Let's talk about that "R" in CRM for a moment. As you all know, the "R" is for "Relationship." We all know that, but sometimes we don't stop to think about it! Talk to any marriage counselor, clergyman or master sales manager and they will tell you that good communication is a key to a good relationship. Many people first installed ACT! to help them stay in touch with their contacts. Read any book on sales and you will be told to stay in touch, communicate, with your contacts to nurture a positive relationship. However, this often deteriorates into one of those things you know you should do - but just don't seem to find the time to do!

So, let's talk about one way you can help with this problem - social web sites. I will be writing more about these in coming weeks, but I wanted to get things started with this little note. Social web sites like LinkedIn and Facebook are powerful tools, once you figure them out! For now, let me suggest that one way to treat these systems ia as another communication channel that you can use to interact with your contacts. A key difference with communicating by letter or email id that your prospects have more control over how you interact with them. They have to register at the sites and choose to interact with you; but that's part of the beauty of these systems.

I have added a section on Social Site Support to my review process. So, I am urging all of the CRM solution developers to get with the program. If you have yet to try one of these systems, I would suggest getting an account at LinkedIn or Plaxo. If you are already using these sites, feel free to share your success stories or questions with me. If you want to communicate with me, see:

On LinkedIn, you can find me here: http://www.linkedin.com/in/richbohn

On Plaxo, you can find me here: http://richbohn.myplaxo.com/

On Facebook, you can find me here: http://www.facebook.com/people/Richard_Bohn/1131546173

On MySpace, you can find me here: http://www.myspace.com/richbohn

On Twitter, you can find me here: http://twitter.com/RichBohn

Stay in touch and Sell More Now,

Rich

I am trying to shine a light on some of the smaller players who I think provide real value to small and SMB businesses. For example, Oprius is a program I recently reviewed that provides a perfectly nice contact manager wed to a powerful drip marketing system.

Oprius is comprised of 7 modules that work together to provide you with the most effective and easiest to use sales system available, period.

Contacts

• Automatically stores a record of all Activities you've had with a Contact.
  
• Instantly pull up a Contact's information from any screen.
  
• No limit to the amount of information you can store about your Contacts.
  

Relationship Builder

• Build a simple Plan for your leads and customers to make sure no one slips through the cracks.
  
• Automatically schedule Emails to be sent or any other type of Activity to be created.
  
• Contacts automatically progress through your Plans as each Step is completed.
  

Phone

• Use the Phone Assistant to quickly and easily update contact info, take notes, schedule followups, and send emails all from a single screen.
• Take the pressure and unknowns about calling away with the built in and customizable phone scripts.
  

Email

• Send and receive Emails from any of your Email addresses.
  
• Send Emails to Groups of Contacts and include a personalized message to each
  
• Stores an Email history as part of each Contact's information.
  

Tasks

• Make a list of all your tasks and check them off as you complete them.
  
• View a record of all your pending and completed Tasks.
  
• Assign and sort your tasks by priority.
  

Calendar

• Create Appointments and re-arrange your schedule with a simple drag and drop Calendar.
• Create and view your Appointments and Phone Appointments on the same Calendar.
  
• Work with and review your Calendar by day, week or month.
  

Home

• Plan your whole day's Activities from one screen.
• View recent Emails, upcoming Tasks, Calls and Appointments.
  
• Quickly jump to any other area of your application.
  

 Price:

 Oprius is offered in a subscription-only plan, with on-going usage running $14.99 per month.

  In-Depth Review:

Oprius is one of the most reasonably priced systems that I have reviewed. Hell, it’s a bargain! Your only expense is the modest monthly fee. There are no hidden costs to sneak up and bite you.

Oprius has room to grow. For example, I would like to see them integrate with Skype and a good fax service. They forget that people still need to communicate on paper at times. So, at some point, I would look for integration with Google Docs or OpenOffice.

For more information, see:

 http://www.sellmorenow.com/strategic/oprius.htm

Watch for more updates next week. If there is a specific program that you are curious about, please let me know in a comment below.

Sell More Now,

                                    Rich

It appears the SaaS solution, SalesPro CRM (from Aleconn Software) is no longer with us!

http://www.sellmorenow.com/strategic/salesprocrm.htm

I got this news the hard way when I received a flurry of emails from users of the system who failed to back up their contact information on a regular basis! This is a bitter pill to swallow, but if you value your CRM information, you simply must take responsibility for backing it up! I am afraid that as more and more of us switch over to SaaS solutions some of us have gotten sloppy about backing things up. Your contact and opportunity information is probably your life blood. Please make an appropriate back up of everything at your own location.

If you don't know how to do this, please add a comment below and I will try to write a recommended back-up procedure for your CRM solution.

If you were using SalesPro CRM, please let me know. I am still trying to track them down and I will send you an email if I do discover anything.

