So. What's the deal with that sales software you are using?
That little solution your boss calls "CRM"...
Or Customer Relationship Management. Which is strangely ironic because the word "solution" usually comes next.
Somehow trying to passively coerce me into believing that a piece of software has magically arrived with the answer to my need to close more deals. Make it easier. Make it faster. Maybe even pick my groceries from the store in the process.
Heck. Why not? If you read all the features listed on the website you might actually assume this much.
And yet, you can't find a sales person who actually likes their CRM.
Am I wrong? What other industry is like this - where the craftsman is completely unhappy with all the tools at his disposal?
Like a landscaper who can't find a rake-maker who makes a useful tool. Or a chef who has to bake all her meals in a toaster oven.
Makes you wonder.
Who is inventing these things?
Maybe I can help you.
There are some amazing CRM solutions out there. And frankly, between you and me, you are better off using a CRM solution than simply throwing in the towel and trying to store it all in your head or on a stack of yellow "Sticky Notes".
You might not know about all the options that you have. Maybe you're stuck with the same old platform your boss' niece put together as part of her computer science summer internship.
So let's take an "edgy" look at it at the CRM technologies out there.
Enterprise Solutions.
These are the tools that are used by the largest sales teams in the world. They are comprehensive in scope and include integration with other enterprise platforms that the organization is using.
Salesforce is everywhere. It's hosted in the cloud and accessible from just about any computer and mobile device known to man. There are almost a thousand different applications created to run on the Force development platform and their pricing starts at $5 per month (for the basic contact management functions).
Advantage: They just added 12 million names from their Jigsaw acquisition. For a small month fee your contacts get updated automatically.
Self-labeled the "#1 On-Demand Business Software Suite", NetSuite is making a run at the cloud-based enterprise solution space. Much more than a simple sales tool, Netsuite brings together e-commerce tools and powerful accounting and financial management. You can use it to track your inventory or track the progress of a sales deal. Big time.
Advantage: Real time "NetSuite OneWorld" dashboards manage the details for global companies. Multi-national. Multi-subsidiary. It all looks easy with NetSuite.
Dynamics is less about a tool and more about the opportunity to create a solution that is what you want it to be. It's all the tools you are familiar with (Outlook, Excel graphs, and a simple database) inside a web platform that you can completely build out from the ground up. If you have enough software development budget, you can have the solution of your dreams
Advantage: Everybody uses Outlook already so the learning curve is pretty minimal.
When Oracle bought Siebel, they inherited a pretty powerful CRM system. It's got just about anything you need to generate large amounts of sales. It has built-in functionality to help manage your entire sales process - from the call center to channel partner selling to industry specific solutions. And you can now get it hosted by Oracle at "On Demand" pricing.
Advantage: The Oracle Sales Prospector analyzes your prospects' buying patterns and suggests possible solutions that they would like to buy from you. Uber-cool.
Open Source Solutions.
These are tools that are free to use. Some of them you can even download to your own servers and host yourself.
Sugar 6 (the latest version) looks a lot sexier than any previous product they have ever released. It's used by over 6,000 companies all over the world and is powerful. You can host the free version yourself or pay a small monthly fee and get support from Sugar's team. It's mobile too (which is nice if you happen to be "on-the-go").
Advantage: Sugar has an IMAP email client that let's you read all your email and implement appropriate tasks and activities based on what the email says.
Basic CRM. Nothing fancy but all the essentials. It's based off of the popular SugarCRM source code and hosted for you by a team that will help you build any extensions that you need to make your product even more usable.
Advantage: Plugins that work with Outlook and Microsoft Office to help you keep all your sales data neatly synchronized.
Zoho is all about the practical business user. The reports can be customized but a lot of your set-up is via their unique drag-and-drop user interface. And since Zoho makes a lot of different products, their CRM integrates nicely with most of their other tools. And the parts that don't easily integrate - well there's a pretty slick API to cover that.
Advantage: The rest of Zoho. More than 20 applications for business collaboration and productivity. Most of them free. How can you lose?
Focused Process Solutions.
These are tools that guide sales teams through a specific selling process. They use time and lead engagement triggers to keep deals moving forward.
Landslide takes your sales process and simplifies it down into a series of time limits and tasks. As you finish the steps, you close the deal. And to help to move through the process, it incorporates sending email campaigns and has GoToMeeting to help you do a quick demo. And if you're tracking an opportunity at a target customer, Landslide will help you organize all your company contacts around the chain-of-command - all the way to your decision maker.
Advantage: Probably the best (most accurate) sales forecasting system on the market. And your own personal sales assistance is only a phone call away - to schedule meetings or send flowers to that prospect you visited.
Mac / OSX Solutions.
These are tools built specifically for the Apple fan club. They usually always emphasize beauty and minimalism.
Ntractive just might be the solution Apple is using to sell their iPhone which no one can seem to keep in stock. It's that powerful. Packed full of unique features you won't find anywhere else. It has a built-in project timer so you can keep track of how much time you are working for your customer. And since it integrates with MailChimp and Twitter you can communicate to as many people as you want. It integrates with IT and software development too - so you can pull in your support tasks and turn them into bigger customers.
Advantage: Beauty and the full-business scope of their offering. Ohh... and being able to process credit cards for about the fastest payment possible.
Gmail-Hosted Solutions.
