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Automated Bid-to-Win: Shrink the Sales Cycle, Seal More Deals February 26, 2010 
As sales organizations endeavor to escape the constricted economy of the 2009 recession, one of their most significant barriers is stagnant progress in terms of bringing their sales cycle under control. Recent Aberdeen research reveals that under-performing companies saw a year-over-year increase in their sales cycle of 12 percent.
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Salesforce.com Aims to Make Office Chatter Productive February 19, 2010 
Salesforce.com has rolled out a private beta program for Salesforce Chatter, a real-time enterprise collaboration application and platform. Positioned by Salesforce.com as an alternative to such collaborative software applications as SharePoint and Lotus Notes, Chatter enables employees to stay connected to designated people, documents and applications.
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Why CRM Keeps Sales Reps Awake at Night February 18, 2010 
Although service is gaining in importance as the economy is forcing customer retention to the fore, sales has long been the dominant leg of the CRM stool. Many CRM efforts were spearheaded by sales, and in many organizations, the SFA functions of CRM software remain the only features that actually get used. That said, sales pros continue to voice problems, concerns and worries about CRM.
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Outsourcing Lead Generation: Who Do You Trust? February 02, 2010 
Practically every business has a dirty little secret: It's called customer attrition. Rarely can a company claim someone as a customer for life. There will always be pressure from the competition -- and as a result, there will always be customer attrition. Certainly, businesses do everything they can to retain their current base, but retention isn't enough.
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2010: The Year of Living Sustainably December 23, 2009 
Am I kidding me? Forecasting the year ahead? Sheesh! One of the reasons the task I set for myself is so daunting this year is that I believe we are in a massive transition state that affects the whole economy, CRM included. I think Tom Friedman got it right in version 2.0 of his Hot, Flat and Crowded.
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How Automation Can Bridge the Sales-Marketing Chasm December 15, 2009 
CRM systems are on a steep evolutionary slope, but marketing automation is evolving even more rapidly, spurred by a rash of innovative thinking and the SaaS delivery model. With the technology offering so much potential, integrating a crackerjack CRM system and an effective marketing automation solution seems like a surefire way to boost sales numbers.
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Top 10 Cloud Computing Flashpoints of 2009 December 11, 2009 
Plenty of industry observers are already issuing their predictions for 2010, but I think it is worth taking a look back at the past year's events to see how quickly the Software as a Service and cloud computing marketplace is evolving. So, following are 10 events that I consider bellwethers of the rapid evolution process.
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Inside Sales: Let Them Drink Coffee December 10, 2009
From early origins of cold-calling into purchased contact lists, to contemporary methodologies incorporating Web 2.0 enablers, companies seeking to steer highly qualified leads to their "closers" are faced today with a combination of competitive threats, information overload and hesitant buyer behavior requiring new strategies and tools to succeed.
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5 Painfully Common Ways Managers Sabotage CRM December 08, 2009 
As anyone familiar with CRM knows, adoption is the key to whether you live or die by your CRM solution. You can make detailed plans, do arduous research, negotiate great deals, execute a deployment plan flawlessly -- and then see it all go for naught when your users fail to use the system.
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Salesforce.com Pumps Up Volume of Workplace Chatter November 19, 2009 
Salesforce.com is marrying its cloud computing bona fides with its growing expertise in collaboration in Salesforce Chatter, a new application and development platform. The company introduced the product at its Dreamforce tradeshow and conference under way in San Francisco.
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Black Swans and Blue Birds November 04, 2009 
I just finished reading The Black Swan, a book that has been on my list since it came out in 2007, and I highly recommend it, though it is not easy reading. There is a great deal of set up before you get to the whole point of the book in the last 50 pages. The Black Swan is about uncertainty in the real world, and the subtitle explains it all: "The Impact of the Highly Improbable."
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SFA May Be Mature, but It's About to Have a Growth Spurt October 26, 2009 
Sales force automation -- nimble, lightweight and usually mobile -- seems to have little in common with its staid parent, enterprise resource planning. Until you consider this: After years of widespread adoption, SFA has also become mature -- but in its own way. Yet the space is not remaining static.
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Sales Forecasting and Say's Law October 21, 2009 
I have been studying sales forecasting and forecasting tools a lot recently, and I have come to the conclusion that we need better tools as well as better ways of using them. There is a lot that can be said about forecasting, its current state and how to improve it, and I don't want to leave anything out but I will try to be brief. First off, how we forecast says a lot about our views on economics.
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Coaching a Killer Sales Force September 10, 2009
With a variety of options available for training their revenue-seeking professionals, today's sales leaders need to carefully select the methodology that will most directly impact their bottom line. Ongoing Aberdeen research of over 500 companies surveyed in July and August of 2009 provides significant insight into how Best-in-Class organizations select and deploy sales training modalities.
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Funny, Beautiful Symmetry September 09, 2009 
There is a lot of unspoken information in last week's announcements by Sage and Salesforce.com about their respective contact managers. Each is creating a disruptive innovation that affects the other, and the symmetry of these dual and dueling announcements is frankly beautiful in a funny way.
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Building a Leak-Proof Sales Pipeline August 20, 2009 
In November 2008, Aberdeen published a study titled, "Lead Nurturing: The Secret to Successful Lead Generation." The survey captured the challenges and strategies from 213 organizations and found that on average, 16 percent of the total leads that are deemed "sales-ready opportunities" actually close. That's a fairly alarming number.
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