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I sometimes forget about the fact that people are trying to do business and that their business is top of mind -- not CRM. That point was brought home to me last week when I was on-site with a client I won't give too many details, but the company has no CRM per se, just some spreadsheets they use for forecasting, a customer database shared with ER...
I have been investigating the possibility that social networking is something that can be used inside an organization -- "intra-organizationally," as my bureaucratic friends might say. That should really be no surprise -- the entire employee base is a natural community, though in many companies the group is small enough that good old face-to-face communication works pretty well. There's at least one place, though, where community-oriented techniques not only work, but also can have a lot to do with profit and loss...
This is one of my favorite times of year because it's announcement season, the time when all sorts of vendors book briefings to tell me about what's new in their worlds. It has been a busy couple of weeks, and I expect the briefing deluge to continue for the rest of the quarter. I love this because I have a ringside seat to what's happening, and ...
Salesforce's announcement that it would partner with Google to integrate and deliver Google Applications said more about the software industry today than it said about either company or even about the propensity of software makers to deliver Software as a Service The software industry, like many others before it, has always had a tendency toward bi...
They may be still waiting for the first signs of the much advertised recession in the Bay Area. Everything I see here, especially this week, points to growth and all that goes with it. Multiple people have come up to me, phoned or e-mailed seeking introductions or support as they confess to having itchy feet or the promise of some capital to start a business. Some -- a few lucky ones -- also have some cash from their last initial public offering (IPO), and having tasted victory, they are eager to do it all again...
Active is much better than passive in most things, not just CRM. In writing, I am constantly reminded to write in the active voice because active voice is terse, to the point and more intelligible Passive voice takes perfectly good sentences and turns them into gobbledygook. For example, the actively voiced, "Why did the chicken cross the road?" be...
Earlier this month SugarCRM announced that it had secured US$20 million in a new financing round, bringing its total funding so far to $46 million -- a significant accomplishment for several reasons If SugarCRM is not familiar to you, it's not a new Caribbean restaurant in SoHo. I never bothered to find out exactly where they got the name, but Suga...
Recession talk is all around us, and CRM has a role in helping any company get through the slump. How? Take our quick quiz A recession happens when:...
I got a statistic stuck in my head last week during a visit to a client in California. Sometimes you hear or see something so interesting for its oddity that it stays with you no matter what. For me, this was one of those times There are actually two closely related bits of information, and both relate to the call center. Ready? In the business-t...
I was speaking with a CRM vendor the other day about positioning and messaging for sales force automation. The vendor was telling me that the company wanted a back-to-basics message that would focus on the importance of SFA (sales force automation) in helping salespeople recover some of the time they invest in unproductive activities On the face of...
I am still trying to figure out what the primaries are telling us about social networking. I think some of this will be important for CRM and as I have noodled on what it all means, I have been surprised myself. Before I go on, this is not a discussion of who won or my candidate preferences, just musings on how it went down First, I think there is ...
B. Joseph (Joe) Pine II has been interested in the vendor-customer relationship for a long time Pine and his partner, James H. Gilmore, have written numerous books and articles that lie at the heart of the CRM approach to business. Together they have written The Experience Economy: Work Is Theatre & Every Business a Stage (Harvard Business School...
Sales 2.0 is a big deal both because it is causing us all to take a new look at selling -- along with all of the social networking ideas and technology that is changing our work habits -- as well as for what it says about marketing To be frank, Sales 2.0 is actually more about marketing than selling. However, the reality is that marketing solutions...
They pulled out all the stops at Oracle Open World last week to unveil a whole lot of advanced and interesting business technology. It was the 30th anniversary show, but the emphasis was clearly about the future -- not the past There was lots that was not CRM related -- though from my provincial perspective I can barely understand why -- and I will...
OK, I get it. I went to the Sales 2.0 conference in San Francisco last week and there was a lot to like about it In my career, I have seen some major back and forth changes in selling, and I have to say that these changes relate more to what is being offered than who we are selling to....
I have been anticipating the Sales 2.0 conference coming up in San Francisco for many reasons. As a certified, bag-carrying sales guy for a number of years, selling is part of me and though I am an old dog, I do enjoy at least hearing about new tricks I am also an avid fan of the game and many of my clients have sales-related issues -- if not prod...
Just a couple of weeks ago, two terms, on-demand and Software as a Service (SaaS), were used interchangeably -- it was truly a difference without a distinction -- but a lot has changed in a short time First, Salesforce.com introduced Force.com, and a day later SAP announced a long awaited on-demand product, SAP Business By Design. The difference be...
My last few columns have been focused on new technologies that are making their way into the broader CRM suite. Expanding the CRM suite has never been easier, as platform vendors like Salesforce.com provide all the capabilities necessary for innovative developers to add something to the ensemble. Here, I thought it might be fun to explore the flip side...
Dave Duffield, most famously the founder of PeopleSoft and now Workday, was giving a keynote presentation at the RightNow user conference in Colorado Springs, Colo., when it hit me. Duffield is about to become a kingmaker in the on-demand market Please forgive the apparent hyperbole and continue....
I'd like to continue on the idea of modernizing our sales processes. Part of this modernization has been the focus on de-spreadsheeting selling. As we all know it started with sales force automation, or SFA, but the trend is alive and well and, if anything, gaining momentum It's hard to believe that not that long ago selling was managed out of a s...
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