May 2nd, 2012
How To Make Money with Inbound Marketing: Four Part Series
Inbound marketing has revolutionized the way SMB (Small Medium Businesses) approach marketing, and BrainSell is here to show you how. The days off minimized results by reaching out to a vague and general audience are over. Find your target audience, get their attention, and turn them into your customers. Join this four part webinar series and learn…
- What inbound marketing is
- Where to start your inbound marketing campaigns
- How to create qualified leads with inbound marketing
- How to properly leverage social media to your advantage
- How to get found on Google
- How to turn qualified leads into opportunities and customers
Signup for this inbound marketing workshop to see the following webinars.
Part 1 of 4: What Is Inbound Marketing? (Wednesday, May 9th, 1:30PM EST)
Part 2 of 4: Creating Leads with Inbound Marketing (Wednesday, May 16th, 1:30PM EST)
Part 3 of 4: Leveraging Social Media with Inbound Marketing (Wednesday, June 6th, 1:30PM EST)
Part 4 of 4: Converting Leads (Wednesday, June 13th, 1:30PM EST)
Don’t forget to check out our other webinars while you’re at it. Sign up early and guarantee yourself a spot in these training webinars, spots fill up quick! And don’t miss us on twitter either! 
Categories: Blogs, Brainsell, Inbound Marketing, Marketing
Tags: Brainsell
May 2nd, 2012
I recently had the opportunity to meet a talented career consultant, Steve Dalton, at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. Steve has written a new book called The 2-Hour Job Search. I know what you’re thinking: is he trying to become Tim Ferriss 2.0? Well, there are certainly worse goals.
But I digress. I mention Steve here because he has a refreshing view of the job search that applies to most if not all of us fully employed folks. Steve says that because we are so busy, we need a job search plan that allows us to move our goals forward without devoting 40 hours a week. Here are some of Steve’s top tips for cutting the time you spend on your job search way down:
Stop Obsessing Over Your Resume
A disproportionate amount of time is spent developing versus reviewing resumes. It’s the interview, and to some extent your online profiles (LinkedIn, etc.) that matter. Make your resume short and error-free and move on.
Ask Questions of Others Rather Than Selling Yourself
Rather than spending days perfecting that elevator pitch in anticipation of a conversation with a new contact, briefly think through questions you can ask them, such as where they see the market headed and why. This builds likeability.
Study Less, Socialize More
Stop thinking with the “school” mentality. It’s not about how much you know, it’s about who you know. Building up expertise won’t mean anything without a strong network, so focus on the latter.
Quit Looking Through Job Postings
Online job posting search engines like Indeed.com are great for a number of things, but they are terrible at getting you jobs. If a job is online, often an employer already has a few internal referrals identified, so simply adding your resume to the employer’s “slush pile” is unproductive.
Do you agree with Steve’s advice? Why or why not?
Related posts:
- Improved Website Search Experience
- Managers – Set Limits on Long Hours
- Working Extended Hours? You’re Not Alone
Categories: Intuit QuickBase
Tags: Intuit QuickBase, QuickBase
May 2nd, 2012
Last week we announced Dropbox integration in Zoho Projects. On this front today we’re listing out the possible ways to sync files in Dropbox via Zoho Projects.
Here’s how it works :
Email files and sync it with Dropbox
In Zoho Projects, every folder is associated with an email address. Just copy this email address compose a mail along with an attachment and click send.That’s it, your file is uploaded in Zoho Projects. And if this folder is configured for syncing with your Dropbox presto…your file is now available in your Dropbox account.…
Categories: Zoho CRM
Tags: CRM, Zoho CRM
May 1st, 2012
I had a question come up yesterday regarding what the Manage Users permission on a profile actually enables a user to do.
It turns out that it allows a user to do a lot of things and should only be given to a select few users in any org.
If a subset of rights is needed to manage users but not manage Profiles or Sharing, check out the Delegated Administration feature.
