Not to predict the next tech boom, but it seems that new companies are sprouting up overnight that can do just about everything. Venture capital is being handed out more now than 5 years ago and this flurry of money is giving people with good ideas a way to make their dreams a reality. but just because you may have the next big thing doesn’t mean you can bring it to market and make any revenue from it.

Many companies are seeing this now. Most start ups from 3-5 years ago are still in a very distinct start up mode. The money they are getting from VCs is being spent mostly on office space and more development, not necessarily more employees and better equipment. With freeware which was once the red headed stepchild of software becoming better quality and easier to use, some companies leave the multiple copies of Microsoft Office at the store and decide to use Google Docs or OpenOffice instead. Most employee computers don’t need to be the workhorses that they were, now a decent laptop an high speed internet connection and an external HD for storage can do the work. Companies with funding are more lean than their splurging predecessors and they are turning the tides on companies that believe that you need to spend $10,000.00 to get $30,000.00. That thinking made sense years ago when I first got into the business, but now with the online applications available you can spend about $3,000.00 for the same result.

Selling in this environment may seem like a handicap but I feel like it is the next wave of change in the process. There will always be the subset of customers or prospects you need to pay a personal visit to, but WebEx and other online meeting applications can save a company from hotel, car rental and airfare on a large portion of their engagements.

Setting up and requiring the training/adoption of a CRM system gives sales people the tools available to do their jobs with precision. But the fact is that many seasoned sales people still do not use a CRM and rely more on spreadsheets, email clients and note pads for their business dealings. I know this because every company I have had the opportunity to work for in the past eight years has shown this to me.

This lack of adoption to a central online database like SalesForce.com, SugarCRM or NetSuite sets the sales people and more importantly the management at a steep disadvantage to the competition. Why do companies still choose the expensive path? The easy answer is that they cannot accept a the new sales paradigm. The saying you cant teach an old dog new tricks was developed for a reason.

Established companies that can make this change will be leaps ahead of the industry. Having a integrated lead management system that is directly tied into their demand generation activities is the grease in their wheels. The CRM with advanced real time reporting give executives the information they need when they need it, not two weeks later when the spreadsheets and other information is processed.

But the established companies are more like big ships in the ocean and take much longer to standardize on new technology. The real winners will be the start ups of the past few years that can move like Zodiacs speedboats and turn like their on rails.

Companies like digg.com that is run by a young entrepreneur named Kevin Rose has kept a small and dedicated staff of visionaries and talent to bring popular media to the droves of even more dedicated readers. Everyone has seen the digg logo on blogging and video sites. Once viral videos were sent through email threads and could take a day or more to become truly viral, now all you need to do is digg a great story or video and it is viewed by hundreds or thousands of people in just hours. No wonder why news agencies have added the digg button to their online pages.

How did digg get so popular? It gave the power of popularity to the people. You decide if it’s worth reading and digging further. Readers see what’s been dug the most and don’t want to miss out on the popular news of the day so they read it and digg it again. The snowball effect of marketing seems endless until the next popular story is posted and the process starts over again. Digg is a prime example of a company that has kept modest by most industry standards. The company gets more popular with every entry. A Google search of “digg” comes back with over 250 MILLION results. Just wait for them to go commercial. I’m sure they are making a few dollars from the Google Ads they display, but once they get a paying advertiser (Who can pay enough) the market will shake. They have basically become a self sufficient machine for marketing with low overhead.

The best part of business in a web 2.0 world is that you can use these services to expand your reach. RSS feeds, Blogs and the rest are all tools any company big or small can use right now that can get your brand and products into the market. Having a website with a ‘buy now’ button will no longer do the job. If you want to do business in this new world, you need help. That’s what these services are designed for. The next tech boom may be a few years out, but the tides are definitely changing for business. If you can’t adapt quickly to the way consumers buy and are exposed to products then you will fall behind. There are some real formidable companies already getting established that will dominate the industry once they flip the switch.

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