Brent's CRM Blog

Infusion's Guarantee to Double Your Sales in 90 Days

Now that I have grieved sufficiently over my tragic pick of Georgetown to win this year's Final Four, I can get back to business. Wait a minute....Tito, pass the tissue....Jermaine stop teasing. Ok, I'm ready.

The folks over at Infusion Software have a pretty interesting contest going on. It's based on the ebook recently authored by there ceo Clate Mask - a good guy with one of the cooler names in the industry. The title of the free ebook is The EDGE of SUCCESS: 9 Building Blocks to Double Your Sales. It's a book about how Infusion faced the problems, issues and challenges on their way to growing the company. And I suspect the challenges they encountered are very similar to issues faced by many people as they try to get off the ground and build successful, profitable businesses. Clate keeps it plain and simple, which makes it easy to read and understand the principles Infusion developed for growing their business. This is one you'll want to check out as it gets right to the heart of what you can do to increase your chances of small business success in the Internet era.

Even if you don't read the ebook, you should check out the contest, because Infusion is going to supply one lucky company with the chance to double their sales in 90 days. They will provide the winner with the use of their CRM/eMarketing solution for a full year. This is a good deal as the Infusion application is a powerful solution for small businesses. But what really makes this attractive is the assistance Infusion is pledging. The winner will receive support and have access to Infusion's entire marketing team during that time. Now that's incredibly important. I know there are still a lot of people who think CRM is all about software, but it's about people, and people need guidance and assistance when going down the CRM path. Think about it, would anyone in their right minds hand over the keys to a Porsche 911 to a kid who just got his (or her) driver's permit? The Porsche is a fabulous car, but in the hands of someone who doesn't know how to drive, the only thing it will do is accelerate (and elevate) the inevitable disaster. So the value of the reward is greatly enhanced with the assistance that goes along with the application.

To learn more about the contest go to http://www.theedgeofsuccess.com/index.php. All the guidelines are there and you have until April 4th to submit your information. As for the claim that Infusion can double your sales in 90 days, I'll leave that up to the winner to tell us. But I'll be interested to find out.

Technorati : crm, emarketing, infusion software, marketing automation
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CRM - Championship Relationship Management: Georgetown over UCLA

It doesn't get any better than this. The Tournament. You gotta love college basketball because of The Tournament. No BcS allowed, not like what we're subjected to in college football... although I have to admit I'm still a bigger football fan than basket ball, but just barely.

So for the next few weeks CRM does not stand for what it usually does, it's all about managing your bracket in search of winning the pool, whichever one you're entered in. I'm not going to go into details here, but I will give you my Final Four:

• East Region - North Carolina
• Midwest Region - Georgetown
• Southeast Region - Pitt
• West Region - UCLA

The Final Two will be:

• Georgtown, after they avenge the tragic, devastating loss in 1982 at the hands of Michael Jordan, cemented when Fred Brown threw the ball directly to James Worthy. A moment I will never forget...and apparently have not gotten over as of yet. But I make this pick not from the heart, but with cold-blooded logic. OK I still hate UNC, but at least I hate Duke even more.
• UCLA will end Pitts magical run to the Alamo

And the winner is...

Given the long explanation of me being a long time Georgetown fan, I'm sure you'd expect me to pick them over UCLA. But remember this is about logic, analysis and everything but wild-eyed emotion. So with that in mind, I'm picking GEORGETOWN!

'Nuff said.

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Microsoft Convergence: The Good, The Bad and The Missing

Last week I attended my first Microsoft Convergence, the annual conference for users and partners involved with the business application side of Microsoft's business. Many small businesses still think of Microsoft has just providers of operating systems and office productivity software, but they go way beyond that with Dynamics line of apps that handle things like ERP, retail management and a few other things.....oh yeah, and CRM. I was attending as an analyst/press kind of person to check out what Microsoft has in store. So here are a few of my impressions from the three days I was in Orlando hanging out at the event.

