Missing the target with your customer relationship management strategy? Follow these five steps to success By Julia Chang In his work in CRM consulting, Yacov Wrocherinsky has seen some disasters. One of the most recent was a large manufacturing company that spent millions on a high-end CRM system, only to realize two years later that it wasn't providing accurate forecasts. "In the old days, people used to select a system based on a decision by the higher-ups, invest millions, and if the project didn't meet expectations, they would write it off," says Wrocherinsky, founder and CEO of Infinity Info Systems, a New York–based sales technology consulting firm. "Today, expectations are different." That's because companies now are much smarter about CRM. They want faster implementation that produces value more quickly. And vendors have done a good job of mastering the basic features and making their offerings available at price points for companies of all sizes. But that doesn't make the process of implementing a CRM strategy any easier—especially since CRM is now expected to be part of broader business strategy. One thing's for sure: CRM is at the top of managers' minds. In a survey of S&MM readers conducted by consulting firm The Alexander Group, ...

There are many options out there for a customer relationship manager (CRM) available. I guess they all have advantages and disadvantages but I have grown accustomed to SalesForce and have no issues with it. Besides using it for work to manage all my accounts and prospects, I also have a personal account that is available to anyone for free. SalesForce has done a good job keeping up with the needs of there corporate customers by adding new features and having a consistent update pattern that they make visible to SalesForce admins. But this is not why I love SalesForce so much. Work anywhere SalesForce as a CRM solution allows a mobile workforce to always be connected. The old school days of field sales people running their business off of spreadsheets should be trashed. Being able to access your company information from any connected device like a computer or mobile phone allows sales people and executives to review and update important data anytime of the day from anywhere in the world. Customizing reports is easy People at the top are always asking for reports. SalesForce makes this fairly simple. You can set reports up to be available to everyone or make ...

A friend passed this article along to me knowing that I stay on top of these types of stories. Little did I know that they mentioned NetSuite as a pioneer of the Sales 2.0 era. Thanks Jake! ------------------- It's a question almost as old as commerce itself: Is selling an art or a science? For years, technology companies have been trying to transform the former into the latter. And for years, the results have largely been disappointing. Think of those days as Sales 1.0. We're now in the era of Sales 2.0. Your bottom line may never be the same. Remember the bad old days of sales-oriented technology? Customer relationship management systems that cost a fortune to install and crashed easily. Downloadable lists of sales leads filled with old or bogus data. E-mail marketing tools that targeted the wrong consumers. And on and on. Fortunately, software firms that target small companies with sales tools have been getting smarter and smarter. Following pioneers such as Salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM) and NetSuite, a new generation of companies is offering easy-to-use, cheap (indeed, often free) technology that can supercharge the performance of your sales force--with minimal training and virtually none of the heavy-duty installation associated with ...

A few months back I wrote "Lead management done right" with the intent of explaining how companies should approach their CRM and the large quantity of leads and data in their database. The fact is that many companies do not have a structure for this and fail to maximize on their leads. If sales is the life blood of a company then leads are the oxygen that is being carried. (o.k. maybe a bad analogy, but you get it.) If your sales people are not managing their leads correctly then fewer sales will take place and bad data will dominate your CRM. By default, if the CRM is being updated by lazy sales people with half data or no data, then marketing will have an even harder time communicating with them. huh...you don't want marketing communicating to your prospects? You need to stop seeing marketing as the enemy and hold their hands for a moment and let them do what they do best, so you can close more deals. The sad majority of companies do not operate this way and the two departments have no idea what the other is doing and therefore they do nothing together. If you don't think this ...

