Salestrakr Blog

Trying out a New Service

I've been trying out a new service here at Salestrakr.  It's called Edocr.  Edocr takes your marketing materials (ones your provide), coverts them to "Flashpaper" and notifies Google and other search engines.  It also "tweets" their availability using your own Twitter account.  It also provides embed code so you can easily make the Flashpaper version available on your blog.  So, here goes.  Take a look at the brochure below.

http://www.edocr.com/doc/5519/salestrakr-simple-powerful 

http://swf.edocr.com/a83a814b92111859eed9eff1be21bb4445aba65c.swf

Can You Apply Gitomer's 12.5 Steps To CRM?

I read this blog by Jeffrey Gitomer today where he talks about commitments and 12.5 points to live up to them.  He's concerned that his 6 foot tall frame has gone from weighing 135 pounds early in his early years to just over 200 pounds today.  I thought I was reading a blog post I may have written.  I am that tall and did weigh 135 and now find myself at 200.  Just like Jeffrey, I want to weigh less than 180.

In reality though, Jeffrey is a Sales Coach extraordinaire.  His 12.5 points are really for how you can improve your business and sales performance.  Here are his 12.5 points:

1. Today, not tomorrow. Tomorrow never comes, especially where change or breaking a habit is concerned.
2. Develop a passion or an anger about your present situation. The only way to make the goal a reality is to get determined and create the inner energy.
3. Do it for the most important person in the world…YOU! Don’t do this for or against anyone but yourself.
4. Write down your exact plan. Detail both the actions you must take, and the rewards for achievement.
5. Set a time frame. The end is as important as the beginning.
6. Determine the daily dose. Just figure out what you need to achieve each day, and do that.
7. Look for substitutes (placebos or pacifiers). If you have to quit something, get a diversion to take your mind off of temptation.
8. Don’t quit just because you slip. If you fall off the (achievement) wagon, get back on.
9. Post your goals and achievements. Post-it note your goals on your bathroom mirror. After you achieve them, take them down and post them on your bedroom mirror. Look at your success every day.
10. It’s a day-by-day process. And if you do your daily bit-of-achievement, the passing weeks will bring you the prize.
11. Change other habits, so that one is not overpowering the other. Goals require change. Take the opportunity to make a few more.
12. Celebrate your victory. Ring bells, drink champagne from the winners cup, PARTY!
12.5 Grim reality is having a crisis occur that forces the commitment to be made. This can be anywhere from bombing the World Trade Center, to having a massive heart attack. Where crisis is not the best place to have commitment occur, it is certainly the best place to show how to take immediate action.

You need to interact with your CRM application searching for contacts, reviewing your sales opportunities, logging calls and assigning key tasks.  Don't sit on the real value of your business as 2010 approaches.  

Read it all at http://bit.ly/8HsseU.

Do Your Business Anywhere

I've written before about the usefulness of a Skype subscription.  I have a Skype World subscription and can call both land and mobile lines anywhere in the US, Canada, China, Singapore and Thailand.  Plus, I can call landlines in 38 other countries at no additional charge.  Not bad for $12.95 to Skype each month.  Of course, using Salestrakr with Skype on my laptop is the perfect combination.  I find who I want to speak with in Salestrakr, click on their phone number, slide on my digital headset and make a phone call. 

Even more interesting though are the places I can setup shop.  Salestrakr is completely online.  So, no need to ensure my contacts are synchronized.  I can setup wherever I can find internet access and do business.  Here are some of the places, other than my office, that I operate Salestrakr and reach my clients and prospects:

• Starbucks.  I have a T-Mobile HotSpot account that works at almost 7,000 Starbucks.  If you have AT&T Internet Access at home, you can use wifi at no additional charge at Starbucks.
• Caribou Coffee.  Wifi is free at Caribou
• McDonalds.  Starting in 2010, wifi at over 11,000 McDonalds will be FREE.  It's already free at the McCafe store near my house.
• Hilton Garden Inns.  Free access in the lobby.

There are though some new concepts that are better for business people

• Roam Atlanta.  Think of a Starbucks without the kids, the coffee grinders and cool music.  Roam has offices you can use either for a fee or for free if you have a "subscription".  I wish these were all over.  Offices have back lit glass whiteboards and LCD televisions with VGA cables for presentations from your laptop.  Include a full kitchen and the ability to host functions (with a full bar) and you've got a place for business people to work.  Just need them all over the US.  http://www.roamatlanta.com/
• Regus Business Lounges.  Not quite as full featured as Roam, but definitely with great facilities, good Internet access and over 1,000 locations worldwide.  http://www.regus.com/businessworld/businesslounges.html

Referral Marketing, How to Shorten Sales Cycles

Attached is an article by Tony Rushin at Harvest Business Advisors.  In it are some key ways you can shorted your sales cycle by employing referral marketing techniques.  Having sold technology products for a long time, I always prefer to speak with someone who already knows about what I'm selling, knows why it's good for them and likes someone I know.  

Referral Marketing Article

Email Blasts and CRM

Salestrakr provides email capabilities directly within the service enabling you to find a contact, click on their email address and pull up a dialog box for an outbound mail.  And when you want to find a select group to email, you can use advanced search to find that particular group that may benefit from a specific message.  But, if you want to send out hundreds or even thousands of emails..............better get the right tool for the right purpose.  Salestrakr isn't an email blaster.  What applications or services do this well?  Below are a few to consider:

• Constant Contact - A very popular online service that allows you to send simple emails, newsletters, surveys and event notifications to a large list of addresses.  Salestrakr uses Constant Contact.
• MailChimp - A very easy to use online service developed by former Georgia Tech "Rocket Science Group" folks
• VerticalReponse - Lots of customers, easy to use, completely online.

These online services though would prefer you don't refer to their services as "Email Blast" services.  In fact, they are quite firm in their demand that you not spam people.  Yes, you can reach your constituents and lots of them.  But, the terms of service for these companies require that your list be populated with the email addresses of people who have opted-in to our list.  That is, they have requested to receive your emails destined for many people.

How can you use Salestrakr with these services?  Your initial list can be created by an export from Salestrakr.  Further, your email replies can be forwarded to a Salestrakr dropbox.

Don't let email marketing scare you.  It can play a big part in your marketing plan.  Use it too much though and you may turn people off.  Use it too little and people may ask "what's this?".

Small Features, Big Impact

Our development cycle never ends.  We are always improving, either due to items we've added to our wish list or those items requested by customers.  We've made a few updates that will help all Salestrakr users gain more value out of the service.

Here they are:

- We have more fields on our business address.  You can now more easily enter a suite number or perhaps a floor number.  The link to Google Maps is there too.  Your entries here will show on the business card just as you type it in the fields.  This is helpful as some of our customers in other parts of the world list floor numbers or even building names to identify their location.

 - Our next update was the stretchable Details field in the "Opportunity" box.  This enables you to see all Details you've entered in an opportunity.  We've also added a "next step" field.  This too is stretchable.  Customers use this to show status and required next steps for a given opportunity.

 - We've corrected our tagging mechanism such that a tag that is no longer used now disappears from the tag cloud allowing for easier "housekeeping" of your tags/keywords.

 - Our pipeline report now has more information at your fingertips.  Now when you see a list of opportunities in a given stage, you can click on 2 new icons. One allows you to pull up the specific opportunity (to make changes or just see the information.)  The other allows you to open up a new browser tab or window with a report for that specific opportunity.  Once open, you can print the opportunity for use in meetings or reports.  See the graphic below.

Give these a try and tell us what you think!