CRM REVISITED YET AGAIN

by Hank Trisler

Today I got a note from an old pal. He speaks of being too late for the blog, but it's never too late to express a good idea.

"Hank,
 

"Your quest for a new CRM got me to thinking that the direction of more reports and features, as commented on your blog, is just so wrong. It is the direction that the non-field folks wanted, and since they approve the budgets, the warriors (that would be sales folks) get crappy goods for CRM. 

"To my current way of thinking, the right direction is to ask, “How do I get this to work with my handheld (iPhone, Blackberry, Droid, etc.)?” I don’t know the answer, but that is the real question. Anything that can’t be done by a sales person with their smart phone is probably generating questionable return.

"My two bits – sorry I didn’t get it into the blog."

Paul

Paul Sakamoto is the CEO of DFT Microsystems, a high tech firm based in Montreal. He's been my customer and friend for over thirty years and I value his opinion highly.

I'm strongly leaning in Paul's direction. My whole system now consists of Outlook kluged together with Word and running on a laptop and my iPhone. I'm pretty much self-contained wherever I go and I don't have to file no steenking reports with anydamnbody.

Of all the systems I heard of, by far the most fascinating to me was that created by Dale Loflin. He has stitched together Android, Gmail, Google documents and some arcane incantations to come up with something that will handle all his correspondence, record keeping  and time management and do it all by voice actuation. That, to me, is the ultimate Road Warrior. His whole office is in his hip pocket. I've asked Dale to tell me more about his system, but he hasn't had time to respond, yet. 

Is this information something you'd like to have? Have you any systems of which you are particularly fond, especially those of the totally portable variety? Please let me know where your head is by posting a comment below.

THE HUNT FOR CRM (IV)

by Hank Trisler

WOW! When I started this thread, I had no idea how much interest there was in CRM. I'm delighted and amazed by the quantity and quality of the discussion.

The more I dig into this matter, the deeper is my confusion. Not only is there no clear winner for everyone, I can't even find a clear winner for me. I like some parts of nearly every program, but have yet to find one that meets all my criteria.

Today, I participated in a webinar celebrating the release of a nearly-all-new Sales Nexus, the brainchild of Craig Klein, one of the nicest and brightest guys you'll ever meet. This program is targeted on sales teams of from 5 to 5,000 seats. It competes quite ably with Salesforce.com, who has been the one to beat in the big CRM game. Teams need reports and forecasts and charts and graphs and other stuff that sole practitioners eschew. Sales Nexus provides these in abundance.

Today, they rolled out a new Email Marketing segment of their program that is a solid world-beater. You can set up a campaign to reach a targeted audience of, say, 5,000 warm bodies. It will send out your 5,000 emails (but who won't?) AND notify you when your email is actually opened, AND tell you when the body clicks on the link you so cleverly included. This indicates interest on the part of the body, who is then elevated to prospect and his/her name jumps up on your screen as someone you ought to be talking to. This means that sales critters spend their time talking to people who have at least a passing interest, as opposed to spending all day chasing their tails.

They charge you a flat rate per month depending on the number of users, but regardless of use. You can send 50,000 emails a month and it costs no more. If your people are silly enough not to want to use Sales Nexus, they can continue to use Outlook and it will interface one with the other. This means you don't have to pressure or coerce your people to use your hot new program.

The frosting on the cake is the Sales Mastery Institute, which is a collection point for videos, blogs, articles, webinars and tutorials on anything pertaining to sales. This can be an enormously valuable resource for any sales team and take a little of the load off the training department.

So here's the way I see it from where I sit this afternoon. If I were faced with the task of herding the aggregation of cats that is the typical sales force, I think I'd run for Sales Nexus. If I were me, as a single operator, trying to sell a product or service and seeking to build my personal brand and stand out from the madding crowd, I'd take a long look at Ace of Sales. I don't imagine you'll go very far wrong with either of them.

We don't have to stop talking about this just because I've finished my thread. I'll be delighted to pass along whatever you experience and let you know what I learn. Keep them cards and letters coming, sports fans.

THE HUNT FOR CRM (III)

by Hank Trisler

You may remember that Dale Loflin wrote eloquently--in comments to the first post in this thread--about a system he kluged together based on GMail and Android. He says it will send and receive email, write letters, do everything but wax your car and do it all by voice activation. There's even a GPS which he claims is superior to that offered by Garmin.

Dale is an extremely intelligent and credible gentleman and I trust him implicitly. I could no more operate a system like his than run a marathon, much less invent and assemble it. If you want to know more about it, write Dale and he'll probably steer you in the right direction. He doesn't sell them for a living, though he probably should.

ACT!, by Sage, is the CRM package most often mentioned by the folks who wrote me. It is without question a very capable, if uninspiring package. The most common complaint was about the customer support, or lack thereof. I downloaded a thirty-day trial package, which claimed it would link with Outlook, but not in the trial package. Same with Word. 

I don't want to download a trial package to be told what it will do, I want to see it work. The package further instructed me not to call, as there was no support available on the trial package.

If there's ever a time you need support, it's when you're first using a program. I wrote a scathing email to ACT!, and got a response from a nice lady who promised to call me to address my concerns the following day. She never did.

I uninstalled ACT! with a bit of sadness, as I'd thought it might be the answer to my problem. It even ran on the desktop, as I wanted it to.

