CRM Talk

A bad technology day, how we can collectively put an end to call center cold calls, a review of CRM Magazine's 2018 CRM Market Awards winners, The ascents of Microsoft & Zoho, how long it really takes to become a CRM leader, how little separation there is among the top ranked vendors in point scores.

Accel KKR makes a 9 figure investment in SugarCRM. Some of the other potential compatible AKKR companies. Sugar's redesign and re-architecture. Sugar's one-clickedness. Mitch Lieberman's take on the investment and his advice, including going all in on the cloud. How the sales team needs to be more consultative and real. The idea of conversational engagement. The Gartner Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation and some of the positional changes since last year. A close pack in the Leader quadrant. bpm'online is alone in the Challenger's quadrant. ProsperWorks rebrands to Copper. Copper's win percentage vs Salesforce. Salesforce and Google are cozying up. Will Google acquire a CRM vendor? Google's Hangouts Meet as a viable online meeting app.

Sam and Steve talk with Joel Schneider, president of Liberty Technology Advisors about what about what should be behind proper ERP selection and implementation processes. Joel answers the question, "is cloud-based ERP as easy as the vendors would lead you to believe?" Joel also addresses many of the factors that people within any organization need to consider before making a decision on an ERP vendor---whether the vendor's offering is cloud or on-premises. The approaches to strategy, selection and implementation for ERP and for CRM are contrasted.

Sam and Steve test-drive Zencastr, Pipedrive raises $50 million, smaller vendors be "taking on" the big CRM vendors or is there a better strategy?, Nimble's approach, Swiftpage's investment and their focus on "the easiest product on the market to use", Act! Connect, the Collabspot plugin for Office 365 and G Suite, contact enrichment, marketing approved email templates vs. empowering salespeople, TIBCO buys Scribe Software, data lakes, a deep dive on integration methods.

The GDPR is in effect, Salesforce earnings, CRM industry growth, data augmentation, CRM and AI, GDPR and ABM, un-gating content, conditional CTA visibility by country, the ultimate objective comparison between Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics 365, image size and SEO, website conversion actions, the FBI's instruction to reboot your router, Alexa privacy fail, bpm'online's conference and roadmap, their 15 use cases for AI, AI's potential for sandbagging detection and for booking travel.

GDPR will take effect in just over a month. Ian Gotts of Elements.Cloud returns to discuss GDPR with Sam and Steve.

Sam's new hip parts, his plan to #DeleteFacebook, messing with Facebook's algorithm, cleaning up LinkedIn letter by letter, Salesforce's purchase of MuleSoft, what acquisitions mean for the Salesforce ecosystem, vanishing best of breed in the CRM industry, Salesforce's small business moves, Microsoft's Dynamics 365 strategy of combining acquisitions, product groupings, Microsoft's impressive seasonal release documentation, Microsoft Office 365 upgrades to Dynamics, Sam's GDPR webinar series, the need for a public documented & auditable processes, GDPR policy statement template, recording GDPR related transactions in CRM, how to change your outbound emailing procedures. Webinar: GDPR & Your CRM WebinarWednesday, April 4th, at 10am CDT Register here

Sam's upcoming body parts replacement, CRM Switch named a Top 10 CRM Blog for 2017 by CRMBuyer, the CRM Switch multi-year CRM cost calculator, GDPR compliance in the context of CRM and marketing automation, blockchain and GDPR compliance, chat & leads, incorporating sales tax in CRM quotes.

A discussion about the various CRM review sites. How they work and how to use them.

Brandon Bruce of Cirrus Insight makes his third guest appearance on CRM Talk. This time, he talks about the Cirrus Insight Platform, which is no longer only for Salesforce users. We also discuss the recent acquisition of Attach.

Sam and Steve deconstruct some of the common questions that are included in CRM RFPs and RFIs. They suggest some ways in which a better outcome can be achieved for the CRM buyer.

In this episode, we're joined by Daryn Reif of CRM Switch, who specializes in vendor independent CRM planning and selection. We are also joined by Craig Andrew Smith of Liberty Technology Advisors, whose company provides vendor independent ERP selection services. We discuss the respective recommended selection processes, including differences and similarities.

