Google Plus to shift the paradigm of sales for businesses

3GuitarHangout • 31st Jul 2011 • Hangout • B2B, B2C, benefits, business profiles, circles, CRM, data, google analytics, google plus, guitar hangout, sales processes, value

A few days after we released the news about Guitar Hangout and watched how it was spreading worldwide, some ideas came to our minds. Many (guess, millions) companies wait for Google Plus to launch business profiles functionality and nobody yet knows what particular benefits it will bring to our daily operations.

But the weekend spent thinking about our guitar training business and monitoring our news journey in the media and G+ gave some insights that we want to share.

We’re sure this functionality will be included in G+ for businesses. If not on the first day of launch, then on the second

1. Circles on pages

If in Facebook page admins when posting can sort their page fans only according to Location and / or Languages, then in Google Plus, oh yeah, there will be as much sorting possibilities as different customer requirements. It means, Facebook never thought (or understood) what businesses are about.

There’re many customers segments in any company – existing customers, potential, big, small, losts, happy, unhappy and so. Log into your CRM – you already have circles, but yet name it different. I’m sure G+ will enable us to change the name of ‘segmentation’ – it will become circlation or smth.

In our business there are guitar beginners, fast learners, 1st levelers, 2nd levelers and so on, heavy metal fans, jazz fans, rock fans, etc. Then we have well attenders and bad attenders (those who miss a lot, bet never quit us…). And we always struggle to manage groups of such different people (note, that batching our guitar students is cost effective exploit of our constraint – guitar teachers). In the early stage of guitar learning even one lesson missed makes a noticeable difference if compared to the guy who attended (dismissed).

With Google Plus this will be solved. It is not because it’s Hangout has streaming functionality (that had many alternatives far before G+). It’s because it is not enough to move land-based business model to internet to expand your market in such business like guitar trainings and many others.

Facebook was a wide media channel for corporate communication. And we, businessmen and marketers, tried to narrow it while creating separate pages for different products, different regions. Those who didn’t narrow the channel, their fans got (and continue to get) mass of news, proposals (spam) that are not interested in. Well, sometimes they do. And that’s why they don’t quit the page. But is it a real customer satisfaction?

To make things short: G+ will be a CRM channel, as much sophisticated as the requirements of firm’s customers.

2. Automatic circles

Remember, there’s such a thing like Google Analytics. And now get back to the thoughts about CRM above. Lets agree on several things we know about CRMs:

- It is smth about our CURRENT customers and COMMUNICATION (and purchasing) HISTORY between the employees and customer, right?

- CRM provides value if and only if all data is up to date and none of employees never missed to add note about the last conversation / proposal / answer, etc.

- CRM covers personal contacting only. If you have e-shop ant track what your customers buy (or miss due to stock-out), it is not CRM. It is e-shop

And here comes G+ with circles and Google Analytics integrated. And we, businesses, benefit:

- we have data about PEOPLE who are within our business or brand on G+, even if they are not our customers. The data covers their behavior with our brand, attractions, reaction to the proposals, hot offers, etc. If Michael +1′d our proposal, is it worth to disturb (spam) him once again with the same request? Or maybe its time to go to sales process stage 2? In Facebook pages we become spammers only because we can’t filter out those who already reacted to the first attempt!

- nobody needs to collect and enter data about people behavior as Google Analytics does it. Remember, robot never forgets to enter smth or is tired, or unmotivated.

- crowds can be tracked on personal basis. And then distributed to the circles automatically. If Vodafone page admin posted link about new Android phone to the big circle, and then some 5% 1′d the post, these 5% automatically form a new circle with respective name. Now page admin can give a Android hot offer only for the 5% group. Others get no spam, and those get personally interesting proposal.

Will will share other insights in the next posts shortly. But it is clear so far: Google Plus will allow businesses to set sales processes not only in B2B (call, meet, get problem, meet, provide proposal, negotiate, agree), but in B2C. It is paradigm shift and we look forward to meet it!