Sales forecasting never has been easy, and over time it has gotten a lot harder. This brings up a couple of points that every sales manager and CEO has to deal with: how to forecast deals and how to track them. Forecasting has gone through several generations of approaches that have been tied direct...
The wearables market heated up last week with Apple's introduction of its Watch and payment processing service, and the implications for CRM are interesting. First off, the announcement shows how very young the wearables marketplace is and how far it has to go. Second, even though wearables are by...
Europeans are relentlessly attacking Google: A German official called for its breakup, a French minister charged it was a threat to sovereignty, and a publisher compared it to a dragon, according to a report. Really? I would have thought the euro and the draconian austerity program needed to keep i...
I've been following the wearables space with great interest over the last year, from the first steps of products like Fitbit and Jawbone to the current wave of activity by a growing list of device makers and, importantly, app tool vendors. This has a great deal to do with CRM, both because of the cu...
The CRM Evolution conference held last week in New York was interesting for multiple reasons. Most importantly, perhaps, is the perception that the market is moving into a higher gear, slipping past the restraints of a recession that would not quit. Good things are in store for the industry, I think...
Apttus and Adobe Echosign earlier this year conducted a survey of more than 100 Fortune 1000 sales leaders, focusing on perennial blind spots for sales managers. Among their just-released findings: One in four companies don't have sufficient KPI insights for average pipeline multiple, deal size, quo...
Take a look at almost any sales software on the market, and you'll find the vendor's claim that the product accelerates the sales process. It's a given. For years, we've been trying to achieve this acceleration, and we've been succeeding. The only problem with this approach is that it can't go on fo...
I was impressed by the announcement by Salesforce.com last week of a new product combination it calls "Sales Reach." It's supposed to be a mashup of sorts between Sales Cloud, Pardot and Communities functionality that helps reps run micro-campaigns, perform nurturing and develop communities. As some...
So far, Satya Nadella's moves as head of Microsoft echo the teachings of Jim Collins' 2001 best seller, Good to Great. It's a book about how and why some companies wallow in mediocrity and others operate at several levels of magnitude higher than their peers -- think Apple for one and Salesforce for...
It's general practice to have multiple sales forecasts, and that typically means low and upside potential as well as what's committed -- but the idea of teasing those threads apart only at forecasting time might be old school and no longer applicable. Long before you compile a forecast, you have a g...
It always happens this way. A market erupts or transitions to something new or it goes the way of the dodo and you miss the key turning point. Looking back, though, you can spot the telltale signs of disruption. People like me, who try to forecast these great events, have the reliability of a dartbo...
Not that the shows ever end, but as I regain my spot on the ground, I have a few observations from the many shows that I have been to or read about over the last eight weeks. First, if you think that cloud platforms are simply a nice alternative to software licenses, you should think again. It's hum...
I don't know anyone who was ever great at sales forecasting. This is not to say that it can't be done, but it's a hard problem -- like forecasting the weather. Today, we can get weather forecasts for many days in advance with temperatures accurate within a few degrees, because we've invested in many...
Wearable computing hove into view in a big way this week when Salesforce.com announced Salesforce Wear, which enables developers to build new apps for teeny-tiny screens and devices that you, well, wear. Wearables is a market poised for takeoff. Last year, for instance, Apple cornered the world mark...
I think about the future -- perhaps too much. I recently read Jeremy Rifkin's new book, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism, and it made me think about the future of work. Rifkin's thesis is that automation is taking on mor...
Yes, communities and infrastructure can't keep up
Some projects are moving too fast
No, expansion is needed to meet demand
The pace seems about right
https://www.crmbuyer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2026/03/ai-voice-agents-crm-workflow-phone.jpg
https://www.crmbuyer.com/story/enterprises-are-trading-press-one-for-crm-native-ai-agents-177614.html
Enterprises Are Trading ‘Press One’ for CRM-Native AI Agents
https://www.crmbuyer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2024/03/frustrated-computer-user-1.jpg
https://www.crmbuyer.com/story/silent-churn-is-the-biggest-customer-support-risk-177596.html
Silent Churn Is the Biggest Customer Support Risk
https://www.crmbuyer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2025/09/AI-inventory-tracking.jpg
https://www.crmbuyer.com/story/overcoming-genai-roadblocks-taskus-helps-retailers-compete-178381.html
Overcoming GenAI Roadblocks: TaskUs Helps Retailers Compete
https://www.crmbuyer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2026/03/email-marketing.jpg
https://www.crmbuyer.com/story/the-end-of-spray-and-pray-email-marketing-178501.html
The End of ‘Spray and Pray’ Email Marketing
https://www.crmbuyer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2026/04/Adobe-GenStudio.jpg
https://www.crmbuyer.com/story/adobe-positions-itself-as-the-ai-control-layer-for-cx-180293.html
Adobe Positions Itself as the AI Control Layer for CX
https://www.crmbuyer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2026/03/digital-workplace-overload.jpg
https://www.crmbuyer.com/story/ai-is-forcing-companies-to-rethink-employee-experience-177608.html
AI Is Forcing Companies to Rethink Employee Experience
https://www.crmbuyer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2026/04/ai-sales-analytics.jpg
https://www.crmbuyer.com/story/how-ai-is-changing-sales-teams-without-replacing-reps-178523.html
How AI Is Changing Sales Teams Without Replacing Reps
https://www.crmbuyer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2026/01/AI-enabled-crm-dashboard.jpg
https://www.crmbuyer.com/story/workbooks-takes-on-crm-giants-with-plain-english-ai-177589.html
Workbooks Takes On CRM Giants With Plain-English AI
Enter your Username and Password to sign in.