CRM Talk

118 Always Be Video Closing

Sam and Steve are joined by Jon Richards of Evolve Video Marketing. We discuss today's buyer, using video in the sales process, how digital sales rooms work, and getting salespeople to adopt tools like OneMob.

117 Ross Simmonds of Foundation Marketing

Steve and Sam interview Ross Simmonds, the leading authority on content distribution and using AI in marketing.

116 Quote-to-Crypto

Steve and Sam discuss quote-to-cash (Q2C) solutions that enable sales teams to quickly generate quotes and receive more orders. They cover use cases for field and desk-based sales, components like CPQ and eSignature integrations, rule-based guidance, and vendor solutions from Conga to MobileForce. Also discussed are sales scenarios with frequent pricing changes, needed integrations, and evaluating vendors based on industry-specific requirements.

115 Your Perfect AI Self

AI-generated summary In this episode, Sam and Steve discuss the benefits of podcasting for marketing versus blogging, based on data showing more people per podcast than per blog. It then covers a survey showing that most marketers are using at least some AI to generate blog content, with the risk of too much AI hurting search rankings.  Sam and Steve agree AI is best for outlines and some after-the-fact SEO optimization, while human-written content ranks better. They discuss various uses...

114 Is SEO Dead?

Steve and Sam talk about the state of SEO in the context of CRM and leads.

113 CRM AI Use Cases

Sam and Steve discuss CRM AI use cases for sales, marketing, customer service, customization & configuration, data migration & integration, analytics, and automations.

112 Dumbed Down By AI

Sam & Steve forget how to think on their own, Enterprise AI megatrends, using ChatGPT for CRM test cases and test data

111 Generative CRM & Marketing

Tech layoffs, low-code development, ChatGPT in marketing, social media marketing

110 How Low Can You Code?

CRM and CRM-related news & information for April 2022.

109 Scott Eller of Neuraswitch

Steve and Sam talk to Scott Eller, Chief Relationship Officer & Co-founder of Neuraswitch about transcription, redaction, and sentiment analysis.

108 Skynet Marketing

A rundown of current marketing & sales AIs.

107 Mathematical CRM Failure

Sam and Steve talk about enforcing security for remote work, COVID's effect on shared workspaces, hindsight 2020 COVID predictions, Creatio's unique approach to a virtual conference, Sam's mathematical mindset around phased implementation, Salesforce sunsetting the Legacy Workflow Builder, the use cases for low code, integration uptime, people not reading iHateCRM.com, HubSpot's biggest product announcements, handling CRM custom objects, Snowflake, and Destination CRM's 2021 CRM Industry Awa...

106 Kevin Snow of Time On Target

Steve and Sam interview Kevin Snow, CEO of Time on Target, sales expert, and technology geek, about CRM implementation challenges, introverted salespeople, accurate sales forecasting, and more. #InternationalPodcastDay

105 Andy Zambito of Creatio

Andy Zambito, Chief Sales Officer, Americas at Creatio, joins Sam & Steve to talk about process management, CRM, digital transformation, low-code, tailored experiences, differentiation, speed of change, speed of operations, and more.

104 Listmania Part Deux

10 questions you should ask when looking at integrating your CRM, 5 reasons a spreadsheet is not a database, 8 plugins to use with your new Wordpress site (relating to Google's new page experience standard)

103 Are You Listicling?

Sam and Steve verbally expand on several of their respective listicles. Source posts are: 10 Questions you Must Ask When Selecting a CRM 5 Levels of CRM Requirements 8 Website Issues That May be Costing You Sales Leads

102 Jeffrey Russo of HubSpot

An interview with Jeffrey Russo, Director of Product, Sales Hub Go-to-Market at HubSpot. HubSpot's evolution from a marketing system to broader front office solution, focusing on the needs of the user experience, streamlining the quote-to-cash process, moving up market, getting "technical debt" that exists within organizations out of the way of the customer experience, applying functionality such as automations across different departments and use cases, HubSpot's durable partner channel, Co...

