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RichBlumberg
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert


Recently, I came across an impressive McLaren race car which triggered thoughts about the similarities between sales teams and race car drivers. The SAP Speeds Up - McLaren Formula Onevideo provides insights on the importance of “split second and informed decisions” to impact short-term results and future outcomes.

ince that unexpected sighting of a very cool car, I began to ponder how this performance model might be applied to cross-teams and collaboration to help impact revenues and bottom-line business results.

This question came to mind…
How can organizations apply tools such as SAP Jam to win their respective races? 


During the SAP Q2 2013 Results Earnings Call Bill McDermott, SAP co-CEO, shared that “American Sugar Refining (ASR) the largest sugar refiner in the world, selected SAP Jam and SAP Cloud for Customer over Salesforce.com to increase customer insight and personalized engagement. ASR expects anywhere, anytime access to relevant data to make business decisions and identify sell and up-sell opportunities in real time.”

These investments highlight that market leading organizations are leveraging a key ingredient of selling: social business collaboration.

SAP Jam combined with SAP applications, such as SAP Cloud for Customers and SAP CRM powered by SAP HANA, provide a competitive advantage for organizations to establish a 360° view of their customers.

The inflection point in leveraging SAP Jam to accelerate sales is to pinpoint specific business requirements which align to revenues, productivity gains, and cost saving. 

Senior executives and their teams who focus on bottom-line revenues, business outcomes, and performance metrics should include collaboration in the mix.   Business leaders responsible for sales should consider a multi-dimensional business and IT model which zeros in on the right people, content, applications, data, business processes, and communications. 

7 Use Cases: Leveraging SAP Jam to Accelerate Sales
Within an organization there are many use cases to consider. Over the years, my team and I have experienced a variety of sales scenarios where collaboration and cross-teaming can make the difference between success and failure including:


  1. PIPELINE: Sales representatives update their pipeline in SAP Customer Relationship Management (CRM) on-premise or cloud and realize that their account team can rally together on SAP Jam to win a deal by bringing all the key experts and their content in one central document-centric hub location.

  2. CUSTOMER’S CUSTOMERS: A top customer is evaluating new ways to impact their customers’ revenues and values the trusted advisory relationship orchestrated by the sales team to provide access to experts and thought leaders. SAP Jam provides private collaboration between the company and the customer.

  3. CUSTOMER INTELLIGENCE: Salespeople need fast access to financial and business intelligence data in one place to know the status of their account and to share it on SAP Jam with their account team during weekly and monthly calls.

  4. MASTER DATA: Sales operations is leveraging sales force automation, but wants to have a single system for sales, marketing, and services to take full advantage of the master data and predictive analytics.

  5. GO-TO-MARKET:  Sales teams and the cross-teams that support them need real-time access to the latest products, solutions, services, and industry information to ensure that they are using the most up-to-date information in discussions with customers and prospects to accelerate pipeline and deals.

  6. FEEDBACK:  Product and innovation teams benefit from customer feedback to assess features, functions, investments, and roadmaps; all of which can be socialized on SAP Jam based on feeds (and connections) to and from SAP Cloud for Customers and/or SAP CRM and then shared by way of discussions, forums, and central collaboration.

  7. CAMPAIGNS: Marketing teams aligned to sales and senior management want to have focused single and multiple account (multi-channel) campaigns and leverages SAP Jam to help accelerate deals and opportunities which benefits sales.


While many of the decisions, executive sponsorship, and guidance happens at the top of an organization, it is the empowered sales, marketing, services, and innovation professionals who size up the organization’s strategy and aligns collaboration to support revenues, value, profit, and growth centered around the customer.

Summary - Split Second Decisions

Whether winning a Formula 1 race or a deal many of the same considerations stand true. There are any number of small differences and “split second
decisions” which separate the champions from the rest of the pack.


Both quantifiable (i.e. pipeline statistics, deals closed, key performance metrics) “and” qualifiable (i.e. cross-teaming, role types, multi-cultures) deliverables are essential ingredients to sales success.


SAP Jam is the social business platform for SAP and SuccessFactors, an SAP Company, which integrates with a suite of SAP and non-SAP products and solutions which become most powerful when adopted to win the races that organizations experience selling day-to-day, quarter-to-quarter, and throughout the year.

 

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About the Author







  Richard D. Blumberg is a SAP Jam Practice leader who works with both SAP and SAP Services. He is the President of World Sales Solutions, LLC (WSS) (www.WorldSalesSolutions.com) providing 29+ years of thought leadership on a variety of “View from the Top” strategies including: Enterprise Social Business, Go-to-Market Strategies, Business Development, Talent Development, and Community Building.  He and his team are recognized SAP Jam global experts for implementations and adoption.

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* Photo Credit: Anton Gvozdikov / Shutterstock.com