Choosing the Right Devices for Your Mobile Life

May 13th, 2010 by Michael Brancato | located in Tips and Tricks | No Comments » | trackback

It seems like every time I turn around, there’s a shiny new gadget that promises a better, easier way to stay connected and get more done. But one person can only have so many devices… and choosing the right one(s) can make the difference between staying productive and being frustrated.

Do you ever wonder whether you should carry a smartphone, tablet, laptop – or all three? Here are a few questions I ask myself before I pull out my credit card; I hope they’ll help you, too.

• What are you going to use it for? This is the first question to ask yourself when you’re choosing a device. Does your job require special software that requires a certain type of computing environment? You need a laptop. Do you primarily use web-based services, without the need for graphics software, fast processing speeds, or a lot of available memory? All you need is a tablet. Is your business mainly conducted on the phone and in person? Get the best smartphone you can buy.
• Where are you going to use it? The environment you work in every day plays a big role in what device to buy. For instance, if you’re on a construction site, a tablet is a risky choice – a laptop in a rugged case or a smartphone that can be safely buttoned inside a jacket might be a better fit. If you’re in an office most of the day, lugging a power-hungry laptop to meetings might be overkill; a tablet will let you take notes, and has the battery life to last for most of the day. If you’re outside a lot, or in a hectic, fast-moving environment, a smartphone will keep you connected via voice, email, and text – without the worries of plugging in, finding an Internet connection, or damaging an expensive device.
• How much do you have to spend? The cost of smartphones, tablets and laptops varies widely. You’ll pay a premium for brand name and computing power – and even more if the device you have your eye on was released within the last three months. If you’re willing to be patient, and wait until the device you want has been on the market a while, you’re likely to get a better deal.

The details matter. Within each category – smartphone, tablet, and laptop – there is also a range of choices. On any device you consider, here are a few things to check for:

• Security standards. Very important if you’re sending confidential information.
• Ease of use. If you do a lot of email or texting, be sure to test out different keypads and keyboards before making your choice – it can have a lot of impact on how quickly you’re able to get work done.
• WiFi capability. Do you need to be connected on the fly? Make sure your device can connect to WiFi.
• Apps or other compatible software. Make a note of all the apps or other software you need – and make sure the device you choose works with them.

Take your time. Ask around. Read reviews from people you trust. Don’t make a rush decision – and you’re far more likely to make a smart choice.

Good luck out there!

Are today’s laptops soon going to be relics of the past?

May 4th, 2010 by Payam Keyhantaj | located in SME Trends | No Comments » | trackback

Apple recently announced that it crossed the 1 million mark on the number of iPads sold… and it only took 28 days! By comparison, the company sold only half that many iPhones during the same period after they were first released. That’s a figure with some staggering implications.

We all know that desktop PC’s are going the way of the dinosaur - as more consumers demand mobility and convergence, they simply don’t keep up. But what about laptops?

Laptops are far more mobile, and they have served us well, but the iPad can do most of the same functions in a small, lightweight unit – and provide lots of additional tools and apps.

Motorola just announced how they will be creating their own tablet. Will other device makers follow suit?

So I ask you: will the Apple iPad change the personal computing industry as we know it today, just like it did with the iPod and iPhone?

What would it take for you to leave your laptop at home? Are there features or specific applications that are must-haves for you? I’d like to hear your thoughts.

Use Ribbit to integrate communications into any web application

May 2nd, 2010 by Kristie Wells | located in Features, Salesforce | No Comments » | trackback

The DreamSimplicity team caught up with Greg Goldfarb, VP and GM of Enterprise Applications of Ribbit at the Sales 2.0 conference to discuss how businesses are using Ribbit for Salesforce to increase their sales team’s productivity.

One of the biggest hassles field sales teams have is the ‘red tape’ following their client visits. Many times they will spend hours in the office logging meeting notes and action items into Salesforce. Businesses who use Ribbit see instant time savings as the field teams call into Ribbit, record the notes from their meetings and Ribbit converts voice into text and places directly into your Salesforce account. Your client’s inbound message(s) convert to text as well, so it means more time spent on revenue generating items.

Greg Goldfarb of Ribbit with DreamSimplicity at Sales 2.0 SF from DreamSimplicity on Vimeo.

Big changes in play. FaceNingTwitterForce

April 29th, 2010 by Greg Goldfarb | located in SME Trends | No Comments » | trackback

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

April 21st, 2010 by Kristie Wells | located in Articles and Media Mentions, SME Trends | No Comments » | trackback

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

April 19th, 2010 by Sia Frederick | located in Productivity, SME Trends | No Comments » | trackback

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

April 12th, 2010 by Jon Garcia | located in Productivity, Tips and Tricks | No Comments » | trackback

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)

April 1st, 2010 by Rico Sharqawi | located in Productivity | No Comments » | trackback

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.

Upcoming Events

March 29th, 2010 by Kristie Wells | located in Events | No Comments » | trackback

The Ribbit CRM team is on the move. Be sure to catch them at one (or more) of the following conferences:

• Cloudforce 2 Tour: April 6, 2010 in Reston, VA
• Cloudforce 2 Tour: April 8, 2010 in New York, NY
• Sales Leadership Conference: April 19, 2010 in Las Vegas, NV

Stop by our booth at one of the Cloudforce events or find Greg Goldfarb roaming the halls at the Sales Leadership conference. If you are already using one of Ribbit’s CRM solutions, we would love to hear about it. Not sold yet, come on by and see a demo. It will be good for you.

Making Use of Voice Memos in Ribbit for Salesforce

March 25th, 2010 by Michael Brancato | located in Features | No Comments » | trackback

If you’re like most people I know, you’re busy—and not just some of the time, but pretty much 24X7. Multitasking is not something you do for just a few minutes here and there when you’re short on time—it’s a daily automatic reflex. So having a tool that lets you avoid time consuming administrative tasks like typing up meeting notes or creating records in Salesforce is more than just valuable, it’s essential.

This is where Ribbit for Salesforce comes in. Once you try this feature you’ll never go back to manually typing your meeting notes.Here’s a potential scenario: You just got off a plane in Miami and you have two client meetings before your evening flight home. Plus, you were hoping to stick your toes in the sand for a few minutes before you rush off the airport. Client A, you discover in your meeting, has some fulfillment issues they’d like to resolve before they place their next order. Before you’re even out of the parking lot you’re already on your phone, dictating your meeting notes while they’re still fresh in your memory.

While you’re driving to meet with client B, your meeting notes are automatically transcribed and sent to you via email—and also flowed directly into your Salesforce message box, where Salesforce activity history is automatically populated. At the same time, Ribbit creates a record of your client visit in Salesforce and inserts your meeting notes. Based on rules you’ve pre-defined in Salesforce, an activity is automatically assigned to customer support for follow up.

Your next meeting with client B goes well and they decide to place an order. You call in your meeting notes from that meeting as you’re driving to the beach, and—based on your pre-defined rules and the phone numbers you’ve set up to call—your notes are automatically transcribed and sent to your admin assistant as an assigned activity. Both your assistant and your customer service team complete their assigned activities while you’re ordering lunch at a beachside cafe. Ahhh.

Now that’s what I call working less while selling more.