New Salesforce.com videos on Youtube
March 20, 2008
A shoutout to Bryan at Salesforce.com for pointing out a few new video’s posted to Salesforce’s Youtube channel recently.
Take a look at…
- Tour de Force Event Trailer
- Marc Benioff Interviews Aon Corporation’s Greg Case
- A Couple Videos showing how excited people are about Salesforce.com and the AppExchange
Managing March Madness with Sales Analytics
March 19, 2008
I received an email from Claudia Kulaga today, an independent consultant, on the topic of sales analytics. It’s quite topical as Q1 winds down and the NCAA basketball tournament gets ready to roll. Here’s what she writes:
Sales can be a mad, mad, mad game. Just like in basketball, you may have the best team, your star players may be at the top of their game, and you may be in the running for coach of the year. But when the last buzzer rings, are you celebrating a score that meets or exceeds what you had been predicting at half-time, or do you have your star player still airborn in one last desperate attempt at victory before the clock runs out?
Sometimes that last attempt works and wins you the game, and sometimes it doesn’t. That’s fine for basketball, but it’s definitely no way to run your sales organization. You don’t get any more points for the acrobatics and maneuvers you’re stuck performing to try and make your numbers when your pipeline isn’t shaping up the way you thought it would at the end of the quarter, and you certainly don’t get additional revenue. All you’re likely to get is a back-ache, and just maybe you’ll make your number.
Profitability comes from predictability, and in this mad world of business you need as much predictability and visibility as you can get, especially when monitoring your sales pipeline - the source of your revenue. And, unless you’ve got a multi-million dollar IT budget and existing IT infrastructure to match, you’re probably not getting all the information you need about your pipeline from your CRM data and Excel spreadsheets. A big part of the reason for that is that while CRM systems are useful, they are designed to process transactional data, not for analysis and dynamic reporting.
That’s why the market shift to business analytics as a service (BAaaS) is getting so much attention right now. With just a few clicks, an on-demand sales analytics applications will allow you to see not just how many deals you have lined up, but critical information that defines the meaning those numbers have for your pipeline, your predictions, and your profits. You’ll have immediate access to information such as what stage of the sales cycle each of your deals is in and how likely they are to close based on variables such as individual sale’s rep’s abilitities, product or industry verticals, competitors, or regions. You’ll be able to splice that with information from other data sources such as Excel sheets and your financial solution, and view the results in a simple and easy to understand format. You’ll have easy access to simple to understand, actionable information at your fingertips, so you always know where you are in your pipeline, where you’ve been, and where you need to go to win.
With one of the emerging business analytics as a service applications, right from the start and through the end of the quarter, you’ll always know exactly where you are in the game and just what are the stengths and weaknesses in your sales pipeline. So when the last buzzer rings at the end of the quarter you won’t be stuck performing acrobatics to try and meet forecasts that were based on incomplete or innacurate information. You’ll be breaking open a bottle, not your back.
The world is mad (enough). With business analytics as a service you don’t have to be!
Got an interesting angle on sale analytics and the business intelligence market shift to SaaS? Send it to me and I’ll post it here.
Salesforce.com Videos to check out
March 19, 2008
A few videos people recently sent me that you might want to check out:
- Our favorite CEO , Marc Benioff, at work promoting the Force.com platform
- Salesforce.com for the iPhone
- Partner relationship management from Salesforce
Got a SFDC related video to share? Post links to comments.
Lead Nurturing With Salesforce.com
March 19, 2008
Drip Marketing: more than an email and a phone call.
By Jason Kort.
Traditionally known as “drip marketing,” lead nurturing in its most general sense is “any sales activity that happens when you aren’t there.” For most companies it’s a one or two-shot effort, consisting of sending a plain-text email, then making one follow-up call.
Effective lead nurturing is more than just emailing and “checking in.” Successful lead nurturing follows a well-thought-out strategy that maps out communications and processes designed to gradually increase your potential’s understanding of-and trust in-you, your company, and your products and services. It requires planning far beyond the typical, “if you don’t close the sale by the second phone call, send the email.”
Lead nurturing campaigns integrated with Salesforce.com extend a company’s reach automatically. A typical strategy for SoftVu clients is to have a personal introductory video message, automatically generated and triggered the instant a prospect completes a lead form. Next, unless the prospect converts immediately, the lead nurturing strategy begins.
SoftVu can dynamically add sender images, voice, video, contact information and other personalized content to humanize campaigns. Relationship building is improved when customers see the sales reps face or photo on a customized landing page. Instant view notifications allow the sales team to know exactly when the customer is viewing their communications and when to call. All message tracking integrates with Salesforce.com so that businesses get a full view of the sales cycle.
We found in a recent study of 100,000 aged lead survey responses across 38 different lending clients, that 60-70% of aged leads remain viable after the second contact-some beyond even six months after applying online. The typical practice of not following up with leads after one or two contacts-not nurturing leads effectively-means you’re throwing away 60-70% of your total investment in leads.
Now more than ever before, lead nurturing practices can help companies get value from leads that companies may have never have touched. Businesses can stay in front of the customer from day one to purchase and be well positioned to continue to nurture customers for life.
Jason Kort, is Marketing Director of SoftVu, a leading provider of marketing automation software. Founded in 1999, SoftVu has earned a reputation for engaging customers with personalized, relevant, and timely communications to help businesses close sales. The company creates automated campaigns for lead generation and incubation, sales follow-up, and client retention programs. Jason is an advocate for marketing automation and his writings can be seen in a variety of business publications and blogs. Read more about Jason on his blog.
