CRM Trends Max Effgen, October 9, 2009 In a recent conversation, the topic turned to the future direction of CRM. Normally, I would wax philosophic on this but it is really pretty simple. Marketing is taking over more and more of the traditional sales cycle. Sales will spend less time educating and more time selling qualified prospects…. Continue Reading
The best salespeople… Max Effgen, October 7, 2009 …are your customers. They have credibility that your sales team will never have — and amazingly they pay you. Nice read on this topic at Marketing Donut: Turn your customers into your best sales people. Continue Reading
Proactive service Max Effgen, October 6, 2009 What does it mean to be proactive in customer service? The goal is simple. Customers do not want to have to tell you there is a problem. To get there is long and often elusive. Understand your support process. Take the time to truly understand what causes customer support problems… Continue Reading
How to scale support Max Effgen, October 5, 2009 Increases in customers means increases in customer support. An effective tactic when starting a self-service initiative is to reassure Customer Support that the organization has to do more with less. Positive and forward looking initiatives will gain traction. More with less does not mean less people. More with less means… Continue Reading
Is SaaS CRM Privacy Moot? Max Effgen, September 21, 2009 A few conversations on SaaS based CRM have recently centered on privacy. The SaaS problem regardless of solution is privacy and integration into core corporate systems. Always has been. Always will. There needs to be a dose of reality though. Cloud based e-mail is reality and many companies are moving… Continue Reading
CRM: It’s *Still* Not About the Technology Max Effgen, September 17, 2009 A solid read by my friend and former colleague Eric Heine on the Integra Technology Consulting Blog. Eric and I delivered a very large Siebel implementation in record time many, many moons ago. He is a true leader in CRM implementations and decries “package slamming”. To add my $0.02, user… Continue Reading
Gist beta going live Max Effgen, September 15, 2009December 2, 2013 Gist makes the move from private beta to public this morning. I have been a beta user for awhile and think highly of the product. If you are in Sales, Sales Operations, Sales Enablement or just want your inbox to be more functional, try it out. Check out my earlier… Continue Reading
Solid read: Social Media is from Mars… Max Effgen, September 14, 2009 Check out this solid read on social media and the enterprise Gia Lyons’ Connected blog. Interesting stuff. Social Media is from Mars, Enterprise 2.0 is from Venus Happy Monday. Continue Reading
Project Success Max Effgen, September 7, 2009 Over the long weekend, I had a conversation with a friend and former colleague on the state of the enterprise. The common theme centered on the advances in technology and that projects still fail at an alarming rate. This made me recall an earlier post on project success. Many many… Continue Reading
Read: Zoho Partners with VMware Max Effgen, September 1, 2009 Interesting read and follow up to My $0.02 post yesterday on Read Write Web about SaaS provider Zoho and VMWare partnering to provide on-site versions of Zoho’s SaaS suite. Go where the market takes you. Smart move. Read Write Web: Zoho Partners with VMware for Collaboration Behind the Firewall Continue Reading