In his book The Long Tail Chris Anderson explained to us all there is almost infinite demand in any market that isn’t satisfied by mass market vendors. There’s nowhere this is more true than the market for small business software. Read full post »
A new sales rep, Mickey joins the Ferrari dealership and gets put with the seasoned pro, Sue, for training.
Mickey asks Sue, “these cars are so expensive, I don’t understand why people buy them”?
Sue replies “well you need to understand what we’re selling. Its not five wheels, and engine and a gearbox. It’s not the top speed of 170 mph. or the 0 - 60 in 4 seconds. It’s not that prancing horse badge representing one of the most famous brands. It’s not even the fact it’s so expensive, if you need to ask the price you can’t afford it.” Read full post »
Unfortunately somebody has already trademarked the phrase “information edge” - we would love to use it. Of course, it implies competitive advantage through the availability of information. All business software, to a greater or lesser extent, increases the information available to the user, so every vendor can claim to offer an “information edge”. We’re hardly going to stand out if we do the same. But it would be nice if we could because, for our target market, we make more information available, more easily, than the alternatives - an information edge. Read full post »
We’re interested in working with people who want to help build a community of small businesses - a community where the small guys can work together in groups to better compete with the big guys. For these people we’ve created a special category of user account - Ambassador. Read full post »
This post is intended to keep our users up to date with our plans for enhanced Opportunity Management. This includes what we’ve previously described as pipeline management, but we will extend the functionality to both customer service and projects. Read full post »
In this morning’s newsletter AMR Research suggests - in its article Social Networking the Front Office - “the elevated failure rates for CRM projects suggests the market is long overdue for a new catalyst to change. Wikis, blogs and social networking have largely been ignored (by CRM suppliers) until recently, some are now looking at these technologies to address the issues of collaboration and community”.
Translation - failing CRM companies will save themselves by including blogs and wikis in their software, because these will encourage people to use it. Read full post »
We’ve just had some great feedback from our users. Webrequest is really rocking for them.
The business offers professional services to a tightly defined market. It doesn’t have a lot of resource to throw at prospecting, and the market doesn’t generally recognize it has a need for the service. The challenge is one common to lots of businesses - a large number of targets, and not much time available to chase them. It’s complicated by the lack of a proven method for delivering the proposition. Read full post »
The basis of just about all management theory published over the last fifty years has been the work of a Frenchman, Henri Fayol.
Fayol was one of the most influential contributors to modern concepts of management, having proposed that there are five primary functions of management: (1) planning, (2) organizing, (3) commanding, (4) coordinating, and (5) controlling (Fayol, 1949, 1987). Controlling is described in the sense that a manager must receive feedback on a process in order to make necessary adjustments. Many of today’s management texts including Daft (2005) have reduced the five functions to four: (1) planning, (2) organizing, (3) leading, and (4) controlling. Daft’s text is organized around Fayol’s four functions. The more pragmatic management consultants have translated this into Plan > Action > Review. Read full post »
Pipeline Reporting is a common salesforce automation function, the main feature of which is a graph showing weighted sales value by period (this is a calculation made by multiplying the forecast sales value by the %age probability assigned to it). We plan offering Pipeline Management will which perform the same function, but with added value in Opportunity Review and Red Zone. Read full post »
The concept of free software on the web, either to try or use, is pretty commonplace right now. Distribution costs are zero and blogs and SEO offer really inexpensive opportunities for promotion. The big question of course is “can it be any good if it’s free”, and the other is how long will it be there, if nobody’s paying for it? Read full post »
