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Salesforce Chatter; Coming Soon

Many of you know I am a big fan of enterprise micro-blogging. Think Twitter for your company. It is by far the most efficient way to share information, exchange ideas, collaborate and engage people in your company. Enterprise micro-blogging tools make companies more agile and improve performance because they capture the invisible.

Salesforce.com is going to launch their own micro-blogging tool called Chatter (now in private beta.) Chatter will compete with Socialcast, Yammer, Socialtext and all the other microblogging tools out there today. It’s a crowded space, but they will have an advantage because of it’s integration into their Salesforce.com platform.

Chatter provides all the typical features you would expect from traditional micro-blogging tools. You can create groups, follow the people most interesting to you, filter feeds to easily find things that are important, respond to specific users directly, share documents and links and more.

But, Chatter also has a few unique features. The most interesting is, unlike Yammer, Socialcast and other pure play micro-blogging tools, Chatter gives you a home page where all of your Salesforce data and important information is laid out for you to monitor. Think of it like a business application dashboard. Another unique Chatter feature is the profile page. The Chatter profile page appears more informative than Yammer and Socialcast from what I can tell. It provides your experience, skills and other personal information so others in the organization know who you are and what you do. It has more of a Facebook profile feel.

Another unique feature Chatter has is its ability to allow you to follow a document. I like this feature a lot. You can follow a PowerPoint presentation, a spreadsheet, a word doc. anything. I like this feature because it makes updating, and managing versions super easy. It also allows you to see what others think of the information and make corrections on the fly. Beyond documents and people, Chatter allows you to follow other applications, including non-Salesforce.com applications.

Chatter also gives you the ability to bring information in from outside social networks like Twitter. The value here is you can create a Twitter search for a specific company or customer and anytime time that company or customer is mentioned on Twitter, everyone in your Chatter group can see it. This is a powerful way to manage a customer and stay ahead of the competition.

One question I do have about Chatter that concerns me is integrating an entire organization. Traditionally, only sales, and marketing and the executives use Salesforce.com If Salesforce wants it to be a ubiquitous tool for the entire company they will have to create licensing pricing that makes it worth it to have everyone in the company to use it; including those who normally don’t use Salesforce, like product, finance and HR. The real value in micro-blogging comes from connecting the entire organization. Not just a few functional groups.

If you are a Salesforce.com customer, Chatter is a compelling tool to bring your organization together. If used appropriately, it has the ability to create proposals faster, identify useful information faster, improve customers relationships, increase sales, accelerate product development and more.

Whether it’s Chatter, Socialcast, Yammer, Socialtext or any other micro-blogging tool, your organization will benefit from their use. Find one and use it. They are about more than chattering, yammering or twittering, they are about getting business done.

Salesforce Rolls Out a Facebook for Businesses (mashable.com)
Salesforce.com gets social with Chatter beta (news.cnet.com)

February 20, 2010 | Filed under: Business Performance,Customer Service,Enterprise 2.0,What I Think! | View Comments |

The “Gist” of a New Sales Tool

I love finding good sales tools. Few things get me as excited as finding good tool to help me achieve my goals. One of the biggest areas for improvement is access to information. Sales runs on information; access to it and use of it. The best sales people are those who learn how to access information others can’t and know how to use it.

Finding information has usually meant research. Companies like Hoovers would compile all the info and we would go tearing through it looking for the tidbit to give us an edge. The problem was Hoovers controlled the info. If they couldn’t find it or chose not to add it, you didn’t get it. Google Alerts has upped the game a bit, but if you’re like me, you get a little tired of managing the tons of emails that come in everyday. I just couldn’t keep up with all the different alerts. This is why I’m excited about Gist.

Gist has the potential to be the next killer sales app. Gist is a new site that allows you to link your contact list to the web. After you sign up, you are prompted to upload your address book. Gist supports, Oulook, Vcard, Gmail, as well as LinkedIn and Facebook. Once your accounts have been set up, (you can set up more than one) Gist begins to pull all the information from the web it can and puts it into a clean dashboard by person, by company. What I like about how Gist works is I can see a client or companies entire web presence in a single click. Gist does a Google search and throws up all the relevant info on the people and companies in my contacts. It tracks the tweets, and blog posts, as well as any new web mentions. Getting information on clients has always been difficult. Gist is changing this and has taken a tremendous step into bringing sales people closer to their clients and what their clients are saying. Gist also provides the same rich information for the companies in your contacts, as it does for your contact list.