The Good

• Personal Stuff
• • The best part of any event always deals with people and this event was no different. It was great being a member of "The Gang of Four" for the time I was there. The Four being comprised of CRM gurus Paul Greenberg, Denis Pombriant and Marshall Lager...and me. It's always great seeing my buddy Paul, but it was also a pleasure to finally meet his lovely wife Yvonne. It had been about four years since I met Denis, so it was good catching up with him. And although I've enjoyed reading Marshall's stuff for a while, as well as having him on my radio show, I hadn't met him until last week. I'm glad that he's just as funny in person as he is in print.
  • Speaking of people who have been on my show that I had never met, here are a few more people I had a chance to finally meet:
  • • Laurie McCabe of AMI Partners - Laurie was our first guest and has been a regular. She's about the only other University of Delaware grad I run across in the industry.
    • Sheryl Kingstone of Yankee Group - Sheryl was our second guest and member of CRM magazine's Hall of Fame
    • Rob Bois of AMR Research - Rob was a part of one of our most popular shows where we held a CRM round-table conversation with him, Marshall and 1to1 magazine's Ginger Conlon. Come to think of it, where were you Ginger???
    • Brad Wilson, Microsoft's GM of Dynamics CRM - Although I didn't get a chance to speak with Brad, I did check out one of his sessions, which I think was the best session I attended during the week
  • Denis Pombriant, who was responsible for naming Paul G. "the dean" of CRM, came up with a new nickname for Mr. Greenberg - the Walt Whitman of CRM. I'm told I'll have to read Leaves of Grass to really appreciate this one though.
• Strong Commitment to CRM

It was easily apparent to anyone who attended the event that CRM is, and will be, a big focus of Microsoft. From Steve Ballmer's opening keynote right on through the rest of the conference, CRM was front and center. It appears to me that it's possibly the number one focus on the Dynamics side. That's not to say that other areas are being short changed, as ERP, business intelligence and other segments are also areas of focus. But I definitely got the sense that CRM is the center piece of what's going on. Which is pretty cool to see from my perspective.

It's also pretty apparent that Microsoft has spent a great deal of time making sure Dynamics CRM 4.0 looks a great deal like Outlook, which they hope will help smooth transitions and increase user adoption rates. I wrote about this before after getting a briefing I had a few months back with Bill Patterson, Sr. Product Director for Dynamics CRM. In fact there is some really nice integration with Word and Excel which should help the millions of Office users who live in those apps.

• CRM the Way You Need It

As many of you know the 4.0 version of Dynamics CRM is being offered in three formats - on premise, hosted by Microsoft as "Software + Services" and hosted by Microsoft partners. Now at first I was kind of skeptical, as were many of the partners, as to why any customers would choose a third party vendor over Microsoft if they were looking for a hosted solution. But after thinking about it a bit this could be a good thing for both customers and partners. This could be the beginning of the long tail approach to CRM. The opportunities for third parties service providers to go beyond creating the traditional vertical offerings and create highly specialized niche offerings built off the Microsoft code-base could attract businesses with unique crm needs that do not want to manage, maintain and customize in house. This kind of plays up something Microsoft refers to as xRM - where other "relationship based" applications are being created from the Dynamics CRM app. So if partners can get past the fact that they may lose some of their traditional revenue streams, maybe they'll find they can create even more streams, which could possibly create deeper, longer lasting relationships. So it's all up to the partners to really make this a decidedly positive development.

• Integrated Experiences

In the session on how Microsoft is (and will use) Dynamics CRM internally, they shared a few of the top needs identified by their own people with respect to using CRM software. Integrated experiences was among the top three needs, along with returning more time to users and... I know it will sound like a cliche, but... a need to have a 360 degree view of accounts. Maybe it was these internal needs that led to a focus on making it easier for CRM to play nice with their ERP apps, SharePoint portal software to share CRM data, access to data on Windows Mobile devices and use high end business intelligence tools to analyze performance. Ballmer also mentioned a new server product - Windows Essential Server - that will help make it easier for mid-size businesses to install and run Dynamics apps. It sounds like Small Business Server for the "M" in the smb crowd.

• CRM and Football: Win-Win

The break out sessions I checked out were actually pretty good. Brad Wilson's session on customer choice had some nice demos showing the three flavors of CRM delivery, giving folks a look at how the on premise, partner hosted and Microsoft hosted solutions look and feel. He also had the Dallas Cowboy's head of technology, Pete Walsh, talk about how they are using CRM to manage customer experiences across all of their business units, which includes tickets, merchandising, luxury services and more. It was probably the most interesting case study of how someone was using Dynamics CRM I heard all week. I really hate saying that because I've hated the Cowboys ever since they knocked my beloved Los Angeles Rams out of the playoffs in the mid 70's when I was a little kid.

