I recently signed up for Google Wave, thanks to a friend that offered me an invitation.

My first impression is that it looks like an awful lot like an email client, with a few extensions to allow collaboration. Based on conversations with a few friends, and what I’ve seen posted on Twitter, this is a pretty common first assessment.

However, a bit of reading in the Google Wave Help section reveals a couple of BIG differences. I’m not suggesting that any are good or bad, just different.

1.       Anyone that has been invited to a wave can see what you type, as you type it. I’m glad I read this, as I tend to type first, then return to edit emails pretty heavily before I send them. I’ll have to be more careful as I type blips.

2.       Anyone in a wave can play back all changes that were made to a wave. Again, be careful what you type! This isn’t an email where you can type a cruel message, then delete it before you hit send (please correct if I got this wrong). If I understand this correctly, even the edits that you make will be captured. On the plus side, if you are added to the wave late in a conversation, you can play it back to get up to speed.

3.       Anyone in a wave can edit ANYONE else’s messages. Not sure how this will work. Could be collaboration, or tampering, depending on context and perspective. As noted previously, all changes are archives and easy to replay.

4.       Image attachments are downsampled to reduce file size. That hi-res image that you thought you attached to a blip won’t be hi-res when the other participants see it.

5.       Waves can be embedded. ie. You could embed a wave in a website instead of having a chatroom. This is on my list to explore further, as I can see some interesting potential uses that would increase interaction and information sharing with prospects.

6.       The conversation is hosted, so you don’t have the old email problem of trying to track a conversation when some folks reply to all, some reply just to individuals, some go off topic. Those things can still happen, but they happen in one place where it should be easier to follow.

 

Have a look at http://completewaveguide.com/, which, oddly, is billed as a complete guide to wave.

I pretty quickly wondered how Google Wave might be used as a tool for selling. Two scenarios seem likely: collaboration among the sales team and/or conversations with prospects.

The internal team collaboration use is a pretty straight forward concept… or at least it appears to be at this point. It could be a good place to keep evolutionary documents like sales collateral, so that new versions are always available in the wave vs tracking versions in personal folders or file shares.

Conversations with prospects could become interesting as others are brought into the conversation, and the prospects become customers and are handed off to the team that will provide our service. A few potential pitfalls exist here, but I’ll explore those later.

I’ll check back in after I’ve had a chance to play with Google Wave and try some out some ideas.

How do you use, or envision using, Google Wave for selling?