Small businesses tend to manage customer relationships through a number of different applications—documents, contact managers, spreadsheets, etc.—and it is those companies that have the most to gain from implementing a unified CRM system. To help quell some of the apprehensions and concerns small businesses may have with CRM, CRM Buyer recently outlined some tips to help SMBs get the most out of the service.

When introducing a CRM system to employees unaccustomed to using one, the most important step is get them to buy into the system. Without employee support and faith in the product, the product will have little worth and SMBs won’t see the ROI they hoped for. Also, every employee must be encouraged to use the platform, because some will likely eschew the system in favor of familiar methods they know have previously yielded success. It is therefore important to stress the benefits of CRM implementation will give the company, rather than the system’s features.

Training is also important for proselytizing employees. Ideally, training will be included with the purchase or subscription chosen, and online documentation, videos, and tutorials are also helpful. For teaching non-technical people, sometimes it is most effective to familiarize them with certain features that are most relevant to their role. Ongoing training for the office is necessary for keeping up with the system’s innovations.  CRM Buyer also recommends training users in groups—training at intervals will allow those first familiar with the system to help others.

Lastly, it is important to choose the right CRM platform. For small businesses, this often means a simple system. Managers should outline the company’s needs and then select a system based on those requisites, and not by the bells and whistles certain vendors may offer.

Two weeks ago, the annual CRM Expo was held in Nuremberg, Germany, and SugarCRM client 3Dconnexion was awarded the 2009 CRM Best Practice Award. The award is most certainly a testament to the value and capabilities SugarCRM delivers to its customers, and 3Dconnexion is the third SugarCRM customer to win the award, and it is also the third such win for Insignio, SugarCRM’s German partner who managed the implementation.

3Dconnexion is a subsidiary of Logitech, and the award was given in the “CRM Launch” category for their use of SugarCRM as a global customer management platform. 3Dconnexion develops control devices for a wide variety of users, from gamers to product designers, and is headquartered in Fremont, CA, with European headquarters near Munich. The previous CRM system was spread across multiple databases, and they turned to SugarCRM for a consolidation solution for online marketing, sales, services and reporting.

The SugarCRM deployment includes key integrations to tie the CRM system into Google Maps, the company’s e-commerce platform and partner portal. It also serves employees in seven languages in Europe and the United States, and 3Dconnexion’s next step will be implementation in Japan. Thus far, it’s been a good fall for SugarCRM, as they were also recently awarded “Best Open Source Technology” by CRM Magazine.

The expansion of cloud computing is unstoppable, and its growth within enterprise software is manifest destiny. Of course, when dealing with cloud storage there are always questions about security. After a recent Unisys survey revealed that more than half of its enterprise participants considered security and privacy their biggest concern with the cloud, eWeek did a little investigation and outlined six tips for security. Details are below, but the main points are to ask questions and don’t assume your storage provider is giving you all the pertinent details, and to be completely familiar—back-of-your-hand familiar—with your company’s security requirements.

• Learn as much as possible about a potential provider’s data management. Whether it’s where data is physically stored or what hiring practices led to the staff responsible for securing your data, make a point to know about it.
• Make sure your provider can show you documentation of encryption used to secure and segregate data between multiple customers.
• Should law enforcement perform an audit, be sure your provider can construct an accurate audit trail. Be particularly wary of providers who can’t give you precise geo-location and compartmentalization of sensitive data.
• Another key to smooth audits: know your company’s compliance requirements inside and out so that these become prerequisites when soliciting a provider. This knowledge could eliminate legal hassles down the road.
• If a provider doesn’t have a trustworthy software security assurance program, find one that does. This means security and privacy will be certain in terms of application development in the cloud.
• Lastly, consider Murphy’s Law. Ask prospective providers how they are prepared to handle a security breach, from damage control to correction.

