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Tim Keelan
Selling Podcasting Within Your Organization
Tim Keelan
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[runtime: 00:31:22, 14.4 mb, recorded 2006-06-20]
On one hand there's Brent Alberda of Keane, Inc, faced with huge competitive pressure and a serious need to build up Keane's sales force fast. On the other hand is Tim Keelan of StoryQuest, combining the power of storytelling with the goals of corporate training to bring peer-based learning to mobile sales teams. The result is "The Inside Story", a podcast available to Keane's sales and support team, offering successful sales strategies as real stories told by the company's own people.
Keelan and Alberta discuss the challenges they overcame when introducing podcasting in the corporate environment and the lessons they learned along the way. Issues include finding out who the decision-makers are, getting the attention of the right people in the organization, dealing with a variety of stakeholders, and communicating the value proposition of podcasting effectively.
The challenges don't stop with securing a budget to include podcasting in the training mix. Keelan and Alberta offer tips aimed at improving the podcast itself as well as the business process of podcast production. Getting the right content to hold the attention of busy salespeople is high on the list. The discussion includes concrete examples of how they recorded the real stories that make up "The Inside Story", as well as how they might do things differently in the future. When selling podcasting in a corporation, however, an ROI of 700% means that the most compelling story may be the one the numbers have to tell.
Tim Keelan is the founder and CEO of StoryQuest. After 15 years of successful selling, Tim traveled the world studying the application of story and narrative for sales, training and organizational learning. Prior to founding StoryQuest he was a sales manager for Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, Interim Technology and CARA Corporation. Past clients included Allstate Insurance, ABN AMRO, Motorola and other Fortune 500 companies. Tim is an associate of the IBM Cynefin Centre for Organizational Complexity.
Brent Alberda is currently manager of Global Sales Operations for Keane, Inc. His responsibilities include sales training, on-boarding and sales certification, plus sales tools including SalesForce.com and Keane’s podcast series, the Inside Story. The Inside Story is a peer-based internal sales enablement that uses podcasting to enable Keane's global sales force. Brent has been with Keane for over 13 years, serving as Account Executive, Sales & Marketing Manager, Business Development Manager for Application Outsourcing, Sr. Account Executive, Director of Sales for North America, and Director of Sales Support.