Manage Users allows you to do the following:
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Profiles
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Manage Profiles (more detail below)
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Assign Profiles
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View Field Accessibility
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Sharing
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Manage User Roles
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Manage Forecast Roles
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Assign Roles
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Manage Public Groups
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Manage ALL Personal Groups
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Assign Public Groups
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Manage Queues
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Assign Queues
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Manage Territories
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Manage Sharing Settings
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Recalc Sharing Rules
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Manage Dimension Categories
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Manage Sales Teams
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Manage Account Teams
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User Management
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Create/Edit Internal User and have access to all User fields
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Manage Hierarchical User Fields
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Assign License
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Activate User
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Expire All Passwords
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Set Org Password Policies
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Reset User Password
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Reset Username
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Reset Email
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Assign Mobile Configuration
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Assign Workflow Manager Field
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Manage a User's Divisions
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Manage a User's OAuth
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View Login Histor
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View Training History
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Delegated Portal Administration
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Create/Edit Portal User
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Edit Self-Service User
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Other Permissions
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Manage Opportunity Update Reminders
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Activate Opportunity Update Reminders
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Manage SAML Subject
The rights to manage a profile is more complex than what is required for most setup objects. Because of the various relationships between setup components and a profile, (objects, fields, layouts, apex, etc...) there are multiple permissions that govern access to manage *all* aspects of the profile but in reality, there are specific permissions to manage different controls within a profile. To be safe, an Admin with both Customize Application and Manage Users can manage all aspects of a profile. However, if a user only has Manage Users, they can
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clone/delete a profile *or* change any of the following:
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Properties (Description/Name)
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Page Layouts
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Record Types
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Tab Settings
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Assigned Apps
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User Permissions
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Desktop Client Access
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Login Hours
If a user has
both Manage Users and Customize Application, in addition to everything above, they can change the following:
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Object Permissions
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Field Permissions
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Apex Class Access
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Visualforce Page Access
Let us know what you think! If you have suggestions for additional distributed administration features, please post them on the ideaexchange (http://sites.force.com/ideaexchange/ideaHome?c=09a30000000D9xt)
Categories: Salesforce CRM
Tags: CRM, DreamForce, Salesforce CRM, salesforce.com
May 1st, 2012
Google recently made a few enhancements to their Spam folder in Gmail, providing end-users with information on why messages land there. As an email marketer, you want to know not only if your messages make it to the spam folder, but also most importantly, why they got there and what you can do about it. [...]
CRM Software Free Trial - Your CRM online guide to Web-based Contact Management Software Free Internet Trials and the latest news Articles, reviews & comparisons.
Related posts:
- Create More Deliverable Emails with Integrated Spam Scoring - Story From: The Official Infusionsoft Blog To help our users improve deliverability to the inbox, we’ve developed a new tool to help them measure how ISPs see their email messages. Often, users make mistakes unknowingly triggering spam filters within the content of their email messages. This tool uncovers those triggers and allows users to improve their email deliverability, so more emails [...]...
- 5 Practical Tips to Improve Your Inbox Placement - Story From: The Official Infusionsoft Blog In an email deliverability study published by ReturnPath, it was discovered that only 81 percent of messages actually reach the inbox sent by commercial email senders. This means that approximately 2 out of 10 messages either land in the spam folder or go missing. While this statistic remains an industry average, there are several tips [...]...
- Capsule contextual gadget for Gmail - Story From: The Capsule CRM Blog One of the projects we've been busy with recently is the development of a Gmail contextual gadget. A Gmail contextual gadget is a gadget that is triggered by clues in Gmail, such as the contents of Subject lines and email messages. For example, Gmail already provides a YouTube contextual gadget. If the body of an email contains a link to a YouTube video, a clickable thumbnail view of the video appears at the bottom of the email. Rather than replicate the CRM functionality in a small window at the bottom of each email, we've designed the Capsule contextual gadget to improve the workflow around receiving an email and the actions that you need to take as a result. Here's a summary of Capsule contextual gadget functionality: Add new contacts straight into Capsule See details you hold about the sender and click through to their page in Capsule Store messages in Capsule without using the dropbox Create an opportunity or case linked to the email File the email under an existing opportunity or case Create a follow-up task If you are already using Capsule and want to take advantage of the gadget you'll need an administrator of your Google Apps domain to grant access to the gadget for the new information required to support the gadget. To do this visit your Google Apps dashboard by following Manage this domain from Gmail. Scroll down to the Service Settings section where you will find Capsule listed and follow the View and grant access link: Then accept the new data access requirements by following the Grant data access link. It can take up to 10 minutes for the gadget to propagate through Google's caches and appear in your account so hold tight if it doesn't appear straight away. Here's just a sample of the positive feedback we've had from users of the gadget: The gadget is phenomenal. If we had known about this beforehand, we would not have hesitated to use Capsule. It's a gamechanger for our business. I think Capsule just gave me the excuse I needed to finally ditch Outlook! This is great productivity tool. Really integrates your email with Capsule It has by far pushed the use of Capsule here to a higher level due to the simplicity of connecting the emails to the contacts and opportunities. We hope you find this addition useful. Thanks as always to our beta testers and customers on uservoice for their feedback and suggestions on this....