Do you know the Sales Best Practices that can help you close more deals and close them faster? These sales best practice white papers and webinars will help your sales team excel in these difficult economic times. The white papers below are featured on Business-Software.com, the fast-growing online destination for hundreds of technology white papers, vendor reports, and straight talk about business software. Best practice webinars are provided by VendorDemo, an online learning community where you can watch, share and rate technology videos.

CRM Best Practices – Sales
Ten Tips to Help Sales Crush Their Number

White paper provided by: FrontRange

Sales is simply not what it used to be. With global competition, it’s increasingly tougher to gain access to decision-makers and close sales. More than ever, organizations and their sales reps need to apply best practices approaches. Those that do are substantially more successful in winning business.

Follow these 10 tips from FrontRange Solutions (the company behind GoldMine) and help your sales people do what they are supposed to do – sell.

How to Outsell the Comptition
The Benchmarking Edge for Successful Sales Execution

White paper provided by: NetSuite

Sales benchmarking represents a source of sustained competitive advantage for corporations today. The second largest cost item on a company’s financial statement is SG&A expense which typically represents 30%-40% of revenue. This guide will help you in sales benchmark and improve your sales performance.

Using CRM to Sell More

White paper provided by: C2CRM

This document is written to address the specific issues related to CRM and Sales Professionals. When considering a CRM solution, it is critical to understand the needs of your sales team members and how they would utilize this CRM application on a daily basis.

Fast-tracking Sales
SFA Tips for Sales Success

Webinar provided by: NetSuite

What makes for a successful sales team? Learn the answers – which include good management, exceptional sales tools, and a 360° view of the customer that persists over the entire life-cycle of that customer.

Join NetSuite and NetSuite customer Art Queenan, CRM Manager, at EBSCO Publishing, a worldwide leader in providing information access and management solutions through print and electronic journal subscription services and databases to learn how.

How the Winners Work

Webinar provided by: Landslide

In this Webinar, Michael Green, Chairman of Landslide, Michael Bosworth, founder of Customer Centric Selling, and Dr. Tom Sant, founder of The Sant Corporation and author of The Giant of Sales, will discuss the three most important best practices to professional selling.

The Need to Balance Business and Product Development
Software companies must be built with a healthy balance between business and product development. One side of the business cannot overtake the other without drastic consequences. Hard economic times test the fortitude of software companies of all sizes; customers and prospects need to watch how companies behave in these times of stress.

On the business side, a company must continue to give exceptional customer service in order to retain current customers and attract new ones. Current customers will need flexibility when possible, great customer service, and continued innovation so they do not fall behind the technological bandwagon as the economy recovers. They will need solutions that help them decrease their costs.

New customers are out there who are still in the market for what is being sold.  Business can still grow at times like these, especially those with products designed to lower costs and increase efficiency. New customers can take the place of any lost through economic attrition and create a broader base for the eventual upturn.

On the development side, a company must continue to refine its products and develop new ones, even though times are hard. If development is shut down to save costs, the company may find itself hopelessly behind the curve as the financial world rights itself and customers go to another vendor that has kept their product line fresh and relevant.

How to Determine a Company’s Stability
To determine the stability of a provider of any kind, a prospect should find out how long the company has been in business, and whether their long term customers are staying with them. Also, prospects should research the company online to determine any issues and contact those who use the products if possible.  orums, blogs, and other forms of online communication  may be available with information and opinions about  a company’s performance.

The Small Company Advantage
There are advantages to using a small company in any economic climate, but in particular, in times when flexibility is needed there is bigger advantage than using a large company.

A large company may not be able to respond quickly or allow flexible terms, solutions packages, or payment options. A smaller company has an agility and a flatter hierarchy ; decisions are made much more quickly. Larger companies also may more often decide to cut costs by cutting customer service than a small company would. The larger company may feel it has the resources to last until the economy recovers and then they can think about customer service again. Until then, their customers will be poorly served. A small company knows it must maintain service to retain customers and attract new ones to stay in business. Both the company and the customer benefit.

Contributed by: Hoyt Mann, President, PhaseWare, Inc.

