CRM Talk

In this episode, Steve and Sam are joined by special guest Clint Oram, who recently left SugarCRM after exactly 21 years. The group explores the future of CRM, the transformative power of AI, and how technology is reshaping the way organizations think about customer relationships, system design, and collaboration.

Jennifer Noonan, VP and GM of CX and IPMC Business Units at Infor, joins Steve and Sam to discuss the evolution of Infor CRM SLX (formerly SalesLogix) and its role in industry-specific digital transformation. Jen shares how Infor's vertically aligned strategy enables the delivery of tailored ERP and CRM solutions to manufacturing, distribution, and service-based organizations. The conversation covers CRM and ERP integration, quoting workflows, and why CRM should be the system of engagement while ERP remains the system of record. Jen also reflects on Koch Industries' long-term investment approach and how it has accelerated innovation across Infor's cloud offerings.

Is your organization ready for CRM? Sam and Steve discuss the ten readiness statements from CRM Switch's online calculator: https://crm-readiness-calculator.crmswitch.com/

In this episode of CRM Talk, Steve Chipman and Sam Biardo discuss AI agents and their impact on business. They talk about how AI agents have evolved from basic IVR functionality to sophisticated business tools. Steve mentions Greg Eisenberg's insights about various types of agents (acquisition, research, content, and community agents) and how they're replacing human tasks at a fraction of the cost ($2,000 in agent costs vs $2 million in salary costs). They discuss Salesforce's Agentforce, with Steve noting Marc Benioff's aggressive marketing against Microsoft's Copilot. Sam shares his experience using Copilot and discusses implementing AI in their Starfish product, including their pricing strategy of raising rates to cover AI token costs. They also explore various pricing models for AI services, from token-based to per-question pricing, and discuss the integration trends they're seeing in the industry, particularly with ServiceNow, HubSpot, and Infor. The conversation concludes with a discussion of sales tax software integration needs and AI-powered headshot generation tools. Sam LinkedIn : linkedin.com/in/sambiardo/ Steve LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/schipman/ Steve X: @stevechipman

Sam Biardo of Technology Advisors and Steve Chipman of CRM Switch discuss the changes and trends in CRM implementations over the past few years. The key points discussed include the shift towards low-code/no-code platforms, the transition from on-premise to cloud-based solutions, the reduced need for developers and increased reliance on business analysts, the growing involvement of clients in the configuration process, and the emphasis on delivering a minimally viable product (MVP) in shorter implementation cycles to minimize risk and provide faster value realization. Other topics covered include the importance of planning and phasing, integration challenges with legacy systems, project management and AI tools, reporting and dashboard creation, measuring success criteria, and data migration best practices.

Sam and Steve discuss the high-level differences between these top CRM vendors. Topics include: Vendor Overviews Scope and Complexity of Business Needs Extending the CRM Database Native vs. Integrated Marketing Functionality The Consultant Ecosystems The HubSpot & Salesforce App Marketplaces Freemium vs. Only Pay-For Scope of Product Offerings AI Features Business Process Automation Tools The User Experience and Interface At the end, we tack on a AI version of the podcast created with NotebookLM which was derived from this blog post: https://crmswitch.com/buying-crm/hubspot-salesforce-differences/

Steve and Sam talk to Sati Hillyer, founder, and CEO of OneMob, about his journey from starting the AppExchange at Salesforce to developing and advancing his company's video platform for sellers over an almost ten-year period. With a OneMob microsite, sellers can provide context, content, and a clear next step for the prospect.

Sam and Steve are joined by Jon Richards of Evolve Video Marketing. We discuss today's buyer, using video in the sales process, how digital sales rooms work, and getting salespeople to adopt tools like OneMob.

Steve and Sam interview Ross Simmonds, the leading authority on content distribution and using AI in marketing.

Steve and Sam discuss quote-to-cash (Q2C) solutions that enable sales teams to quickly generate quotes and receive more orders. They cover use cases for field and desk-based sales, components like CPQ and eSignature integrations, rule-based guidance, and vendor solutions from Conga to MobileForce. Also discussed are sales scenarios with frequent pricing changes, needed integrations, and evaluating vendors based on industry-specific requirements.