101 CRM Millions and Billions

Creatio raises $68 million, HubSpot goes enterprise, Sugar's HD-CX, AWS and AI, Salesforce eyes $50 billion in five years. Creatio's first ever funding announcement video Rich Green's Deep Learning & Time video

100 VAXRM

Salesforce's Vaccine Cloud, Sam's vaccine shot scheduling nightmare, Sam's joint webinar with Creatio, CRM 3.0, how low code/no code has altered roles in CRM deployment & management, field service, ABM, video selling, video training, CRM best practice videos, de-densifying your slide decks, HubSpot's customer code deck, explaining difficult to explain concepts, telling a story, content distribution.

099 Slackquisition

Salesforce's acquisition of Slack (and Acumen), SugarCRM acquires its largest partner W-Systems, CRM vendors & leads, getting found for CRM searches, Creatio's 24 hour event, low-code solutions, BA to developer ratios, Facebook acquires Kustomer, visual development tools & whether they are necessarily simple, the Microsoft/C3.ai/Adobe alliance, CRM predictions for 2021.

098 Wistia Adds Audio

An interview with Josh Johnson, senior product manager at Wistia, about Wistia's new audio hosting platform for marketers. Learn more about the audio offering. Chris Lavigne's excellent post and video about how to build a Soapbox Station for video recording.

097 David Campbell of SugarCRM

David Campbell, Vice President of Product Marketing at SugarCRM, joins Sam & Steve to discuss sales, marketing, customer support, data, AI and the customer experience.

096 Muting Rogan

The west coast in flames, whether a podcaster should host the next presidential debate, CRM product news from Inforum, updates from HubSpot's virtual Inbound conference.

095 Emoji Queries❓

Sam's commitment to golf, the NHL and NBA bubbles, deploying CRM & training CRM users during a pandemic, using emojis for product searches, the most effective forms of marketing in 2020

094 Zooming Requirements

A moratorium on CEO interviews, iOS 14 & location tracking, an "off the grid" mobile option, marketers' digital transformation, new Google My Business features, gathering requirements & conducting online workshops.

093 Meteorologist Backdroppings

Musings about online meeting technologies and how they're being used. How CRM vendors are helping out with discounts and free components.

092 Adaptation

Sam & Steve talk about ways to adapt your sales and marketing to our current reality.

091 Work Distancing

090 Craig Charlton, CEO - SugarCRM

089 CRM AI Demixed

088 Power Shutoffs & Parasites

Reasons for our absence -- long vacations, Public Service Power Shutoffs and parasites. bpm'online becomes Creatio. More Salesforce acquisition rumors. Dreamforce '19 report. Video outreach. Observations on Gartner Magic Quadrants. CRM industry maturity and commoditization. Accelerated release cycles by CRM vendors. Vendors increasingly aligning their offerings around analysts' "three pillar" expectations.

087 Beta Blues

Sam's iOS 13 beta testing blues, Gartner Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation, a variety of HubSpot to CRM integrations, declining website visitor conversion rates.

086 Rich Green of SugarCRM

Rich Green is Chief Product Officer and CTO at SugarCRM. Rich leads SugarCRM's engineering and product management teams and is responsible for the product vision and global strategy of the award-winning Sugar platform. In this episode, Sam and Steve ask Rich for his perspectives on and his vision for CRM.

085 Widespread CRM Panic

Massive Salesforce outage, multi-tenant vs. single tenant hosted CRM databases, SugarCRM acquires Collabspot and Salesfusion, Sugar's new quoting module, Sage sunsets SageCRM Online, bpm'online's low code no code, citizen developers.

084 Max Altschuler of Outreach

Sam & Steve talk to Max Altschuler, Vice President of Marketing at Outreach, about sales engagement and how Outreach facilitates multi-channel sales communication with prospects. Max is co-author of Sales Engagement: How The World's Fastest Growing Companies are Modernizing Sales Through Humanization at Scale.

083 Seedy CRM

A discussion with Greg Martinelli about CRM in the agricultural business. Greg is an ag sales trainer, coach and speaker. Greg's website.

082 Polar CRM

The deep freeze hits Chicago just in time for the bpm'online conference. Sam previews his talk at the conference.

