CRM's Shouldn't be the Leaders in Technology.

Our guest is GoldMine Vice President, Paul Petersen. We were talking about technology iOS systems and not wanting to be the pioneer in these technologies, but to be able to respond properly and to have your product evolve to meet needs that are continuously evolving monthly; it seems like that they change and very rapidly.

 

Paul Petersen cited: 

We have people ask us, 

“What do you have this function?" "No we don't." 

We ask, "Do you use it?" 

"Well no." 

"Have you thought about how you would use it?" "No." Or, "Then why is it 

important?" 

Highlights include:

 

CRMs and why there are so stinking many of them!

Unlike accounting which is a pretty stable environment once you get your network going and how you want your invoices to look and things like that, you can turn that out for years in some cases without having to do much. But when you look at CRM it is a very evolving workspace. So CRM right? Customer relationship management is a bit of a misnomer because you are including customers, prospective customers, prospects.

 

It turns into a lead management; it becomes this combination all-encompassing tool.

CRM is all those places that connect all the muscles, connect the brain, nerve reaction so yeah lead processing which in all marketing you've got the sales department then you have customer service which can be run integrated or standalone and of course management wants to know what's happening.

 

Which is CRM is the best for you, whether it's a proprietary one or some overall layer that knows how to play nicely with other systems?

When you get to areas like finance or your general marketing and sales, people have tried to integrate things but are finding that day, if I have an integrated accounting pick it's got CRM. The CRM doesn't do such a great job after all or they focus on the wrong things – integration. I am spending a lot of money to create a record and accounting systems when I may be only do that 10 times a month right? So is that really a high-value area or it just creates a lot of technical complexity?

 

I don't think… CRM's shouldn't be the leaders in technology. 

What they need to do is accommodate the most common technology and we are commonly going through things and saying… So for example we missed the quickness with which Android was becoming adopted. We looked at it, it was kind of a fragmented marketplace. We had iOS solutions smart phones, 98% of the market, it seemed like a no-brainer. Within six months of releasing the product, android had sorted that out primarily through Samsung driving it. They got one version of the operating system and they had some major carriers now carrying the devices and it was kind of a "Whoops!" So we did get there but we tend not to like to be the first in the market.

You'll have to listen to the replay for the full conversation.

 

------------------------------------

This episode is generously sponsored by The Vanella Group

The Vanella Group, Inc. is the only firm that delivers telebased lead generation programs exclusively for enterprise technology providers. They achieve results 5 times higher than industry standards for outbound lead generation based on the research published by implementing their unique Telesales 2.0 methodology. We are an award winning leader in this space and get results like no other firms. The Vanella Group supports firms from Fortune 500 companies to startups.  To learn more, visit BuildPipeline.com or call 888-335-0340