The email marketing origins of GreenRope, the transition to an all-in-one platform for managing long term relationships, sharing multiple methods of customer communication around an organization, the high cost of integrating disparate systems, the many components of a customer relationship, creating a more collaborative company culture, turning clients into advocates, getting your emails to stand out in recipients' inboxes with timeliness and relevance, email as one part of an omni-channel strategy, the benefits of modeling the sales process, the reason for GreenRope's contact-based vs. user-based pricing model, what types of companies use GreenRope, the need for at least one person to own CRM within an organization, the weak CRM component of many "all-in-one" solutions, GreenRope's approach to vertical markets through private-label resellers, GreenRope's pure organic growth, the value of having operations-side applications such as events and LMS built into the platform, integrated predictive analytics, how to get a no-pressure, consultative demo of GreenRope.

CRM administration, the high demand for businesses analysis skills, what it takes to become a skilled business analyst, creating a basis for process improvement, the soft skills needed for eliciting business process flows, the limitations of traditional diagram tools, how to distill complex processes down to an easier to absorb hierarchical model, making the technology available to the Fortune "5 Million", simplified notations, the handoff between activities, activity boxes that start with verbs, resources as an alternative to swim lanes, attaching items to an activity box, making a process map universally understandable, using Elements.cloud in a live workshop, how to run workshops, Ian's "business analysis improv" approach when he presents, displaying process diagrams within Salesforce objects, self maintaining user training material, why process mapping can be used in almost any industry and across all departments, the coming GDPR compliance requirements & how Elements.cloud can help, where to find Ian and his team at Dreamforce, the Elements.cloud "free forever" model. Promised links: Ian's Session at Dreamforce GDPR eBook Analysis Automation Adoption eBook Insider's Guide to Dreamforce '17

California wine country fires, upcoming CRM vendor interviews, G2 Crowd Grid for CRM, Pipedrive vs. Pipeliner CRM confusion, CRM systems that allow for extending the database schema and those that do not, normalizing repeating sets of fields, ProsperWorks raises an additional $53 million. Sugar's Hint add-on product for data augmentation and prospect/customer alerts, three or four major annual product releases vs. continuous improvement (micro-releases), open source CRM, companies that still deploy CRM on-premise, cloud security vs. corporate network security.

Sam's arduous journey home from the path of totality, a multi-year analysis of the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation, commentary on the movement of various CRM vendors within the Magic Quadrant, newcomers and the drop-offs, the Niche quadrant appearance of Xiaoshouyi CRM, a discussion about GreenRope, Fireflies.ai, and Node.io

A conversation with John Rounseville, co-founder of Saxa Solutions. Saxa is a Salesforce partner that specializes in the Healthcare and Life Sciences industries. John discusses some of the challenges facing healthcare providers, physician recruiters, medical device sales reps and specialty providers who are looking for more referrals. We talk about how CRM can help with Physician Relationship Management, patient engagement and tracking data about and from medical devices -- whether the devices are located in provider facilities or with patients.

Sam gets sick and infects conference attendees plus his employees, Steve's guest appearance on "Our Love Hate Relationship With Sales", Infor CRM's integration to LinkedIn's Sales Navigator, the high price of standalone Navigator, the value of connecting CRM to multiple big data sources, Nimble's capabilities, Infor CRM's Marketo integration, what doesn't sync from marketing automation to CRM, tracking sources from Lead to Order, Contour mapping, Coleman AI, Infor's vertical market strategy, integrating acquire companies' products, the CRM beasts that will not die, companies moving back to ACT!, Google My Business for B2B companies, the sale of Endeavor Commerce to Vendavo, Zoho's new Zoho Sign digital signature app, Zoho's alternative to QuickBooks.

