When it comes to optimizing the marketing mix to generate the highest quality and volume of sales leads, few can match Pelin Thorogood’s expertise. This was confirmed in April when the Sales Lead Management Association (SLMA) named Pelin as one of the 20 Women to Watch in Sales Lead Management.

Pelin joins a distinguished list of winners, including: Ardath Albee, Marketing Interactions; Lisa Arthur, Aprimo; Jeanne Hopkins, HubSpot; Maria Pergolino, Marketo; Jill Rowley, Eloqua; Jenny Vance, LeadJen; and others. See the full list.

Pelin expertise in sales lead management is forged by her background in web analytics, social media marketing and sales intelligence. During the more than years she has been advising InsideView, a sales intelligence leader, Pelin played a prominent role in helping define and nurture the Sales 2.0 movement, and recently went on to evangelize social selling. Prior to founding Schulman+Thorogood Group that, she served as SVP Marketing at web analytics and online marketing optimization pioneer WebSideStory, now part of Adobe Systems.

Pelin first wrote about Sales 2.0 three years ago in this article in InsideCRM: “Sales 2.0: How Will it Improve Your Business?” She later teamed with partner Rand Schulman to write about how to market to customers in the social era for her alma mater, Cornell University: “The Birth of Customer 2.0 & The Death of Marketing as We Know It.”

Congrats Pelin!

It sounds like one of those chicken or the egg questions…and given all the buzz about Sales 2.0 technologies and methodologies, you might be tempted to answer “Sales 2.0”.  But I think Sales 2.0 is really the sales organizations response to the “evolve or die” mandate they face, given the smarter and more informed buyer they have to sell to: Customer 2.0.   I do believe the customer has evolved faster than the sales guy…and I believe this is – at least in part – due to how B2B trends typically follow B2C.  Prospects who are looking to make B2B purchase decisions are also consumers, and have been making B2C decisions for a long time.  Access to online reviews, comparison shopping engines, Facebook or Twitter “conversations” on products and services they are evaluating has turned them into much wiser B2C buyers…So, why not transfer that same process, powered by “social intelligence”, to the B2B buying cycle? 

I started an earlier blog post with the observation “We market and sell in a brave new world where prospects are equipped with near x-ray vision into companies, products and people they are considering doing business with.”  This statement implies Customer 2.0 holds all the cards!  Hence, evening out the playing field requires sales to be just as knowledgeable about the buyer and bring real value to the sales process by demonstrating why their products and services can solve the customer’s unique business challenges.  Relevance emerges as the key to synchronizing the selling cycle with the buying cycle.  Armed with a 360° view of their prospect’s business that can only come from “listening to” them and engaging them through social media, sales people now have the opportunity to gain the deep insights necessary to get Customer 2.0’s attention – insights that will drive Customer 2.0 into deeper engagement with your company and delivering on the ultimate promise of Sales 2.0!