Strategy

The past year seemed like one of marking time in CRM. The trends are all well spelled out: Social CRM will become a critical tool, service has grown in importance as customer acquisition has become more difficult, and the value of mobile CRM is becoming painfully apparent. So why aren't we acting on...

This Christmas, I was sitting around with the in-laws after the presents were opened, when my father-in-law asked me a question that has probably been nagging him for a long time. "What is it that you do?" he said. Well, I'm a writer, first off, but what is it that I write about? CRM. Explaining wha...

Recessions are always a good time to rebuild your competitive infrastructure, and the slow growth/recession of the last couple of years has been no exception. On the stock market, the technology sector seems to be doing quite well. After bottoming in the middle of the summer, the software companie...

'Tis the Season. And it's better to give than to receive. And you'd better watch out. Besides being Christmas gibberish, those statements apply neatly to CRM. It's always the season to think about improving how your employees use CRM. It's better to give them tools that reward them for using them ...

Salesforce.com's Dreamforce event is now 10 years old, and it's reached the stage where it draws a true sample of the Salesforce ecosystem. Of course, there are plenty of Salesforce personnel and vendors whose products work with Salesforce, but there is an increasing number of real customers. For me...

It's always fun to see the flood of articles this time of year about the holidays. "Is Your CRM Ready for Christmas?" the headlines knowingly ask. "Are You Facing a Christmas E-Commerce Customer Experience Crisis?" "The Holidays: Will You Survive? Will Your Family Survive?" OK, I stole that last one...

Developing good relationships with your customers pays off when all is going well -- but it can also pay big dividends when things go very wrong. In fact, as a recent case illustrates, those relationships nurtured through CRM can set the tone for your corrections and preserve your business. The busi...

A lot of information is coming together this quarter that begins to put a new spin on social CRM. While we've all been busy getting networked in our personal lives and professionally, a huge mountain of data has been accumulating that will make our work in social technology more valuable. Last week...

When it comes to the broad topic of "CRM failure," you often hear the same tales: a too-complicated integration, an incompetent integrator or inflexible technology. The reality is that technology is usually not the problem, nor is it integration or integrators. If you push, you'll find that the most...

Best-in-class sales organizations that leverage B2B teleprospecting stand out. How? They consistently achieve 90 percent of their sales team quota; they experience at least a 10 percent year-over-year increase in average revenue per sales rep; and they gain an average 7 percent year-over-year improv...

I get a lot of email. It's not all because of my job or because I publish my work frequently. Some of it is like that, but it seems like my email address is on a lot of lists, and I am one of the people who get spammed whenever there's a webinar to fill. Perhaps you know this feeling. Last week ...

Microsoft announced a new price point for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online 2011 at Convergence 2010 Europe, which kicked off Thursday in London. When it is generally released at the beginning of next year, it will be available for $34 per user, per month, for the first 12 months of service. That price...

RightNow Technologies certainly has come a long way in the last 10 years, and the company used its industry influencers day in Colorado Springs this week to remind us. I saw the day as a marker of a turning point in the company's development, a time when it said to the world, "The first phase of lif...

I was eating dinner at my favorite Japanese restaurant last night, and I was nearing the end of my meal when the waitress came to the table and presented two beautiful pieces of maguro, or tuna sashimi. When I said I hadn't ordered it, the sushi chef leaned over the counter. "No -- you did not order...

My favorite scene in "The Social Network" is when Mark Zuckerberg's character has an epiphany that Facebook's screen should have a field to designate a user's status, as in relationship status or availability. Wait, I didn't give something away, did I? You've seen the movie, right? No? Go see it....