These are tools that you can add right to your Gmail inbox. Since they are embedded with your email, you get highly efficient information.
Rapportive adds a sidebar in Gmail that searches for your contact's email address and displays as much information as it can find for them on the web. If there are multiple parties on the email chain, you can hover your mouse over any one of them to get updated information. And if your prospect uses Tungle.me to keep track of your schedule, you can create an appointment in a couple clicks of your mouse.
Advantage: Raplets lets products like MailChimp, Crunchbase, and Batchbook (among others) integrate along side Rapportive right inside Gmail.
Etacts logs all your communication with a contact. You can see the stats of how many times you have been in touch with your contact and even create notes to remember anything in particular. As well, you can click on links to their various social media links - like Twitter, Facebook, and Twitter.
Advantage: If you use AT&T for your wireless service, Etacts will match your call log to your contacts and remind you when you haven't called your high-priority relationships in time.
Outlook-Hosted Solution.
These tools embed into Microsoft Oulook and add a lot of value to your day-to-day customer interaction.
Xobni is the most downloaded plugin for Outlook ever. It not only presents your contact's relationship details, it also searches the web for information about your contact - Facebook, Hoovers, Salesforce, Xing, and more. Since it indexes all of your emails, you can easily retrieve threaded email conversations and those hard-to-find attachments (including version tracking). Ohh... and Xobni tells you all the people that your prospect has been emailing along with you. Think of it as friend-of-a-friend relationship data.
Advantage: XobniOne. Xobni Mobile. It's a tie for awesome. Anyone who has ever emailed you is in your address book along with any phone numbers that Xobni finds in the body of your emails. That address book is then backed up to Xobni One and synced to your Xobni Mobile device.
Gist takes knowing more about who you know to an extreme. They collect all your contact data from your emails and search the web to find any mention of that prospect anywhere. Blogs, Google news, your calendar - it's all available to you online right along side any updates for your contacts. When you send an email or check your inbox, you have all the personal data you can't find anywhere else sitting just inches away. It's pretty amazing.
Advantage: Their online platform integrates with your contacts from Salesforce, LinkedIn, Twitter, and a half-dozen other data sources and is controlled by importance thresholds so you prioritize the data you get back.
"New School" Solutions
These tools are my favorite. They include innovative solutions for messaging prospects as well as integrating social media and other Web 2.0 tools into daily use. They are all leading candidates for any small or medium size business.
Relenta is all about you getting things done. And it's based on where you spend most of your time - email. You can create contacts from people who email you and add your activities and files. It's more than just about selling. It's about getting tasks accomplished. And when we get to the end of your inbox, you're probably a lot closer to closing a bunch of deals.
Advantage: Email marketing. It's built right into the platform, along with canned responses and auto-responders. Filters and rules help you refine this even further.
SalesNexus describes itself as the CRM that sales people will really want to use. They might be right. Since their recent relaunch a few weeks ago, the platform is even easier to use. And a "Getting Started" interface will help you import your existing relationships and show you how to customize the look and feel. Strong permissions provide control over syncing and what each user has the rights to do. The reports are easy to use and the data you can sort and search on is pretty end-to-end.
Advantage: Their membership-only Sales Mastery Institute created by Jonathan Farrington is the leading reason to use this platform.
Batchbook (in my opinion) is the leader in this new world of web 2.0 that helps you sell. And my favorite. You can forward emails into the platform and associate them with contacts that you can merge and import. You can sync with Google and Mailchimp and Flowtown and a half dozen other technologies that make selling easier. It's quick and easy. Deals are easy to create and manage. And tags, lists, and reports are great ways to manage your opportunities.
Advantage: The whole thing. From "supertags" that pull in Twitter, Linkedin, Flickr and blog feeds to the ability to create web forms that can be embedded into your website. And I like the contact searching integration with Flowtown.
Highrise claims to be the smarter way to keep track of customer relationships. And it does that. It's simple to use every member of your team to help you close deals. You can see their notes and share tasks. Since Highrise is just one of the many popular tools from the team at 37 Signals, you can chat, collaborate, and share information in style. By the way, over 5 million people use these tools.
Advantage: Third part applications. From dedicated mobile apps to billing, invoicing, and support solutions, Highrise works with other tools you are already using.
Bantam Live is one of the newest CRM platforms on the market and fills a unique gap in the sales tools space by introducing sales fulfillment. Project management in a nutshell. You can add tasks and share files. And since it integrates with Google Docs, you can quickly link and share documents that need team collaboration. Ohh... another thing - Bantam makes it incredible easy to add new data to the platform. It's all right on the home screen
Advantage: Comprehensive task tracking and delegation. A dashboard view on the home page keeps you constantly updated on everything that is going on.
Take a Look.
I can't solve the problems with your sale manager or the fact that most of the sales training you are getting is probably nonsense.
I can, however, suggest that you take a bunch of these products for a test drive.
Who knows?
Maybe you'll solve your toaster oven problem in the process.
Dan Waldschmidt is a former technology CEO, one of the founders of IntroMojo, a popular inspirational speaker, and a sought-after strategist on creating edgy conversations in the marketplace. He blogs regularly on his popular motivational selling blog Edge of Explosion and is the husband to a cute gal named Sara and the father to two energetic boys. He's just an ordinary dude who happens to have an outrageous vision. And he wants to help you change the world...