Several weeks ago we held our first Google Hangout – a discussion on Sales Leadership’s Social Strategy. The discussion featured Richardson’s CEO David DiStefano and Gerry Moran, SAP’s Head of Social Media, North America. We’d hoped also to include a speaker from InsideView, who couldn’t join because of technical issues (more on that shortly). We’ve posted a video of the session below.
DiStefano and Moran have some great insights on where social selling is taking sales management practice. Both are leading their respective firm’s social media efforts, but also offering thought leadership to a diverse business-to-business client base on the topic.
The Google Hangouts On Air platform seemed interesting to us, given its recent product enhancements. It’s promise: simple videoconferencing with an option to broadcast sessions to large audiences, for free. The service mostly lives up to this promise; “mostly†in the sense that it worked more than it didn’t. But it’s maddeningly difficult to use, and nowhere near a business-quality tool. Enmeshed with the confusing Google+ service, it’s poorly documented and confusing. So there’s a considerable learning curve for organizations hoping to adopt it (as we were) as an alternative to a webinar platform, a purpose for which we now realize it’s poorly suited.
In the end, we couldn’t add our third speaker (the invitation wouldn’t send from our Hangout), despite multiple efforts over many hours. For this reason, we’ll pass on attempting another Hangout or investing more time in trying to make it work. But you might find it interesting for non-business applications, or if you’d simply like to feel better about that buggy webinar solution you’re already frustrated with.
In the meantime, enjoy the excellent insight from DiStefano and Moran below.
