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Cost reduction, chasing talent globally, aligning product life cycles to critical natural resources -- all form the mantra that has made outsourcing the silver bullet so many manufacturers and service companies reach for when the challenges of achieving financial objectives (read cost reduction) hit ...

If you want to see who's winning at retaining and attaining higher-than-ever customer loyalty, look no further than what is really happening inside sales reps, call center reps, their managers, and for that matter, their CEO ...

As business intelligence and analytics hit full stride this year, dashboards are becoming ubiquitous. Typically, marketing, sales, operations and -- increasingly -- quality management departments are all creating their own ...

There's no other series of business processes that are going through more of a transformation today and impacting customer relationships more than order management ...

While much has been written on how vendors can get the most out of their analyst relations strategies -- both in blogs and in my book -- little has been written about how technology buyers can maximize their use of advisory firms. Jim Zimmerman, in his blog, AnalystPerspectives, presents this issue in a well-written post ...

In many technology-driven companies, customer advisory councils are the weapon of choice of marketing and sales departments when the unmet customer needs get lost in new product development ...

Whenever I think of New Year's resolutions, one of Mark Twain's best quotes comes to mind: "A habit cannot be tossed out the window; it must be coaxed down the stairs a step at a time." ...

The coming year is going to reorder entire industries due to customer churn. With this reordering will be an entirely new set of selling dynamics, as existing ones prove marginally successful into 2007 ...

Like many industry analysts and alumni, I find analytical concepts sexy. Add in creating strategies for serving customers more efficiently while being profitable at it, and the conditions are perfect for the creation of an Accidental Analyst ...

It's about that time of year when we see all the predictions and forecasts of how much online sales will increase, by product, for this holiday season. From cautiously to wildly optimistic, these forecasts are things that e-commerce managers' dreams are made of ...

It's the catch-all department in many companies where top sales funnel activities like lead and demand generation are found, or lower sales funnel strategies including pre-sales support, pricing exceptions and team selling are found. It's team selling on enterprise-class ERP applications. It's also another word for a telemarketing staff. Defined by its functions more than its measures of performance, business development is, in many companies, the glue that connects customers and prospects with sales...

The best performing companies when it comes to customer-facing strategies actively attack the seven deadly sins of CRM with a vengeance. These observations come from their quantified success, and for certain publicly held companies, a rise in their Price/Earnings Ratio, stock price and valuation. From a limited sample, that correlation exists ...

The service revolution inCRM -- and, in fact, throughout customer-facing strategies -- is well underway in many companies. The reason the remainder of the industry doesn't see it yet is because many CRM vendors' responses to the revolution are so slow that they make lagging economic indicators look speedy ...

For many companies, there is an uncomfortable truth that even with CRM systems in place, one big gaping hole comes up again and again in customer experience: it's the nagging issue of saving customers time ...

With the CRM vendor landscape going through so many changes today, it's an excellent time to check up and see what your vendor's viability is, what their future prospects look like, and especially for the best-of-breed vendors, what their exit strategy is, if they have one ...

For many manufacturers, indirect channels provide the majority of their revenue yet carry only a small percentage of their most profitable products. Instead, indirect channel partners opt to move literally tons of low-margin items, competing in the marketplace on price and availability alone. The electronic components industry is a case in point. When buyers have little opportunity to customize services or products, pricing and availability are all that matter...

Earlier this year I spent a couple weeks in Australia visiting subsidiaries. I was amazed to see how the seemingly smallest of processes Australian companies use to communicate internally have major implications globally. It's been tempting to create a maturity model that shows the wide gulf in organizations' maturity at transferring knowledge globally...

By definition Search Engine Marketing refers to both paid search and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The former is based on a pay-per-click advertising model as companies bid on specific search terms or in the case of Google, AdWords, to get a more visible placement within search engine results. SEO refers to a series of Web site design processes by which companies tailor the content, keywords and messaging on a Web site to improve its rankings in search engines. SEO by nature requires a commitment on the part of companies to continually compete for top rankings in their chosen search areas. SEO is never a one-and-done proposition, but a continual re-fueling of sites with fresh content to keep its rankings up in search engines...

In many companies, marketing is experiencing a resurgence and new relevance, a rejuvenation if you will towards aligning closer to customers than ever before. What's most encouraging about this is the fact that strategies based on dated cause-and-effect relationships with clients are -- through the use of blogs, more focused communication with customers through research, and Voice of the Customer (VoC) programs -- finding entirely new meaning in marketing departments throughout many companies, especially those in manufacturing...

More and more of the companies that are either piloting or actively pursuing Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) frameworks to support their business strategies are aiming to accentuate, strengthen and streamline selling and service strategies. Cutting the costs surroundingdatabase and data warehouse consolidations, reducing integration costs by getting out of hand-built adapter hell, and getting pricing, configuration, quoting and service data to sales reps when they need it are also key goals of their strategies...