Why Sales Is Still Missing From Social CRM. Umberto Milletti is the CEO of InsideView, the social CRM application which brings comprehensive sales intelligence gained from social media and traditional sources directly into any CRM platform for increased sales productivity and revenue.
We’ve all heard the stories about the big deals closed on the golf course or at the steakhouse, but these tales are starting to belong more in episodes of Mad Men than in today’s business environment. Today’s sales professionals operate less from the fairway and more online and by phone. Indeed, CRM, email, and web conferencing have become the ubiquitous productivity portals for all customer-facing professionals. However, with the efficiencies and cost effectiveness of such virtual work platforms has also come a dramatic reduction in the actual relationship time needed to conduct the inherently interpersonal business of selling.
What has taken sales so long to catch up, and what now needs to be done? Learning From Marketing and Customer Service Dr. Social Business and The Age of Infrastructure. It’s inevitable that in many discussions of social media and social business development, someone will ask: What’s the next big thing?
What happens now? The next big thing isn’t big at all. Well, at least in terms of flashiness or bombastic, noisy fanfare. It’s not even likely to be sexy. If you care about where social is going next, it’s time to get your sleeves rolled up and dig in. There is and always be a bleeding edge for things, and people that somehow manage to make their livings and livelihoods from predicting what that edge will look and feel like. In the next year to five years, we’re going to be having conversations about things like: Human Resources.
I <3 SOCIAL MEDIA » Blog Archive » Infographic: The Value of Social Commerce. Eight reasons why 2011 is the year of mobile commerce. There are anticipated technologies that, despite capturing the imagination of technophiles, analysts and journalists, seem to just never arrive as soon as one expects or hope.
Mobile commerce and mobile wallets are good examples. Year after year, the vision and ambition are strong but the execution and usage is weak. However, there are a number of reasons to expect that 2011 is the year that a tipping point in the use of mobile phones as the ultimate shopping enabler becomes reality. The idea of turning your mobile smartphone into a mobile wallet is an appealing one. There is no device that spends as much time in our personal proximity than a mobile phone, much more than wallets. What could be nicer than using the intelligence of a smartphone to enable all of the purchases we make today with our wallets?
However there are eight very good reasons to expect significant changes this year that during 2011 will take us much closer to a broader mainstream adoption by users and retailers.