I have long advocated the idea of CRM vendors behaving like CRM users – in other words, using the ideas that the discipline that CRM represents to run the business of selling CRM applications. A lot of vendors fall short of this; their internal needs trump the needs of their customers, and thus they default back to the behaviors that software vendors have been using for years. I just don’t think using a 1980s-style selling approach is appropriate any more, especially for CRM; if you want my full opinion on this, take a look at this post from last year that goes into it in depth.

One aspect of avoiding this tendency is choice. Vendors that refuse to take steps to broaden their customer’s choices are clinging to an old model; they’re saying, “our customers can’t handle options – they’re too simple to make choices.” It’s like they’ve adopted their philosophy from that Devo song, “Freedom of Choice:” “Freedom of choice is what you’ve got/Freedom from choice is what you want.” Except that was a satirical song about consumer culture; your business is not a confused customer buying trivial items. You’re a business buyer with specific needs, and you need the freedom to choose what works best for your business.

What does choice look like? Well, it can take the form of an interface users can personalize, or it could be deployment models that allow businesses to select from the cloud or on-premise or vendor- or partner-hosted versions of the same application based on their businesses, or it can be even more technical.

For example, SugarCRM quietly unveiled Sugar 6.4 today just in time for IBM’s big Lotusphere show. This is a release targeted primarily at developers, but there’s no reason to limit the options for anyone who works with a CRM application. One of the things that’s included in the new release is DB2 support. Buisiness-wise, it makes sense as an extension of SugarCRM’s partnership with IBM. But there’s more to it. Adding support for database is not an easy thing to do, but it’s necessary if you are serious about the idea of choice – and choice needs to be extended to all people who interface with the CRM application, including the developers who work with it behind the scenes.

One of the common CRM mantras is that you need to allow people to do business with you the way you wish to do business. If you’re a CRM vendor, that should mean understanding what your users need to work with your product in the best, most productive and most profitable way – thus, adding a database to the list of things the application supports is very much in keeping with the idea of a CRM vendor embodying CRM ideas in its product.

Of course, the pursuit of choice can be an infinite effort, and so vendors have to be careful about where they devote their energies. But this is an elemental aspect of how vendors should care for CRM customers. If your vendor insists on making the choices for you, realize they don’t have your best interests in mind – they’re out for themselves.

We all know that customers are evolving. Your customers are demanding a more peer-like relationship with you; they’re buying after doing their own research, and they’re asserting their need to understand their choices. You need to sell to this new breed of customer; it seems logical for CRM vendors to sell in the same way to their customers. After all, if CRM vendors can’t keep up with the changes in customer behaviors and needs, what chance do those vendors’ customers have?  Can you really keep pace with customers demanding greater choice without offering choices within the CRM application?

Some of this is clearly philosophical, I know. But if you ask developers what they prefer – a single, locked-in path or a selection of capabilities that allow them to customize, personalize or integrate in the way that best solves the specific problem at hand – the answer ought to be clear. And it will set up better tactical answers to business issues, making your CRM implementation more effective.

Social media and social CRM are the kinds of things that offer multiple points of value. People who have their throwback CRM hats screwed on too tightly tend to see the formula as data+SCRM=sales dollars as the only metric, which isn’t exactly right. There are other benefits to engaging in SCRM – market intelligence, greater customer data and engagement, and improved customer service.

Engagement can lead to product co-creation, which is especially helpful for software companies. They have the ability to add features (or get rid of useless or annoying ones) with each release, so listening to customers seems like a natural thing to do.

We saw that in action today with the release of Sugar 6.3, which has its genesis entirely in the feedback of users of Sugar Community Edition and Sugar’s Developers’ Community.

The developers are never shy about sharing things they like about Sugar and they’re even less shy about things they don’t like, and they had the feeling that community edition was becoming something of an afterthought – so they spoke up. John Mertic, the community leader, received a virtual earful (eyeful? Comment section-ful? The precise word eludes me just now) and, to his credit, brought it back to the team within the company for serious consideration.

The result is the latest edition, which provides more thorough administrative controls, simpler data importing from a wider array of sources, email archiving, quick-edit capabilities, and simpler data importation. Some additional functionality was added to Sugar Logic and, best of all, it’s all available in the free Community Edition, which you can get through a free download.

The point here is not the new version of the software. The point is that it’s an incredibly valuable skill listen to customers and then act on what they’re saying (which the Sugar team has done) and infinitely more helpful than ignoring that community, or to hear what it’s saying and remain immobile (which SugarCRM did, to varying degrees, before this release).

