Integrating Salesforce + GroupSwim + web design for complete customer lifecycle experience

Last week I visited with a potential sales partner about Intellicore Design solutions.  Among the topics, I discussed how we saw our business automation, collaboration, and web design solutions integrating together.  Said another way, Salesforce, GroupSwim and web design/eCommerce.

Knowing that a picture is worth a thousand words, I drew a diagram for our prospective sales partner.  Then this weekend, I listened to a fabulous video presentation by David Armano, VP of experience design with Critical Mass, on Thinking Visually, The Movie and it spurred my thinking to post a copy of the sketch in Big Cat Chronicles.

This is just a sketch, and not a fancy graphic, but it gets the job done.  So here it is, the our world view of our solutions.

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Customer outreach via Salesforce and GroupSwim

If you have a customer-centric business, then you already know that you need to outreach to your customers. The question then becomes how?  We like integrating Salesforce and GroupSwim to accomplish the goal, giving each solution different aspects of the heavy lifting.

Yes, the two solutions have some redundancies like both having knowledge bases.  In most of these cases, though, one solution outperforms the other so it makes sense to use a combined best of breed solution to get the give the most to your customer interactions.

Here’s how we envision things – and this is the sort of thing we’re in process of developing.  This springboards on a discussion that I touched on in my article Integrate community and CRM solutions & alleviate sales challenges.

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Integrate community and CRM solutions & alleviate sales challenges

Over the last two articles in the Sales Challenges series (here and here), we’ve delved into the sales challenges revolving on messaging, prospecting and closing sales.  We also identified using online community and CRM solutions to resolve these challenges.

Today, I want to close the loop by discussing the benefits of integrating these solutions together to further mitigate sales challenges.

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Mitigate prospecting and sale-closing challenges – Use CRM and community solutions

Sales Challenges series, part 2

Yesterday, we opened the Sales Challenge series by looking at challenges around messaging and the solutions to mitigate them.  Today, we’re going to investigate challenges around prospecting and closing sales and the ways in which you can use CRM and community solutions to resolve them.

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Resolve messaging sales challenges with community solutions

In this economy, we all face sales challenges.  Topping the list are those related to messaging, prospecting, and closing the sale.

Each of these challenges can be mitigated through the effective use of CRM and community solutions in the Sales Challenge series will investigate each and provide solutions to mitigate them.  To start off, we’ll focus on the messaging.

However, these challenges interconnect so in our third and closing article in the Sales Challenge series, we’ll address integrating the solutions to achieve a holistic resolution.

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7 Tips to stimulate Salesforce.com user adoption

Any and all change is stressful – even welcome change.  No matter how excited your staff may be about the idea of a new business tool or strategy, at the worst they still may balk at times and the best may stumble as they work to gain proficiency in the new thing.

That’s just as true about new enterprise applications like Salesforce.com as anything else.  So know that and prepare to meet the challenge of helping your company’s employees adapt to the change.

I’ve got some tips for you to use to stimulate the user adoption of your Salesforce implementation, although it truth, you can use these tips for any solution...

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Salesforce.com leads vs contacts – mining social networks

One of my sales buddies made a professional commitment to use LinkedIn more actively as a tool to expand her network and generate leads.  She experimented with it the last few months to great success and wants to expand her community involvement.

She had been entering new LinkedIn connections as Contacts because of the diversity of connections she made, many of whom were not leads.  For example, she says her connections span prospective customers, prospective partners, competitors, referral sources, and other miscellaneous networking connections.

I counseled her to enter them all or most of them as Leads instead.  Here’s why...

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How to ensure an IT implementation success

A Michael Krigsman article, published in TechRepublic, caught my attention because of the rather observation that  68 percent of IT projects fail.  Holy moly that sent me bopping ‘round to IAG Consulting, the original source of that yucky stat.

Based on their research, IAG found that the most common source of failure is poor requirements definition processes.  Put another way, the 32% of the companies most likely to succeed when it comes to IT implementations are those that have engaged in strong requirements definition processes.

While I haven’t undertaken rigorous study of the subject as IAG seems to, it does back up what I’ve learned from personal experience in my own past solution implementations.  And it backs up a cornerstone belief of Intellicore Design Consulting.

To ensure that your company falls with the successful 32% relative to Salesforce.com solutions, check out our recent webinar on Tips for Successful Salesforce.com Implementations....

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