Brandon's run for Knoxville city council, persistent CRM adoption problems and what to do about them, where salespeople actually build relationships, CRM as a management reporting tool, meeting users where they work, bringing CRM data into the inbox, updating CRM in the inbox, saving salespeople time and helping them make more money. Managing nuts & bolts CRM tasks in the inbox, under-utilization of marketing automation, transferring the drip marketing apparatus to sales, programming your sales playbook, using best practices to develop Flight Plans, landing in the prospect's inbox instead of in their Promotions tab. Brandon's book, "The Slow Sale. How Slowing Down Wins More Deals" and the need for a quiet period while working a deal, the dangers of focusing too heavily on sales acceleration, reconciling management pressure to close deals with the value of the quiet period, open communications in selling and avoiding surprises, Brandon's experience with a timeshare salesperson's process and what happened when he veered from the seller's playbook, sales effectiveness vs. sales efficiency.

A discussion with Jon Ferrara about managing relationships where you can have conversations. Jon's passion is to build relationship platforms that help other people achieve their goals. Since starting GoldMine in the late 1980's, Jon has believed that the more people you can help grow, the more you'll grow. In this episode, Jon identifies the many types of people beyond customers and prospects who businesspeople should be connecting with on a regular basis. Jon reveals how to stay top of mind with people in many different roles and what you should do to get people to call you rather than you calling them. We also discuss today's announcement of Nimble Smart Contacts App, a new freemium add-in for Microsoft Office 365, Outlook desktop and iOS.

Cleveland is not Detroit, prospect reactions to vendor canned responses and preset dialogs, All Turtles for natural language AI, Cirrus Insight's coming Flight Plans, Paul Greenberg's article on trust, trust metrics, establishing trust on your website,recording video testimonials on the cheap, Camtasia video editing for marketers, establishing credibility and website authority with HARO, the coming Starfish automated data migration tool.

Identifying and getting rid of toxic backlinks, The new version of Starfish ETL, the upcoming Starfish ETL partner program, LinkedIn data's availability to Microsoft D365 customers, feedback on the Zoho's Zoholics Sales & Marketing Conference from Steve, Zoho's numerous apps, Sam explains the processes of becoming a bpm'online partner, bpm'online's wide range of capabilities, divergent analyst perspectives on CRM vendors, G2 Crowd's latest round of funding, Sam & Steve's no-popup policy on their respective websites.

Skype fail and Plan B, gated vs. ungated content, A/B testing, HTML vs. plain text nurture emails, nurture tactics, tracking with Google Analytics events, visualizing data in Google Sheets, chatbots, getting re-asked for your account number by a call center agent, forwarding non-www to www, Burger King okays Google Home, website speed and WPEngine, Arlo vs. Nest Cam, two security camera use cases.

Unlimited Verizon data (sort of), Apple's possible move from Salesforce to Sugar, IBM's move to Salesforce's Service Cloud, Salesforce's use of IBM's Watson to power Einstein, Marketo and Infor partnership, marketing automation system rollups, Infor CRM gets out of neutral, Windows 10 upgrade reportedly "breaks" Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, Salesforce's ongoing Lightning push, loyalty programs, rewards and CRM.

Changing listener's lives, winter golf in Chicago, more detail on Simple CRM System, selling salespeople on using CRM, industries that lag in CRM adoption, what it takes to implement CPQ, getting salespeople to tag DQ'd leads with "reason disqualified", getting around the gatekeeper, use-case-driven CRM data migration, to migrate or not to migrate custom fields.

Sam's birthday, Steve's trip Down Under, six levels of CRM expenses, the cure for low CRM adoption by salespeople, Sam's DIY Virtual Digital Sales Assistant (VDSA), a commentary on Gartner's Todd Berkowitz's 10 fearless predictions for 2017.

Peter D'Cruz on early days sales management software, objective sales pipeline, helping salespeople, building a sales process, self-disciplined salespeople, when buyers buy, explaining yourself fully, disqualifying early, forcing a prospect to say "no", change the prospect's opinion, buyer self-education, beware the lonely prospect, the "don't follow up" sales strategy explained, applying Taoism to sales, not swimming upstream and going with the flow in sales.

Sam's office party interruption, Salesforce vs Microsoft comparison update, CRM requirements for sales management, self-implementing CRM, the cost of CRM professional services, preventing scope creep on flat rate engagements, quote to order to invoice, level of detail in CRM requirements, the difference between sales and marketing, low CRM adoption by salespeople, giving salespeople more options, the Benioff and Nadella bromance is over, our past bad annual predictions, a couple of predictions for 2017, Yahoo! announces a new hack.

