Entries Tagged 'SMB San Francisco' ↓
March 24th, 2009 — SMB San Francisco, Upcoming breakfasts
San Francisco’s second Social Media Breakfast, April 3rd, will feature a conversation with Jonathan Knowles on Social Media Metrics: How to Measure the Performance of Social Media Marketing. After the success of our first event, we’re continuing both the venue, Cafe De La Presse’s Wine Bar on Grant, and the format of interviewing a well-regarded author on a critical topic for marketers. This time, we have the honor of hosting Knowles, an internationally known author and expert on marketing finance.
Knowles has written for Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, Marketing Management, and The Wall Street Journal. He’s been profiled in Business Week and his work has appeared at the World Economic Forum in Davos. His book, Vulcans, Earthings and Marketing ROI is regarded as one of the most accessible treatments of marketing finance and performance measurement.
Jonathan will join us for a discussion about Marketing ROI and Brand Equity, and the fundamental difference between short-term and long-term marketing metrics. We’ll talk about effective strategies for developing worthwhile metrics in an environment of rapid innovation, and when it makes sense to turn off the meter.
If you’re planning to attend, we’ll be soliciting questions and case study suggestions in advance, in addition the usual Q&A. We’ll also be launching a Social Media Metrics survey before the event, and we’ll preview the results at the event.
The event begins with an hour of networking at 7:30am, and the program will run from 8:30 to 9:30am. Registration is available online at http://smbsf2.eventbrite.com/. Seats are $20 and limited to 50 participants.
Once again, this event will be hosted by MotiveLab, and we’re open for sponsors. If you have any questions, please contact Chris Kenton.
March 2nd, 2009 — Recaps, SMB San Francisco
I can’t tell you how pleased I was with the launch to the San Francisco Social Media Breakfast. We sold out our tickets and had a great turnout of about 50 people–which is pretty remarkable for a 7:30am event in the city. But hey, the traffic and parking was a breeze. We moved the event a couple doors down from Cafe de la Presse to The Wine Bar, which was a much better venue both for networking, and for the presentation with Anneke Seley.
We kicked the event off with an hour of networking over coffee and breakfast, and I did a an interview with Anneke Seley, sort of in the style of Fresh Air, before opening up the conversation. We talked about Anneke’s background and depth of experience in Silicon Valley–she was employee #12 at Oracle and launched their highly successful inside sales group–and used that as the backdrop for talking about the industry trends that have led to Sales 2.0, and how that’s reshaping the way businesses build sales organizations.
We’ll be book talking Sales 2.0 in the next week or two, so I don’t want to steal the thunder from the discussion, but one concept really jumped out at me that I’ve been thinking a lot about the past few days. It builds from Anneke’s discription of the way the environment for selling in Silicon Valley has changed over the past decade, and how the change has impacted Web 2.0 adoption.
As Anneke tells it in Sales 2.0, back in the day when she joined Oracle, there was a major shift just getting underway in the valley. Traditionally, companies like Oracle sold only extremely expensive enterprise products and sales focused on developing large accounts. Sales people were at home in the field, wining and dining clients and racking up huge expense accounts. As Oracle started selling cheaper products that could load onto desktop PCs, smaller companies became viable prospects, meaning smaller accounts that couldn’t sustain the huge costs of an enterprise-focused sales force.
That trend has only accelerated. We now have companies of all sizes buying products online, and in the case of software, often for a monthly subscription fee with little or no switching costs. What this means is that the cost of selling has to be dramatically reduced. We need efficient ways to meet customers online, attract, inform, educate, and persuade them to buy our products, and the cost of that sale has to be well within the falling margins for product revenue. This is a business driver for social media that goes beyond the red herring of how trendy Web 2.0 may be, and whether or not it’s a passing fad.
If you want to follow the Twitter conversation from the event, you can pick up some good bits of dialog, not to mention some good follows. Also, Jeff Weinberger has a post up about an aha social media moment that happened during the breakfast–which is exactly what it’s all about.
Stay tuned for video from the event, and the book discussion. I passed out a half-dozen books to people who committed to reading it this week. We’ll check in on Friday and start the ball rolling.
February 9th, 2009 — SMB San Francisco, Upcoming breakfasts
San Francisco is kicking off its Social Media Breakfast on February 27th, at Cafe De La Presse. Seats are limited to 40, and they’re already moving fast. Tickets are $20, and are available online.
Our first breakfast features a conversation with Anneke Seley, author of the new book Sales 2.0, Improve Business Results Using Innovative Sales Practices and Technology. Anneke was one of the first employees at Oracle, where she started what may be the best-performing and widely renowned inside sales forces in the software industry. Today, Anneke is founder and CEO of PhoneWorks, a group of the industry’s best sales consultants, where she helps companies achieve revenue acceleration from professional inside sales teams.
As a proven sales leader, Anneke has a unique and compelling perspective on Social Media and its application to sales. This is a timely and important topic for anyone in business and marketing, and a great way to kick off the Social Media Breakfast in San Francisco.
Tickets will sell out, so don’t wait to register online.
The San Francisco SMB is organized by Chris Kenton, CEO of SocialRep, and founding partner of the social media group MotiveLab. If you have questions about the event, or about sponsorship opportunities, please contact ckenton AT socialrep DOT com.
March 22nd, 2008 — SMB San Francisco, Upcoming breakfasts
Brian Shaler has announced an “impromptu, unsanctioned” Social Media Breakfast in San Francisco this morning, Saturday, March 22, 2008.
Here are the event details:
Social Media Breakfast San Francisco