Archive for April, 2010

Big changes in play. FaceNingTwitterForce

Thursday, April 29th, 2010 | located in SME Trends | No Comments »

Many of you have probably heard about the Morgan Stanley Mobile internet report featured on GigaOm yesterday. Two pieces of information in this report were particularly interesting:

1. Mobile internet users are expected to surpass desktop internet users in 2013, and;
2. As of July 2009, more people use social networking than use email, and more time is spent on social networking than email.  These are fundamental shifts in user behavior, connectivity, and personalization that are sure to affect virtually every business in a variety of ways.

What do you think?  Are you seeing the use of mobile internet or social networking increase in your business?

There have also been notable announcements in the social networking industry in the past few weeks.

1. Facebook is now everywhere. The “Like” button is now all over the web, the “FaceWeb”
2. Twitter is going vertical. Twitter buys client application and SMS company + announces paid advertising.
3. Ning is shutting down their free communities. Up or out.  Revenue from Google AdWords is not enough to support free.
4. Salesforce.com announces Chatter for free use and buys Jigsaw. A big step toward further enabling social networking and crowd sourced data for business.

It’s hard to draw any single conclusion from all of this. One thing is clear - the ways consumers and businesses communicate, share information, and get work done are changing fast.  I’m curious to see how the expansion of Facebook across the web and Twitter’s broader use of SMS text messaging change the landscape.  Will this bring value or just inundate users with a flood of random information?  What do you think?

Ribbit gives eBizQ the 411 on Trends in Mobile CRM

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010 | located in Articles and Media Mentions, SME Trends | No Comments »

eBizQ recently interviewed Ribbit’s own Greg Goldfarb, VP and General Manager of Enterprise Applications, to find out how mobile CRM is evolving and how it’s being used today. Among many observations, Greg shared the following with eBizQ editor Peter Schoof.

• Greater automation is helping to make CRM more dynamic—user-specific, relevant data can now be pushed out to users (as opposed to users digging for relevant data themselves).
• Integrated voice and text messaging is solving the problem of how to get information from the CRM system out to salespeople in the field effectively and efficiently.
• CRM is becoming a more of a collaboration environment than a sales reporting system, rapidly linking mobile field sales people to those working in the office.

You can also read the transcript and listen to the entire interview here.

Road Warriors Work Best in the Cloud

Monday, April 19th, 2010 | located in Productivity, SME Trends | No Comments »

Laptop? Check. iPhone or Blackberry? Check. 3G/4G card? Check.

Most sales professionals already have everything they need to stay productive on the road, according to David Taber, CRM consultant and author of Salesforce.com Secrets of Success. In a recent article penned for CIO magazine, Taber makes a strong case for cloud-based CRM versus remote-desktop solutions and smart phones with CRM clients over laptops. Taber also weighs in on the iPad and gives it the thumbs down.

Read all about it here: CRM for Road Warriors: Phone or Laptop?

Improving Lead Management: Insights from B2B Marketing University

Monday, April 12th, 2010 | located in Productivity, Tips and Tricks | No Comments »

Did you know that something like 70% of B2B leads don’t get followed up?  I heard this surprising statistic last week at a B2B Marketing University conference, an event addressing new processes, tools, and staffing strategies to improve marketing and sales activities. The statistic, which reflected results from a B2B survey highlighted at the conference, was so surprising because every sales and marketing organization I’ve ever worked with seems to be working overtime to gather and follow up on leads.

The conference offered these valuable insights as well:

• Buyer behavior is changing dramatically as more product information becomes available online. Prospective buyers are using the Web to create a short list of product companies, and contacting sellers directly (instead of the traditional sales model of companies contacting and nurturing buyers).
• The Internet has altered the types of media buyers use to gather purchasing information. Buyers using print media, for example, to gather information has declined 10-25% while buyer using blogs, white papers, and word-of-mouth has increased over the past few years. This implies that marketers need to shift their media buying to better align with the changes in information gathering.
• Marketing’s role needs to evolve from “batch and blast” (emails) to “lead nurturing” (delivering leads to sales when prospects are close to making a buying decision). This means emphasizing lead quality over quantity, properly qualifying opportunities, and giving buyers the right information for each stage of the decision making process.
• The sales team needs to contribute more to the lead/opportunity management process by providing ongoing, accurate insight and detail about the buyer that can be captured and shared across the sales team (using CRM and business mobility tools, for example). Better insight into the buyer’s decision-making process will give the sales team the support they need to close deals.
• Marketing automation innovations—including content management, lead scoring analytics, sales lead insight tools, campaign management, web analytics, and closed-loop analytics—can be used to more accurately target potential buyers with educational content appropriate to each stage in the decision-making process.

The conference ended with a panel discussion of sales professionals from companies that had revamped their lead management processes. My favorite takeaways from this discussion included:

• Most of the work in improving lead management happens outside of software.
• Implementing changes in phases is best. As one panelist put it: “Trying to fix everything at once is like trying to boil the ocean.”
• Improving the lead management process is well worth the effort. Panelists cited increases in sales revenue of 15-30%.

My Favorite CRM App (next to Ribbit for Salesforce, of course)

Thursday, April 1st, 2010 | located in Productivity | No Comments »

I like streamlining and making information available when I need it—especially when it comes to sales processes and tools.  Just as Ribbit for Salesforce unifies and automates voicemail, SMS text, and Salesforce, I find Box.net for Salesforce helps streamline communication between sales and marketing by putting relevant content at my fingertips. Gone are the days of FTP or email attachment size restrictions and time-consuming downloads. I can now send documents and files via an embedded link right inside my email messages sent from Salesforce.

When I’m on the road, I can access my Box.net account from my mobile phone to send email messages with attachments and track when shared files are downloaded. Additionally, I can track version history and conduct full text searches of all of my stored files as needed. Box.net improves my collaboration with remote team members and clients by allowing me to access files anywhere, anytime. To further enhance communications, I can also use eFax and EchSign to send contracts requiring approval and signatures.