AI-generated summary In this episode, Sam and Steve discuss the benefits of podcasting for marketing versus blogging, based on data showing more people per podcast than per blog. It then covers a survey showing that most marketers are using at least some AI to generate blog content, with the risk of too much AI hurting search rankings.  Sam and Steve agree AI is best for outlines and some after-the-fact SEO optimization, while human-written content ranks better. They discuss various uses of AI in marketing, like generating content sections, outlines, titles/descriptions, Tweets, LinkedIn posts, images, presentations, and videos. Key takeaways are that AI is extremely helpful for accelerating content creation and distribution but should be used carefully and edited by humans for the best results. The hosts emphasize keeping human-created, original text for critical content like blogs. They note AI content lacks nuance and sounds formulaic if not edited. Data shows that human-optimized content ranks better in search. Other topics include using AI for sales enablement assets, contracts, policies, CRM, training, and deflecting questions. AI is great for outlines, titles, descriptions, and images, but human creativity is essential for resonance and ranking. X thread prompt "Create an X (formerly Twitter) thread from this article https://yourcompany.com/blog/postname.  Ignore the information in the page's footer. Create a 5-part thread, with 3-4 lines each. Each part should lead the reader to read the next part of the thread. Do not use hashtags."

Steve and Sam talk about the state of SEO in the context of CRM and leads.

Sam and Steve discuss CRM AI use cases for sales, marketing, customer service, customization & configuration, data migration & integration, analytics, and automations.

Sam & Steve forget how to think on their own, Enterprise AI megatrends, using ChatGPT for CRM test cases and test data

Tech layoffs, low-code development, ChatGPT in marketing, social media marketing

CRM and CRM-related news & information for April 2022.

Steve and Sam talk to Scott Eller, Chief Relationship Officer & Co-founder of Neuraswitch about transcription, redaction, and sentiment analysis.

A rundown of current marketing & sales AIs.

#InternationalPodcastDay

Andy Zambito, Chief Sales Officer, Americas at Creatio, joins Sam & Steve to talk about process management, CRM, digital transformation, low-code, tailored experiences, differentiation, speed of change, speed of operations, and more.

10 questions you should ask when looking at integrating your CRM, 5 reasons a spreadsheet is not a database, 8 plugins to use with your new Wordpress site (relating to Google's new page experience standard)

Sam and Steve verbally expand on several of their respective listicles. Source posts are: 10 Questions you Must Ask When Selecting a CRM 5 Levels of CRM Requirements 8 Website Issues That May be Costing You Sales Leads

An interview with Jeffrey Russo, Director of Product, Sales Hub Go-to-Market at HubSpot. HubSpot's evolution from a marketing system to broader front office solution, focusing on the needs of the user experience, streamlining the quote-to-cash process, moving up market, getting "technical debt" that exists within organizations out of the way of the customer experience, applying functionality such as automations across different departments and use cases, HubSpot's durable partner channel, Conversation Intelligence, sales coaching based on transcripts, applying machine learning to transcripts, honoring two party states & countries, HubSpot's advantage for applying revenue attribution to marketing efforts.

Creatio raises $68 million, HubSpot goes enterprise, Sugar's HD-CX, AWS and AI, Salesforce eyes $50 billion in five years. Creatio's first ever funding announcement video Rich Green's Deep Learning & Time video

Salesforce's Vaccine Cloud, Sam's vaccine shot scheduling nightmare, Sam's joint webinar with Creatio, CRM 3.0, how low code/no code has altered roles in CRM deployment & management, field service, ABM, video selling, video training, CRM best practice videos, de-densifying your slide decks, HubSpot's customer code deck, explaining difficult to explain concepts, telling a story, content distribution.

Salesforce's acquisition of Slack (and Acumen), SugarCRM acquires its largest partner W-Systems, CRM vendors & leads, getting found for CRM searches, Creatio's 24 hour event, low-code solutions, BA to developer ratios, Facebook acquires Kustomer, visual development tools & whether they are necessarily simple, the Microsoft/C3.ai/Adobe alliance, CRM predictions for 2021.

An interview with Josh Johnson, senior product manager at Wistia, about Wistia's new audio hosting platform for marketers. Learn more about the audio offering. Chris Lavigne's excellent post and video about how to build a Soapbox Station for video recording.

David Campbell, Vice President of Product Marketing at SugarCRM, joins Sam & Steve to discuss sales, marketing, customer support, data, AI and the customer experience.

The west coast in flames, whether a podcaster should host the next presidential debate, CRM product news from Inforum, updates from HubSpot's virtual Inbound conference.

