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Top Trends Driving CRM Success

The secret is out. Successful companies of all sizes are gaining an edge by putting new trends in CRM to work in their favor. Want to join them?

To get a leg up on the competition in 2007 listen to this Webinar on key CRM trends in 2007 featuring Liz Herbert. Senior Analyst of Forrester Research. Discover how to:

Tap into new trends in CRM to increase sales
Maximize the value of your existing CRM investments
Deliver an irresistible customer experience
Replicate the successes of leading companies

Register here to listen to the recorded webcast: Register for the Webcast Now. And, visit here for a copy of the Forrester Report, Trends 2007: Customer Relationship Management compliments of Salesforce.com: Download trends_2007_crm_3.1.07.pdf

If want a copy of the Webcast slides download them here: Download sfdc_crm_trends_webcast_6.20.07.pdf

To learn more about the on-demand CRM solutions offered by Salesforce.com please visit our CRM software as a service applications area.

Want to Know How Your Sales Organization Compares to the Competition?

To achieve success, it's not only important to understand how you compare to the competition—it's vital you understand which capabilities your competition draws on for success.

Join us for a live Webinar April 24^th at 10:00 AM PST to learn about key metrics that drive highly successful sales organizations and how to effectively apply them. Industry experts including Barry Trailer of CSO Insights, an independent 3rd party research firm specializing in sales effectiveness will help you benchmark your sales organization in the following areas:

Attracting, retaining, and training top sales talent
Compensating and rewarding sales teams to drive performance
Disseminating sales intelligence to close more deals
And much more.

At the time above, please dial into the call at:

US #: 1.888.283.0563
Int’l #: 1.706.634.8459
Conference ID: 4213637 followed by # sign
Please use a PC with Windows 2000 or higher to join us at: https://www.gotomeeting.com/register/890543245

If you can’t make the Webinar or you joined us and want a copy of the deck we presented, you can download it here: Download cso_insights_and_salesforce.com webcast 4.24.07.pdf

Also be sure to get your complimentary copy of CSO Insights’ NEW 2007 Sales Performance Optimization Report—a $295 value. Based on data from 1,300 leading firms, this is the most comprehensive survey of Chief Sales Officers’ key metrics available, packed with buying trends, 100 performance benchmarks, sales strategies, and more. Get the details you need to determine where your company excels—or where it needs improvement—starting now!

Register for a copy of the CSO Insights’ NEW 2007 Sales Performance Optimization Report here: 2007 Sales Performance Optimization Report by CSO Insights

For a full overview of the SFA applications available from Salesforce.com visit the Sales Management Tools pages within our SFA Product section.

View Your SFDC Data Schema or Entity Relationship Model

Recently an application support analyst from a salesforce.com customer asked for an application where one can easily view and print one’s current salesforce.com Data Schema or Entity Relationship Model. Four solutions come to mind:

Developers’ Sidekick by Upside Outcomes is a free client app that instantly displays the objects and attributes of your salesforce.com schema. Handy for developing custom apps or designing reports.
Sforce Explorer is a .NET and Partner API based executable that provides a simple user interface for testing SOQL queries and browsing your salesforce.com data model. Source is included with the download. Requires .NET Framework 1.1 or later.
SnapShot by Dreamfactory allows an account administrator to take a picture of the current state of the customizations in their salesforce.com org and track all changes over time, between different accounts, or between different user profiles.
Simon Fell’s Soqlx (for Mac only). It also allows for export to PDF and has a nice graphical schema explorer.
Take a look and let community know which one you like best. Have a CRM question? Askwendy@crmsuccess.com.

Cool Tools Heat-Up The AppExchange

While not an exhaustive list of apps in any given technology area, here are my picks for some of the coolest partner solutions on the AppExchange. I define a cool vendor as one that offers solutions that are either:

1) Innovative meaning they enable users to do things they couldn’t do before like Cast Iron’s Application Integration Appliance, a form of packaged integration which allows users to simply plug an appliance into their network and make minor customizations to the process, maps and governance mechanisms to quickly integrate salesforce.com with SAP, Oracle, or Lawson for example.

2) Impactful meaning they will have business impact (e.g., revenue enhancement) like the ability to automate and streamline the entire quote to cash process by embedding a product and pricing configurator in your sales process.

3) Intriguing meaning they caught my interest and curiosity in the past few months like Angel.com’s SurveyByFone, an automated IVR solution that enables users to send an automated 5-question customer satisfaction phone survey from salesforce.com.

Cool Vendors on The AppExchange

Customer Surveys: Clicktools, Pollzter by Astadia Consulting, LLC, Angel.com (IVR phone surveys)

Data Cleanse: CRMfusion’s DemandTools, Before the Call, Harte Hanks Trillium Software

Data Append: OneSource, Hoovers, Factiva

Document Management: ShareMethods

Email Marketing: VerticalResponse and Exact Target

Integration Tools: Above All Software's Above All Order Management for SAP, Cast Iron Systems Application Integration Appliance, The Informatica PowerCenter Connect Option for salesforce.com, and Scribe Software's Scribe Insight.

