Posted in CRM on Jan 30th, 2012 No Comments »
Lauren Carlson used her Software Advice blog to ask an interesting question: when picking a CRM application, should you go vertical, customize or integrate? I think she’s hit upon something important here: if you plan on gaining a competitive advantage from CRM, you can’t use only the functionality that comes standard in the box (or [...]
Posted in CRM on Jan 26th, 2012 1 Comment »
By Chris Bucholtz When you work with CRM all day, you start to look at your interactions through CRM-tinted glasses. Sadly, much of what you see encapsulates the way CRM is either misused or ignored. For instance: Dear business that sends me too much junk: I appreciate that your email marketing system is integrated with [...]
Posted in CRM, social CRM, Uncategorized on Jan 9th, 2012 7 Comments »
By Chris Bucholtz This is the fifth year that I’ve compiled a list of the best CRM blogs, and the trend is clear: more and better blogs on the topic of CRM are out there than ever before. In 2008, it was a struggle to find 20 good blogs on CRM; now, there are so [...]
Posted in CRM, social media, Uncategorized on Dec 6th, 2011 No Comments »
By Chris Bucholtz One of the things social media allows us to see clearly and instantly is that some people don’t get social media. I see this every day in the CRM Outsiders Twitter feed (we’re @CRMOutsiders, by the way). Many of the people following us and being followed by us pre-date my arrival, including [...]
Posted in CRM, Social Business on Nov 10th, 2011 1 Comment »
By Chris Bucholtz A few years ago, I did a webinar with some respected thought leaders in the area of sales about the impact data was having on selling. No one was willing to use the term “data-driven selling” – that was too much for sales people’s sensibilities. But the guests were willing and able [...]
Posted in CRM, social CRM, social media on Oct 17th, 2011 2 Comments »
By Chris Bucholtz As I keep saying, there are as many ways to use social media for your business as there are businesses. The best way to use it, of course, will be based on the behavior of your business and on the behavior of your customers. It will not be based so much on [...]
Posted in CRM, Customer Experience on Oct 12th, 2011 No Comments »
By Chris Bucholtz I never get tired of talking about CRM as a discipline, not a technology. Yes, yes, yes – the technology allows you to scale the discipline, but ultimately, the ideas, initiatives and actions that result from CRM and reach customers are not executed by technology – they’re executed by people. (Clint Oram, [...]
Posted in CRM, CRM Success, Customer Experience on Aug 24th, 2011 5 Comments »
We use the term customer a lot – but what do we mean by that? That seems like a fairly dopey question at first, but CRM can be reigned in by language, and language doesn’t get any more basic for CRM than the word the first letter in the acronym stands for. I know my [...]
Posted in CRM, social CRM, social media, twitter on Aug 9th, 2011 No Comments »
Jonathan Stark is currently running a very interesting Social sharing experiment. He has published his Starbucks card for anyone to download onto their smartphone, and is allowing people to buy coffee on him. Really. No Joke. The Mobile Applications consultant, from Providence, R.I., has asked that people keep their purchases to $3 or less and [...]
Posted in cloud computing, CRM, CRM Success, Microsoft, salesforce.com, SugarCRM, Take of the Week on Aug 4th, 2011 1 Comment »
The way companies use and pay for customer relationship management (CRM) applications is changing. Moving from a predominantly perpetual license-based system, where companies paid a large up-front sum and then smaller annual maintenance fees, CRM software providers are now moving towards monthly or annual subscription fees to access CRM software on the Internet. The various [...]
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