When a breadth of plausible explanations for a phenomenon is available, Occam’s razor reminds us that the simplest, most succinct explanation is the best one.   Kodak was placed in a similar situation in 2006 after a series of acquisitions created a range of different sales management tools. After integrating these acquisitions into their Graphic Communications Gropu (GCG), Kodak realized that it was using different quoting tools, pricing practices, polices, and procedures to sell to the same customer base.  Because Kodak was already pleased with their CRM and ERP systems, they found no reason to replace their entire system. They needed a system that was functional enough to exist in their... read more »

You have questions. We have answers! Ask our team of B2B sales experts about your current challenges in the inquiry-to-order process and learn how you can sell more and sell faster with product configuration, workflow approvals, and proposal generation. How do your customers access your product catalog? How do your customers access your configuration capabilities? What channels do you utalize for sales: direct, sales reps and channel sellers? What features do you offer such as shopping carts, product comparisons and customer reviews? read more »

  Riding the Metra for work each day, it is clear that the times have changed simply by observing the other rider’s habits. Long are the days of newspapers and books (well, at least in hard copy) and taking over are laptops, tablets, and smart phones. All of which are being used for a multitude of tasks from personal to business and everything in between. These devices have not only changed the way we do business but the requirements for doing business. It is rare to find any manager or executive without a smart phone attached to them with a constant stream of work emails coming in, or a sales person without their laptop finishing up a proposal for clients. This new heavy reliance on... read more »

Graduation season is upon us. For many, that means begrudgingly buying pen sets and heading off to the less-than-likable in-laws’ house to celebrate their son or daughter’s achievement in all things entering the real world.  For the graduates themselves, however, this will eventually end in a frightening realization: Much of what they learned in school will not directly apply to their first “real” job and they will have to face the uphill battle of learning the ropes there before they can begin to succeed. A number of these new graduates will likely move on to work in the business world finding themselves in jobs such as sales.  The biggest hurdle to true success in sales positions, however,... read more »

            You have nearly finalized a huge sale. The hard work is done, the customer knows what he wants, and the price has been agreed upon. When you get the signature, it’s payday – but the deal can still fall through. You need to lock it down with a killer proposal, but building it out takes a lot of time: writing a cover letter from scratch, copying in all the customer information and pricing data for the quote, branding it with a customer logo, finding the applicable terms and conditions, adding any visual aids and then double checking to make sure everything’s correct. After the exhausting process is complete, you still run a high risk of error and the quality of the final product... read more »

  It seems like there is always some new kind of marketing trend each day.  Between tagging, tweeting, commenting, blogging and joining groups, it seems easy for your business to get lost in the jumble of things. As a social media addict, I at times lose hours to my habit/addiction. But social media marketing should not be one of them.  Social media is a great way to get word out about your business and its capabilities.  Whether it’s through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or any other social media outlet, word spreads around and it is a great way to make connections and network with others in your industry.  As opposed to traditional marketing strategies like advertisements through different... read more »

2.6 seconds left.  Down by 1.  A spot in the National Championship on the line.  It all comes down to a full-court pass and making an open shot.  We all remember the epic 1992 East Regional Final game when Duke miraculously came back from a deficit and beat Kentucky in the final seconds of the game.  But that last-second, buzzer-beater shot he took was more than just luck.  It was well-planned.  Every play has been thought out and practiced before being executed on the court.  Without good planning, training, practicing and the right tools, each team would be unable to continue on in the bracket.  With the chance of either going home or staying in the tournament, a team and its members... read more »

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that much has changed since my grandfather’s sales days. Back then, he would travel to customers and prospects with a heavy bag of products so he could demonstrate how the product worked and interacted with its various components. Over the years, sales professionals started to move away from this approach – in part due to the back breaking pain it caused. Instead, some started to carry paper catalogs. While not as heavy to carry, these were (and still are) pricey and much more difficult to use for new and existing customers in terms of visualizing how the product actually worked. Today, sales professionals have a new sales bag – the iPad. With the third... read more »

This is a re-post from www.bigmachines.com: BigMachines announced that its BigMachines 11 release has achieved Oracle Database Ready status through Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN), demonstrating that BigMachines has fully tested and supports its product on the Oracle Database 11g Release 2. BigMachines is a Gold level member of Oracle PartnerNetwork.Oracle Database Ready is part of the Oracle Exastack Ready program, which allows partners such as BigMachines to be recognized by Oracle for developing, testing and tuning their applications on the latest component products of Oracle Exadata Database Machine or Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud engineered systems. Oracle Database 11g offers BigMachines... read more »