Professional Services Automation: OpenAir

Project Management: DreamFactory

Quoting, Pricing, and Configuration: BigMachines, Firepond, Comergent

Sales Compensation: Xactly, Centive

Service and Support Add-Ons: Angel.com (IVR), Talisma (email, chat and knowledge base), Gearworks (mobile workforce management)

Web Conferencing: Convoq, WebEx

Test Drive, Demo and Install these cool on-demand business solutions and more, on the AppExchange.

Have a CRM question? AskWendy@crmsuccess.com.

Selling the On-Demand Model to IT

In September, the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) published a new white paper that takes a comprehensive look at total cost of ownership (TCO) of software applications. The white paper provides a true "apples-to-apples" TCO comparison between the traditional on-premise model and the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model. The research reveals that common TCO analyses underestimate or omit the people resources and other costs necessary to run and manage traditional on- premise software applications. Since SaaS service fees typically include most, if not all, people and infrastructure costs, many TCO comparisons between the two models are incomplete. The white paper identifies the common cost factors most likely to be underestimated or omitted when comparing the TCO of traditional software versus SaaS. These common costs (which are included in the SaaS service fees) are:

Hiring and training certified personnel to install, manage and maintain the on-premise software applications
Staffing a help desk to provide training and support to the end-users of the on-premise software applications
Building and maintaining the redundant network and hardware infrastructure necessary to operate the on-premise software application

For on-premise software, the white paper concludes that when factoring people cost, it is estimated that companies spend up to four times the cost of buying the software itself. With many internal IT departments overworked and overloaded, a strong case can be made that the SaaS delivery model could alleviate headaches such as capital expense, end-user training and others. The white paper also includes a TCO calculator that incorporates all the cost variables discussed. Using the calculator enables companies to make better informed decisions when considered SaaS or traditional software deployments. For a copy of the white paper visit: Software-as-a-Service; A comprehensive Look at the Total Cost of Ownership of Software Applications.

As a pioneer in the SaaS arena, Salesforce.com has been help more companies deliver better products and services, at lower costs than any other CRM SaaS vendor. You can learn more about Salesforce.com's award-winning CRM Software-as-s-Service applications by visiting www.salesforce.com.

How Companies Measure Employee Adherence to Data Quality and What They Do With the Data Once It’s Clean

We were recently asked by a customer for examples of how companies measure their employees in terms of adherence to data quality standards. For example, his regional marketing specialists are responsible for creating, cultivating, and maintaining an active database of potential and current clients in Salesforce.com for their region. Right now, they use fairly broad measurement criteria of "cleaning, updating, enhancement and consolidation of customer & prospect data for pipeline accounts & target markets." He was curious if we could share any best practices to guide them in making the measurement criteria more tangible. Read on for the best practice. And, using a dynamic scoring process, learn what to do with your data once it’s clean.

Best practice is to set up data quality dashboards showing data quality scores by user and provide some incentives for users with high data quality scores like the opportunity to win an iPod. For example, one Salesforce.com customer introduced a Data Quality dashboard in which records owned by individuals follow a simple score. For example, all records are rated between 0-100. So if there are five attributes on a record, then each attribute is worth 20 points and this tells us whether the record is complete. The net effect is that each record can instantly tell you how qualitative it is and you can then draw together stats for the user. Click on the graphic for an example Dashboard for the data quality scores.

In this example we rate Account, Contact and Opportunity details but you could rate anything. The attributes that we measure are listed below each of the first charts. By measuring the quality of the data entry activity rated by user, you can spot persistent offenders and reward good behavior.

Here are example screens shots and custom formula fields that should work against any salesforce.com system as they are based on standard fields. Even if you have extended your Salesforce system, these will work. You just need to review what attributes are important to you and adapt the formula accordingly. Customers looking to implement this should also consider adding data quality scoring on other objects like Leads and Cases.

Account - Data Quality Score

IF( ISPICKVAL( {!Industry} ,""), 0,20) + IF( ISPICKVAL({!Rating},""), 0,20) + IF( LEN({!BillingCity}) = 0, 0,20) + IF( LEN({!Phone}) = 0, 0,20) + IF( ISPICKVAL( {!Type} ,""), 0,20)

Account - Data Quality Description

IF( {!Data_Quality_Score__c} =100,"All Account Details Captured", "Missing: "&IF( ISPICKVAL( {!Industry} ,""),"Industry, ","")&""&IF(ISPICKVAL({!Rating},""), "Rating, ","")&""&IF( LEN({!BillingCity}) = 0, "Complete Address, ","")&""&IF( LEN({!Phone}) = 0, "Account Phone, ","")&""&IF( ISPICKVAL({!Type},""), "Type",""))

Contact: Data Quality Score

IF( LEN( {!Phone} ) = 0, 0,20) + IF( LEN( {!Email}) = 0, 0,20) + IF( LEN( {!MailingStreet} ) = 0, 0,20) + IF( LEN({!Title}) = 0, 0,20) + IF( ISPICKVAL( {!Salutation},""), 0,20)