All in all the key here is that Microsoft knows how to make software, and now that they seem serious about CRM you can expect they will create compelling CRM offerings that can be delivered in formats customers can use to increase their opportunities of success.

The Bad

It's time for all technology companies to stop incorporating Star Wars themes into every trade show and conference they put together. I mean it's 2008 already, it's time to let it go. Give me some LOTR (Lord of the Rings), X-Men, or even Harry Potter, of which I've never read the books or rented the movies. At this point I'll take anything else, even rip-offs of Ishtar, Howard the Duck, or even (gasp) Soulplane. Anything but Star Wars...I'm begging you.

With that aside, on a more serious note I have to say what was really bad about the event has to do with what was missing.....

The Missing

Over the last few weeks I've been involved in Oracle's first ever CRM blogger's call , Sage's analyst call outlining their CRM strategy for the next two years, and Infusion Software's user conference. And without exception the main themes coming out of all three of these events is the growing importance of social CRM - how social media and web 2.0 tools are being incorporated into traditional crm strategies to reach their customers and prospects in a more meaningful way. In fact social CRM has very little to do with software, and everything to do with acknowledging that customers have the power to engage with whomever they want, whenever they want, wherever they want, however they want and how dramatically they wish to do so. So the masses can more easily amass without the boundaries of the past, and drive how they'll consume information as well as how they will do business. Which means that old maxim of business not being personal is no longer the case, if it ever was. Business IS very personal, so CRM has to be way more than great software, productivity gains and integration. These things are important, but so is understanding why people blog, leave comments, digg or stumble, create videos, etc.

So I was really surprised that I only heard the term web 2.0 mentioned once in the sessions and keynotes I sat in on during the three days I attended Microsoft Convergence. I was hoping to hear Steve Ballmer explain how Microsoft's investment in Facebook would play into their strategy for helping their customers build effective social marketing strategies. But I can't recall Facebook being mentioned at all, or LinkedIn, which I couldn't help think about as both Oracle and Sage are building links to these unbelievably popular sites AND business platforms into their CRM offerings.

And while there was an interesting demo of how you can manage Microsoft adCenter campaigns from within Dynamics CRM - what is being dubbed as keyword marketing services - I kept on thinking what about the ability to manage Google AdWords, which the vast majority of search engine marketers may be interested in. And why wouldn't they be interested as Google is still the tool of choice for finding things on the web. And that goes for those people who want easy Dynamics CRM access on iPhones and BlackBerrys. This last point I do believe there's something in the works, if I'm not mistaken.

Now I know Microsoft is in the process of trying to buy Yahoo!, but even if that goes through you can't ignore the hold Google has on the market, or expect folks to conform to what works best with your software, even if the software is good. It comes back to the philosophy of social CRM - participating in the conversation where the people are. They will value you more if you contribute to the conversation, and not try to take it over or force it where you want it to go. And that understanding of the social aspects of CRM is what seems to be missing here. The Dynamics CRM application looks to be solid, the choices for consuming it will work (I think), and enlisting local partners to lend expertise and support should really serve Microsoft well. Focusing on productivity, ease of integration and user adoption is also critical and looks to be well thought out and implemented. But it's just as critical to understand successful CRM initiatives need to go beyond the traditional areas of centralized databases and operational efficiencies. You have to understand how the web is transforming how customers and prospects want to communicate with your business. And that's more social than operational. Companies like Salesforce.com, Oracle and others are demonstrating their understanding of this. And it would have been great to see this on display at Convergence because Microsoft definitely has the capacity to compete in this area as well. I'm sure Microsoft understands all this, but it would have been great to hear it from them at this event.

All in all I was impressed with what went on at Convergence as it was a top notch, well run event. The exhibitor's area was great with a number of opportunities to check out all the different Dynamics apps. And a personal thanks to all the folks that made it easy for guys like me to concentrate on the event without having to worry about much of anything. However I can't help but think about how much better it might have been if Microsoft's business application side displayed their understanding of the social path we all seem to be on. Maybe that's coming at the next Convergence. I look forward to finding out.

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This One is for The Moneymakers

I've been on the road quite a bit the last month speaking and meeting. I'm heading back to Orlando tomorrow to check out Microsoft Convergence. It will be my first time attending so I'm looking forward to seeing what goes on there.

