You may remember how a month ago, I blogged about When I Use Twitter, IBM Wins. That blog was based on my own perspective and my own theories as to how I thought IBM was benefitting from my use of social tools. I had no real data, however, to back that up.
Recently, I received a very exciting note from Randy Frink communicating that we had won a big opportunity at a customer site. I thought that was great, but I asked him "what's that got to do with me?" He said that they were able to close the sale thanks to my blog. I was ecstatic! I asked him to tell me more.
Later that night, he sent me a presentation (see below) with the story line describing how my blog helped close the sale. Here's what he said happened:
- Searched Lotus Connections for support of SPNEGO and Connections
- My blog entry on the subject was in the top 10 results
- Followed my blog to the step-by-step directions in the InfoCenter
- Randy did NOT contact me, went directly to an ISSL expert and Development (i.e. I was NOT the bottleneck!!)
- Connected the customer to the right expert to close the sale!
So there you have it! Thanks to a blog entry I wrote more than a year ago, IBM was able to make a very significant sale. I think we can even calculate the ROI on this:
Costs:
- Time to write blog entry: 15 minutes
- Cost per hour (assumption): $50
- # of blog entries last year: 200
- Total Cost: $2,500
Revenue:
- Not sure how much the sale was, but let's assume $250k
ROI:
- 100 times the cost!!!!
Enjoy!