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!
Luis, that's a great story. Too bad it didn't happen in early January. At Lotusphere, I attended a BP Roundtable around social software (products like Quickr and Connections). The people in charge of the products and in charge of selling them claimed to have no time to be blogging or to be on Twitter. Obviously they see no value in using social networks. Sad but true. It's like a bicycle-riding granola-eating environmentalist getting a job selling at a Hummer dealership.
ReplyDeleteStories like yours are great. Way to go.
Absolutely! These are the experiences that make us win the opps: real histories wich let the customer understand the ROI of a Social Network.
ReplyDeleteGreat to see this sample and great to see you sharing it!
I think blogging is invaluable. However, it is difficult to measure. I'm one of the lucky ones. I have been blogging about DB2 for z/OS for more than 4 years, that's before it was fashionable. Everyone I work with tells me the blog is of great use. It gets quoted in sales calls, we use it to get information out about seminars, new product, product updates, along with the everyday technical DB2 stuff that I write about. Subscription are well over 2000 with over 11,000 visits in Jan 2009 alone.
ReplyDeleteSo although I cannot give you a dollar value for blogging, I can tell you the company absolutely benefits from it. I would really like to see blogging increase with employees writing about everything we sell.
Willie
My DB2 Blog
@Alex - I can only assume the Connections team was under-represented in that room ... between Luis B (and Luis S) and Mac and Suzanne and David (not to mention Stuart and Mitch and Handly) ... I think Connections is well represented in the blogosphere.
ReplyDeleteStories like this help!
Congrats, Luis!
Pues nada Luis, diles que te den una comisión de la venta.
ReplyDeleteSaludos desde España.
Martín
sidra400.com