- Capsule contextual gadget for Gmail - Story From: The Capsule CRM Blog One of the projects we've been busy with recently is the development of a Gmail contextual gadget. A Gmail contextual gadget is a gadget that is triggered by clues in Gmail, such as the contents of Subject lines and email ...
Categories: CRM, CRM Software Free Trial, Infusionsoft CRM
Tags: CRM, CRM Software Free Trial
May 1st, 2012
I just love all the time and attention that our clients and consultants are giving to user adoption these days. Ten years ago, we consultants used to have to describe user adoption to our clients, explain that it was their single greatest risk for project failure, and try to convince them that the efforts built into our budget and project plan to facilitate adoption were indeed vitally important to the success of their project.
But it seems we've turned a corner in the last few years, and I'm finding more openness to that conversation on recent projects. While this new openness is real progress - and it's comforting to find in our industry - the practical steps of assessing and addressing threats to solid user adoption remain obscure to many project teams.
Here are five data points that I think are worth evaluation for every CRM user audience. If we can assess and address each of these five issues early and often, building user adoption into our project lifecycle as a separate and distinct discipline, the total risk of CRM project failure will drop significantly.
1. Digital Natives vs. Digital Immigrants
A guy named Marc Prensky coined these terms back in 2001. Kudos to him! The "digital divide" is of primary concern to a CRM project team. If our users are totally comfortable with technology, our job in designing software that is easy to use, and training users to perform specific tasks, is that much easier. But let's not think in terms of black and white; it is useful to consider both the median, and the lowest reasonable or acceptable, techno-savvy represented among our intended CRM user audience. Next, let's allow that assessment to constrain and inform our design and training efforts throughout the project. (For more information on educating across the digital divide, see Marc's website at http://marcprensky.com.)
2. Collaborative and Virtual Workspaces
Has your user audience been working with data silos, or are they accustomed to the "pile on" nature of shared content and data? Facebook is a great example of a very pedestrian collaborative virtual environment. If your soon-to-be CRM users have lived their entire corporate careers working one user at a time on data stored in Excel spreadsheets, you may need to help them along the capability maturity model to realize that when CRM is introduced, they will be sharing data with many other users. How do they perceive that change? It may scare them, and it is your task to calm, soothe, and reassure them that a collaborative workspace is a positive change.
3. Relational Databases
Many of us take for granted the ability to watch as another colleague diagrams boxes and lines on a whiteboard, labelling the connections with one-to-many, many-to-one, and many-to-many tags that are in fact meaningless and complex to non-tecnical users. Your user audience may understand parent/child relationships within data sets when they are presented in the form of a report or print out, but may need your help translating that logical heirarchy onto the screen of a living, breathing, feature-rich CRM application. Don't take your own intelligence for granted. As CRM implementation consultants, it is our responsibility to close the gap between our soon-to-be CRM users and the nuances of the new software. Don't blame them if the relationship of a Contact to an Account is not second nature to them - they're new to the system. Look in the mirror - you built the thing.
4. Points of Pain
Moving away from the technical abilities of users, let's consider their expectations vs. what you are actually going to deliver. CRM users assume that you have made a promise to them - whether or not you have explicitly verbalized that commitment. They assume that if their company is investing time and money in this new system, that that same new system should make their lives substantially easier. It should provide a net gain in productivity for them. This is an entirely distinct user adoption risk that deserves serious consideration. For each user that will log into CRM, specifically which of their daily points of pain do you intend to eliminate in exchange for their daily use of the system? (Read more...)
Categories: Webfortis
Tags: CRM, Microsoft, Webfortis
May 1st, 2012
Pardot & Hubspot Price and Feature Checklist
Pardot and Hubspot are two of the best selling marketing automation products in the world for good reason. They offer features that other marketing automation solutions don’t, they’ve established proven track records, and new users are quick to learn the software.
As the public grows increasingly aware of the benefits behind marketing automation, the demand for information about the software is rising. That’s why BrainSell has created a “Price and Feature Checklist” between these two powerhouse solutions.
- Price
- Mobile access
- Integration features
- File hosting
- Software limitation
- Support and training
Are all addressed in this price & feature checklist. If you’re trying to efficiently create more leads and a better ROI, then marketing automation is an extremely viable option. If you want to know more about two of the best marketing automation products on the market, then download this checklist now!
And don’t forget to to stay up to date on all industry news, whitepapers, blog posts, and more!
