By Jim Ward - President, BrainSell

My first summer read was a book called  “The Four Agreements”*. Really, a holistic self improvement read — though it struck me that “The Four Agreements” are the very same Four Disciplines that lead to successful business careers, initiatives and a general business creed for your employees of any company. In fact — you might find it’s a differentiator when you think about how your competitors do business.

The Four Agreements described below seem so obvious, yet it’s something that bears repeating and is worth having in front of your company’s team as they perform their daily activities. Don’t take these disciplines for granted and expect that everyone lives by these disciplines daily, they may try to however you’ll find that these disciplines are a constant improvement program. If you make these disciplines a company expectation and everyone’s onboard — it reflects a consistent means of doing business with clients, prospects and vendors.

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The CRM Advisor

You ask the questions, and our resident CRM guru shares her wisdom.

This week’s question: “Do I need mobile CRM capabilities?”

A: The experts say that if more than 20% of your customer-facing staff frequently work from off-site locations, the answer is YES.

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You ask the questions, and our resident CRM guru shares her wisdom.

This week’s question:
“How can CRM improve my up-sell and cross-sell programs?”

A: As any successful inside sales reps will tell you, the “one-size fits all” approach to selling into existing customer accounts simply does not work. Effective up-selling and cross-selling require a true understanding of each individual client, including needs, preferences, and behaviors. Without this insight, customer marketing strategies will lack targeted, relevant, and compelling messages, and are likely to produce lackluster results.

CRM systems make it easy to track, manage, and analyze all customer activities. For example, reps can create detailed logs of each customer meeting – including notes from conversations. So, at any time, both sales and marketing teams have vital customer information – such as what products have been purchased, what products the customer has expressed an interest in, what business challenges the organization faces, etc. – right at their fingertips.

As a result, they can increase the value and profitability of the existing customer base by more effectively segmenting their audience for campaign and promotion purposes, and making more informed and intelligent recommendations regarding add-on or complimentary products. Submit your question to the CRM Advisor.

“ACT! and Goldmine weren’t really upgrades from Excel, and Salesforce.com made us pay for a great deal of functionality we didn’t really need. Entellium eSalesForce offered multiple sales processes, whereby each sales rep could use the ideal process for their role. We were up and running within a week.”

– Mitzi Graham, executive director, ScreenPlay

The Challenge

In May of 2005, ScreenPlay reached a critical juncture. With six product groups and eight sales territories, as well as rapidly growing sales and service teams (40 and counting), ScreenPlay had maxed out Microsoft Excel’s limited ability to track customers.

“Excel isn’t really meant to be a CRM tool, and we were experiencing the pain of trying to make it do too much,” said Mitzi Graham, executive director at ScreenPlay. “The inefficiencies were crippling and the lack of data visibility across the company hamstrung our ability to make good decisions.”

As a result of using an inadequate CRM system, ScreenPlay faced the following issues:

• Non-centralized data. Customer information was typically stored in Microsoft Outlook on each salesperson’s computer, putting the data at risk should something happen to the individual’s computer.

• Manual reporting inefficiencies. Graham spent an average of eight hours a week compiling status reports, pipeline forecasts and revenue projections from each sales rep into a single spreadsheet. The complexity of each report reduced the amount of actionable insight available to management.

• “Double calls.” Occasionally two sales people would call the same prospect or company offering complementary products and services. As a result, sales “synergy” was lost.

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Market research firm Gartner released its latest Sales Force Automation magic quadrant late last month. The magic quadrant, a tool that aids companies in the evaluation and selection of technology vendors, places CRM providers in one of four categories – challengers, leaders, niche players, and visionaries – based on several criteria, including viability, functionality, market share, and customer support.

Gartner notes the key trend that has continued in the past year is the continued adoption of on-demand SFA or hosted SFA for companies of all sizes. Some of the notable companies included in the report were:

* Microsoft CRM (View Demo)
* Landslide (View Demo) – First time mention
* Entellium (View Demo)
* NetSuite (View Demo)

For more details on this latest Gartner quadrant, or for other CRM reports and research from Gartner, visit www.gartner.com.

Fusion Advisor, Inc. is a Carson City, Nevada-based provider of next-generation technology solutions for the wealth management industry.

Founded in 2005, Fusion Advisor’s core mission is to design and develop cutting-edge software tools that empower independent financial advisors to provide unparalleled service to clients, make smarter and more informed investment decisions, and offer guidance that will maximize the value of each client’s portfolio – all while expanding their business and building a stronger, more recognizable brand.

As the company prepares to introduce it’s very first product to the market – the Wealth Portal™ account aggregation platform – it is relying on powerful customer relationship management from GoldMine to manage all the activities surrounding this exciting launch. GoldMine is helping Fusion Advisor to:

* Build a large base of qualified contacts to market to
* Create and deploy campaigns that will generate awareness and pre-launch “buzz” among key prospects
* Identify opportunities for strategic partnerships
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Salesforce.com recently introduced CampaignForce, the industry’s first on-demand CRM application designed specifically for political campaign management.

CampaignForce helps political strategy teams manage and track relationships with constituents and donors – even when they’re on the campaign trail – and automate critical activities such as recruiting and staffing volunteers, fundraising, and public relations.

CampaignForce can also help politicians and their staff members gain insight into perceptions and beliefs of donors and voters, and to more effectively push political agendas. Additionally, users can easily monitoring Web buzz, such as online press articles, blog entries, YouTube video viewings, Google searches, and more.

CampaignForce will be available in Q2 of 2007, and will cost $65 to $125 per user. For more information, visit www.campaignforce.com.

What does a leading provider of Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) solutions do when faced with rapid growth, a rising demand for its solutions, and an increasing volume of leads? It turns to on-demand Sales Force Automation (SFA) from SalesJunction.com.

The Company

AccuDraft, Inc. provides robust software and comprehensive services for CLM. The company’s innovative, fully-hosted solutions enable organizations to dramatically improve the efficiency and accuracy of their contracts and other vital business documents by simplifying and automating the way they are created and maintained. Over 400 leading companies such as Charles Schwab and Shell Oil rely on AccuDraft to enhance their most vital contract processes and ensure contract compliance.

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You ask the questions, and our resident CRM guru shares her wisdom.

Q: “How do I prevent my sales reps from keeping separate prospect databases?”

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