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Getting the lingo down — Social CRM, CRM 2.0, Sales 2.0

August 14, 2009 in Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , | by insideviewblog | 2 comments

There has been some great content posted to the Web over the past few weeks discussing the definitions of industry terms that are increasingly being used, such as CRM 2.0, Social CRM and Sales 2.0, but whose meanings are still evolving. As a company that aims to deliver many of the benefits recognized in these emerging industries, we found it particularly interesting to hear from some of the experts in the field about what these new terms mean to them.

1to1 Media recently posted a very thoughtful discussion among three experts on Social CRM (sCRM), which discusses the strategies and conceptual framework behind the emerging sCRM market. The conversation is between Bill Band of Forrester Research, Brent Leary of CRM Essentials, and author Paul Greenberg, all of whom bring great insights into where Social CRM is headed and what it means for businesses today. Give it a listen here.

As evidenced by this discussion, there is a lot going on now in the field of sCRM, but it is also an industry that will continue to grow and mature. Russ Mayfield recently noted on the Socialtext blog “When it comes to sCRM, we have only discovered the tip of the iceberg.” In this post, Russ also gives a very interesting overview of Web 2.0’s evolution, which has driven much of the sCRM movement. He references Eric M. Johnson of the State Department’s Office of eDiplomacy who was quoted as saying that the State Department had shifted from a  “need to know” to a “need to share” culture”, and thus had created a Wiki community post-911. In many ways this quote also sums up how people at large have begun to approach information sharing differently with the advent of Web 2.0 technology.

While our culture has become increasingly driven to share information on the Web, the result is more organized and unorganized data being available to us than ever before. The core issue is how does one efficiently find the information that they need? That challenge is what we are focused on. No matter what industry term our technology falls under, at the end of the day we want our users to remember us as giving them the ‘right’ up-to-date information at the ‘right’ time.

Twitter: brand new channel, same old challenges

April 9, 2009 in Sales 2.0, Technology | Tags: , , , , , , | by perramond | 6 comments

Weeks after Paul Greenberg’s thought-provoking post on ZDNet, the debate continues as to whether Twitter could/should evolve into a Social CRM or remain a channel/medium (read: a “non app”).  This on-going conversation in the Blogosphere & Twittersphere, have actually done a lot to bring together the social media crowd and social CRM (“CRM 2.0″) proponents.  There’s also some promising talk of collaboration between industry pundits Paul Greenberg and Brian Solis.

One of Paul’s central arguments here is that Twitter is not (and should not become) an application, but rather remain “just” a channel / medium (albeit it a powerful, extremely trendy, and perhaps transformation one.)  Most of the reader comments agreed (no shocker there… Paul has a pretty loyal following, and he has a nasty habit of being right most of the time.)

One particular blog comment from “kotharia” struck a chord.  The gist was that while leveraging Twitter as a listening & communication channel is a good start, “these emerging channels have a potential to generate a huge volume of conversations (unstructured data) which cannot be harnessed easily.”  Hmm, this problem sounds familiar.  They went on to suggest that “One would need effective tools to harness & synthesize the data to enable better decision making.”

BINGO!  One thing is guaranteed… just like all other media, traditional and social, Twitter will exacerbate information overload. We happen to focus on solving this problem specifically for sales & marketing professionals but really the principles are applicable across all knowledge workers.  You need a layer of intelligence / analytics operating on top of Twitter (along with all other potentially useful data sets and information sources) if you want to make it relevant and actionable.  SalesView is focused on doing just that for sales/marketing/support professionals, WITHIN their CRM.  Call it social CRM, CRM 2.0, socialprise, or just plain cool… the bottom line is that it has a huge impact on sales productivity.

Twitter ups the ante in terms of volume and frequency, but the challenge is not a new one. Before our current love affair with Twitter, most organizations had not yet figured out how to filter & analyze the thousands of online news sources, much less the hundreds of thousands of business blogs out there. So we can’t assume that Twitter is “noisier” (as measured by signal to noise ratio, not volume) than any previously available media. It’s just a bigger fire hose!

