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 ...

If you are a professional with an entrepreneurial spirit, or a self employed maverick and need a better way to manage your contacts other than Outlook, you could use one of these. SalesForce.com is the leader in Enterprise CRM solutions and they offer free accounts to individuals. All of the features available to Enterprises are not available, but all of the basics which is all you really need to manage information is available on demand. The personal edition is customizable so you can add logos, special links and setup email templates for mass communication. The reporting functionality is great. so if you want to get a quick graph of opportunities you are working on, or need to check when the last time you had a conversation with I have been using one for a couple years now and it has been extremely helpful when on the road and I needed to call Steve Jobs and didn't have all of his contact information handy. Get this and the integrated Outlook toolbar and you can automate the syncing of the data so it is always current. Download SalesForce for free here.

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

I found this while looking for information on tweaks I can make to my salesforce.com account. I was looking for a way to add images into contact and account records and came across this. This simple mod not only allows you to add a contacts Yahoo IM name into a special field, it goes one step further to create an icon that will tell you if that contact is online or off. Now the search is on to find simular mods that can do the same for AIM, Google and MSN.Here are the steps.1. Set up a custom field. Read this if you need help.2. Create a custom field of data type “text”3. Create a field label of "Yahoo IM" and edit the the field name to say "YahooName". use a length you feel comfortable with. I used 50. Click Next*Now the text field is complete and can be added to the page layout. Next the fun part.1. Set up another custom field.2. Create a custom field of data type “Formula”. On Step 2 of the wizard, specify a return type of “Text”.3. On Step 2 of the wizard reate a field label of "Yahoo" and edit the ...

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 ...

This is a topic I find myself thinking about more often than not. Mainly I believe that people in general understand and excel at things they feel most comfortable and confident with. When you can put an unfamiliar scenario or topic into terminology and draw on past experiences you have had through your life, you will understand them and relate to them in a more positive and effective way. You can train your mind to learn anything you want by doing this. But I digress a little. By the comparison between business and war, I am not trying to trivialize the boots on the ground. Being an ex-soldier myself, war in it's rawest form is a very dark subject. What I mean to do with this series of posts is generalize and raise specific points of tactics and training I have had and how the parallel between being in the trenches is the same with business as the military when it all boils down to it. Many of you in the business world may already be familiar with some of the terms I bring up. I'll be separating each topic into it's own post as time goes on. Here is the ...