My friend, Jeffrey Gitomer, was only one of MANY people writing to tell me about his program, Ace of Sales. It is a bona fide, guaranteed winner. If you want lots of tables, graphs and reports, look elsewhere. If you just want to sell stuff and brand yourself and stand out from the madding crowd, take a good look at Ace of Sales. It will guide you to create email that really packs a punch. It will do ezines, flyers, post cards, letters and greeting cards quickly, easily and professionally. If you can't look good with this program, you're just not good looking.

Ace of Sales runs "in the cloud," which means all your data resides on Jeffrey's servers. This is not nearly as scary as it sounds, as the data is encrypted and safeguarded. Running in the cloud means you can access your information with any computer, anywhere you can log onto the internet. It doesn't handle incoming email, so you still need to run Outlook, or something as an email client. The downside of running in the cloud is that it seems to run a bit slow. So plan ahead.

The real ball-buster for me is that it will not sync with my iPhone. My iPhone is permanently affixed to my body and any program that will not sync with it is a non-starter, in my view.

If you want a program to help you plan a sales campaign and then execute it with style and panache, you're going to have a hard time beating Ace of Sales.

I have a couple more programs that I'm evaluating, so I'll plan to write my final installment tomorrow. If you have any thoughts, comments or questions, now would be an excellent time to flush them out, you should pardon the expression.

THE HUNT FOR CRM (II)

by Hank Trisler

I had no idea what I was doing when I put out the call for help deciding what CRM package I should employ. I had no idea not only how many CRM packages there were, but how many GOOD CRM packages there are.

I promised you a report on my research and report I will, but I'm just going to hit the high spots (IMHO) and leave it up to you to determine which package delivers the right blend of features for you.

I'm going to tell you a little about one, two or (at the most) three packages a day for the next few days. At the end of that time I hope to have my own decision made, though I know how I'm leaning as we speak. Rather than attempt any rating whatever, I'm just going to tell you about them in the order they came to me.

The first is a really nice little package called Cyrano. This is the brainchild of Scott Zimmerman, who has taken all the grunt work out of Relationship Management. He has even removed the computer. You don't have to enter any data, write any letters or do anyotherdamnthing. You just call his toll-free number and tell his people about your customer, what he/she likes and what should be done in the area of follow up. Scott and his team take it from there. You hang up the phone and go out in search of another live one. This is the individual sales person's dream. If you absolutely detest the idea of employing CRM, Cyrano is one of the first things you should look at. The followup system for those who hate followup. Call Scott Zimmerman at 330-848-0444 x 2 for a pleasant chat.

Highrise is a slick looking program among the many who have chosen to run "in the cloud," rather than on your desktop. For the uninitiated among us, this means that all the data is stored on Highrise's servers, rather than on the box in your office. The big benefit is that it doesn't matter which type of computer (PC, MAC) you use, or even if it's not your computer at all, you can log on to your personal web site and it's just like you were in your office. Prices start at FREE, for which you get precious little, and run up to $150.00 a month for which you get unlimited users and 50,000 contacts. If this isn't enough, you're too big a deal for this homey blog.

There are two to get you started. I'll take a look at some more tomorrow. Meanwhile, please feel free to express any opinions you have in the comments section. Lots of folks are listening in.

THE HUNT FOR CRM

by Hank Trisler

More years ago than I care to remember, in the dark days of DOS, I stumbled upon a contact manager called TeleMagic. I thought it the most wonderful invention since indoor plumbing and immediately signed up to be a dealer.

I sold TeleMagic at high levels until they decided to come out with a Windows version. It was horrible; slow and buggy. After an extended period of suffering, I took on a package--out of Australia--called Tracker. It ran well on Windows and was a thoroughly adequate contact manager. The Aussies never quite got the hang of marketing in North America, however, and soon ran out of money and lay, smoldering, at the side of the road.

Since I was without product to sell, a friend introduced me to GoldMine. This was the beginning of the transition from Contact Manager to Customer Relationship Manager. It was amazing. It would handle all my correspondence, my appointments, even manage my faxes and emails. I loved it and sold it happily for nearly ten years. Eventually, GoldMine wanted more time from me than I was willing to commit, so I stopped selling it, but remained a happy and devoted user.

Fast forward to a new computer running Windows 7. GoldMine wouldn't run on it. No sweat, I'd just upgrade to the current iteration. I called the home office and was told they wanted $1,100.00 to get me current. ELEVEN HUNDRED DOLLARS? Do they think Mom and Dad were cousins? I ought to be able to buy ten contact managers for that kind of bucks.

And so, today, I'm on the hunt for a new Customer Relationship Manager. I've downloaded the demo for ACT!, but found it to be sorely lacking in the demo department. I'm looking for something that works and doesn't require a pilot's license to drive it. I need your help to tell me what you're using and how it's working for you. When I have some data compiled and a decision made, I'll feed back the results for our mutual benefit. Here are the factors I consider important in a CRM package.

• An excellent word processor, or integration with Word.
• An auto-dialer.
• An excellent email client, or integration with Outlook. It needs to be able to do email blasts and hide the names and addresses of the recipients.
• Obviously a trick calendar with lots of alarms and ticklers.
• Synchronization with iPhone.
• Prefer being able to network with one other computer, but not essential.

You'll notice that I have not included reports, as I have no one to read them. I also omit forecasting, as I think it's a joke.

So there you have it. Help me find a CRM solution and I'll share with you the fruits of our investigation. I'm thinking it will be interesting, educational and fun.