The Shift due to recession and fuel costs

Chris Brogan is threading some trends together by combining the writings of Shel Israel on Social Media & the Cost of Fuel and Steven Rubel Digital Nomads Rising giving insight on the future trend of working remotely and social media that will induce changes in the way people work and do business (even sales).

Change ahead

One of the reasons given change is likely to happen:
- The increasing cost of fuel.
- The availability of bandwidth.
- The shifting of jobs into knowledge delivery and networked communities more than face-to-face affairs.
- Web applications, web services

The Shifts

Often recessions accelerate social shifts that are waiting to get adopted by the larger public. According to Steven Rubel one of such trends is Digital Nomads using web services (applications and solutions) in order to be able to work from anywhere.

- Conferences will attract less people due to high travel costs, whereas virtual conferences could become popular.
- In order to get closer to customers, businesses will increasingly use social media instead of face-to-face meetings due to high travel costs.
- Increase of use of video

The Shift also for buying and selling

It is exactly this vision of the remote worker or Digital Nomad that brought us the develop LEADSExplorer:
- The website has become one of the main assets of any company.
- The website represents the company, where the customer and the lead are paying visits for information.
- Most B2B deals (7/10) start with a Internet search and comparison of different alternatives.
- Recession and fuel costs will drive people even more to the website.
- During recession there is always a drive towards cost reductions: website and Internet communication are less expensive than any other channel.
- Sales department is probably the most expensive per head in any company.
- On the Internet people believe they are incognito, however much can be revealed.
- More and more, both seller and buyer will be Digital Nomads using (secure) VPN connection to their company to represent themselves to the outside.

The website as a source of information for selling
The remote salesman or sales assistant can find visitors on the company website, identified by the company name. They can qualify these visitors as leads by the information presented and retrieved from LEADSExplorer.

These “warm” companies can be cold called having a higher rate of success.

Then the salesman can follow-up his contacts or the contacts found on the Internet, using the CRM that receives constant inflow of the website data. This allows him to analyze the interaction of communications with the lead of customer and their reactions by the visits on the website.

Both the salesman and the sales assistant can work remotely using the same data, still interacting immediately and directly with the lead or the customer, as they can “see” them on the website.