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Customer Focus Is an All-Hands Exercise February 10, 2012 
Last week, after dropping off my Prius at the dealership for routine service -- as I've done regularly since I bought the car in 2007 -- I ambled over to the shuttle stop for a ride home. "Where you headed?" barked the driver, never raising his head from his newspaper. When I let him know where I was going, he immediately recognized me and his demeanor changed entirely.
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5 Ways to Sell Salespeople on CRM January 26, 2012 
The way the concept of CRM is defined during the sales process can sow the seeds of its ultimate failure. Because the decision makers are often sales managers rather than actual salespeople, the pitch is usually made that CRM makes it easier for the managers to manage their sales staff. Which is true. But what's in it for the sales staff?
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What's Good for Social Business Is Good for Social CRM January 19, 2012 
I'm ensconced at the Swan and Dolphin Hotels at Walt Disney World in Orlando this week for IBM's concurrent Lotusphere/IBM Connect shows, and all the announcements here paint the picture of a company and a partner ecosystem that is going all-in on collaboration. Big Blue's fuddy-duddy reputation is being completely overhauled, it seems.
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If Customers Will Pay, Why Aren't We Selling? January 12, 2012 
Do customers suffer from a split personality? I say this not because of encounters with clearly rattled fellow shoppers during the holiday season. I say it because of the numbers that consistently come out when customers are surveyed -- and the other numbers that seem to be in the forefront of most buyers' minds.
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Social CRM and the Speed of Change December 15, 2011 
Social media is often held up as the wind sock to gauge how fast the winds of change are blowing. When Google+ gained 25 million users in just six weeks, it was used as evidence that people had become willing to shift the channels and methods they used to communicate at the drop of a hat in our new, technologically accelerated age.
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Consistency and the Customer Experience: Wise or Foolish? December 08, 2011 
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote famously in his essay "Self-Reliance" that "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." These days, many people drop the "foolish" out of the statement and thus completely pervert the saying's meaning, creating a justification to bash the idea of consistency.
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Stick-to-itiveness: 3 Steps to Continually Refine Your CRM December 01, 2011 
Each dollar spent on CRM yields $5.60 in benefits, according to a recent report. Though the findings are interesting, the methodology is questionable. The 70 participating companies were customers of a firm that had been profiled in case studies -- they were not necessarily typical CRM users. Still, it's worth noting that the companies were embodying a trait of successful CRM users: "stick-to-itiveness."
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Want to Future-Proof Your CRM? Get Flexible November 17, 2011 
When the so-called experts dispense advice about CRM implementations, whether they're first-timers or replacements of old systems, they always include a caveat about the future. You need to solve today's problems with the new system, but you also need a way to "future-proof" your investment so that the next set of problems to present themselves don't force you back into the CRM selection process.
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When CRM Stalls: Kicking It Up a Notch October 20, 2011 
As a CRM journalist, I always enjoy talking to integrators (or resellers, or VARS, or partners, or whatever term they choose to describe themselves). It's always an interesting contrast to speaking with vendors. The discussion you have with a vendor is like taking an anatomy course; the discussion you have with an integrator is like speaking to the coroner.
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Forging Strong Links in Your Customer Interaction Chains October 13, 2011 
What's the ultimate goal of CRM? As much as I and others of my ilk might talk about the positive interactions, good feelings and peer-to-peer relationships that result when CRM is done well, they're just happy means to an end. The end is, and always will be, inflating the bottom line.
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Want Credibility, Marketers? You've Got to Earn It October 13, 2011 
Let's be honest: Marketing has always been considered a little "soft" in the business world. That may be why CMOs have one of the shortest average tenures of any corporate board member. Marketing's reputation comes from reporting on metrics like "impressions" and "brand awareness" -- things that CEOs and CFOs simply do not understand because they can't see the impact on their financial statements.
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The First Step to CRM Success: Name Your Problems October 06, 2011 
My friend Hank retired from the Coast Guard after a 20-year career, and now he's pursuing a second career of service as the executive director for the Alameda Food Bank, another truly worthy career path. During a recent party, we got to talking about work -- me about CRM, him about the food bank. As it turns out, the food bank had a need for CRM, much as many nonprofit organizations do.
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SCRM Bottom-Line Potential: Profits at Many Points September 29, 2011 
CRM is a business tool. Lke any business tool, its objective is tied to money -- either making more of it through increased sales, or saving it through greater efficiency. Perhaps because CRM is rooted in sales force automation and hard sales, the customer's path through CRM has mirrored the customer's path through the sales funnel.
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The 3 Opportunities You Miss by Using CRM Only for SFA September 22, 2011 
One of the great conundrums about CRM is the disconnect between its stated intention and what it's usually really used for. Theoretically, CRM is supposed to help businesses build better and longer-lasting relationships with customers. In actuality, it's usually used to simply manage customer data as a tool for sales.
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The Business of Personal Relationships: What SMBs Need to Know Before Investing in CRM September 19, 2011 
Relationships are the lifeblood of any business. As a small business achieves the success of a growing network, the question often turns to how to choose the best system for managing the information captured across multiple devices, digital files and scribbled notes. A contact management systems or full CRM software is the best way to keep tabs on the relationships contributing to the growth of the business.
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3 'Oh, Duh' Social CRM Lessons September 15, 2011 
These many years of excited conversation about what SCRM could do for businesses and what businesses need to do to make it a reality have created more questions than answers for many companies. That's created an aura of complexity around SCRM. Sure, there are complex components to creating an SCRM strategy -- how do you staff your SCRM efforts? How do you transition from listening to engaging in conversations?
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