Here’s the short list:
1. Information at your fingertips – With multiple authors contributing content, you soon have a information-rich environment of client information, competitive intelligence, and other sales artifacts
2. You become the de facto destination for information – What could be better than having your customer access a privatized portion of your blog filled with project and proposal content?
3. Better distribution of your content – Your RSS feed is a personalized channel piping straight to your customer
4. Instant collaboration – Password-protect a part of your Blog and Voila!, instant extranet.
5. Branding – Your blog is a billboard. Personalize as you please.
6. Online Proposals – The web is your platform to create your proposal. Wouldn’t your client prefer to login and view your proposal rather than thumbing through pages?
7. Cross-selling opportunities – Invariably, your client will ask, “How did you create this?”.
8. Humanizing your company – Big or small, every company can use another channel to communicate with their customers.
9. So when you or your company is “Googled”, you’re found.
10. Because your competitor is already using Blogs
At my last company, we used a sales blog to distribute competitive intelligence, partner and vendor information, and other general updates relevant to closing new business. When you think about how many times reps look for the latest Powerpoint, proposal, or pricing list, and the time it takes for them to find it, the ROI becomes much clearer. With a sales blog you have a central repository for this nformation and built-in features like categories and commenting keep it tidy and interactive. That alone is very powerful when you consider the amount of collective knowledge it takes to win a new client.
And with the RSS feed, sales reps know when the site is updated. How many intranets can do that?
George Dearing is a consultant with more than 10 years experience helping companies use technology to solve business problems. Through Radiant Digital, he provides consulting services for internet and intranet-based solutions spanning enterprise portals, collaboration, content management, webolog, and integration software.
He can be reached at 214.563.3101 or http://radiantdigital.blogs.com