Golfing in central Florida with alligators, Microsoft Dynamics rebranding and new pricing, more CRM vendors add AI, Chat and Drift, blocking the LinkedIn deal, automating drip marketing, customer journey mapping overload, simplified process mapping with Elements.cloud, CRMNext and banking, building a CRM vertical on a platform vs. building from the ground up.

Sam's European river cruise & other adventures, Podcasteasy.com, Dreamforce '16 report, Salesforce Einstein, MVPs, Twitter pass, DCLeaks and acquisition targets, government email security.

Cheap MacBook upgrade, Apple's port reduction, Yathit for Sugar and Gmail, Microsoft's big win over Salesforce, Wells Fargo's sales compensation plan "glitch", autonomous selling, AI-powered CRM.

Quickbooks to CRM integration, data driven digital marketing, Oracle acquires NetSuite, salespeople's first CRM impression, Best CRM advertising site, the $14B CRM debacle, SugarCRM's channel award, sales & marketing alignment. Steve's company's site | Sam's company's site

Using Uber for business travel, LinkedIn Sales Navigator integration with Microsoft's top competitors, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Salesforce closes DemandWare deal, Chat popups and exit intent popups. Steve's company's site | Sam's company's site

SugarCon 2016, Microsoft buys LinkedIn & what Facebook should do, Salesforce buys DemandWare, Klipfolio. Recorded at the beautiful Gloria Ferrer Caves & Vineyards in Sonoma, California. Many thanks to Jason for his excellent service and great insights into sparkling wine. Steve's company's site | Sam's company's site

CRM Evolution conference, customer portals, customer experience management (CX, CEM or CXM), Salesforce NA14 downtime, voice commands and CRM, Amazon Echo, Calendly, Google Slides API & CRM use cases. Steve's company's site | Sam's company's site

Apple news, being an airline passenger in the 1960's, Sam's CRM database cleaning effort, limiting the number of marketing automation system records. Steve's company's site | Sam's company's site

Sonoma wine, MarTech, the marketing technology stack, how to develop a marketing automation playbook. Steve's company's site | Sam's company's site

Sam and Steve discuss gamification and touch on the benefits of a marketing automation playbook. Steve's company's site | Sam's company's site

Voice control of CRM, prospect and customer engagement data with Wistia and Attach, CRM poll results, Google Trends for CRM and MA vendors. Steve's company's site | Sam's company's site

Native advertising, removal of CRM features, CRM software rewrites, 2016 predictions, crowdsourced CRM review sites. Steve's company's site | Sam's company's site

Steve and Sam talk CRM and mapping with Proxima Software founder David Wahl. Steve's company's site | Sam's company's site

Sam & Steve discuss Dreamforce, Infor Next San Diego, CPQ technology, Amazon EC2 & S3, Chromebooks, Vertical CRM vendors and LinkedIn as CRM. Steve's company's site | Sam's company's site

Steve interviews Brandon Bruce, co-founder of CirrusPath, at Dreamforce 2015 in the Admin Zone. Steve's company's site | Sam's company's site

Sam and Steve talk about CRM use cases and about a bottle of 2001 Casanova di Neri Brunello. Steve's company's site | Sam's company's site

Ignoring orthopedists, Apple Watch, Government CRM, poor man's B2B landing pages

After congratulating one another for the respective championship victories of the Hawks and the Warriors, Sam and Steve discuss CRM project management, the effectiveness of drip email, big data and predictive analytics.

Steve and Sam lightly deconstruct the Marc Benioff / Stephen Kelly fireside chat about the upcoming release of Sage Life, a small business accounting application that's being built on the Salesforce1 platform. This is followed by a discussion about verticalized CRM.

Sam and Steve discuss all the speculation that was sparked by Bloomberg's report that salesforce.com "is working with financial advisors". Zoho's CEO speaks out. CRM product upgrades and rewrites.

Steve & John discuss Microsoft Convergence 2015, InsideSales, ProsperWorks, HubSpot CRM and Larry Ellison.

Sam, Steve and guest John Kassar discuss the differences and similarities among Sugar, Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Salesforce.