Brent's CRM Blog

Tales in Blogger Relationship Management - GoogleForce is in Full Effect

Kingsley Joseph over at Salesforce.com sent out an email this morning with links to a special blogger's page with information on the new Salesforce for Google Apps product that integrates features of Google Apps with features of SFDC. Now anyone who has read this blog over the years knows that I've been predicting GoogleForce for since late 2006, and then again when I was interviewed for CRM magazine at the end of last year. So I'm not going to dwell on the obvious - on how I think this combination makes entirely too much sense. I am planning to do check out the integrations this week, but in the mean time you may want to check out the following video that comes from the blogger's resource page:

I'll do a post on what I actually think of the integration lather this week. But this is another great lesson in BRM (Blogger Relationship Management). Here are a few of the key points:

• Setting up the special blogger's page with links to important information
• Emailing us with the heads up of the announcement
• including the movies in there
• offering to answer any questions we may have
• suggesting tags if we were to blog about the news
• recommendations for twittering and live blogging the webcast taking place this this afternoon

Coming off the heals of the second blogger call by Oracle last week, this is another sign that CRM vendors understand the value of communicating to the bloggers there customers and prospects check out.

Speaking of Oracle, maybe the rumor that they may buy Salesforce is just that, and that I may still have a shot at being right about GoogleForce.

Technorati : crm, google, productivity tools, salesforce
Del.icio.us : crm, google, productivity tools, salesforce

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

Talking GQ on Wall Street Journal's Blog

I don't know how I forgot to mention this, but after speaking at the Small Business Summit I had a fun conversation with Shelly Banjo of the Wall Street Journal. I had mentioned the importance to small business people of knowing what their Google Quotient (GQ) is in order to pass the Google Test when people search for information on you or your company. So Shelly and I spent some time going over some of the quickest ways to begin showing up, which she covered on her WSJ blog entry:

http://blogs.wsj.com/independentstreet/2008/02/14/whats-your-google-quotient/

This goes along pretty nicely with an interview I did for the Aileen on the Go internet television show on BroadcastAtlanta.com last summer:

Always check BroadcastAtlanta.com for the latest in Atlanta Video news.

Thanks Shelly for including me in your blog!

Technorati : google quotient, google test, small business summit, wsj

Passing the "Live Search" Test???

This one is for all my Microsoft buddies who always cringe when I mention how important it is for people to pass the Google Test when those needing help turn to their favorite search engine to find assistance. About six months ago I was interviewed for a Wells Fargo small business publication. It was for the cover story on Web 2.0 and small business. The reporter said they would send me a link to the article when it was available. So for the first few weeks I kept an eye out for it. I never heard from the reporter, and quite honestly can't even remember his (or her) name.

Anyway I figured I'd catch it when it showed up on one of the Google alerts I have set up on my name, company name, radio show, etc. But it didn't. Plus it never showed up when I Googled my name. So I just forgot about it. But for some strange reason recently I decided to do a search on my name in "the other" search engines. And guess what popped up when I "Live Searched" my name? Yup, the Wells Fargo magazine issue with my short interview.

So it just goes to show you that it's important to regularly put your name through all the search engines, because different stuff comes up in them. Although passing the "Live Search" Test is no where near as catch as passing the Google Test.

Technorati : ask, google, live search, microsoft, yahoo

Six Apart's David Recordon on Social Netwok Portability...and Touching Base with Mom in a Web 2.0 World

On our radio show, Technology For Business Sake, we recently had a great conversation with David Recordon of Six Apart. David is their tech lead on for open platforms. Six Apart is one of those unique companies working closely with Google on OpenSocial, as well as with Facebook Beacon. And David is their point person. So he has soon interesting things to say about where we are with social networking, and where we may be headed with it.

Now I really was in to the conversation around what's going in the social networking space, and how tools are being created to make it easier for us to get the most out of social networking experiences, but what really fascinated me was the second part of the conversation where my co-host (Michael Thomas) and I started asking David about how he uses the Web 2.0 tools. We asked him because in addition to being one of the most knowledgeable people on the subject, we wanted to get the perspective of someone who has literally grown up using this stuff... because David is all of 21 years old!

Now I'm not jealous....OK maybe a little bit, because I remember (barely) what I was doing when I was 21. And it wasn't speaking all over the world as a highly respected expert. I was trying to pass intermediate accounting and deciding if I should have a grilled cheese sandwich or fish sticks for dinner. But I digress..... Anyway we really enjoyed listening to David talk about how he uses social media to communicate not only with his peers, but also with his mother. It really gave me a different perspective on how Gen Y operates, and taught me quite a bit about what to expect in the not too distant future.

So below is the whole show for you folks to check out. It's broken into segments, and the last segment features the part of the conversation where we focus on David's use of social media with respect to communicating with his mother. And the opening segment features a short conversation about solopreneurship, and a rant I did about Stanley Burrell (aka MC Hammer) becoming self-proclaimed technology entrepreneur. Yes this rant was inspired by my earlier blog entry on the subject. If you'd rather download the show just click here. Enjoy!

Technorati : david recordon, facebook, openid, opensocial, six apart

Google vs. Microsoft: Battling In The Clouds and On Demand, But Will CRM Be The Deciding Factor?

