Why wouldn’t I want direct closers spending some portion of their time “trolling Discussion Groups on LinkedIn.” Isn’t that a great way to self-generate some highly targeted leads?

Keep up the great blog!

To answer your first question – No, advertising can’t be effective without being trusted. I can’t imagine anybody saying, “I don’t trust this (brand, company, product or service), but I’m going to give them my money anyway.”

Re Sales and Marketing being different beasts; I think it depends on the size of the business, and to some extent the industry. My clients are SMBs (which I define as between 20 and 100 employees). They are B2B companies, and many just didn’t do Marketing at all (or they thought they were doing Marketing when they had their logo printed on hats for the annual Chamber golf tournament). What I’m saying is that that’s wasteful. There are much better ways to spread your messages, with orders of magnitude better ROI.

We can and should eliminate the time wasted by Sales people cold calling and trying to influence with other intrusive and unwanted messaging (like advertising). They might as well take the money and set fire to it. I often see SMB CEOs knowingly blow money on advertising for vanity reasons.

I will grant you that the term ‘Sales 2.0′ may be used by sales and marketing vendors to sell h/w, s/w and services. I used it as a way to describe a paradigm shift that I see occurring in SMB Sales and Marketing departments.

Bob

I’m not sure that the survey you link to says that 95% of advertising is wasted. What they say is that people only trust 5% of advertising. Could it still be effective without being trusted? Because you’re worth it.
You draw some interesting conclusions on the convergence of sales and marketing. Not sure I would draw the same conclusions. It appears to me that sales and marketing are different beasts but they do need to greater alignment and cooperation. I summise that Sales 2.0 is a creation of Silicon Valley to try and sell us all more tin and code. I encourage my clients to work on their culture, language and people before they even consider throwing technology at sales and marketing.

Rod Sloane

Roma è il mio preferito luogo sulla terra. Mi farebbe piacere a venire vedere voi, e di insegnare a leggere.

Molte grazie,

Roberto

Thanks for sharing your expertise with us. I’m one of the old school, like Terry, and I’m working to evolve into 2.0 version. This info is like nourishment for me.
Thanks again.

Ciao!
Pierluigi