Social Selling: The New Practitioner's Guide

Complex sales involve a number of different people. You will find multiple decision makers, buyers, each having a completely different role and need than the next one. As a sales professional, it is up to you to work within the ranges of expertise and knowledge to present your solution in a compelling manner. This is where social selling helps!

Manage and Grow Your Customer Relationships with these Web Based CRM Solutions

I've taught for a long time that customer relationships are the key to any marketing strategy, but I'm still surprised at companies that don't use customer relationship management tools. Recently while working with a client I spent time evaluating the different CRM options that are available. I want to share with you what I found, in hopes that you to will adopt a CRM and begin to use it with your initial and ongoing marketing campaigns. Using a CRM will show you that by staying in touch with customers you can in fact increase your bottom line.

My objective in finding a CRM was to find a solution that was web based. The reason I like a web based solution is because they tend to be easy to setup, cost effective and great if you have employees in different locations.

Five Guidelines for Outsourcing Your Search Engine Marketing

It's true there are great benefits to being found in search engines, whether it be Google, Bing, or Yahoo!. When someone is searching for your product or service and they find you in a search engine it not only build credibility, but it also often gains you the inquiry of a "warm" lead. A consumer that is ready to purchase.

First off, don't let anyone tell you that you can't learn search engine marketing. You can. However, it will take time and effort on your part. The information is out there, but you must seek it out, implement it, and monitor it. There are some companies that just don't have the time or resources to do search engine marketing on their own so they seek to outsource it. This is not a bad move, provided you do your homework and don't get taken by search engine marketing companies that are not legit and won't get you the desired results you are paying for.

Social CRM: How Can It Make Money?

Once the consumer world shifted primarily online, the business world followed. The move to relating to the customer who absorbs and shares products and information in 140 characters or less culminated with the rise of social customer relationship management (CRM). The market for social CRM, and the applications it has produced to track customer habits, relationships and activity via social media platforms, has drastically orbited into relevance in the past year.

Writing Your Social Strategy

This is where things get a little tough—you actually have to write the strategy. And this is where all of the social media gurus are going to come up short. Because in all the time it took them to tell you you needed to Facebook and tweet your business, they skipped over The Art of War, The Fifth Discipline, and W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne’s Blue Ocean Strategy.

Blue Ocean Strategy doesn’t even mention social media or CRM in its 239 pages, but it’s all about how to make the competition totally irrelevant (avoiding the battles that create a “bloody red ocean,” or Red Ocean strategy, where rivals battle over a shrinking kitty of profits), reach a ton of customers, and do it all at the lowest possible cost.

How Social Media Is Changing CRM

It’s big news these days for tech watchers: CRM software stalwarts are rapidly acquiring startups that enable businesses to manage the increasing number and variety of social media platforms better. In May, Oracle (ORCL)bought Vitrue to help it publish and manage social media campaigns, and the company just announced the acquisition of Collective Intellect to help it monitor social chatter. Salesforce.com (CRM) purchased social media performance and sentiment tracking companyRadian6 last year and now is acquiring Buddy Media, a Vitrue competitor.

What’s prompting the shopping spree? According to Laura McLellan, a research vice president at Gartner (IT), technology spending in the next five years will be directed more by chief marketing officers than chief information officers—a remarkable prediction. I predict those CMOs will be spending much of that money on CRM systems that integrate social media.

Transforming into a Social CRM Enterprise

Being successful at social media often requires organizational change management. Here are some tips to follow.

It's no secret that the power of social media lies in the connections it creates. More companies, however, are also realizing that good social CRM connections can improve their bottom line as well.

Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide is a case in point. The company's Starwood Preferred Guest loyalty program provides various ways for hotel guests to share their travel experiences and photos with family, friends, and other hotel guests on social media networks. As an added benefit, guests who check into one of its hotels with their Facebook or Foursquare account can receive "Starpoints," which can be applied toward free breakfasts and room upgrades.

Such social media efforts have helped to double the loyalty program's membership over the past five years. But, perhaps, more importantly, members are spending 60 percent more than they did five years ago.

These results would understandably whet any customer strategist's appetite. And, in fact, the promise of social CRM has done just that: Gartner is expecting social CRM sales to exceed $1 billion by the end of this year, up from $820 million last year.

CRM

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software solutions allow you to manage the relationships you have with your customers, using a combination of people, processes and technology. It helps your business attain and retain happy customers. CRM is an overall strategy to help you to learn more about your customers and their behaviour so you have the skills to develop stronger, lasting relationships which will benefit both you and your customers. It's impossible to manage a successful business without a strong focus on CRM. After all, your business is all about the customer.

Sales Channels Are Driven By The Client

Many years ago the only channels that most organisations would use would be the direct and indirect sales channels. The promotion of the product would be carried out by marketing in the form of advertising campaigns, newsletters, direct mail, exhibitions, seminars, etc.

As technology became available and affordable companies employed web sites and e-marketing campaigns trying to drive interested parties to engage so that they could be pursued as leads.

Manage and Grow Your Customer Relationships with these Web Based CRM Solutions

I've taught for a long time that customer relationships are the key to any marketing strategy, but I'm still surprised at companies that don't use customer relationship management tools. Recently while working with a client I spent time evaluating the different CRM options that are available. I want to share with you what I found, in hopes that you to will adopt a CRM and begin to use it with your initial and ongoing marketing campaigns. Using a CRM will show you that by staying in touch with customers you can in fact increase your bottom line.

CRM vs Vertical Marketing Solutions: Which One Is Right For You?

I’ve talked in a previous blog about the changing face of CRM but it’s a topic that I keep coming back to, after all shouldn’t customers be at the heart of all our businesses? When I talk to our customers about the need to manage their stakeholders, whoever they may be, many still believe that a traditional vertical point specific solution best fits their needs. I think that as a result many organisations are missing a trick – and potential revenues.
For me, CRM has an image problem. When CRM solutions initially came onto the market they were primarily aimed at sales and general customer relationship management processes. They were perceived as ideal for companies with a large customer base and came with a price tag to match.