The amount of goodwill that this establishes is hard to measure, but it’s always a good idea to acknowledge the customers who contribute good ideas. It builds loyalty and it makes them feel like peers (rather than people whose ideas you’ve appropriated). It also paves the way for future collaboration.

This isn’t limited strictly to software companies. Other industries are learning about their own products from the customers who use them and can envision ways to make using them better, ranging from automobiles to sporting goods to plumbing hardware. Instead of relying on just your in-house expertise, you can supplement that with the very best practical product evaluators possible – your customers.

If you are looking into CRM, I’d suggest taking a look at Sugar 6.3. If you’re not, I suggest understanding the way 6.3 came about and applying it to your business.

The various pricing schemes can create confusion among buyers as they try to assess the total cost-of-ownership (TCO) of different CRM services priced under various schemes. For example, there are still several companies offering license-based pricing models. Also, some companies offer a subscription option in addition to a perpetual license option.

In July we did a comparative price analysis of four leading CRM solutions for mid-market organizations. Forrester Research defines mid-market organizations as any organization with revenues of less than $1 billion and/or fewer than 1,000 employees. The CRM solutions included in this TCO analysis are:

• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
• Sage SalesLogix
• Salesforce.com
• SugarCRM

For this analysis we looked at the following costs and requirements: for premise-based solutions we included the server and end-user (named user) licenses and annual support and maintenance fees. For on-demand solutions we looked at the annual end-user (named user) subscription fees. Each solution had to include mobile access, integration with Microsoft Outlook, a customizable reporting engine and configuration and customization capabilities.

We looked at the three-year TCO (total cost of ownership) for a 10-user; 25-user; 100-user and 500-user deployment. We assumed the following storage requirements: 5GB for the 10-user; 10GB for the 25-user; 15GB for the 100-user and 25GB for the 500-user deployments. For this analysis, we used standard list pricing as available in July 2011. Term, volume and other discounts (such as discounts available under the Microsoft Enterprise Agreement) have not been considered.

You can download this analysis here.

Here’s a preview of the 3 year TCO for a deployment of 25 users:

Here’s a list of things you should avoid posting:

1. Party Photos showing you drunk or with a hand somewhere it shouldn’t be.
2. That you are having a party – unless you really want more people than you invited!
3. Passwords – unless you can afford to lose the information or money it protects.
4. That you are planning to take a sickie.
5. Drama with your friends.
6. Issues with your parents or family.
7. How to get more connections, friends or followers – it sounds like spam.
8. Your bodily functions – really, no-one needs or wants to know!
9. Photos or events which reveal your were not sick that day at work.
10. Complaints about your boss.
11. That you hate your job and want to leave – it may happen sooner than you think.
12. Links to personal sites from a business account – keep business and pleasure separate.
13. Updates that you have escaped from jail and are on the run (stop laughing – this has been done!).
14. Pictures of your, or worse other people’s, body parts (unless this is part of your job – tattoist for example).
15. Anything which you are not comfortable with – don’t post it. Chances are that other people won’t be comfortable with it either!

Some of the above list may seem obvious, some not so obvious.
Can you think of any others which are definite no-nos when it comes to Social Networking?

With more and more security being set up on mail servers across the globe by both Internet Service Providers and company IT departments, it is becoming all too easy to fall foul of the SPAM/JUNK filter, resulting in your mail being quarantined, marked as junk or, worse still, deleted before it’s even made it through to the mail server itself!

In order to help you avoid some of the commonest pitfalls in an effort to increase your hit rate to your targets I have created this “Top 5″ list.

1. Don’t sound like a spammer from the start.
Normally, email filters examine the words in the email “subject line”. This is the header that you see when an email shows up in your email box. A good subject line can encourage people to actually click on and open an email, but you need to exercise care when creating your subject headings to prevent filtering.

Frequently, more sophisticated anti-spam methods used by Internet Service Providers use a “points system” that identifies trigger phrases commonly used by Spam. If an email goes over the “points limit” it is filtered out and is never delivered to a customer.

Some of the more commonly used phrases that Service Providers and mail clients filter out include:

Free!
50% off!
Click Here.
Call now!
Subscribe.
Earn $.
Discount!
Eliminate Debt.
Double your income.
You’re a Winner!
Reverses Aging.
“Hidden”.
Information you requested.
“Stop” or “Stops”.
Lose Weight.
Multi level Marketing.
Million Dollars.
Opportunity.
Compare.
Removes.
Collect.
Amazing.
Cash Bonus.
Promise You.
Credit.
Loans.
Satisfaction Guaranteed.
Serious Cash.
Search Engine Listings.

