It has been said that a man who promotes his competitors on his own site is a man who soon will find another line of work. I have always believed, and made it the policy of VanillaSoft, that getting people into the right product is more important than selling your product to the wrong person. For my older readers, you will recall that Santa did the same in the classic film, “Miracle on 34^th Street.” Macy’s became famous for sending people to their archrival, Gimbals. If it is good enough for Santa…

The truth is that no one product can satisfy the needs of everyone. From time to time I find a new product or service that I like to write about and recommend. Don’t get me wrong. If you need lead management, I want you to look at VanillaSoft first. However, if you are looking to manage prospects and contacts without letting anything slip through the cracks, and you want to do it through traditional e-mail, than I think you should take a look at Contactually.

Simple and smart, Contactually automatically prioritizes your email contacts and helps you reconnect with the most important people at the right time. When they see a high-priority contact start to slip off your radar, they will send you a quick reminder to follow up. 

Beyond taking action with contacts in your network, Contactually also gathers and adds information from Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (along with 20+ other social networks) to each person in your address book. You can easily find the latest updates on everyone in your network, and share it with other folks on your team.

Contactually is a great solution for anyone who sends a lot of emails, particularly people in sales, business development, or professional services (like consulting or financial management. Contactually works with any IMAP email account – including Gmail, Google Apps, Yahoo, and AOL.  

So, if you have been looking to better manage your e-mail, contacts and opportunities, plug a few holes of lost opportunities, and are not ready for traditional CRM or lead management software, then Contactually may be worth the look.  To grab a free trial of Contactually visit them at  www.contactually.com/beta

Lauren Carlson, CRM Market Analyst over at Marketing Automation Software Guide, shared a post and video link that I think clearly outlined and clarified some of the confusion around lead management and demand generation. As a provider of Lead Management Software, we see it all of the time.

Lauren shared that “demand generation” and “lead management” are two terms that are well known but are often times confused and thought to be the same thing. Lauren posted a great two-part whiteboard session with Carlos Hidalgo, CEO of Annuitas Group and Executive Director of the Marketing Automation Institute.

In the video, Carlos defines both terms and explains how companies should view them not as separate entities, but a dual proposition. I like the simple but elegant explanation Carlos gives.

I encourage you to take a look.  Vist Lauren’s Blog here to watch the video.

Best,

Ken

Have you ever stood behind your outbound sales people and really paid attention after they complete a sales call? It can be quite the learning experience. Whether they are the high-paid closers or the entry level prospectors, many, if not most, will kill quite a bit of time before saddling up and making the next call. As a sales manager or business owner, this loss of productivity can be the difference between OK performance or harnessing a high-powered sales team. Read the rest of this entry »

 Not so many years ago, we would click on a few icons, wait for a report to generate, review the report and feel pretty good about the control and speed we had over our data, salespeople and results. Well friends, in a world of instant gratification, reports seem like yesterday’s news. Today, we want live streaming stats, and we demand that our sales software provides them.

If your Lead Management, Telemarketing, Prospecting or Inside Sales Software can’t tell you instantly and at a glance exactly what is going on with your leads Read the rest of this entry »

I must admit, when I heard Steve died, I think I was like many people. We were somewhat expecting it, and not necessarily shocked by the news. Like many of you, I watched the coverage and it made me reflect on the many contributions Steve and Apple have made in terms of form, design and marketing. But, with all of the coverage, I did not necessarily feel that connected to the event. Or, at least not until I read the following Facebook post the next morning. It read:

“Game changer to Electronics

Life changer for the Future

We will miss the man that lets us

do what seemed out of our grasp”

  Read the rest of this entry »

I get quite a few questions about the value of auto dialing and whether or not it can really increase the productivity of a sales person who works by phone. Most managers who have never tried a form of auto dialing are skeptical, and they should be. There are so many amazing claims in the market built around dialing that it makes it hard to get to the truth. I have seen wild claims: 400% increases promised, triple your sales, never go 10 seconds without a live conversation and so on. Most are just that: claims.  But before we throw out the baby with the bath water, let’s take a look at reasonable claims. Read the rest of this entry »

“WOW! Free, and it does everything I need it to”…. Really?

Because of the nature of what I do, I keep a close eye on search volume for particular terms. Over the last several years I have seen a measurable uptick in the number of searches for “Free Software.” It is not only call center software, but software of many types. And, interestingly enough, advertisers and software companies say come hither, we have what you desire.

The purpose of this post, as with many of my posts, is to say get real. Remember the golden rule: you get what you pay for. Now, for what you did not expect me to say: Read the rest of this entry »

If your business is dependent on setting appointments as the starting point to generate sales, or if you are a professional service that sets appointments for your clients, and you have not taken full advantage of the remarkable advances in appointment setting software, then the boat to success may have sailed without you. Get on board – it is not too late.

Over the last several years we have seen a migration from basic telesales software and lead management software, to powerful appointment setting software focused on driving better qualified appointments and, most importantly, more appointments. Read the rest of this entry »

If you get caught up in the blogosphere or read all of the marketing hype around inbound marketing, you may find yourself hard pressed to hear the reasonable voices of sanity.  New companies have burst (OK-exploded) on to the scene, promoting all things inbound marketing.  “GET FOUND!” they  scream.  Some seem to suggest that people need to take a back seat to technology.  Actual sales people need not apply.  If I get one more e-mail suggesting I read this blog or article and it says; “Powered by” whoever the flavor of the day is, I will just… Read the rest of this entry »

Come-on, we have all done it at one time or another.  You know, produced a sales forecast out of thin air.  Heck, back in the day it was all but required.  “Jim, what does your gut tell you the sales team can do this quarter?”  BTW – by “back in the day,” I mean a few years back when the economy was flowing, fat marketing budgets ruled the day and the question was how much over quota will would go.  Times have changed my friends, and we must change with them. Read the rest of this entry »