Sales & Customer Relationship Managment news & articles

• B-to-b users want sites with b-to-c service, ease
  Jakob Nielsen, web usability guru and interactive marketing expert, discusses the shortcomings of B2B websites in terms of fulfilling their sales & marketing potential. According to Nielsen, business visitors are often disappointed that web-based B2B sales material does not have the same ease of use or quality of design that they are accustomed to finding on B2C websites or consumer marketing collateral in general. The article goes on to describe a number of ways that sales opportunities are lost on B2B websites, perhaps the most of important of which is a failure to support the complex B2B buying process.
• ‘Reference Customers’ and turning sales prospects into trusted relationships
  While geared towards Enterprise B2B salespeople, this article makes a compelling case for the value of what the author calls ‘reference customer selling’ in sluggish buying markets, as opposed to the ‘solution based’ approach often touted as lending an edge in a lean economy. ‘Customer reference’ sales entails using the real-world stories, case studies, and best practices that are naturally created while working with clients with whom you’ve evolved from a supplier/seller into a trusted advisor role. These relationships ought to provide a wealth of experience that can be brought to bear during the sales and purchasing cycles, and these handles not only help move the sales process forward, but can also help define a different and more rewarding kind of business relationship during the initial stages of a deal.
• Hot Seat: The Demand for On-Demand CRM
  Another article catering to enterprise-level sales teams, this piece from an online CRM (Customer Relationship Management) trade journal explores the emerging battle between hosted and on-site CRM software. CRM applications are used to guide corporate sales forces through the customer relationship life-cycle and thereby improve long-term sales performance and client retention. Although most CRM software provided by vendors such as SAP and Salesnet is designed to meet the same end goals – helping sales teams capitalize on opportunities to make well timed and targeted offers to existing clients for additional products and services – there are two very different ‘species’: hosted and traditional or on-site. The hosted variety works on an Application Service Provider ‘On-Demand’ model, where a corporate sales department essentially rents or pays as they go for access to proprietary software that resides on the CRM provider’s network. On-site CRM has been around longer than hosted CRM, and works like most traditional entreprise and desktop software: it is licensed and installed in the client’s facilities. In either case, as the various CRM executives quoted here point out, CRM software has been embraced by large sales operations for the value it adds to different aspects of sales and customer relations: from connecting ‘customer touch points’ across an organization to automating sales forces.

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