Contact: Data Quality Description
IF( {!Data_Quality_Score__c} =100,"All Contact Details Captured", "Missing: "&IF( LEN( {!Phone} ) = 0, "Phone, ","")&""&IF(LEN( {!Email}) = 0, "Email, ","")&""&IF( LEN( {!MailingStreet} ) = 0, "Complete Address, ","")&""&IF( LEN({!Title}) = 0, "Job Title, ","")&""&IF( ISPICKVAL( {!Salutation},""), "Salutation",""))

Opportunity: Data Quality Score
IF( ISPICKVAL({!Type},""), 0,20) + IF( LEN( TEXT(MONTH({!CloseDate}))) = 0, 0,20) + IF( {!Amount} <= 0, 0,20) + IF( ISPICKVAL( {!LeadSource},""), 0,20) + IF( LEN({!NextStep})=0, 0,20)

Opportunity: Data Quality Description
IF( {!Data_Quality_Score__c} =100,"All Opportunity Details Captured", "Missing: "&IF( ISPICKVAL( {!Type} ,""),"Type, ","")&""&IF(LEN( TEXT(MONTH({!CloseDate}))) = 0, "Close Date, ","")&""&IF( {!Amount} <= 0, "Amount, ","")&""&IF( ISPICKVAL( {!LeadSource},""), "Lead Source, ","")&""&IF( LEN({!NextStep})=0, "Next Steps",""))

To take this a step further, in theory what is it that an organization wants to do once their data is clean? Maybe you want to use an account scoring process to aid your sales team in identifying who they should be targeting based on criteria such as market size, industry sector, number of employees, revenues, interests, etc. This approach would work with the data quality measures discussed and take it further by providing insight into how an organization can then use clean prospect/customer information to work out who to target. For example, in the account scoring process, you can define a series of key account criteria and then determine a formula (using weighted criteria) to derive an account score. The formula would adapt according to the status of the account, i.e. adapt once the account converts from a prospect to customer. The account scoring would provide trending functionality based on the present and historic scores to determine a rising, static or falling value. The solution would deliver sufficient granularity in its calculations (rather than just a final numeric value against the account) that can then be used to mine the data to identify more trends. We recently saw a demo of how one organization had used this account scoring approach within Salesforce. It was quite compelling.

Have a CRM question? Askwendy@crmsuccess.com

A Dozen CRM Best Practices

Whether you’re just starting out in customer relationship management (CRM) or you’re a seasoned CRM veteran looking for a boost, these 12 CRM best practices can get you off on the right foot or into the next generation. From justifying a CRM investment, to measuring and improving customer loyalty, these short and easy to read CRM best practice whitepapers answer some of the most common CRM questions today.

To learn more about the on-demand CRM and business applications offered by Salesforce.com you can visit our CRM software as a service applications area on www.salesforce.com.

Have a CRM question? AskWendy@CRMSuccess.com

Improve Your Prospecting with Account Intelligence

Based on our June 2006 customer relationship survey*, we estimate 21 percent of you are interested in additional data cleansing and data quality services however, we suspect many of you may not know that one of the best ways to improve the quality of your data is to leverage the data enrichment services of providers like OneSource.

The best CRM system is only as good as the data that goes into it. Too often, low-quality contact and prospect data keep companies from achieving the sales productivity gains that CRM can help deliver.

Join salesforce.com July 14^th for a live Webinar and learn firsthand how you can empower your sales force with on-demand Account Intelligence.

You'll hear a customer share their story of how his team has increased productivity and call success rates with better account intelligence, you’ll see a live demonstration, and get all your questions answered in live Q&A. Give your sales organization the information they need for better prospecting, deeper account penetration, and increased close rates. Start by registering for this free event now: Pump Up Your Prospecting with Account Intelligence.

* June 2006 salesforce.com Customer Relationship survey conducted by independent 3rd party CustomerSat Inc., 963 respondents, randomly selected.

Salesforce includes many features to ensure that real-time data is always on-hand. To learn more about these features visit Lead Management, Opportunity Management, Sales Activity Management and Sales Management feature pages.

Have a CRM question? AskWendy@crmsuccess.com.

Finding the On-Demand Applications You Most Want in the AppExchange: #1 Customer Satisfaction Surveys

For the second quarter in a row, customer satisfaction surveys remained the number one on-demand application of most interest to our customers. It’s not surprising as most often, the first step toward improving the customer experience is to start surveying customers. Can you tell your CEO what percent of your customers are loyal and what percent are likely to defect? And, better yet, what your strategy is to acquire and retain loyal customers? For best practices in measuring customer loyalty and all kinds of advice on finding the on demand solutions you most want to solve your top business issues, Download finding_the_apps_you_most_want.pdf

Best Practices in Selecting Applications in the AppExchange

With the AppExchange, Salesforce customers now have an easy way to address dozens of business needs through the world's first on-demand application-sharing service. The AppExchange directory gives Salesforce customers an easy way to find and install hundreds of on-demand applications designed to solve a wealth of common business challenges. With hundreds of pre-integrated, on-demand applications now available on the AppExchange, you may be wondering where to begin. For some good advice,

Download best_practices_in_selecting_applications_in_the_appexchange.pdf