Categories: Blogs, Brainsell, Hubspot
Tags: Brainsell
May 1st, 2012
Each of our workplace experts has weighed in on the following question from a reader to give you four points of view. Here’s the question, with our experts’ responses below:
I started my first real job about a year ago and have a good rapport with my coworkers (as is necessary when working in a collaborative work environment). However, there is one, we’ll call him “Fred,” who is causing me some stress. Fred will frequently slam his keyboard into his desk, loudly curse, and generally disrupt the workplace environment. I never feel personally threatened, but it is disruptive and unprofessional. Fred and another coworker started dating last year, which led to a good amount of office drama, and their subsequent breakup (police were involved), led to more office drama that I cannot even begin to recount while keeping this brief.
Fred has been reported to HR several times, but most recently he was sent home because of a fight with his ex-girlfriend/coworker. This led to a meeting with HR and he may or may not be back tomorrow, depending on their decision. In the meantime, our boss has told us that if at any time we feel that our work environment is not safe, secure, professional, or positive, we are more than welcome to go talk to him and voice our concerns. My main question now is, in the event that Fred returns to the office, what is the difference between complaining about Fred’s workplace habits (again, I never feel threatened) and keeping our boss informed about the workplace environment? Where is that line drawn? I worry that if I go talk to our boss about him (or any other concerns I may have), that I will be seen as a complainer and a tattler. Can you help me figure out that line?
In general, I would refrain from complaining to your boss about your co-workers, because it will usually make you look immature and/or gossipy. The fact that you are a recent grad underscores this point. In this case, though, it sounds like your boss has purposely opened the lines of communication about Fred, so assuming HR doesn’t send Fred packing immediately, I think you could say something like: “You mentioned that you wanted us to keep you informed about what’s going on with Fred, and I’m still pretty concerned about him. What do you think is the appropriate way to respond when he says/does A, B, C?” In this way, you are keeping your comments professional while showing empathy and asking for guidance, and you will likely protect your manager’s opinion of you.
Whether you should do this or not depends on how much the situation is eating at you. Some people who are less caring might just let it go since what’s happening with Fred doesn’t affect them directly, but based on the fact that you wrote in with this question and are saying you feel stressed, it seems that it’s bothering you enough that action would make sense.
I think Alexandra’s answer is right on, but I have another concern. Because you don’t have a lot of workplace experience, you might not recognize some of the warning signs of a more serious threat. I’ve worked with someone who had similar behavior – loud cursing and fits of temper – I can tell you this is not a situation you want to take lightly.
Research shows that employees who recently have been disciplined, have an inability to control outbursts and have disagreements with co-workers are much more likely to become violent at work. Too often we hear about tragic consequences at work because no one recognized the warning signs and took the necessary steps to secure the workplace against violence.
At the very least, you need to express some concerns about Fred. Don’t dismiss this as an overreaction and at least visit with your boss or human resources and ask them what steps they’re taking to ensure your safety. Even though you may feel no personal threat right now, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. If one day he escalates his anger, you don’t want to be anywhere around.
I love Alexandra’s suggestion to phrase this as a request (Read more...)
Categories: Intuit QuickBase
Tags: Intuit QuickBase, QuickBase
May 1st, 2012
Traditional sales organizations tend to think of email marketing in terms of nurturing client relationships, newsletters, etc.
Especially for B2B sales pros, emails seem to be superfluous and run the risk of annoying valued prospects and customers.
Of course, there are plenty of good reasons to succumb to these fears but, in a world where customers’ attention is their scarcest resource, wise sales teams take advantage of all the communication mediums they can.
What makes and email campaign effective? There can be plenty of answers but, there should be two core goals of any campaign…
- Motivate the right prospects or customers to take the desired action
- Build a relationship of trust with prospects and customers
No email campaign will yield 100% success in motivating the desired behavior (request a quote, schedule a demo, talk to an account manager or make a purchase) but, even those that choose not to act should be left with a feeling they were treated with respect, their needs were understood and a respect for the expertise of you and your company.
A simple formula for creating a strong campaign that achieves these goals and more is to start with the end goal in mind – what is the desired action of the prospect? – and work backwards from there to develop copy, content, subject lines, etc.
Create a call to action that speaks to the inner needs or pain of the prospect – use “Click here to Relieve Back Pain” instead of “Set an Appointment Today”.
Then write your email with that “pain” in mind – highlight it. For more complex products and services, ask yourself “Do my prospects typically already understand the type of service we provide and it’s ability to address the “pain”? If not, then the email should focus on the pain, highlight how it’s costing time, money, energy, etc. and make the call to action an educational report or whitepaper or a video – “3 ways to stop overspending on Internet service”.
