Thursday, October 13, 2011

Using Social Network Analysis to Drive Sales

From a brief article in the Harvard Business Review last month:
Salespeople have always prized the individual at the center of a web of prospects, because once that person becomes a customer, peer influence may cause the rest to follow.
The trick, of course, is finding that well-connected prospect. Traditionally the search has required all the salesperson’s black arts: sniffing, calling, schmoozing, and guessing. But network theory is beginning to turn it into a science. 
It's an interesting discussion because it touches on combining data from different kinds of sources (insurance claims, drug sales, locations of doctors, who talks to whom) to help pharmaceutical companies identify their most influential clients and concentrate their sales efforts accordingly.

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