I say going back to Orlando because I was just down there 10 days ago to speak at a conference on behalf of the Six Apart. It was a nice event, but the most memorable thing for me was meeting my first billionaire. As I jumped into the elevator to go to my room, Arthur Blank, co-founder of Home Depot and owner of the Atlanta Falcons, also jumped in right as the door closed. And sadly, I have to admit, I was $tar $truck. I even lied and introduced myself as a big fan of the Falcons, a lie so vicious my tongue should have snapped right out of my mouth. It's probably a good thing I wasn't sporting a Michael Vick jersey at the time. Anyway Mr. Blank was really cool. He shook my hand, asked me what brought me down there and wished me good luck with my speaking engagement.

Speaking of billionaires, last week for my BlackEnterprise.com column I wrote about Oprah's social media lesson for solopreneurs and other small business types. It's about how Oprah, along with author Eckhart Tolle, were going to hold 10 webinars discussing Tolle's book A New Earth - Oprah's latest book club selection. The morale of this story is if the world's most recognizable media mogul is turning to social media, shouldn't us unknown little guys? I think we have more to gain than the queen of all media does.

I've gotta give it up to the money makers... good lessons and good manners. Oh well, I'm off to the big O (Orlando, not Oprah). Maybe, just maybe I'll run into Bill(ionaire) Gates.

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Blogger Relationship Management - Oracle Steps Up

This past Friday I participated in what I think may have been the first "blogger call" - as opposed to an analyst call - set up in the CRM industry. Anthony Lye, Oracle's senior vice president of CRM, invited a select group of bloggers to discuss a few developments the company is working on. The call was a little late in getting started and lasted about 20 minutes. And I can't write or comment on what was talked about until March 11th when Oracle makes the information public, but it should be of interest to anyone following the space or who is serious about CRM. What I can comment on is the fact that Oracle held the call in the first place. It's a good sign that Oracle gets the importance the industry blogosphere has with respect to holding important, inclusive conversations with CRM enthusiasts, practitioners, users and customers. Even if I had not been invited I'd feel that way. Because it shows Oracle is paying attention to things that their customers and prospects are involved with - using social media to participate in the conversation. It also shows a great respect for the bloggers, but an even greater respect for the CRM community in which their customers (current and future) look for guidance, information, and to be heard.

So I thank Anthony for putting this together and for inviting me to participate. It puts Oracle ahead in terms of BRM, at least in the CRM industry. Hopefully there will be more questions from the bloggers on the next call (thank God Paul Greenberg was at the ready). Don't take it personal Anthony, we're just not used to being treated like real people....

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Infusiastic About Small Business

It's been a few days since the last post, but I have a good reason....ok an excuse. I spent most of the past week in Scottsdale, Az attending Infusion Software's third annual user conference. I was there in dual roles you could say, because in addition to checking the scene out from a pseudo-analyst perspective, I was also one of the guest speakers for the event. And I was in awesome company with the following powerhouses "grabbing the mic" to dispense some serious knowledge, passion and fun:

• Michael Gerber - Author of the E-Myth book series and founder of the Dreaming Room
• Pat Sullivan - Creator of ACT! and SalesLogix, and founder of Jigsaw Health
• John Jantsch - Author and creator of Duct Tape Marketing
• Ramon Ray - Technology Evangelist and editor of SmallBizTechnology.com

Being in the company of these folks was really a special treat for me because they are all great guys that I have learned a great deal from either through reading their books, following their blogs, or using their software. But what was great for me is that every last one of them has been a guest on my show, and with the exception of my good buddy Ramon, I had never met any of them before. And all I can say is that they were as great in person as they were on the radio.

Impressions of Infusion - The Employees, The Partners, The Customers...The Community

I had the opportunity to speak with a Infusion's ceo Clate Mask a few months back when I was just getting familiar with the company. about a month later I spoke with Infusion founder Scott Martineau and marketing vp Dave Lee. I remember enjoying talking to them about small business and the needs real small businesses have for CRM. And that's what I remember most about those initial conversations, a sincere interest in small business.....not sMBs (lower case "s" intentionally used to emphasize most companies passion for M's and not true S's). And because I liked what I heard, as well as what I saw during a short demo of the product, I invited Dave Lee to be on the show to have a conversation about small business crm. We had a pretty lively discussion you can check out using this link.

