Customer Spotlight: Migrating from Salesforce to Z-CRM Saves Young Company Huge Money

Posted on May 17, 2013 by Arun

“It all started with Jim Cramer.”

For those of you unfamiliar with Jim Cramer, he is a popular American television personality, former hedge fund manager, and host of CNBC’s Mad Money.

As Indigenous Corporate Training Inc. (ICT) founder and CEO Bob Joseph tells the story, “Years ago, I was watching Mad Money and he was pushing Sales Force’s CRM solution. I knew we were at the point in our company growth where we needed a good CRM solution and one that could accommodate our growth. So, from Cramer’s recommendation we began our customer relationship management with Sales Force.”

Soon however, Joseph realized that Cramer’s recommendation was not suitable for ICT…

The Business

ICT is a global training company committed to working collaboratively with regional, national, and international clients to provide a broad range of performance improvement training services geared specifically at helping individuals and organizations to work effectively with Indigenous Peoples.…

Customer Spotlight: Using Automated Workflows in Z-CRM to Save HOURS Everyday

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Arun

When BrightWise Marketing first opened its doors over 12 years ago, CEO Jeff Gordon knew that CRM was of utmost importance in creating a positive customer experience and helping the new company grow. Gordon selected a popular CRM solution at the time and “made due” for several years before realizing that the current approach wasn’t working. “We had been talking about getting a real CRM solution for 6 or 7 months because our current CRM tool was simply not cutting it.”

Having used the same CRM tool for several years, Gordon was looking for a CRM solution that he could easily import data into, quickly learn to use, and automate many of his daily tasks.

The Business

BrightWise was started in 1992 by CEO Jeff Gordon to provide marketing consulting services to small and medium sized businesses. Gordon refers to his marketing strategy as “action marketing.”

BrightWise’s strategy is to provide innovative strategies that generate response, change behavior, and build brand equity. They focus on marketing programs that blend promotion, advertising, direct response, visual communications, branded products, and alternative media.…

Customer Spotlight: Zoho CRM Transforms the Way a Business Tracks Customers AND Equipment

Posted on May 3, 2013 by Arun

In 1999, Chester Hull saw a major opportunity in the consulting industry. As an ordinary consumer, Hull began to take notice of how frequently he was put on hold when calling companies for support, inquiries, or product information, and how often the experience was relatively unpleasant.

“How long will I be on hold for? Why is the ‘hold music’ so awful? When will I reach a real person to talk to?!”

Hull seized the opportunity to address this common customer pain and started his company Prosound to alleviate this pain. His goal was to work with companies around the globe to offer an amazing customer phone experience.

For the first seven years of business, Prosound tracked its customers with spreadsheets and various database programs. As the customer base grew, so did the data that needed tracking. Additionally, the aspect of mobile integration offered a valuable opportunity for Prosound which was impossible with the current customer tracking approach. Hull decided that if Prosound wanted to take business to the next level, he needed flexible CRM solution with mobile integration.…

Using CRM to Automatically Manage Basic Sales Tasks

Posted on August 20, 2012 by David Spark

Since 2008, Johnny Shami, Sales Director at AdLift has been a customer of Zoho. Prior to that time, he lived in an offline world of contact management and CRM. Plus, all his information was split among different applications: Excel, Word, and even paper. He was constantly asking the typical sales questions such as “What’s my pipeline for this month and next month?” and “What do I need to follow up on?”

It was a world of limited access of information for him, and more so for his team. Once he moved online with Zoho that all changed.

Now that applications are integrated and everyone has access via an online CRM system, Shami says he can complete all the sales 101 tasks he couldn’t complete before such as assigning tasks, finding pipeline information for any month, and seeing how each sales person is performing.

Today, everyone has access to Zoho and Shami’s wasted hours hunting down information has been reduced dramatically.…

The CRM You Use is the One You Love

Posted on August 9, 2012 by David Spark

After working with a string of dreadful non-intuitive CRM applications, young entrepreneur Tara Berthier, President of Speakers Boutique, recently discovered Zoho CRM, the first CRM application she actually loves using every single day.

The business

For her six years out of college, Tara Berthier (@tberthier) has worked at a string of speakers agencies, Speakers Spotlight and the National Speakers Bureau. Just a year ago she started TLB Talent and last month she launched Speakers Boutique, a speakers agency with offices in Toronto and Halifax, Ontario Canada.

A troublesome history with CRM applications

Berthier was introduced to CRM applications right out of college. They were a must for any speakers agency that not only have to manage talent, but also customers and prospective customers.

First job out of school was at the National Speakers Bureau where they used a CRM application called Maximizer.…

Has Your CRM Application Changed Your Life?

Posted on July 20, 2012 by David Spark

After undergoing an exhaustive search of CRM applications, Deborah Morelli, Account Executive for Interbank Mortgage Company landed on one CRM tool that has changed her life and she’s vowed to take it wherever she goes.

Business:

On a daily basis, Deborah Morelli, Account Executive for Interbank Mortgage Company, must manage 40 to 50 accounts with mortgage brokers across 20 states while also looking through 200 to 2000 different leads.

The Challenge:

Morelli used to manage all her accounts through Outlook. It was a mess. She forgot people’s names, couldn’t discern key contacts within a group, and she forgot to return phone calls.

“Keeping track of them within Outlook just doesn’t work for me,” said Morelli. “I found myself disorganized, losing business, not servicing my clients very well, and I was just desperate.”

Competitive analysis of CRM:

Morelli wanted to be more organized so she started to do some research on CRM.…

A Proper CRM Tool is Necessary to Create a Sales-Based Company

Posted on June 20, 2012 by David Spark

To build a fast growing company like SpamExperts, CMO Nils Decker needed a CRM tool that converted his technology-only company into a sales-driven company.

Business

Back in 2005, two university friends of Nils Decker launched SpamExperts, a company that had built a new technology for filtering out spam.

While they had a great technology, they had no plans to build revenue as they didn’t know who their customers should be. That’s why the founders asked Nils Decker to join their company as CMO to determine who they should be their target market. By 2008, SpamExperts had found their niche: ISPs and webhosting providers.

Challenge

Decker’s challenge was to turn this technology into a company that was driven by sales. To do that he would need customers. To get customers he would need prospects. To convert prospects to customers would require management of that relationship.…