Here’s the approach we’ve taken to date…
http://www.insideview.com/cat-platform.html

Basically we look at channels / media / content as plug & play. Blogs come along, plug it in. Twitter comes along, plug it in. Rest assured that in the next 6-12 months, some OTHER shiny, new thing will capture the hearts & imagination of sales & marketing so what then?  Just plug it in. After all, the next-next-big-thing promises to accelerate the commoditization of content and worsen information overload. Unless, that is, you have tools that can filter & analyze data in the cloud to identify only the relevant & actionable information.

That’s where we think things are going. What do you think? Reply here or Tweet us at http://twitter.com/insideview.

Twitter’s role in Sales 2.0: The Debate Continues

March 27, 2009 in Sales 2.0 | Tags: , , , , , | by insideviewblog | Leave a comment

This week, CRM expert Paul Greenberg continues the Twitter/sales discussion in his recent ZDNet post “Is Twitter Social CRM? Nope.” In the piece he argues that while folks like Jeremiah Owyang and Brian Solis are claiming the micro-blogging tool will become a very useful too for ’social CRM,’ in reality it can’t be due to the “M” — management. If Twitter were to allow the management of conversations around brands and businesses, then it would simply no longer be the freewheeling communication platform it has become.

Paul does conceed though that Twitter can be used as “a channel for finding the customers to engage with and to get data from” and a means for developing “richer customer insights.” How does he differentiate this from Social CRM? We recommend reading the article.

‘Social CRM’ relates to the ability of CRM technology to monitor, engage, and interact, on a social-Web level — essentially, to do its job in a social-Web context. This technology is evolving, from mash-ups to becoming part of CRM offerings out of the gate. The idea that CRM is getting social is hardly new, but it is exciting to see the ways that it keeps getting social. Twitter is latest ingredient in a cornucopia of information that the social Web offers up and we are curious to see what role it can play in the future of sales intelligence. One can observe the limitations that the service currently has for sales prospecting, but as Twitter evolves, we may be singing a different tune.

Update April 8th:  The Twitter + Social CRM discussion continues on ZDNet –  and there’s promising talk of collaboration between industry pundits Paul Greenberg and Brian Solis.  Check out the full discussion thread here:

http://talkback.zdnet.com/5206-17933-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=62379

A New Sales 2.0 Learning Series and New Customer

March 5, 2009 in Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | by insideviewblog | Leave a comment

In addition to the excitement surrounding this spring’s Sales 2.0 Conference here in San Francisco, today we were pleased to announce two other huge advancements on the Sales 2.0 front here at InsideView.

First, we’ve teamed up with CRM expert Paul Greenberg, enterprise technology analyst Alex Jefferies and Sales 2.0 author Anneke Seley to produce a series of Sales 2.0 Webinars. The Sales 2.0 Executive Series will begin on March 19, and will explore the latest productivity-enhancing sales strategies in an economic climate where the number of legitimate sales opportunities appears to be shrinking. The sessions will reveal tangible methods for achieving significant efficiencies in sales organizations by empowering them with the information and the tools they need to be successful.  Be sure to join us for a set of informative sessions with some of the best minds in sales and CRM today!

Second, we’re excited to announce that Cast Iron Systems, a leading SaaS integration company and former OneSource customer, has adopted SalesView. The decision for the Cast Iron folks to sign on with SalesView came from the advantage that Sales 2.0 technologies brings over traditional business information services.  Says Cast Iron sales head George Gallegos, “The completeness of the prospect data and the relevance of the alerts, coupled with its powerful CRM mash-up make SalesView a highly effective sales productivity enhancer. The insights we gain from SalesView are key to qualifying opportunities early in the sales cycle so that we focus our efforts only on those prospects who fit squarely into our sweet spot.”

That sweet spot is exactly what we’re going for as innovators in sales technologies, and we hope to continue bringing it to more companies as Sales 2.0 keeps growing.

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