Thought Leaders in Sales 2.0: Carol O’Kelley, CEO of Salesfusion (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What are other core areas where you think marketing automation and Sales 2.0 is making a real difference?

Carol O’Kelley: To where you can make systems work for the marketers or for the sales people, instead of the other way around. You can even look at an auto dialer that’s improving the efficiency of the sales organization. I think that it’s easy to overlook some of those things and say, “Those have been around for a while.” But if you think about the increased efficiency that’s brought the average demand generation, those can be great productivity boosters.

Sramana Mitra: Are there other trends that you would want to touch upon?

Carol O’Kelley: Something like an Oktopost in terms of the ability to socialize content is another great way to have very good tracking and extend the audience in a very cost effective way. I really like what they’re doing. That’s a relationship that we’re looking to grow.

Sramana Mitra: I’m going to switch gears in terms of the line of questioning. When you look around the sales automation space and you were a fresh entrepreneur today, do you see any obvious open area that is crying for an entrepreneur to step in and solve a problem?

Carol O’Kelley: That’s a really good question and it’s something I’ve thought about a lot lately. I’ve always been intrigued by entrepreneurship. I’m always thinking of what I’m going to do next. I don’t think it’s so much of a new solution. I think it’s about taking some of the things that are already out there and making them simple and accessible. I struggle to think what hasn’t been touched at this point, but I do think there are enormous opportunities to make things simpler and more accessible.

If you think about what you’ve seen happen in really good design whether that’s in consumer products or technology, that’s something that the space is really craving. If you look at even something like marketing automation, it’s just incredibly complex and overwhelming for people to even start to embark upon the journey. The system is complex. It’s not necessarily intuitive. It requires integration to CRM and other third-party systems. If you have any amount of data to migrate, there are a lot of folks that even require you to have a third-party integrator get you live or a dedicated head count to manage a system.

It’s very easy for a marketer who’s trying to juggle a lot of balls, everything from strategic planning down to tactical management of events and lead management, to be scared off from this space. I think it’s time for us all to turn that and make these systems work for the marketer instead of the other way around.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Thought Leaders in Sales 2.0: Carol O’Kelley, CEO of Salesfusion
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