Spotlight Features

Even at post-tech bubble prices, adopting a CRM system requires a sizable commitment for any firm. Many of the companies making these investments, though, still are not realizing the maximum value for their money due to common missteps before and after the implementation. Some firms, for instance, a...

More and more of the companies that are either piloting or actively pursuing Service-Oriented Architecture frameworks to support their business strategies are aiming to accentuate, strengthen and streamline selling and service strategies. Cutting the costs surrounding database and data warehouse con...

Earlier this week, RightNow Technologies announced its acquisition of Salesnet, an on-demand vendor known for its highly specialized sales methodologies. It was a coup for the Bozeman, Mont.-based vendor, says founder and CEO Greg Gianforte, for a number of reasons -- not least because it lopped a y...

Remember demand? It was always seen with supply and it was used to make markets until some wise guys told us that the two could go their separate ways. If you keep all things constant except for supply you can run the table, or so they said. It reminds me of the old joke about the poet, the engin...

The recent run-up of gas prices has lead to many U.S. companies rethinking their stance on telecommuting, and in the more global context, the increasing acceptance of outsourcing is creating virtual teams at an unprecedented rate. Given the euphoria over Software-as-a-Service applications, the ques...

Buying a U.S. company offers a quick and easy way to acquire a client base without having to build one up slowly through traditional sales and marketing efforts, efforts that can be expensive, time consuming and not always successful. As described in part one of this series, acquisitions can provi...

I am a bit of an economics junkie. My interest in the dismal science carries over from my interest in evolution and can be summarized as, why things are the way they are and how they got that way. I am currently finishing up a book that gets me where I live, Why Most Things Fail: Evolution, Extinc...

U.S. companies that have not globalized their production or service operations are prime acquisition candidates for Western and overseas investors. Following an acquisition, the new owners can gradually shift some or all of an acquired firm's work offshore to competitive locations, making the entir...

When the sales team operates with urgency, the soul of a company is alive, thriving and growing. The sales department is the company's heartbeat and is absolutely necessary to create a sense of purpose and maintain a constant focus on delivering value to customers. Great salespeople are constantly t...

Customer events have replaced trade shows as the big-spend item in many software vendors' and analyst and advisory firms' marketing budgets. Implicit in this shift of spending is the precision possible for targeting CEOs and CIOs with relevant content. The challenge however is getting these senior ...

You don't need to go far to see how different the 00s are from the 90s, just take a look at selling. Ahh, the 90s, lots of people in sales tell me you didn't make sales calls in the 90s, it was more like making appointments to take orders. Gurus of selling like Jim Dickie of CSO Insights, reported...

Acquisition of existing enterprises offers the quickest, safest route to entering new markets and expanding rapidly within existing markets. The alternative route is organic growth through traditional sales and marketing efforts. We begin here by recognizing the limits of conventional sales and mar...

For retailers, there is nothing more sacred, outside of the holiday shopping season, than a successful multichannel operation. Same-store multichannel buyers -- that is, those who shop both in a retail store and online -- spend 14 percent more annually than single channel buyers do, according to Jup...

The trend of Americans and Canadians buying call centers in India is driven by the low cost of these facilities and by the speed with which buyers can begin using them. The first article in this series focuses on the advantages of buying a facility with less than 100 seats in Bangalore, primarily ...

In August 2005, specialty retailer Casual Male struck a bargain with its customers: If it didn't have a best-selling item in a particular size or color in stock, it would get it within five days. If it couldn't deliver, the customer would get the item for free. Nine months later, Casual Male is out ...