Done Deal: Blogs Can Provide Testimonials February 06, 2007
By Betsy Cummings
Earlier this year, sales executives at GlobalSpec Inc., in Troy, N.Y., had their eye on a "major fortune 500 software company" but weren't sure how to close the deal. One element on their side was that GlobalSpec wasn't new to the client—they'd worked with them before. But GlobalSpec, a search engine for engineers that offers online marketing and catalogs to companies, wanted to increase their sales with this client. How to prove that GlobalSpec's tools and services would be used by that client's end users remained elusive to Brian Carter, GlobalSpec's vice president of sales and planning, until he turned to what in hindsight seemed to be obvious—blogs.
After several attempts to reach out to the software giant Carter and his team received interest from the client's ad agency, which handles things such as catalog placement and online search advertising. But, says Carter, "we were more interested in a bigger piece of the puzzle because we felt we had their demographic." To reach that end, he provided evidence, culled from various resources and blogs about GlobalSpec, that he could use as evidence to their strength in the marketplace. "We had some survey information and coverage of GlobalSpec on some blogs," Carter says.
Armed with that information, not just GlobalSpec's own sales pitch, Carter was able to bring more weight to his message and secure a larger deal in the end. The client ended up expanding their four-month campaign with GlobalSpec by two months and represented one of GlobalSpec's top 20 clients. Third party data, Carter says, "and the fact that some of our users had talked about us on blogs was very helpful."
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