Leads, they are the life blood of your sales teams. They come from many different channels. Your company website, trade shows, search engines, and the best are from current customers. But one of the most important aspects of lead management is to actually have a process for managing them. Some of the companies I have worked for had solid processes, some had none at all. Don't spend days or weeks having meetings about how to manage leads. Your company does not need to have the best process out the gate, you just need something. by sheeshoo Here are some best practices that I have come across in my years in sales. Have one central bucket for ALL automated inbound leads. Most will be from forms on your corporate website. When you upload leads from events, they should all be put into the same bucket. This is done for many reasons. It reduces on confusion and it allows the sales people to pull their leads quickly and act on them effectively. Require basic information from the leads. Name, company, email, phone number and where the lead came from. The "where" is the ice breaker for the first call. If you don't know where you came ...

Since many of the mods I will be mentioning all have this in common, I'll make it easy and explain this once and link to it as needed.1. Go to your setup screen. The link is located in the upper right corner of your screen. When you get to the page it should look a little like this. 2. On the left section there is a link for App Setup. Click that. 3. Find the Customize your Contacts tab 4. Now go to Create a new custom link

As a sales person, I live in my CRM. It's the primary tool for my profession second only to my phone. Another sales tool I use is a social networking site called LinkedIn. Here is how they discribe themselves "LinkedIn is an online network of more than 10 million experienced professionals from around the world, representing 150 industries". I call it the MySpace for professionals. I have put together a way to bring the two tools together and make my Salesforce CRM work for me in new ways. When prospecting or in the course of general due diligence, the more you know about your lead the better. LinkedIn has over 10 million registered users. Chance are if you are dealing with a company executive, they have a LinkedIn account. Searching LinkedIn can give you some interesting facts as well as give you better insight to 'who they really are." I used to pull my lead in the CRM that was either uploaded from a trade show or a person asking for more information and cut&paste the name into another tab that had LinkedIn up already. (Yes, tabbed browsing is much ...

You have your account. Either through work or the personal account you signed up for. Now make sure you have your information in correct.Go to your Setup and edit your personal information in the "My Personal information" section. Make sure you have your name, address and phone number in correct.Now go to the "Email" section and make sure you have the right email address (This should be done already) and create an email signature.Something like:Regards,{!User.FirstName} {!User.LastName}{!User.Phone}{!User.Email}[and you can add a logo or picture by using the html code for example]img src="http://www.yourpicture.jpg Obviously you can add a lot to your signature, this is just an example.

This domain will be use for the development of tweaks and modifications to Salesforce.com that a company can use to customize the Salesforce CRM to help drive sales. These posts will be grow over time and will be primarily focused on the sales person and how to use your CRM to gather better information on your accounts, contacts and leads. Since a CRM is supposed to empower the sales person let's make a few adjustments in your Salesforce CRM that will drive better decisions and make your daily sales grind a bit easier the SOCOM way.Many companies use Salesforce, they are the leader in the CRM market. The most obvious appeal for companies to use a hosted CRM as a sales tool is mainly the on demand nature of the system and the ability to give executives a view into the company with special reports and dashboards.But what about the account manager on inside sales person? Besides having a basic listing of leads, contacts and opportunities, what can they do with such a great tool? How many dashboards are available out of the box for them? How customized are the fields in their records? Chances are like most companies you ...

5 tips for writing e-mail subject lines that'll get recipients to read on One of the most important elements of your e-mail communications is the subject line. Next to the "from" address--which should be a recognizable company name--the subject line will determine whether your e-mail gets opened.Writing a great subject line is no small challenge. You only have a few words to make it compelling, urgent and specific--without sounding too sales-like or misleading your readers. Here are some tips for writing subject lines that'll get great results.1. Keep it short and sweet. Do your best to keep your subject lines under 50 characters, including spaces, as most e-mail clients display 50 characters or less. A recent study done by e-mail monitoring company Return Path showed that subject lines with 49 or fewer characters had open rates 12.5 percent higher than those with 50 or more characters. The study also found that click-through rates for subject lines with 49 or fewer characters were 75 percent higher than for those with 50 or more characters. Want to increase your open and click-through rates? Keep your subject line short and sweet.2. Be specific. A ...