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.

Did you know that at www.vendordemo.com, you can watch hundreds of business software webinars and demos for free? You’ll also find documents at the site, including case studies, whitepapers, and brochures from industry leaders.  At VendorDemo, you can browse, share, and rate those videos and documents that help you most.  We’ve dedicated this issue of ERP Buzz to highlighting some of most popular content from the site.  Don’t miss these hot webinars!

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Today, the role of the contact center extends beyond simply answering questions and providing information.  With increasing call volumes; expanding agent responsibilities; and rising demands to deliver rapid, high-quality service, businesses can find it hard to keep up.  That’s where today’s advanced call center software solutions come in.

Designed to simplify service-related interactions by coordinating and automating agent tasks, call center software systems give agents all the tools they need to help customers, while giving managers complete visibility into department activities, agent performance, and service quality.

If your company is looking to purchase a call center package, a new resource is available to you: to help you find the software that is right for your company, the editors at Business-Software.com have compiled a list of the best vendors in the industry.  The comprehensive Top 10 Call Center Vendors whitepaper is designed to help you build your “short list” and make an informed purchasing decision. Read more »

The Business Software Advisor
You ask the questions, and our resident software guru shares her wisdom.

This week’s question:  I’m thinking of transitioning my customer service into a virtual call center.  If I go virtual, how can I best manage the performance of my remote agents?  

A:  Agent management is a challenging function, especially within virtual contact center environments. Supervisors often find it difficult to evaluate the performance of customer service representatives who don’t reside in the same physical location, or to provide them with the kind of constructive feedback they need to do their jobs effectively. In some cases, remote agents may also lack access to the information they require to properly answer questions and address issues.

Today’s call center software solutions are designed to address these issues.  The features of these software packages enable managers to accomplish better agent management in virtual contact centers.  Read more »

The old adage of “the customer is always right”, coined in 1909 by Harry Gordon Selfridge, is becoming less realistic for businesses today.  The customer cannot always be “king”, even when a business fails to live up to its part of a buyer-seller relationship and when a customer suffers for no fault of his.  Abrasive customers, particularly those who are eventually allowed to benefit from their antics, often get better treatment than customers who are willing to put up with some valid discomfort. This can cause resentment amongst employees. In fact, companies are now discovering that putting their employees first often results in an increase in customer service standards. Read more »

Learn more about humanizing your approach to marketing automation in these informative videos from VendorDemo.

 
“How To Drive New Revenue with Marketing Automation”
Webinar provided by: Consona

Marketing organizations are facing new challenges to get their message out and produce a better return on their efforts. This netcast will provide you with a preview of Million Handshakes, a world-class dialogue marketing application which can work with your CRM solution to easily overcome the marketplace challenges via its simple, yet powerful, interface to create intelligent, personalized marketing campaigns.

“Infor CRM Outbound Marketing”
Webinar provided by: Infor

Infor CRM Outbound Marketing enables you to plan, execute, and monitor anticipated, personal, and relevant marketing campaigns across all touch points and achieve a rapid return on your investment.

“Humanized Communications” 
Webinar provided by: SoftVu

Watch this demonstration of how SoftVu’s on-demand Marketing Automation Platform humanizes communications to provide personalized, relevant, and timely communications.

Visit VendorDemo.com and watch hundreds of business software webinars and demos – for FREE. Build your short list of software vendors, share your favorite videos, and access white papers to learn more about technology solutions.

It’s Personal
In this Web 2.0 era, audience focus is more important than ever.  Many companies spend an enormous sum of money on collecting information about their customers’ key attributes, but  few companies– studies show –take full advantage of that valuable information.  The truth is, procuring customer data doesn’t have to cost a fortune, and if you already have a CRM system in place, you have the necessary repository for it. 

The value of having personal customer data is not to be underestimated: It enables companies to transcend the environment of automation and impersonal cold calls and to connect with the customer on a one-to-one level.  In a recent blog article, Tony Compton, CMO at Infor, was quoted saying, “A whole new breed of customers will be magnetically drawn to companies that allow them to customize their experience and reflect who they are…They want to manage their persona, and that persona may change.” Read more »

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

Difficult economic times can hit salesfolk hard.  As their pipeline shrinks, so can the morale of sales reps.  What can companies do to keep pipelines full and salespersons enthusiastic in tough times like these?   Author, sales consultant, speaker, and CEO of Sales Architects, Lee Salz, offers some words of wisdom for businesses and the salespeople who keep them strong.  

B-S: When the pipeline’s flow turns into more of a trickle, what’s the best advice you can give for incenting customers and capturing new leads?
LS: When the economy tightens, it is critical that companies have a very specific process for their sales organization to follow. When things are grand, process is forgotten as revenue just comes in the door. However, now it is time to go back to basics. Review your profile of your ideal client. Has it changed? Ensure the sales organization understands the profile. Put in place behavioral metrics to ensure that the team has the right activity level to build out the pipeline. Don’t buy into the economy as an excuse for buyers not buying. Read more »

In 2007, as “cloud computing” was working its way into the vocabulary of mainstream business, several major universities and corporations (including Google and IBM) began a large-scale cloud computing research project.  This year, major events are being hosted that address the topic and its ramifications for high-tech businesses worldwide:  GigaOm held their cloud computing-focused “Structure 08” conference last June, and this week, Microsoft’s annual Professional Developers Conference will be a forum for the announcement of Microsoft’s new cloud computing platform. 

Here are some upcoming cloud computing events:

Cloud Computing Expo   

Fairmont Hotel, San Jose, CA

IGT 2008: International Cloud Computing Conference & Exhibition

December 1-2, 2008

Israel

Cloud Computing Conference 

February 11, 2009

Metro Toronto Convention Center, Canada

Interop Las Vegas   

May 17-22, 2009