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.…

Email With CRM inside; A Must Have For Sales People Who Live In Email

Posted on April 25, 2013 by Hari Murali

So you managed to set up this fantastic Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application, which is without a doubt helping your sales team close more deals faster. But then, it dawns on you that some of your sales people are still obsessed with using Email for exchanging messages.

The more you notice them spending time in keeping the two tools in sync, you get this nagging feeling that maybe your Email service and CRM should interact with each other?

Let’s face it. It is an irrefutable fact that we are all still obsessed with checking and responding through Email even amidst the burst of social media channels. You simply cannot write it off, particularly as a communication medium for business. Trying to treat CRM and Email as two exclusive tools, is probably not too prudent.

In our view, as a provider of online business apps that include an award winning CRM and ads-free business email service, the stance to take is not CRM or Email, it is CRM and Email, integrated with each other.…

Just in: Zoho CRM Web Forms and Button Element for Zoho Sites

Posted on December 17, 2012 by Preethi.varma

Website is the face of every business while CRM is the backbone. As a measure to link them both, we now have Zoho CRM web forms integrated with Zoho Sites.

All the customization is done in one place where the data is stored. With such integrated Website-CRM system, you will have streamlined and up-to-date information of Contacts, Cases and Leads at your disposal. You will be better prepared to make decisions for successful negotiations with customers. Here’s all the help you need.

Another significant feature that we are announcing today is the button element. The button element enables you to create call-to-action buttons that link to any other page, thereby making the links prominent.

Try them right away!…

Just Keeping Up with People is Key to Growing Revenue

Posted on October 23, 2012 by David Spark

“If you don’t utilize CRM you lose everything. It’s so difficult to keep up with people. Not only in your own company but everyone you’re dealing with on a day to day basis. It’s imperative,” said William “Brimstone” Kucmierowski, President and Co-Founder of Hound Comics, a media company that not only publishes comics, but also cookbooks, TV programming, and lots more.

In my interview with Kucmierowski and his partner, Eddie “Luscious” Castillo, at the Small Business Expo in New York, Kucmierowski schooled Castillo as to what CRM actually is. He explained that CRM puts all the people you deal with on a regular basis in one place so you can actually manage them.

Kucmierowski has been a longtime avid CRM user. He was first a devotee of the desktop application ACT, but now he’s moved his CRM operations into the cloud.…

Hey, What Are You Going to Do with All Those Business Cards?

Posted on September 20, 2012 by David Spark

A stack of business cards can be a daunting project, that’s if you don’t know what to do with them. At the Small Business Expo in New York, I met up with an attendee, Ben Pianko, who was starting his own photography business, Benz Lenz. He had a badge holder filled with business cards, so I asked him what he was going to do with all of them. He wasn’t familiar with Customer Relationship Management, CRM, so you won’t be surprised as to what I obviously suggested.…