If deciding on the desired action is the obstacle, ask yourself what most commonly motivates customers to contact your customers? What do they want or need badly enough to call and ask to talk to a sales person? That’s the pain your call to action should correlate with.
If there are more than one answer to that question, write several emails. Now you have a campaign!
Remember, not communicating with emails is a missed opportunity. Your sales team has limited time and resources. Leveraging email to allow the most qualified prospects to “self-identify” can maximize the productivity of your team.
Related posts:
- SalesNexus Announces Free Webinar – 7 Easy Ways Sales Teams Win with Email Marketing
- Email Marketing for Sales Teams – Buyer Beware!
- LeadFerret and SalesNexus Combine Free Leads with Powerful Sales CRM and Email Marketing
Categories: Marketing, Web Based CRM
Tags: CRM, SalesNexus, SalesNexus CRM
April 30th, 2012
...or, mastering the black art of URL hacking the email page.
Sending an email from Salesforce.com can be a clicky operation. You dig around for the Send An Email button, click it, click Select Template, find your template and click it, maybe type some more stuff in the email, and finally click Send. That's a lot of clicks, especially for organizations where they just use the same template over and over. Well, the good news is that you can make this a much less clicky operation by making a custom button which changes the URL parameters. Technically URL-hacking is not supported by Salesforce.com, and it's technically not a supported API, so be forewarned -- but when you're on a quest to reduce clicks, you gotta do what you gotta do.
So let's say you have a template that you usually use for Cases which contains some pleasantries and then a merge field that adds in the text of any related Solutions. If you've not used Email Templates much before, by the way, have a look at the sample template entitled "SUPPORT: Case Response with Solution (SAMPLE)" -- it does just what I've described here. Anyway, what you'll want to do is make a custom button that preselects this template. It's quite simple really.
- The first thing you'll need to do is get the ID of the template you want to use. This can be found by finding the template via Setup->Communication Templates->Email Templates. Click on it and look in the URL -- you'll see an ID up there that looks like 00X30000000rNM0 (which may be followed by a ? with some other parameters -- ignore that stuff, just take the 15-character ID that starts with 00X). Copy that ID into Notepad or someplace where you can get to it later.
- Now go to Case and create a Custom Button -- let's call it Email Solution. Set its Behavior to Execute Javascript and its Display Type to Detail Page Button. In the Javascript area add this line of code, replacing the <your template here> with the ID of the template you saved earlier: location.replace('/email/author/emailauthor.jsp?retURL=/{!Case.Id}&p3_lkid={!Case.Id}&rtype=003&p2_lkid={!Case.ContactId}&template_id=<your template here>');
- Now add this custom button to your Case page layout, and voila, you have a one-click button that will bring up your email complete with template.
But wait, there's more!
To this we can actually add a few more bells and whistles.
By default the Send An Email page likes to BCC the sender. Many call center agents I talk to find this rather annoying. With the addition of another URL parameter to our custom button, we can stop it from BCCing anyone. The parameter is p5, so our new code would be:
location.replace('/email/author/emailauthor.jsp?retURL=/{!Case.Id}&p3_lkid={!Case.Id}&rtype=003&p2_lkid={!Case.ContactId}&template_id=<your template here>&p5=');
Notice at the end there the "&p5=" -- that sets the BCC area to empty.
But what if you just want to send the email in one click with no edits?
Well, you can do that too, with -- you guessed it -- one more URL parameter: the save parameter. If I take the above code and add a save=1 to it, then when I click the button, the email will just be sent, and the Case page will refresh itself to indicate that an email was sent:
location.replace('/email/author/emailauthor.jsp?retURL=/{!Case.Id}&p3_lkid={!Case.Id}&rtype=003&p2_lkid={!Case.ContactId}&template_id=<yourtemplate here>&p5=&save=1');
And what if you want to change the From address?
You may have noticed that if you have Email To Case enabled with some routing addresses, or if you've modified the email address in the My Email Settings page in the Personal Information area of Setup, that when you go to send an email you have a choice of From addresses. You can default this From address too!
The From address is just another parameter in the URL -- it's p26. So taking our earlier example, let's add a From address default:
location.replace('/email/author/emailauthor.jsp?retURL=/{!Case.Id}&p3_lkid={!Case.Id}&rtype=003&p2_lkid={!Case.ContactId}&template_id=<yourtemplate here>&p26=me@mydomain.com');
Note that the p26 default will only work for items that are actually in that From address list.
And that ends today's lesson on email buttons.
Happy emailing!
Categories: Salesforce CRM
Tags: CRM, DreamForce, Salesforce CRM, salesforce.com