There are other problematic phrases that can trigger some Spam filters, or start adding “Spam points” to emails sent out, which should be avoided. These include:

Act Now!
All New.
All Natural.
Avoid Bankruptcy.
As Seen On…
Buy Direct.
Casino.
Cash.
Consolidate Your Debt.
Special Promotion.
Easy Terms.
Get Paid.
Guarantee, Guaranteed.
Great offer.
Give it away, Giving it away.
Join millions.
Meet Singles.
MLM.
No cost, No fees.
Offer.
One time.
Online pharmacy.
Online marketing.
Order Now.
Please Read.
Don’t Delete.
Save up to.
Time limited.
Unsecured debt or credit.
Vacation.
Viagra.
Visit our web site.
While Supplies last.
Why pay more?
Winner.
Work at home.
You’ve been selected.

Using quotation marks, dollar signs and exclamation points in subject lines will frequently trigger mail filters, as well as using all capital letters (shouting).

2. Addressing.
Make sure you use valid ‘From’ and ‘Reply-to’ addresses. Clearly identifying the sender is one way to convince the filter you are legitimate. Using a generic address is also one sure fire way to get added manually to recipient’s spam lists. If you’re sending them information you think they want, then be upfront about who you are and make that connection count. Research shows that most users judge the legitimacy of an email by the sender’s name and email address.

3. Calm it down
Using multiple exclamation marks or capitals (SHOUTING) to get your point across is certainly going to annoy the reader. Assuming it didn’t get caught in the spam filter already, that is.

4. Link the Link.
It is quite possible that you created a tracker URL to see when people clicked through to your company’s website. However, there is a mistake which many people (myself included) get caught out by – linking the link. Put simply, this is when you’ve created a tracker to go to your company website (http://www.sugaruk.co.uk) and have used the same address as the hyperlink text within the email “visit our website – http://www.sugaruk.co.uk”. It’s something we’ve all done. We want the person to see our website address in the email, as it will then get magically lodged in their brain and they will think of it all the time.

However, because the tracker in Sugar is replaced with a unique URL in the code of the email to allow Sugar to track WHO clicked on that mail, some mail clients see it as spam because the address being referenced is not exactly the same as the address being displayed in the email.

So how do you get around it? Simple. Use something like “Visit our website” as the hyperlink text instead of the address. Sure, keep the address visible in the body of the email if you really want to, but link from some standard text not a different URL. That way, you can be sure your mail won’t get filtered for linking the link.

5. White lists.
Get your prospects to add your address to their “White list” (a list stored within their email program to say which email addresses they trust not to spam them). This can be as simple as putting a link at the footer of your email called something like, wait for it… “Add my address to your safe senders list” which can send them to a page on your website or blog explaining how to add an email address to their white list in common mail clients (Outlook, Googlemail, Hotmail, AOL etc.). That way, you know that even if their mail server has passed it through, it’s not going to get caught by the spam filter on their personal machine.

This tip was originally posted on the SugarUK Blogs where you can find a whole host of other useful SugarCRM tips.

Why is this important? I thought I’d let Koka Sexton, the inbound marketing manager at InsideView, and director of Social Selling University, spell it out for you. Here’s Koka:

Things have changed significantly for B2B sales. The availability and access to data of all types, social networks and social media has created immense new amounts of information for everyone to digest – sales professionals and customers alike. At the same time, customers themselves have fundamentally changed how they research and purchase: in his recent book, Brian Carroll of InTouch states that nearly 100 percent of those who are visiting a company’s website are just there to learn more, but an overwhelming majority will eventually make a purchase. Will it be with your company or with your competitor?

This has placed a new challenge on sales professionals to not only build relationships, but to reach out at key moments with the most important information to prospects and leads – from thousands of data points – to be able to discern the real “truth” about prospective customers, stay productive and take revenue-driving action. At InsideView, we monitor, analyze, filter and show sales professionals what’s going on with their leads, contacts and accounts so that they can follow along and engage with this real-time intelligence at the right time. The Aberdeen Group has found that the kind of intelligence InsideView provides can improve revenue by more than 10 percent right off the bat.

Here’s what we mean by intelligence versus simple data:

This week, we were very excited to see InsideView go live directly within SugarCRM, the world’s leading provider of open source CRM, as an embedded and core feature. InsideView will empower SugarCRM users to find and qualify leads; engage and convert opportunities; and renew and upsell existing customers. It does this by providing access to millions of contacts and companies, alerting sales reps to “sales event triggers” (reasons to reach out) and displaying any possible connection you have to a contact from your own social networks and your existing customer accounts. It’s true sales intelligence at work, and it’s integrated directly into your existing workflow with SugarCRM, for free. Experience the productivity for yourself, gain access to sales experts and let us know what you think at community.insideview.com. And if you’re as impressed with us as our other customers, we offer our advanced versions at an exclusive discount to SugarCRM users.

