debor058

The days for CRM industry dominated by SalesForce, Microsoft Dynamics, SugarCRM, Sage, HighRise and other enterprise solutions are over. New CRM 2.0 kids are on the block and they are growing like crazy. So what is CRM 2.0 exactly? Nobody knows. Clearly CRM 2.0 is the next generation of customer relationship management tools, but CRM 2.0 means different things for different people. For some, CRM 2.0 designation stands for collaborative CRM. For others, CRM 2.0 means using social network tools like LinkedIn or Facebook for prospecting and selling. Another popular interpretation for CRM 2.0 is reverse CRM or user driven customer relationship management. So let’s take a look at three CRM 2.0 examples and discuss some of the CRM 2.0 leaders. 1.    Collaborative CRM Bitrix24.com is probably the fastest growing CRM 2.0 solution, if 2.0 means collaborative CRM to you. Essentially Bitrix24 is enterprise social network , plus CRM , plus project management , plus planner, plus do...

Daily Advice Link - How I Increased Sales 350% With Press-Releases ICANN announced today that its Board of Directors has approved the 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement. It’s the conclusion of a long and contentious process that has resulted in arguably the most sweeping changes ever in the contract that governs the relationship between ICANN and domain name registrars. I’ve written previously about the impact this will have on domain registrants.Yet domain registrars will also face substantial burdens, and this will particularly affect smaller registrars with limited resources. Due to the new RAA and other changes in the domain name market, the next six-to-twelve months will be some of the most demanding (and potentially rewarding) domain registrars have ever experienced. What’s required of registrars Registrars will have to integrate or create a number of systems and practices under the terms of the 2013 RAA. Some of the demands on registrars include a phone or email ...

Daily Advice Link - How I Increased Sales 350% With Press-Releases FreshBooks ( claim your $50 FreshBooks coupon here ) is known for weird titles.Corey Reid, for instance, is Chief Cat Herder. That's Director of R&D Talent for us mere mortals. Saul Colt is Head of Magic. Perhaps you'd prefer Marketing and Customer Experience Design. And don't even ask me what Freshbooks CEO goes by. So perhaps it shouldn't be a surprise that FreshBooks isn't really about bookkeeping. Instead, FreshBooks is really one of the first timekeeping and invoicing software turned SaaS (it'll be interesting how FreshBooks reacts to the recent onslaught of free CRM with invocing ). FreshBook is now used by over 5 million users and known for it's "braindead simple" approach. One of the reasons for that that one year after being launched in 2003, it had only 6 clients. That's six. And 24 months into operation, it had only 10. This is how Mike McDerment recalls these day...

Daily Advice Link - How I Increased Sales 350% With Press-Releases http://www.numberfire.com/ The age-old rivalry between jocks and geeks is finally dead--and Nik Bonaddio is the killer. Bonaddio is founder and CEO of numberFire, an analytics platform that takes sports data to new brainy levels. Combining mathematically derived metrics with advanced algorithms that factor in situational variables, numberFire turns the "unstructured and misleading data" around sports into highly accurate stats and predictions for NFL, MLB and NBA players and teams. What this means: Your betting odds just got better, and your fantasy-sports team just dominated. In fact, the New York City-based company's official 2012 March Madness bracket correctly picked the winner (Kentucky) and finished in the top 1 percent of brackets nationwide. NumberFire claims that its data gives users a 31 percent higher chance of winning their fantasy leagues and beats the projections provided by leagues 93 percen...

Daily Advice Link - How I Increased Sales 350% With Press-Releases https://www.bixnets.com/ Baby boomers are retiring, and millenials are becoming mobile more than ever. For a business, especially those that recognize the importance of its workforce and the knowledge gap that may occur as a result of an imminent departure of older personnel, this can be bad news, especially for business and economic growth. As per a recent study, it is believed that in North America alone, about 75 million old-timers will be leaving the workforce within the next 15 years. The lines “for every unmet need, there is a startup waiting to happen” and “if you can’t beat them, join them” aren’t without merit. A startup by the name of bixnets.com, short for Business Intelligence Exchange Networks, came about as a result of a conversation its founder, Brad Gaulin, had regarding baby boomers leaving the labor force. And if someone is to help the younger generation succeed in any way, shape or form, knowledge and...

