Front Office Box

They say imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, in which case I should be pleased.

Strangely it doesn’t feel like that. Maybe I don’t really believe my interpretation of what we’ve seen? Maybe I’m just pissed off at my ideas being stolen? Maybe I’m disappointed at my own failure to exploit our vision?

But there should be no surprise. We’ve combined front line experience in sales and sales management with first hand experience of software design and implementation. We’ve set out to exploit technology. We’ve set out to lead with our ideas rather than our money (which we don’t have, anyway).

Of course others with less expertise will imitate what we do.

What makes me think we’re being imitated? Quite a few things, but here’s a selection of the most obvious.

* The other day I read some comment about a new CRM providing Tags for labelling contacts – like all the others. For the record we were the very first to use Tags in this way – it was a while ago now. We did notice one particular app come out with a similar approach. I put that down to a little insider dealing from one of our partners, but all the others doing the same thing had passed me by. So now it’s standard.

* Early this year an inbound marketing expert suggested we find some clear blue water and grab it for ourselves with lots of unique content. We chose Sales Process Management, and it’s worked pretty well. So well that last month one of the biggest CRM apps started promoting it’s “Sales Process Management” capabilities.

* And then there’s the latest. Right from the start our mantra has been software that just does, and stays out of the way. This is ours, and has been for four years. I can even tell you when and where Gareth coined the phrase. We’ve used it ever since. Last week there was a lot of fuss about another new CRM app, brand new. The strap line in it’s promotional pages is “software which works, and stays the heck out of your way”.

How long will it be before somebody comes out with pipeline management, with probabilities automatically calculated on completed milestones, and deals colour coded?

Well here’s fair notice to anybody tempted to try. I’LL SUE YOUR ASS!

This is mine. It’s the result of years experience, a great deal of imagination and an absolute commitment to making the software do the heavy lifting instead of the users.

Anybody who wants to imitate this idea will find buying the business a lot less expensive than the court case.

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November 9th, 2009 - Posted in CRM  |  Add a Comment