A phone call is almost always an important moment. I call my friends and family when texting or posting on Facebook just won’t do, and I call businesses when I’m serious about making purchases. Working in business communications, I’ve had more than one person ask me if people even call businesses anymore as consumers. “Don’t […]

What percentage of time do your inside sales reps spend actually selling? A CSO Insights study found that sales reps spend an average of 20% of their time researching prospects before making calls. And while Salesforce.com offers reps the ability to log vital data after sales calls, let’s face it – this takes up a […]

Inside sales teams selling large ticket items, take notice. Zogby Analytics polled 1,000 consumers who had submitted an online form requesting information about a product with at least a $1,000 value, asking them various questions about their communications preferences. 75% of respondents reported that they would be happy for companies to call them 2-4 times per month, […]

As marketers, we talk a lot about generating leads and driving ROI. But when customers receive the right messages across every touch point, revenue follows. Tracking the impact of marketing campaigns on inbound call activity in Salesforce.com is a powerful way for marketers to determine which marketing campaigns create valuable customer relationships. The result of […]

Ever wish that business phone on your desk was as smart as the one in your pocket? With our new Intellgent Dialer for Salesforce.com customers, it can be even smarter. Our softphone works as an extension in Google Chrome (the world’s number one browser) and syncs data with Salesforce.com (the world’s number one CRM), enabling […]

Like many others before me, discovering marketing automation was a defining point in my career. And once you see the light, there’s no going back. I remember the old days of sending out email campaigns without any knowledge of how those campaigns were affecting conversions or contributing to pipeline. But marketing automation tools such as […]

Our desire to collaborate with our fellow human beings is built into our genetics. In fact, evolutionary anthropologists recently discovered that young humans prefer to work together to solve problems, while chimpanzees do not exhibit such a preference. It has been said that it takes a village to raise a child, and in B2B sales, […]

An interview with Andrea Wildt, VP of Product and Marketing for Full Circle CRM. As marketing budgets continue to expand, it’s increasingly critical to understand how marketing efforts impact pipeline. Traditional ROI models give credit to a single effort that impacted a sale or opportunity. For example, if a prospect views a tweet, then performs […]

Among the primary challenges for companies managing their bring your own device (BYOD) programs are concerns about data security and lack of oversight into employee behavior. Some companies have even turned to draconian BYOD policies in which self-provisioned devices are inspected for “inappropriate” apps such as Angry Birds or Amazon Kindle. However, these sorts of regressive […]

It’s no longer a question of whether marketers should invest  in social media. Social platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook are blooming with valuable behavioral data about your customers. Not surprisingly, there has been an explosion in social media advertising. BA Kelsey has predicted that by 2017 social media ad spend will more than double […]

We’re occasionally asked why we chose to target our initial product line toward Salesforce.com customers. While Salesforce is currently the world’s largest CRM vendor, that only happened recently. One of the main reasons we partnered with Salesforce is because they’ve grown their business, in part, through smart acquisitions. Each new acquisition adds new dimensions to […]

Chances are that your sales reps aren’t spending enough time on the phone with customers. Simply put, it’s hard to hit a home run when you’re stuck in the dugout. The more time that inside sales reps spend on calls, the more opportunities they’ll have to close deals. But sales processes often include blockers that […]