Sam's commitment to golf, the NHL and NBA bubbles, deploying CRM & training CRM users during a pandemic, using emojis for product searches, the most effective forms of marketing in 2020

A moratorium on CEO interviews, iOS 14 & location tracking, an "off the grid" mobile option, marketers' digital transformation, new Google My Business features, gathering requirements & conducting online workshops.

Musings about online meeting technologies and how they're being used. How CRM vendors are helping out with discounts and free components.

Sam & Steve talk about ways to adapt your sales and marketing to our current reality.

Reasons for our absence -- long vacations, Public Service Power Shutoffs and parasites. bpm'online becomes Creatio. More Salesforce acquisition rumors. Dreamforce '19 report. Video outreach. Observations on Gartner Magic Quadrants. CRM industry maturity and commoditization. Accelerated release cycles by CRM vendors. Vendors increasingly aligning their offerings around analysts' "three pillar" expectations.

Sam's iOS 13 beta testing blues, Gartner Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation, a variety of HubSpot to CRM integrations, declining website visitor conversion rates.

Rich Green is Chief Product Officer and CTO at SugarCRM. Rich leads SugarCRM's engineering and product management teams and is responsible for the product vision and global strategy of the award-winning Sugar platform. In this episode, Sam and Steve ask Rich for his perspectives on and his vision for CRM.

Massive Salesforce outage, multi-tenant vs. single tenant hosted CRM databases, SugarCRM acquires Collabspot and Salesfusion, Sugar's new quoting module, Sage sunsets SageCRM Online, bpm'online's low code no code, citizen developers.

Sam & Steve talk to Max Altschuler, Vice President of Marketing at Outreach, about sales engagement and how Outreach facilitates multi-channel sales communication with prospects. Max is co-author of Sales Engagement: How The World's Fastest Growing Companies are Modernizing Sales Through Humanization at Scale.

A discussion with Greg Martinelli about CRM in the agricultural business. Greg is an ag sales trainer, coach and speaker. Greg's website.

The deep freeze hits Chicago just in time for the bpm'online conference. Sam previews his talk at the conference.

Sam's latest wine club, when & why Infor CRM wins, a look back at 2018 acquisitions, ContactOut Chrome extension, Wix gets into CRM, "CX" in 2019, CRM in email client sidebars, CRM AI in 2019, 5 CRM trends for 2019, bot backlash.

Instead of show notes for this episode, we'd like to use this real estate to provide information about an option for making a donation to victims of the Camp Fire. Since you're most likely reading this on your mobile phone, please text CAWILDFIRES to 90999 to make a $10 donation (the Red Cross and AT&T).

Dreamforce 2018, Inform, CRM AI offerings, SugarCRM's input on why they win deals.

A bad technology day, how we can collectively put an end to call center cold calls, a review of CRM Magazine's 2018 CRM Market Awards winners, The ascents of Microsoft & Zoho, how long it really takes to become a CRM leader, how little separation there is among the top ranked vendors in point scores.

Accel KKR makes a 9 figure investment in SugarCRM. Some of the other potential compatible AKKR companies. Sugar's redesign and re-architecture. Sugar's one-clickedness. Mitch Lieberman's take on the investment and his advice, including going all in on the cloud. How the sales team needs to be more consultative and real. The idea of conversational engagement. The Gartner Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation and some of the positional changes since last year. A close pack in the Leader quadrant. bpm'online is alone in the Challenger's quadrant. ProsperWorks rebrands to Copper. Copper's win percentage vs Salesforce. Salesforce and Google are cozying up. Will Google acquire a CRM vendor? Google's Hangouts Meet as a viable online meeting app.

Sam and Steve talk with Joel Schneider, president of Liberty Technology Advisors about what about what should be behind proper ERP selection and implementation processes. Joel answers the question, "is cloud-based ERP as easy as the vendors would lead you to believe?" Joel also addresses many of the factors that people within any organization need to consider before making a decision on an ERP vendor---whether the vendor's offering is cloud or on-premises. The approaches to strategy, selection and implementation for ERP and for CRM are contrasted.

Sam and Steve test-drive Zencastr, Pipedrive raises $50 million, smaller vendors be “taking on” the big CRM vendors or is there a better strategy?, Nimble’s approach, Swiftpage’s investment and their focus on “the easiest product on the market to use”, Act! Connect, the Collabspot plugin for Office 365 and G Suite, contact enrichment, marketing approved email templates vs. empowering salespeople, TIBCO buys Scribe Software, data lakes, a deep dive on integration methods.