More later, Rich

Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865.

Some of my favorite actors share this birthday, like The Cosby Show actress Keshia Knight Pulliam (1979) and, of course, "Sex and the City" actress Cynthia Nixon (1966).

Then there is my all-time favorite (and Fellow University of Illinois alumnus) Playboy creator/editor Hugh Hefner (1926).

I don't know what Jean has planned. She usually likes to take me out for a nice lunch. Then, spend a quiet evening at home with one of her own gourmet dinners. Don't ask how it is possible to maintain a sensible weight in this house!

Regular readers of mine know that I am a relationship marketing nut. In fact, one section of my review process asks CRM developers to show me where they capture birth date details and how they actually make it easier for busy sales folks to perform the simple act of sending out a birthday greeting. I am sorry to report that the typical reply is, "You could do that with one of the user defined fields." How long have I been doing this now? Most of these pin-heads are still developing CRM solutions that hit all of the IT guys technical hot buttons but don't do a damn thing to help sales people take better care of their customers and Sell More Now! And, they continue to whine about the low adoption rates for their wonderful products!

Which brings me back to the original reason I am writing this post. I want to say thank you to the dozens of you out there who took a moment from your own busy schedules to throw some relationship marketing back at me with your heartfelt birthday wishes for me. Better yet, so far I have received a large bottle of Merlot, 3 bottles of Scotch and 4 boxes of cigars. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! And the UPS man hasn't even made his delivery yet!

Before I close, I do have to say one more thing though. The phrase "old fart" was used entirely too many times today!

Thanks again everyone,

Rich

You know me, the first question I always ask CRM developers is, "How does your software actually help sales people sell more now?"

Well, the folks at Infusion Software are putting a different spin on this with their contest to Help Small Businesses Double Sales!

To mark the introduction of its first eBook, Infusion Software, the leading provider of CRM software for small businesses, today announced the launch of a contest to find the most inspired small business. The contest is based on the eBook authored by Infusion Software’s CEO, Clate Mask, "The Edge of Success: 9 Building Blocks to Double Your Sales."
 
To enter the contest, entrants must submit either a 60 second video or a blog post reacting to Infusion Software’s new eBook "The Edge of Success: 9 Building Blocks to Double Your Sales". The winner will receive Infusion CRM, Infusion Software’s leading web-based automated marketing and customer relationship management designed for entrepreneurs, free for a year with a built-in guarantee that within three months Infusion Software will help the winner double their sales.
 
“If entrepreneurs use the strategies in the eBook correctly, they will see magical things happen in their businesses,” explained Clate Mask, President and CEO of Infusion Software. “Just a couple of the ideas contained in the book will help small business owners maximize their time and turn every aspect of their business into money making opportunities.”
 
The eBook is available as a download at http://www.infusionblog.com/the-edge. Infusion Software sets out to help entrepreneurs simplify their business, maximize their time, and significantly increase revenues, using InfusionCRM and the same principles in "The Edge" eBook.
 
“We're so confident in our software that we're going to prove that it can double a small business' sales in three months, guaranteed,” said Dave Lee, Vice President of Marketing for Infusion Software.
 
The eBook includes tips for entrepreneurs, like:

• How to sell (and continue selling) to your existing customers
• Why you need an online presence
• Ways to tap into your prospects’ subconscious buying habits
• The most effective ways to expand your reach (and bring in more leads than you ever thought possible)
• And dozens of other “tricks” Infusion Software, and many other small businesses use to grow their companies
• The contest is open through April 4, 2008. For contest rules visit http://www.theedgeofsuccess.com.

More information on the contest can also be found in theInfusion Software blog.

My wife, Jean, and I love a good awards show. She'll make a nice dinner. We'll open a bottle of wine and then kick back and watch something like the Academy Awards. As I watched the  show several years ago though, I kept thinking about the awards I once gave. In the early days of my newsletter, Computer Aided Selling, I gave out several awards. However, in the mid-80's we were a little ahead of the curve though and I stopped giving the award.

Then, back in 1999, I decided it was time to BRING BACK THE WILLY! If you don't recall, that was the 50th anniversary of Arthur Miller's great play, Death of a Salesman. For many folks in sales, this was our first exposure to sales. 

Everyone remembers the line near the end of the play, "riding on a smile and a shoeshine." The line that always stuck with me though comes just a moment later; "A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory." I know when I was having a difficult day on the road or just lost an order I was counting on, remembering those dreams I was chasing always kept me motivated. "The Willy" is awarded to honor products that genuinely help salespeople take better care of their customers and Sell More Now. In other words, "The Willy" is awarded to honor products that help salespeople achieve their dreams.  