So I was hoping that my initial conversations would be a good lead in to meeting the folks at the conference. It was. Now of course I expected everyone from management on down to be on the best behavior, but I never got the sense from any of the Infusion folks I met that they were anything but sincere about their passion for their customers. There were over 160 folks attending the event, and it seemed that every Infusion employee knew every Infusion customer. Not saying that's literally the case, but it appeared that way because of the interaction I was checking out. And I really cannot remember any negative comments coming from the user community, or the partner community for that matter. Which was really interesting as I went around speaking to folks and asked on a number of occasions what their impressions of the company were. In fact I'd have to say the Infusion customers were a pretty happy bunch, looking to learn more about how to use the product to automate as much of the marketing process as they possibly can. I emphasize asking about customer impressions of the company, and not the product.

Speaking of the product, I can't really because I haven't been hands-on with it as of yet. I do plan on "laying hands" at some point in the near future, but wanted to view the product vicariously through the experiences of the customers at the conference. And although the crew of guest speakers were very well received and did a great job, the true stars of the conference were the customers Infusion brought on board to showcase how they were using the software to automate drip marketing campaigns, execute email marketing, even handling event registration activities. Probably the highlight of the conference, from a user perspective, was a presentation by power user Darcy Juarez of Dentist Profits detailing how she created and implemented an automated multi-step, multi-direction drip marketing campaign with Infusion.

The interaction between the users was also really interesting to see, as many times they would participate during session Q&A's to offer up their tips and tricks for doing things with the software. But the most interesting development to me was, of course, in the area of social crm. At one point during a live demo led by Scott Martineau, a customer in the audience said that the demo is great but it would be even better if users could access this kind of demo online. The Infusions folks said they could absolutely do that. But then another user jumped up and asked if any user could create a "tip" video for the Infusion user "community", which drew a round of applause from the audience. Hmm....do you think Infusion will look into doing this???

All in all I was very impressed with the conference. Impressed with the commitment Infusion has to REAL small businesses, as their customer base is made up mostly of companies with fewer than 25 employees. Impressed with the growing number of certified consultants I spoke with solid experience in delivering service to small businesses. And I'm especially impressed with the customers I spoke with who understand the importance of leveraging the web to generate leads and automate the marketing process as much as possible. These folks understand that automation will allow them the time to build valuable long lasting relationships with great customers. I sincerely hope that, as Infusion grows, it remembers this event and how their users participated. If they can grow and keep the spirit of helping REAL small businesses alive, they can be a leader in the space.

So thanks to Infusion for letting me participate. And a special thanks for the warm welcome to the conference attendees, and for not laughing at me when Ramon made me do the cabbage patch during the evening reception. You all were the the ABSOLUTE LAST PEOPLE EVER TO SEE ME DO THAT....EVER!

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CRM Association National Conference

I'm typing this one up at the airport using my iPhone, so this will be short and sweet. If you get a chance you should check out this year's CRMA conference taking place April 1st and 2nd here in Atlanta. Keynotes by Martha Rogers and Paul Greenberg are just two of the many reasons to attend. There will be great sessions and panel discussions throughout the event, as well as opportunities to network with industry heavyweights.

So do yourself a favor and check it out. For more info go to http://www.crmaconference.org. I hope to see you there.

Conspiracy Theory Redux - I Like Mike...Arrington

As a short follow-up to the post on how Marc Benioff and Larry Ellison, with the rumor of Oracle interested in buying Salesforce.com, are trying to ruin my predictions of 2008 being the year small businesses fully embrace CRM, and that Google will buy Salesforce.com. No need to go over old ground, but I did first post that GoogleForce prediction back at the end of 2006.

Anyway just when I was thinking these predictions were totally off base, Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch wrote a post on Microsoft's Innovator's Dilemma which included these two sentences:

"In the middle of this sits Salesforce, the king of software on demand. At some point Google or Microsoft will make a serious move to acquire them, and at that point the other will respond with a counter. "

Now it goes without saying that I agree with Arrington's take on this, as it would make sense for either Microsoft or Google to be interested in Salesforce.com. But with Microsoft engaging in what appears to be a hostile takeover attempt of Yahoo!, and getting ready to roll out it's long awaited Live CRM service, I still have to go with GoogleForce. Mainly because I'd still be able to call 2008 the year of small business CRM. So I like that one more than the Oracle-Salesforce combo. If for no other reason than the name....OraForce....that's just too close to orifice for my liking.

Technorati : crm, google, microsoft, salesforce.com

I'm At Rocket Place

I'm having a good time at the event!