Tips and Pitfalls of CRM Use and Implementation

Host Paul Petersen talks with GoldMine CRM, CMO Stacy Gentile about the tips and pitfalls of CRM use and Implementation. They look back to guests like Jay Baer, Gene Marks, Patrick Renvoise, Jill Konrath, Todd Cohen, Chad Pollitt, Shari Levitin, and others to discuss the takeaway tips about sales in general and CRM usefulness for sales and management.   For instance:

• Why management shouldn’t look at CRM as a policing tool
• Why salespeople have to be honest with themselves about forecasting and the CRM tool helps
• How to make the CRM tool more useful
• Why a CRM tool makes ordinary salespeople better
• Why the CRM tool must be customized for your business
• It’s all about the data and that comes from the custom fields
• Why lead attribution is difficult to pin down
• Regardless of AI advances, the human point of data entry is important

CRM Radio is hosted by Paul Petersen and the sponsor is Goldmine CRM broadcast on the Funnel Radio Channel.

A Big Issue is Fixing Poor Sales Coaching

She’s serious with humor, laughs when making a thoughtful point and you know as you listen that she speaks with authority and truth.  Colleen Francis of Engaged Selling talks with host Stacy Gentile about the issues around poor, poor sales coaching.  They discuss:

• How to avoid sales boom and bust cycles
• Why companies are not intentional enough about revenue
• The number one coaching failure: It worked that way before, it should work now
• The worst advice given to salespeople: “You’re not hitting your numbers, you have to close more deals.”
• Why companies have to be more intentional about sales metrics
• Is sales even the right word anymore?
• Are we in a buying environment and not a selling environment?

About our guest, Colleen Francis

Colleen of Engage Selling works with business and sales leaders to synergize the sales DNA of the organization to seize market opportunities. Whether designing strategy to target a new market or working with a team to improve its productivity, Colleen's results have attracted clients such as Merck, Abbott, Merrill Lynch, Royal Bank, Dow, Adecco, Trend Micro, NCR, Chevron, and thousands of other global organizations.

Time and time again, clients who work with Colleen note her frank, no-nonsense approach to accelerate sales while reducing effort and increasing profits. Colleen's practical strategies deliver immediate and lasting results.

Colleen is an award-winning writer and consultant, bestselling author, and member of the Speaking Hall of Fame. She is recognized as one of the foremost thought leaders on the future of selling by leading publications worldwide, including being named a LinkedIn Top Voice for Sales.

About Non-Stop Sales Boom

Has the last week of each quarter in your business become a mad scramble to meet quota? Do your year-end reports show sporadic and unexplainable highs some weeks that will be near impossible to meet next year, as well as mysterious lows that ruined your goals for a 10 percent increase? For many sales organizations, anomalies such as these are strangely commonplace and unshakeable without intentional efforts to ratify them.

Nonstop Sales Boom explains how to break this unhealthy cycle and achieve strong, steady results--every quarter, from every member of the team.Author and experienced sales leader for over twenty years Colleen Francis says the secret to leaving behind the roller-coaster reports and achieving sustaining, steady success is to broaden the focus from merely closing deals to actively nurturing the four critical stages of client engagement:

• Attraction: Fill the funnel with lucrative prospects

• Participation: Turn them into customers faster

• Growth: Invest in valued clients

• Leverage: Turn customers into referral generators

When companies concentrate on only one or two of these areas, their results become erratic. But by becoming purposeful toward all four, simultaneously, they will systematically attract a regular flow of prospects and move them smoothly through the pipeline--taking the chaos and pressure away from the end of quarter for good!

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CRM Radio is hosted by Paul Peterson and Stacy Gentile and sponsored by GoldMine CRM on the Funnel Radio Channel.

Siloed Mentalities Kill Companies, But There is a Cure

Todd Cohen  testifies that siloed companies are mediocre companies that eventually die.  They die because sales and marketing are siloed.  They die because employees, regardless of job title don’t understand that when they serve the customer well, they are in sales.  They die because company departments don't talk to one another. 

Todd says they can be in manufacturing or finance, it makes no difference, every action they take serves the customer.  He’s got opinions and examples of solving the silo problem in this interview with the host Stacy Gentile.    Cohen discusses:

1. Everybody in the company is in sales
2. Job titles are limiting and useless
3. Marketing can’t craft messages that sell without talking to customers
4. We are all in an experiential economy
5. Everyone in the organization, by the nature of their job, is in sales
6. No one works in a back office; There is no back office
7. CRM is a transparency system and process for sales and marketing
8. People set your company apart from competitors
9. Everyone in a company has a connection to the customer

Cohen is the author of two books, Stop Apologizing and Start Selling and Everyone’s in Sales.

About our guest:

Todd Cohen’s proven strategy of Sales Culture™ has helped to revolutionize the sales success for franchises, trade groups, and organizations, including Subaru of America, Inc., Ernst and Young, The UPS Store, Inc., The Canadian Franchise Alliance, Corning, Inc., The NFL-PA and PNC Bank. Todd uses his unparalleled expertise, unique insights, and memorable examples to engage, motivate and educate audiences in the United States and around the world. He delivers more than 90 keynote addresses a year, speaking to audiences as small as five people and as large as 5,000.

Times Are Changing Rapidly for Content Marketing – Expert Advice from Chad Pullitt

When Chad Pullitt talks you have to listen, and this show with host Stacy Gentile is no different.  Pullitt says that the future of marketing is entering a new phase.  Native advertising is gaining strength, readership (also listenership and viewership) demands a new content approach; hard core paid performance marketing is stressed and moving up funnel.  What this means is content marketing is coming into its own, but it is no longer a race for the most volume; today and tomorrow it is driven by three tactics to be successful.   Listen and learn.

About our guest, Chad Pollitt:

VP of Marketing, Co-Founder, Professor, Author, Board Member x 3, International Keynote Speaker & former US Army Commander

A member of a Forbes Top 100 list, Chad authored "The Native Advertising Manifesto," "The Content Promotion Manifesto" and "51 Things Your Mother Taught You About Inbound Marketing." He is a regular contributor to industry media outlets, including the Huffington Post, Guardian and Social Media Today.

Chad has been creating profitable online campaigns for over 16 years for some of the world's most recognizable brands, while delivering tens of millions of dollars of tracked return. Over the last ten years has delivered over 100,000 leads and 24,000 marketing qualified leads. Named a top five content marketing thought leader and top 20 CMO influencer, he continues to innovate by leading the emerging industry of online content promotion and distribution.

Since early 2002, Chad has played an integral role in designing, developing, deploying, executing and tracking robust web marketing strategies for client companies and organizations and is an Internet marketing expert. He holds a BS in Entrepreneurship from the Indiana University Kelley School of Business and an Internet Marketing Masters Certification from the University of San Francisco's prestigious School of Business and Management.