Some analysts offer awards such as the "Top 15 CRM Solutions." That may be a good way to make the first cut in a beauty pageant, but it doesn't narrow things down in a meaningful way to help folks make better CRM purchase decisions. So, the first step we take is to break things down into logical segments for different sized businesses. Then, we consider both on-premise and SaaS alternatives. Here is how we break things down:

So, without further adieu, here are the 2007 Willy honorees!

• Best On-Premise SOHO CRM Solution

ACT! by Sage Premium 2008  from Sage Software

• Best On-Premise Small Business CRM Solution

  Prophet CRM from Avidian Technologies

• Best On-Premise Mid Market CRM Solution

Sage CRM SalesLogix from Sage Software

• Best On-Premise Small Enterprise CRM Solution

Microsoft Dynamics CRM from Microsoft Corporation

• Best On-Premise Medium Enterprise CRM Solution

No award given this year!

• Best On-Premise Large Enterprise CRM Solution

No award given this year!

• Best SaaS SOHO CRM Solution

Zoho CRM from AdventNet, Inc.

• Best SaaS Small Business CRM Solution

Infusion CRM from Infusion Software

• Best SaaS Mid Market CRM Solution

NetSuite CRM+ from NetSuite, Inc.

• Best SaaS Small Enterprise CRM Solution

No award given this year!

• Best SaaS Medium Enterprise CRM Solution

SalesForce.com from SalesForce.com

• Best SaaS Large Enterprise CRM Solution

No award given this year!

We also gave the following two special awards this year:

• Best Outlook CRM Solution

Prophet CRM from Avidian Technologies

• The Jim Cecil Award for Excellence in Drip Marketing

Infusion CRM from Infusion Software

As is my custom, I do not feel compelled to make an award just because a category exists! If I don't see anything special out there, so be it!

I had to chuckle when I read the article in this morning's Wall Street Journal (search for: Paying for Online Reviews Can Fan Fame by Simona Covel.) The article described how a company increased traffic to their web site by paying bloggers to post reviews about their services. If you are curious, go check out http://payperpost.com/ . Now, I suppose this is O.K., though I think people should disclose when thay are posting a "sponsored" review.

Now, this could never be the case with CRM reviews that you might find on the web, could it? I first became aware of this practice when, in the beginning stage of reviewing a new CRM program, the product manager asked me what our fee would be. Perhaps I can still be naive sometimes, but I really wasn't sure what he was asking. I told him that we do not charge the CRM vendors for our review process. To preserve our independence, we earn our way selling the best possible reviews we can produce directly to the people shopping for CRM software.

At this point, I had been writing CRM reviews for more than 15 years and had always been proud of our total independence from the CRM developers! So, I was a little surprised that some of my new competitors were charging a fee to publish their mindless check-list "reviews." I guess I shouldn't have been though. As a recipient of CRM developer press materials, I had long ago noticed how similar some of them were to the many "independent" white papers I get from those brainy research firms with Boston area addresses.

So, what's the lesson here for you folks trying to make the best possible CRM purchase decision? As with many things, it is caveat emptor! We know we should be careful believing everything we read on the internet when the topic concerns enlarging certain parts of the male anatomy. Why would you expect it to be any different when you are looking for honest information on CRM solutions? So, do your homework on this important issue too. I have been at this for more than twenty years and it is now a labor of love for me! I lay all my cards on the table. Expect the same from any other "independent" source you might consider for CRM software advice!

As always, thanks for your time,

Rich

I am excited to announce that the all new and improved SellMoreNow.com site is now live!

We have been working on this site for months. And, as with many of my projects, it took way longer than I planned. Sorry. But it is live now.

This update was brought about for several reasons. First, the Web 2.0 standards had passed us by. The new site strives to be fully compliant with W3C standards. We also thought it was time for a fresh new look and feel. Finally, after writing about CRM for so many years, I do come up with new ways of thinking about and organizing the information. The new site is designed so that I can make updates with ease.

I still have about 100 pages that I need to add as soon as possible - mostly in the tactical solutions section. I am also updating many of the pages in the Snake Bite Kit. You should note that the Strategic Solutions section includes profiles of more than 200 CRM solutions. Imagine that. If you only read the "drive by" media you might get the impression that Salesforce.com and SugarCRM were just about the only choices out there!

If you see anything that I missed or topics that you want me to cover, just pop me an email.

Thanks, Rich

Sometimes you actually have to put in a new program and beat your head against it for a few months to really learn the best way to move forward. I started my blogging life with TypePad. That worked O.K. But, I wanted a little more control and my own domain name. So, I moved to the popular WordPress a few months back. Then I went through the usual learning curve where once you figure out the way things really work you realize the way you should have done things the first time. So, I decided to take the opportunity of the recent WordPress update to just start fresh. Oh yes, I switched hosting companies too. So, there are even more changes that I had to make behind the scenes. I will give you a full update on all of these changes real soon now!

Thanks for your patience, Rich