Amidst a climate of economic insecurity, businesses are wondering how they can trust that their potential or existing CRM software vendor has “staying power”.  Moreover, customers want to be assured that –- in addition to having the fortitude to overcome the national economic downturn — their software provider will maintain quality standards for their products and services. 

How can your company get this reassurance?  With the advice of a few top CRM vendors – including Hoyt Mann of PhaseWare and Kathy Sacks of iLinc – we’ve compiled a list of the “Top 5 Questions to Ask Your CRM Provider”.  For the sake of your company’s well-being – and for your own peace of mind – we encourage you to call your representative and ask the “tough questions” are essential in evaluating the solidity of your vendor and the viability of that vendor’s offering.

1. How many and what types of companies are in your user base? (Fortune 500’s?) 
2. What kind of service guarantee do you provide?
3. How do I protect myself from losing my data due to system failures?
4. What is the company’s long term plan for the financial downturn? 
5. In an SaaS model, ask to see the public Disaster Recovery Action Plan.

When it comes to CRM software, you want to have confidence in your provider’s ability to weather an economic storm.  Won’t you feel better knowing just how secure that software provider is?  Posing the critical questions is not just reassuring, it’s downright critical to ensuring the safety and security of your business’ data.  And remember: you won’t know unless you ask.

Contributors: Hoyt Mann, CEO, PhaseWare; Kathy Sacks, iLinc

Many businesses outgrow their CRM system. But, before you consider purchasing a new one, make sure you’ve gotten as much value as possible out of your existing investment. Read more »

Why PPC Management Software?
While highly effective in delivering qualified prospects, the management of pay per click (PPC) advertising on search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN is increasingly complex. Many software marketers marvel at how their simple campaign with a hundred or so keywords has grown into a multi-national lead generation machine with thousands of keywords, across multiple search engines, and bidding strategies that sound a bit like war.

Successful PPC campaigns require extensive keyword lists, constant management and monitoring, sophisticated bidding strategies, and well-tested creative and landing pages to outperform the competition. Manually managing a PPC campaign of any significant size is nearly impossible.

Paid search marketing software helps software marketers manage their ad campaigns by consolidating campaign management, optimizing bidding, and eliminating tedious account management tasks to improve their marketing return on investment.

Signs Your Company May Need PPC Management Software
Is your marketing team spending more and more time monitoring your PPC campaigns? Have you shifted more of your marketing budget to PPC advertising? Or perhaps you have the opposite problem, a campaign that hasn’t been looked at in months? These are some of the indicators that send marketers in search of paid search marketing software. Another sign that it might be time to abandon your manual optimization efforts are competitor ads that continually outrank yours (and they are NOT spending more).

Read more »

By Katherine Jones, Director of Marketing at NetSuite

Many CRM systems begin to struggle as business growth expands across borders and currencies, resulting in poor visibility across the entire business organization. Consider a global organization: sales information and results cover the territory, the country, the region, and then have to roll up together at corporate headquarters.

With typical sales force automation point systems, sales, forecasts, quotas and commission calculations cannot be accurately consolidated as they cross borders or continents. If your growth plans include crossing country borders, be sure to use these criteria in checking your potential vendors:

• Sales reps and sales management in each country need control of their orders, forecast, quota and commissions in appropriate local currency.
• Accurate currency translation for roll-up of subsidiary costs, revenue, and commissions to regional and corporate headquarters.

Read more »

By Katherine Jones, Director of Marketing at NetSuite

We all know that our sales teams should be leveraging the businesses advantages of mobile devices when they are out of the office. But like most things, it can be easier said than done — that is, done well.

Wireless connectivity has become mainstream in today’s workplace. Here are some stats from IDC and Gartner: IDC says 40% of workers now travel for business and they say this will rise to two-thirds by 2007. Gartner reports that there will be 41.1 million mobile professionals worldwide by year end 2007.

Planning for your mobile device integration is not intuitive — it does take some thought. Here are five points I think are important to remember in creating a mobile workforce.

Read more »