Daily Advice Link - How I Increased Sales 350% With Press-Releases https://fundersclub.com/ While crowdfunding doesn't yet allow the 99 percent to invest in companies directly--Kickstarter and Indiegogo supporters typically only contribute or buy a future product--FundersClub is prying open the door to allow more people into the VC game . The goal of the venture capital platform is to facilitate financing in early-stage companies for small but accredited investors who wish to make low minimum investments. The start-ups, meanwhile, have a better chance of lining up funding than they would from family, banks or angel investors. Since attracting $6.5 million in VC funding last summer to launch the platform, San Francisco-based FundersClub has helped place more than $2.5 million into nine companies, including Soldsie, a startup that lets merchants sell directly on Facebook; Tracks.by, a social promotion platform for musicians; and Sponsorified, which connects brands with sp...

Bitrix24.com is a new SaaS (software as a service) cloud based social intranet platform that makes corporate intranet easily available to smaller companies. It does not take any time to deploy (everything is already installed and set up) and doesn’t cost anything if it’s used by companies with fewer than 12 employees. At first, Bitrix24 looks like corporate Facebook – there is the wall or activity stream where different employees engage in discussions and vote by ‘liking’ ideas, documents or workgroups. There are also instant messenger and photogallery. This is where the similarities end. The first important Bitrix24 module is free CRM (customer relationship module) that comes with a database for clients and prospects that are easily sorted by events (phone call or meeting, for instance). Next comes the sales funnel that divides clients into easy-to-work-with groups - new prospects, first contact, requeste...

Daily Advice Link - How I Increased Sales 350% With Press-Releases http://www.thumbtack.com/ Companies from Angie’s List to Yelp to HomeAdvisor have tried over the past decade to crack the U.S. market for plumbing, gardening, and other local services by developing an online database for homeowners looking for reliable referrals. There have been limited successes but no breakout leader, partly because many of the nation’s tens of millions of local small business owners spend relatively little time on the Web and run their businesses the old-fashioned way , with a pen and pocket calendar. Now there’s a new entrant in this crowded field, Thumbtack. The San Francisco startup has operated quietly for four years, building a database of more than 250,000 service professionals who can pay the company fees for referrals. They include home maintenance workers and a wider range of occupations, from wedding officiants to yoga instructors. Thumbtack planned to announce on June 13 that it has raised...

With 60 dollars per user per month (that’s if you want to have access to app marketplace where all the goodies are) and a two year minimum contract frequently required, SalesForce is out of reach for most small businesses. And it’s really a shame, because SalesForce is a great CRM. But don’t despair, here are three free SalesForce alternatives that are actually better at some things than SalesForce itself. Check out our SalesForce vs Bitrix24 vs Nimble vs Streak review. 1.    Bitrix24 . Bitrix24 is the most popular and powerful free SalesForce alternative and for a good reason. In addition to offering an extensive CRM that’s 100% free for 12 users or less, it’s actually a much better SalesForce Chatter alternative than Chatter itself (social intranet). In fact, Bitrix24 comes packed with free goodies that SalesForce itself doesn’t offer (other than through third party integrations) – like project managemen t, file sharing , mobile CRM , doc management , video chat and vi...

Site of the day - PickyDomains.com, world's first risk free naming service http://hailocab.com/ One day in 2011, three internet entrepreneurs set up a meeting with three cab drivers in a London cafe. Many hours later, they emerged as the six founders of Hailo, a mobile app that connects taxi drivers with passengers. One of the 'treps, New York native Jay Bregman, harbored a near-obsession with the "fundamentally inefficient" taxi industry that stemmed from his previous venture, a highly successful same-day delivery company. "Taxis in New York spend 40 percent of their time--in other cities, 60 percent of their time--cruising for fares, while people find it difficult to get a taxi," explains Bregman, Hailo's CEO. "And there was nobody to put them together." During that fateful meeting, the three cabbies--with half a century of driving experience among them--provided insight that led to Hailo's unique solution: approaching the industry from ...

People often underestimate the importance of SaaS marketing optimization. Certainly in most cases, once a plan is worked out, some initial level of optimization is conducted, or else every marketing campaign in the history of SaaS would fail horrendously. Unfortunately, the cursory tweaking is usually all that is done. Sure, the marketing plans usually work out if the plans themselves are solid on a basic level, but they could work better. Considering you must have a good positive ROI on your SaaS marketing strategy, optimization is a great way to work toward this goal. Unfortunately, how to optimize marketing in this industry seems like an elusive bit of knowledge to many, so with that in mind, maybe we ought to talk about some of the more important and basic tenets thereof. First and foremost, we need to talk a little bit about demographics. I don't need to talk about how important demographics are to any marketing campaign, be it SaaS or otherwise. But, while you surely regard ...