Connecting your sales force Part II - Message boards, the new water cooler?

A connected and collaborative sales force is a smarter, more effective sales force.

By Editor on Oct 16, 2007

A connected and collaborative sales force is a smarter, more effective sales force. With that in mind, eyeforpharma recently hosted a webinar (Sales Force Effectiveness: Collective Intelligence) on ways to keep sales reps together despite geographical distance. Joe Miles, sales force effectiveness project director of eyeforpharma; Paul Moravec, sales effectiveness manager at Quest Diagnostics; Binyah Kesselly, director of enterprise improvement and process excellence at Johnson & Johnson; and Carol Gebert, account manager at Thermo Fisher Scientific Laboratory Automation and Cellular Imaging, all took on the subject of the collective wisdom of front-line sales forces and how that wisdom can be tapped to improve the effectiveness of the team as a whole.

So, how do you tap the individual knowledge of sales force members who often work in isolation, separate from the rest of the team? In the first part of a three-part article, Joe Miles the Web 2.0 tools that address this question. In part two, Paul Moravec looks specifically at online message boards. In part three, Binyah Kesselly discusses prediction markets and how they can bring sales and marketing teams together, while Carol Gebert addresses collaborative sales tools and the motivational components that must be built in to them.

To read Part I, Web 2.0 tools that bring the team together, click here . To read Part III, Prediction markets, cooperation and competition, click here .

Part II - Message boards, the new water cooler?

Paul Moravec of Quest Diagnostics spoke on Sales Message Boards: The Ultimate Collaborative Network? Message boards, according to Moravec, provide a rich, stable forum for sales-force interaction.

One key advantage message boards have over chat rooms is convenience. Where message boards are static, meaning that the information is stored on the board and can be accessed at the reader's convenience, chat rooms are real-time. They require that every participant be available at the same time, regardless of work schedules or time zones.

Message board benefits

Message boards aren'st just convenient. They can also provide some necessary peer-to-peer contact, says Moravec, relieving that feeling of being a lone voice in the wilderness and keeping reps engaged in the industry.

Message boards are an excellent way to tap into the collective wisdom of an entire sales team, no matter how far flung individuals may be geographically. Reps might be focused in different areas or specializations, but threads on message boards allow cross-fertilization across specializations, enriching all. And topic headings perform a self-sort, with more popular threads receiving the highest number of views and responses.

Collaborative message boards promote a departure from what Moravec calls the usual suspects mentality. On every team there are the go to people, the ones that can usually be counted on to have an answer or a solution. But always counting on the same few stars can lead to stagnation among the go-to crowd.

Message boards, security and good conduct

Message boards are wonderful sources of community and social interaction, but by their nature they can be vulnerable. Such boards must be hosted in a secure environment like an intranet site, and anyone who leaves the company should be immediately removed from the active-user list.

There is a lot of information on a message board, Moravec warns; information that doesn'st need to be shared outside the company. Competitive intelligence, sales practices, weaknesses within the company or team, barriers to customer acquisition all form what Moravec calls a treasure trove of information for competitive sales forces.

Another concern is the nature of the board itself. Conversations can get quite heated if no one intervenes, and reps who become dependent on information from the boards might be discouraged if the questions they ask are not answered in a timely manner. Moravec suggests using moderators to keep the board focused and civil.

Getting the most from your message board

There are a couple of behaviors that Moravec warns against. Group think is one such behavior to avoid. As Moravec says, group members often try to minimize conflict or embarrassment to others by agreeing when they really don'st. Consensus is thus reached too quickly, and the advantages of collective wisdom are lost. Users need to be on guard against too-quick consensus.

Equally, those Moravec calls internet experts must be discouraged. These people are very good at sounding authoritative. They are articulate and charismatic, but they may not be well-informed. They are experts, says Moravec, at Internet behavior, not necessarily at their jobs.

Message boards are an excellent tool for promoting the free exchange of ideas between peers. And for many a sales rep, putting in a lot of lonely miles on the road, they can provide an important source of social interaction and support. As Moravec puts it, the feeling of isolation can be tempered a bit by modern technology.

To read Part I, Web 2.0 tools that bring the team together, click here . To read Part III, Prediction markets, cooperation and competition, click here .