I had an email through last weekend from a sports drink company asking me to fill out a questionnaire. They were interested to know why, despite having registered an interest, I hadn’t gone on to order their product. I remember the company well. I was preparing to take part in Continue Reading

Interesting post from Jill Konrath in her Selling to Big Companies blog, highlighting an email follow up by an undisclosed CRM vendor to a white paper down-load. My take on it – aside from it being a remarkably crude attempt at getting a ‘suspect’ to qualify themselves, and while it’s Continue Reading

One thing that struck me, as I waded through a pile of tender responses just before Christmas, is how uncertain some vendors become when you ask them to give guidance on the recommended administrative overhead for running their systems. The significant majority of respondents just ignored the question. A few Continue Reading

I read Brian Carroll’s article on lead nurturing before Christmas which recommends a very structured approach to managing and developing leads until they are sales ready. He suggests companies develop a carefully structured campaign programme for each lead as a means to improve close rates and reduce the length of Continue Reading

As Francis Buttle notes in his article for CRM guru ‘who is educating the next generation’ – ‘So, what’s going on? Why is a fundamental and widely applied business discipline – CRM – not being taught in our universities?’. I’d take that further – why does the whole issue of Continue Reading

I came across a couple of posts on a similar theme – the absence of magic bullets. One from Steve Yegge, and the other from Joel Spolsky. They resonate with how I see the CRM industry. Hundreds of millions of pounds are spent promoting CRM software as providing instant gratification. Continue Reading

One of the presentations I give (when I occasionally get invited out to some independent perspective on the market) is ‘15 keys to a successful CRM implementation’. I’d put a link in to a copy, but I’ve adopted a minimalist approach on my slides – al la Beyond Bullets – Continue Reading

As poacher turned gamekeeper I’m only too aware what a pain preparing responses to requests for proposals (RFP’s) can be. However I get to read a lot of responses these days, and it can be tough on the other side of the table as well, so I want to set Continue Reading

It seems like I’ve seen more than my fair share of CRM software demonstrations of late. We’ve been involved in several vendor selection exercises and have been sitting through a lot of presentations as a result. So for any vendors who happen to be passing my thoughts on the keys Continue Reading

Just a quick post to note, should anyone be interested, the latest edition of Conspectus Magazine has an opinion piece from this correspondent, on software as a service (SAAS). This is the link should you wish to browse it on the web. It does require a sign up though.