $#!t 

  • Artificial intelligence
  • Predictive search results
  • Augmented reality
  • Pre-crime
  • Ideas we cannot even consider at this time

How to win at online sales moving forward

Create evergreen Content information

Bait the hook!

Deliver real value

Give before you ask

Put your user first

Remember, users are selfish

Think like a media company!

But not a like click-bait website

Stay nimble

Fast is better than big

Tell a great story

Connect emotionally

Be bold

There is already enough mediocrity

Try new things

The internet is not permanent

Raymmar Tirado

Director of Products @ClearIdeaLabs

Q&A

Work: Clearidea.us

Personal: Raymmar.com