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Strike While the Social CRM Iron Is Hot March 18, 2010 
"If you can't measure it, you can't manage it." If you haven't heard that one multiple times, you aren't really in business. It's a truism -- and part of being a truism is that it's true, for the most part. When a new business strategy emerges, it can temporarily topple truisms -- but soon, they're back and as applicable as ever.
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Customer Data Is a Terrible Thing to Waste March 12, 2010 
Few marketers would argue against the importance of relevant, timely, personalized marketing communications. In fact, research has consistently proven the value of personalizing marketing messages by segmentation, targeting, or one-to-one messaging. Personalized email campaigns generate two to three times higher click-through rates than mass email campaigns and twice the conversion rates.
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Social CRM's Point of First Impact March 11, 2010 
Service is becoming perhaps the most important leg of CRM. It's not just me saying it -- it's many others, including Paul Greenberg, who literally wrote the book on CRM. With the economy in the state it's in, that makes sense; keeping the customers you already have has never been more important. However, service has some internal cultural hurdles to clear before it gets the respect it deserves.
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Tricks of Your Trade: Little Things That Can Make CRM Better March 05, 2010 
There's an adage in the CRM industry that every successful CRM implementation is customized in some way. That may not be as much of an absolute as it once was. But, in order to gain a true competitive advantage from CRM, your business needs to find ways to use it differently than your competitors do.
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Automated Bid-to-Win: Shrink the Sales Cycle, Seal More Deals February 26, 2010 
As sales organizations endeavor to escape the constricted economy of the 2009 recession, one of their most significant barriers is stagnant progress in terms of bringing their sales cycle under control. Recent Aberdeen research reveals that under-performing companies saw a year-over-year increase in their sales cycle of 12 percent.
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Social CRM: Walk Before You Run February 25, 2010
Had a meteor hit the Dulles Westin outside of Washington, D.C., two weeks ago, it would have set social CRM back 10 years. That meteor, in addition to melting a lot of snow, would have vaporized in a trice the vast majority of the world's serious thinkers on the topic of social CRM.
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VCs' Confidence Crisis February 24, 2010 
In our industry, we live on innovation, and innovation takes capital -- something that has been in short supply over the last couple of years. Venture funding took a massive hit in 2009, but there are signs that the trend might be bottoming out. If it is, we might all learn to exhale again.
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CRM for the Small Business, Part 2: Choosing the Right CRM Tool February 23, 2010 
Once a small business decides to invest in a CRM solution to replace the patchwork assortment of tools it has been using to manage its information, the selection process can be daunting. A plethora of CRM vendors offering an assortment of features have appeared on the scene in recent years, said Brent Leary, cofounder and partner of management consulting and advisory firm CRM Essentials.
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B2B vs. B2C CRM: What's the Diff? February 22, 2010 
For companies that sell their products and services direct to consumers, CRM solutions frequently miss the mark. A quick Google search for CRM helps prove this: The search returns plenty of B2B products, but sifting through the results to find solutions designed specifically for the B2C sale is like finding a needle in a haystack. Why is this?
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Why CRM Keeps Sales Reps Awake at Night February 18, 2010 
Although service is gaining in importance as the economy is forcing customer retention to the fore, sales has long been the dominant leg of the CRM stool. Many CRM efforts were spearheaded by sales, and in many organizations, the SFA functions of CRM software remain the only features that actually get used. That said, sales pros continue to voice problems, concerns and worries about CRM.
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Unified Communications: Decidedly Sustainable February 17, 2010 
I almost never attend a webinar unless I am speaking. When I need to know something, I usually get a one-on-one with a CEO or other leader of a company. They're very gracious with their time, and the tutelage helps me as an analyst, though often I don't run out and write something about my experience.
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5 Basics for Making the Scene in Social Media February 15, 2010 
Many companies are hesitant to adopt the social media movement because of the uncertainty of negative comments or results. The fact is that negative conversation will happen regardless of whether or not you are engaging in social media, so don't hesitate, just jump on the social media bandwagon and engage.
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Marketers, Take a Leaf From Sales' Psy-Ops Playbook February 12, 2010
Anyone who has worked in sales or indirectly worked closely with sales has experienced those curious times when deals that seem to be moving along perfectly suddenly go cold. Was it something you did, something you said, something you failed to do? Inevitably, the question always gets asked "What could we have done differently to make the sale?"
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Zeroing In on Active Networkers February 10, 2010 
New research from Harvard Business School and the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project give new perspective to the social media and social CRM phenomenon and raise a yellow flag for all those people proclaiming social media the second coming. First: Harvard. The Economist ran one of its special report sections this week on social networking.
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The Cloud Is Not a Place February 03, 2010 
What exactly is cloud computing? The question just doesn't go away, and as the year starts, SugarCRM has just released a white paper -- "The Sugar Open Cloud" -- offering its definition and its argument for why its vision is superior. I am not sure about either. Full disclosure: I like SugarCRM and have a lot of respect for what they are trying to do.
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Closing the Customer Visibility Circle January 14, 2010 
Whether driven by lack of product differentiation, customer demand for better service, or simply the need to improve the prospect/customer experience, companies are seeking to better understand their customers in order to more effectively acquire and retain business. Yet recent Aberdeen research shows less than a third of all companies have real-time visibility into all related processes, from customer quote to cash receipt.
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