Nice to see ROI (real ROI) being discussed all round!

Excellent post, Tac. Your comment about marketing being the easiest way to prove ROI is dead on…the one point I differ on is the idea that selling it into cost centers has to be a cost savings sell. Speaking for our business, I can point to significant business that's come directly as a result of the customer service that we provide on twitter and GetSatisfaction. The fact that the customer service conversation now resides in the public domain fundamentally changes the value prop, as the line between customer service and marketing is getting very blurry (which is why, in my view, the smart positioning for vendors selling customer service solutions is to focus on the sales/marketing value). All that being said, I think the primary point is right — the best path to revenue is to focus on the direct impact social media can have on the purchase cycle.

More than anything, my biggest takeaway from customer conversations we're having is that, by far, the best approach to marketing/selling social media into the enterprise is to be extremely point-of-pain oriented (as opposed to going for the big vision, enterprise-wide, infrastructure sell). While I buy into the idea that social media will eventually serve as core, underlying communications infrastructure (and will change the way we do business in some fundamental ways), it loses value if it's sold/implemented in a top-down manner. Trying to sell it as underlying communications infrastructure goes against what it's about and the second you sell it this way, the big company command-and-control instincts kick in (“How does the software help us control who can speak for our brand? We can't have just anybody talking about our product roadmap…how does the product help us control that?”). This kind of sales approach made sense in the past for infrastructure products like ERP, CRM and systems management, where the primary goal was command-and-control, but that doesn't work when the value is all about speed, collaboration, individual responsibility, etc. If instead you address a specific point of pain (i.e., focus on the specific value props that you mentioned), eventually it'll spread naturally throughout the organization.