Benioff takes shots at Microsoft in latest interview
March 18, 2008
Dan Farber and Charles Cooper of Cnet recently interviewed Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff. In the interview they focus on Salesforce’s shift to the platform-as-a-service model and on the company’s competition. Benioff’s responses are telling, and well thought out. The Q&A session also shows that Salesforce.com’s main man knows his stuff, having a much better grasp on the direction of the software industry than his rivals, something he points out by taking regular shots at big wigs such as Microsoft.
A couple of quotes from the interview I found interesting:
Does this kind of economic climate, where there’s lots of uncertainty, make it easier or tougher for someone selling software as a service?
Benioff: The power of software as a service is that it’s less risk than software, no matter what. That’s because the traditional software model has you buy the software and then you attempt to implement it. The risk is all yours. You’re kind of paying up front. With software as a service, you pay as you go so the risk is mitigated over time. If it’s not right for you for whatever reason, you’re not as far into it as the old model. The old model was you bought everything–the software, the hardware, the implementation–and then you had to make the determination: Is this the right product for me?
Author’s note: I found the above quote interesting as it got me thinking about the risk involved on the part of the customer in any business transaction. Clearly the more you can reduce the risk for the customer, the more likely the sale. Certainly any number of industries could benefit from giving this question some thought.
You’ve shifted from software as a service to platform as a service. How do you think you’re doing in terms of colonizing the Web with your platform as a service in terms of getting companies to just shift over to this new model–where it’s, you come to us and we do everything for you?
Benioff: It’s taken about a decade of Salesforce to kind of get the software service movement to really happen. We will be 10 years old on March 8 of next year. People overestimate what you can do in a year and they underestimate what you can do in a decade, unless you’re (Apple CEO) Steve Jobs.
I think that it’s going to take a decade to make platform as a service happen because it’s the re-creation of all the ISVs (independent software vendors), the technology also, the ecosystem, the implementation, and so forth.
And just in the same way that we don’t want to be the only ones doing software as a service, we certainly don’t want to be the only ones doing platform as a service. We want to be able to clearly show that this is the future of the industry, too.
Google Salesforce.com marriage unlikely
March 17, 2008
A recent article on the Wired blog network reports that a Google purchase of Salesforce.com is unlikely at this time due to the current upheavel in the market. The post by Wired’s Betsy Schiffman is an interesting one as it sheds some light on what’s going on over at Google and weighs in with opinions on the likelihood of a Salesforce.com Oracle merger.
Over the past month, we’ve covered the story as rumors unfolded about a potential sale to Google, Oracle and Microsoft, none of which have acknowledged by Salesforce as having any basis in reality…at least for now.
Continue reading over at Wired.
Vancouver User Group Meeting - Wed March 26th
March 17, 2008
Vancouver will host its next user group meeting next Wednesday at 6:30 PM.
For more details visit the Vancouver Salesforce.com User Group blog.
Austin User Group Meeting - Wed March 26
March 17, 2008
Austin is setting a great example on how to liven things up a bit next week by hosting their next meeting at a bowling alley.
Sounds like a blast!
MONTHLY USER GROUP EVENT
Wednesday, March 26th
4:30pm to 8:00pm
LOCATION
300 Austin (this isn’t your ordinary bowling alley)
9504 North I-H 35
Austin, TX 78753
Check them out at http://www.3hundred.com/
CONTACTS
David Franklin: david.franklin@genband.com
Alice Jones: ajones@bulldogsolutions.com
SPONSOR(S)
Cast Iron Systems
For additional details, visit the Austin Salesforce.com User Group blog.
Microsoft vs. Salesforce on Customization
March 16, 2008
Check out this great summary of last week’s Microsoft Convergence 2008 conference on Paul Greenberg’s blog. At the bottom of the post he calls attention to Steve Ballmer’s claims that Microsoft CRM 4.0 has “unparalleled” simplicity of customization compared to salesforce.com. Paul plans to “put Microsoft and salesforce.com feet to the fire” by contacting both companies “to see if they are willing to do a bakeoff.”
This ought to be interesting!
Signs Your Sales Pipeline Might be Based on Fiction or Fantasy
March 14, 2008
Is your sales pipeline based on fact, fiction or fantasy? According to recent research from IDC, sales productivity is now the #1 priority of CEOs, but many organizations are still focused on activity management instead of tracking the right performance metrics that will drive bottom-line results. Here are 5 signs that your sales pipeline might be based on fiction or even fantasy:
- You expect deals to close without knowing that they’re actually stuck in your pipeline.
- You’re looking at the overall pipeline totals, without looking at what’s moved
into the pipeline and what’s moved out. - You’re counting on specific deals to close, without looking at the performance of the reps responsible for closing those deals quarter over quarter or year over year.
- You don’t have a clear understanding of the trends in your conversion rates.
- You don’t know how long it takes for your sales reps to ramp up and instead rely upon antiquated industry rules of thumb.
It’s been said that sales is both art and science, but when your pipeline is truly fact-based you’ll have confidence in your forecast and be able to avoid nasty end-of-quarter surprises. And believe it or not, according to this CSO Insights whitepaper, you’ll also have better retention as your sales reps will have a clear understanding of how they’re being measured and your objectives will be aligned.
We recently did a webinar with Selling Power that focused on some of the best-practice analytics you need to deliver a fact-based pipeline. More on this topic next week. If you have other suggestions for posts on the topic of analytics best practices, feel free to email me or share your feedback in the comments below.
Featured Sponsors
Latest Headlines
- Salesforce.com for sale? Rumor mill starts up again…
- Salesforce.com Winter ‘09 sneak and peak
- Successforce gets a make-over
- The subscribers, they rule? They do!
- Go bananas for Salesforce.com
- The First 500: Salesforce Certification
- They’re called “Mindtouch” ?
- How Salesforce.com Uses Salesforce.com: Webinar
- Salesforce.com on the S&P 500
- Can You Answer These Questions About Your Sales Pipeline?
Subscriber Count
Sponsor