081 Winery CX

Sam's latest wine club, when & why Infor CRM wins, a look back at 2018 acquisitions, ContactOut Chrome extension, Wix gets into CRM, "CX" in 2019, CRM in email client sidebars, CRM AI in 2019, 5 CRM trends for 2019, bot backlash.

080 UX Darkness

Instead of show notes for this episode, we'd like to use this real estate to provide information about an option for making a donation to victims of the Camp Fire. Since you're most likely reading this on your mobile phone, please text CAWILDFIRES to 90999 to make a $10 donation (the Red Cross and AT&T).

079 Bionic CRM

Dreamforce 2018, Inform, CRM AI offerings, SugarCRM's input on why they win deals.

078 CRM Destinations

A bad technology day, how we can collectively put an end to call center cold calls, a review of CRM Magazine's 2018 CRM Market Awards winners, The ascents of Microsoft & Zoho, how long it really takes to become a CRM leader, how little separation there is among the top ranked vendors in point scores.

077 How Suite It Is (For SugarCRM)

Accel KKR makes a 9 figure investment in SugarCRM. Some of the other potential compatible AKKR companies. Sugar's redesign and re-architecture. Sugar's one-clickedness. Mitch Lieberman's take on the investment and his advice, including going all in on the cloud. How the sales team needs to be more consultative and real. The idea of conversational engagement. The Gartner Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation and some of the positional changes since last year. A close pack in the Leader qu...

076 ERP Implementability

Sam and Steve talk with Joel Schneider, president of Liberty Technology Advisors about what about what should be behind proper ERP selection and implementation processes. Joel answers the question, "is cloud-based ERP as easy as the vendors would lead you to believe?" Joel also addresses many of the factors that people within any organization need to consider before making a decision on an ERP vendor---whether the vendor's offering is cloud or on-premises. The approaches to strategy, s...

075 CRM Investments & Acquisitions

Sam and Steve test-drive Zencastr, Pipedrive raises $50 million, smaller vendors be “taking on” the big CRM vendors or is there a better strategy?, Nimble’s approach, Swiftpage’s investment and their focus on “the easiest product on the market to use”, Act! Connect, the Collabspot plugin for Office 365 and G Suite, contact enrichment, marketing approved email templates vs. empowering salespeople, TIBCO buys Scribe Software, data lakes, a deep dive on integration methods.

074 Artificial Reservations

The GDPR is in effect, Salesforce earnings, CRM industry growth, data augmentation, CRM and AI, GDPR and ABM, un-gating content, conditional CTA visibility by country, the ultimate objective comparison between Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics 365, image size and SEO, website conversion actions, the FBI’s instruction to reboot your router, Alexa privacy fail, bpm’online's conference and roadmap, their 15 use cases for AI, AI’s potential for sandbagging detection and for booking travel.

073 Countdown To GDPR

GDPR will take effect in just over a month. Ian Gotts of Elements.Cloud returns to discuss GDPR with Sam and Steve.

072 Vanishing Best of Breed

Sam’s new hip parts, his plan to #DeleteFacebook, messing with Facebook’s algorithm, cleaning up LinkedIn letter by letter, Salesforce’s purchase of MuleSoft, what acquisitions mean for the Salesforce ecosystem, vanishing best of breed in the CRM industry, Salesforce’s small business moves, Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 strategy of combining acquisitions, product groupings, Microsoft’s impressive seasonal release documentation, Microsoft Office 365 upgrades to Dynamics, Sam’s GDPR webinar series,...

071 GDPR & CRM

Sam's upcoming body parts replacement, CRM Switch named a Top 10 CRM Blog for 2017 by CRMBuyer, the CRM Switch multi-year CRM cost calculator, GDPR compliance in the context of CRM and marketing automation, blockchain and GDPR compliance, chat & leads, incorporating sales tax in CRM quotes.

070 A Review of CRM Review Sites

A discussion about the various CRM review sites. How they work and how to use them.

Sales Productivity Inside of Email

Brandon Bruce of Cirrus Insight makes his third guest appearance on CRM Talk. This time, he talks about the Cirrus Insight Platform, which is no longer only for Salesforce users. We also discuss the recent acquisition of Attach.