I just got my copy of this week's Businessweek and had to read the cover story on Google's Next Big Dream. It's about how a 27 yr. old software engineer is leading their charge into cloud computing, where computing is done by a "cloud" of computers rather than by individual PCs or servers. Google is not alone in investing in this, as companies like Yahoo!, Amazon and IBM are all have their heads in the clouds. In fact Google and IBM are working together on this one, probably because of the other company investing heavily in cloud computing....Microsoft. You should check this article out when you have a minute as it looks like all of our futures are going to be a bit cloudy at some point.

Another article you should check out is in today's New York Times - Google Gets Ready to Rumble with Microsoft. I became aware of this one after reading Anita Campbell's post over at Small Business Trends. The cloud theme is carried over into this article, as Google's CEO Eric Schmidt believes that as high speed internet access proliferates and gets increasingly faster, and internet software gets better, more and more people will welcome using software over the web, instead of installing it on personal computers many people still feel are too complex to maintain. That's why Google is cranking out new apps all over the place, like GMail, Docs and Spreadsheets, Google Talk, and many, many others. And of course Google Apps for Domains which is Google's stripped down answer to Microsoft Office. Now in all actuality the feature-rich Office has way more functionality than any of the Google counterparts, and a better comparison at this time would be with Microsoft's Office Live. But you gotta believe that the goal here is to build feature-rich internet software that competes with installed stuff, so the end game has to be to deliver as much functionality as possible, which means installed Office. And I'd be willing to bet Microsoft will be adding more Office functionality to Office Live, which does present some issues as Office Live is a lot cheaper than regular Office.

So Google is going after Microsoft with frontal attack of SaaS. But one thing Microsoft has is the one thing Google doesn't as of yet. And when you think of SaaS or On Demand or whatever you want to call it, you think of CRM, because CRM has literally been the poster child for this movement, particularly when it comes to "the business web". In fact Salesforce.com, the poster child of on-demand CRM, proves this out. In a recent article, Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff noted that it took them seven years to reach 500,000 paid subscribers, but only 16 months to get the next 500,000. And Microsoft is rolling out Dynamics Live CRM, the SaaS version of its CRM application. Now I haven't seen it as of yet (I will be getting a briefing and demo shortly and will report on it) but folks I trust have told me it really looks good, and should get serious consideration by companies looking to implement CRM.

Now Google does have a great deal of momentum going for them, but I think this could be a big omission by Google, not having a CRM answer in their duel with Microsoft. More and more, businesses are turning to CRM to help automate lead generation and qualification, as well as streamline the sales process to turn qualified leads into cash money as quickly as possible. And with CRM vendors beginning to integrate Web 2.0 components into their services, CRM is really about to hit the mainstream. Just think the business network Salesforce.com is beginning to unleash with Salesforce-to-Salesforce. Concursive (formerly CentricCRM) is also doing this. And to be sure this is just the beginning as Web/CRM service integration is a perfect match which businesses of all sizes need as soon as possible.

This is shaping up to be an awesome battle. So I think it only makes sense for Google to fully arm themselves in this fight for the ages. It's not too late to for them to change this. Last year about this time I predicted that Google would by a CRM company. They didn't but they did cozy up with Salesforce.com to allow folks to manage AdWords campaigns from within the CRM app, as they did with NetSuite. But it makes even more sense to pull the trigger this year, especially with Microsoft getting their act together with Live CRM. So maybe I was just a bit early with my prediction. Maybe they were just waiting for Salesforce.com to nail down that one-millionth paid customer to prove that SaaS is here to stay in the business world. If this were to go down, the fight would REALLY be on!

Technorati : cloud computing, crm, google, microsoft, saas

Why I Trust My Good Name to Wordtracker and Not Google

Recently I've been doing a great deal of keyword research, much more than I usually do. Partly because I went on a bit of a domain name shopping spree, and also in preparation for writing a few articles as well as a case study. So I really went into Wordtracker hard trying out different terms to find related keywords that I wouldn't normally come up with on my own.

For example here are a few related words that Wordtracker spit out for the term chocolate:

These are just of a few of the words and phrases that Wordtracker came up with that somehow relate to the word chocolate. My favorite is "Oprah favorite things" there at #29. As I pointed out in one of the articles I wrote, I didn't make that up trying to be funny, blame that one on Wordtracker. Just out of curiosity I also checked out Google's free keyword selector tool to see what words they came up with for chocolate and they came up with many of the same words. Surprisingly enough, Oprah was no where to be found this time around.

After playing with a few other terms I got a little curious to see what Wordtracker and Google would spit out for my name. Here's where things got interesting. Here are some of the phrases Wordtracker came up with for brent leary:

Now most of these make a lot of sense to me as I'm pretty heavily involved in crm, technology, web 2.0 and small business. And since I host a radio show it makes sense for that to be there. There were a few things missing in the top 20, like devilishly handsome, genius, and one of a kind, but I think they were just further down on the list.

Now compare this list with the list from Google's keyword selector tool:

Um.....yeah.....this reads more like my Christmas card list to send out to family members, except most of these names aren't in my family and I don't send out Christmas cards. In fact I think Google gave my relative keywords instead of related ones, as the only thing that links me to these results is my last name. Nothing else.

So I was really kind of freaked out by this, so I decided to run one more test and see what Google would spit out for crm:

Well if it wasn't for the last entry, call center jobs, I would have said it looks like they just found words with the term crm in it. But still I needed to see what Wordtracker came back with:

Once again Wordtracker came back with a much more varied list of related phrases. So I'd have to say I definitely feel more comfortable with the Wordtracker results, even if I do have to put out a few bucks compared to Google's freebie. If you're heavy into keyword research you may want to consider it to.

Technorati : google, keyword research, wordtracker