Simply click on “Add Sugar Dashlets” at the top right of your home screen and click on the Web tab.

Enter the URL of the RSS/Blog feed (e.g. www.sugaruk.co.uk/blog/feed) into the News Feed box and click “Add“. It will now appear on your homepage for you to drag to where you want.

You can also add webpages/sites to your homepages too by using the Website box.

Not only this, but you can also change the dashlet’s height by hovering on the title bar of the dashlet and clicking on “Edit Dashlet“. You will then see amongst the options, the height option, where you can specify (in pixels) how high you want the dashlet window to be, in order to show more or less information in the initial view. In version 6.2 a new feature has also been added allowing you to auto-refresh individual dashlets at set intervals to save you having to keep refreshing the entire screen in order to keep up to date with your blogs etc.

This tip was originally posted on the SugarUK Blogs where you can find a whole host of other useful SugarCRM tips.

Relationships are, at the most basic level, a joining of two “things”, whether pieces of information, pieces of an object/building/machine, or even people.

Some relationships SHOULD be stored in your CRM, others are more diverse and need to be looked at as to whether it is relevant to be stored in your CRM system, or just in your personal diary/address book/memory.

With this in mind, I would like to make your aware of a new “relationship” which is happening in the next few days.

On 18th June 2011, the SugarUK “family” will see a new relationship being formed.
This time, however, it’s nothing to do with a business venture, but all to do with personal relationships.

Joe Bushnell (yes, that IS him in the picture above!), SugarUK’s Sales Director, will be marrying Becky Ellis (one of SugarUK’s Admin Clerks) in Felixstowe, Suffolk, UK.
This is not the final stages of an office romance, as Joe and Becky have been together since before Becky joined the fold at SugarUK.

I would like to ask that if you read this, whether you know them or not, that you send Joe and Becky a message of support, condolence, joy, or whatever you feel appropriate. Please send your messages between now and Saturday 18th June 2011 to joe@sugaruk.co.uk and help make the happy couple feel that little bit more special as they start their journey into married life.

I will leave it to you to decide whether you need to add this to your CRM system, update Becky’s record etc.

Go to the relevant record and at the top of the History panel you will find a “View Summary” button.

Pressing this will result in a popup window appearing containing an historical view of all activities performed (calls, meetings, emails archived etc) for that particular record.

This tip was originally posted on the SugarUK Blogs where you can find a whole host of other useful SugarCRM tips.

For example, which word should take precedence?
Merely by its name it would appear that the ‘Customer‘ is the primary focus, probably due to the doctrine that “The Customer is Key”, ‘Management‘ is the end result of how we store the information about the transactions we have with them and the ‘Relationship‘ is how we connect those records to the customer.

However, if we turn the order of the words on its head and think about Managing the Relationship with our Customers we suddenly get a clearer view of how CRM should perhaps be viewed.

We Manage our data (track communications, schedule calls and meetings) in order to form a Relationship with our prospects in the hope they will become Customers.
But CRM is about more than simply being a metaphoric sales pipeline of getting the fish on to the hook and landed into our corporate net.

Once you have the customer, that’s when the hard work should start. Fishermen don’t call the place they put their caught fish a KEEP net for nothing!
Sure, it’s no easy task for the sales team to get the customer on your books in the first place and that is something that should not be underestimated or under valued. But in comparison to the length of the professional relationship your organisation is hopefully going to have with that customer in the long term, it almost mirrors the effort going into the process of convincing someone that they want to go on a date with you, compared with the hard work and years of commitment on both sides to keep the relationship working for more than just that first night.

Relationships of any type are difficult and take effort. Whether it be the one we have with our siginificant other, or with our children and the understanding that that requires, or in the business environment with our customers, we must never lose focus of the fact that we must strive to be the best we can, to help the other party be the best they can, with our support.

In the same way that a teenager keeps a secret diary containing all their dreams, aspirations and events that have happened to them (good or bad) and gets their friends round on a Saturday night to watch films and drink, so a valuable CRM system should allow you not only to keep a record of those crushes (leads), the ones they had dates with (conversions) and the events that led up to them (history log). It should be an ongoing documentary of what you are still doing with them (activities, calls and meetings); a secret diary, if you will, of what business desires (opportunities)you hope to secure with those leads and customers, as well as a way of putting together those invitations in the form of email campaigns.

It’s true that while teenagers develop, with the right input, over time into (one hopes) a valued member of society, so too your CRM system should develop, with the correct data and use, into a priceless part of your organisational procedures and practices.