I recently read some interesting stuff about analysing customer networks - the network of influencers and peers who are part of the buying decision (perhaps most applicable in the B2B and not-for-profit spaces).
Any good salesperson has always understood these influences and attempted, where possible, to reach them. What is different appears to be the attempt to apply some analytic rigour to this work. Social networks are a hot field in marketing right now - in fact, Gartner cited Social Network Analysis (SNA) as an emerging technology for the nex ten years (see: http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=495475)
I'm not endorsing this company but at first blush it looks like they have some interesting ideas on how to approach this....anyone out there want to add to the discussion? http://www.comlytics.com/Home/
A related Harvard Business Review article:
http://www.comlytics.com/ID=2819/TYPE=1161/HBR-Network%20Selling.pdf
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Community Analytics does apply a business process to understanding these influence networks. Our methodology involves asking the customer community to nominate others; we're not running algorithms against existing data. This is a significant paradigm shift in the field of marketing. I'd love to hear any other thoughts/questions that might be out there.
- Katie Weishaar, Director of Marketing & Strategy for Community Analytics
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