There are a few features I really enjoy. One is the ability to dial up or down the importance of a contact or company. The more important a contact, the higher on the dashboard you can make them show up. This gives you control on who gets more attention your watch list. Gist also syncs with your email account for better organization of all your account information. Gist gives you the ability to share contacts with other Gist users and merge contacts into a single view. (ex: multiple contacts at a single company.)

I have been using it for a few weeks and have just scratched the surface. I uploaded my entire contact list, not sure I’d do that again. There are too many people I just don’t care to watch. Gist does integrate with Salesforce.com. Which was a good move. I haven’t played with that feature yet. I am curious on how it’ll work.

Gist is headed in the right direction. As more and more people come online, via Twitter, Blogs, LinkedIn etc, Gist will provide you immediate information that can be used in the sales process, relationship building and a myriad of other business needs.

Gist is easy to use and easy to set up. I don’t see any barrier to adoption. Go sign up and tell me what you think. Playing with it is the only true way to find out how something works. Come back and give us your two cents.

October 21, 2009 | Filed under: Enterprise 2.0,Web 2.0/Social Networking,What I Think! | View Comments |

Still Room In Gartner’s Sales Force Automation Leadership Quadrant

Gartners Sales Force Automation Magic Quadrant came out last month. There were few surprises. SalesForce.com remained the leader, with Oracle’s Siebel coming in second. Microsofts Dynamics CRM is making a push and trying to challenge Seibel and Salesforce.com

Despite what looks like a few leaders among a crowd of lowly contenders, I think there is still room for new players in the leadership quandrant. The visionary quadrant is nearly empty while there is overcrowding in the niche quadrant. The CRM (Customer Relationship Management) space is far from mature.

Saleforce.com jumped out early and figured out the value in a hosted/SaaS/Cloud model. I think it was a great move and clearly the way to go. Companies managing their own Sales Force Automation or CRM server side just makes no sense and unnecessarily increases the cost of sales.

I’ve used 4 of the SFA systems in the magic quadrant, Goldmine, Act, Saleforce.com and Siebel. I prefer Salesforce.com. But despite my preference, I’m not convined they have it nailed. CRM systems need to do some things really well. First they need to be simple to use. They should have an almost idiot proof barrier to adoption. Second they have to be easy to navigate. Don’t confuse easy navigation with ease of use. By navigation I mean the fewer clicks per activity or task. One to three clicks for updating an opportunity, creating a report, or changing a sales stage should be the goal. It needs to be easy to move from one activity to the next flawlessly. I’m don’t think any of the CRM tools do these things really well. I also think CRM tools should look to Facebook and other web 2.0 companies for their UI development. Most CRM systems lack the connection data social networks provide, such as notification of similar solutions being sold by others in the organization, collateral recommendations for specific products or sales opportunities etc. Most CRM tools are still very linear and miss an opportunity to connect sales teams, with the data, the solutions and the customers. Use of the data is an area where CRM tools could make substantial gains and where challengers or niche players could make inroads.

CRM tools are critical. I am a huge fan. I’ve worked in sales organizations that didn’t have them and they just aren’t productive, efficient organizations. Companies dedicated to sales and revenue success adopt and manage a strong CRM tool. CRM tools provide organizations with the data, process, and connectivity necessary to accelerate the sale, manage revenue, identify product gaps and trends etc. CRM tools have the ability to be a core business system for companies large and small. Understanding this, I will not be surprised to see a new contender enter the leader quadrant in the next few years. There is just too much the current CRM systems don’t do or don’t do well today.

Despite the crowded space, the quadrants don’t lie. The visionary quadrant is conspicuously empty. This means there is room for innovation. I hope someone recognizes this and comes up with the next killer CRM app. I’ll use it!

August 12, 2009 | Filed under: Sales Leadership,Sales Process,The Chase | View Comments |