Chuck Schaeffer
The Customer Relationship Management Evolution in 2022
There are a lot ways the Customer Relationship Management software market continues to evolve. But from my vantage point I find the most telling evidence of CRM maturity to be based on who benefits. And over three decades I have observed a clear patter...
Welcome to the Future of Sales
The sales profession is in transition. It is quickly shifting from an offline, seller-driven, push-based model toward a digital-first, data-driven and buyer-focused response. There are four unmistakable buyer-led trends that will define the future of s...
A 3 Step Framework to Reallocate Sales Time for Improved Sales Performance
Sales managers are acutely aware that sales reps spend less than half their time selling. But Best in Class sales companies pursue continuous efforts that incrementally shift sellers most limited resource, their time, away from nebulous task-based acti...
How Much Should You Invest in Innovation?
Apple invests 5% of its revenues in Research and Development. Facebook invests 13%, Google 16% and Amazon now invests 28%. So how much should you invest? Here are perspectives and methods to align innovation budgeting with revenue targets, provide comp...
The Salesforce CRM Renewal Dilemma
For many Salesforce customers the CRM renewal comes with a surprise. They are told they need to upgrade to the next CRM pricing tier, or their initial CRM purchase was some type of sweetheart deal that is now expired, or some other factor that results…
CRM Software Request for Proposals: Valuable Discovery or Waste of Time?
Most CRM software RFPs fail to surface measurable weaknesses, limitations and differences among competing CRM systems. There are three methods to improve upon ineffective RFPs. You can fix them for moderate results, append them for better results or re...
Is Salesforce Worth the Price Premium?
Salesforce CRM is a market-leading solution, which comes with a significant price premium. When does a higher price pay dividends?
How to Choose the Best CRM Software for your Retail Company
When looking for the best retail CRM software many novices evaluate technology features. That is a mistake as CRM software features and functions may or may not deliver retail business results. A better approach is to start with the most strategic reta...
The Final Four Competitive Advantages
By Chuck SchaefferBeing competitive starts by understanding exactly how customers make purchase decisions, what they want from their suppliers, and how you use that information to create or expand competitive advantages. No company can invest in ...
The Productivity and Payback of Employee Engagement
By Chuck SchaefferEmployee engagement is a top contributing factor to high-performance growth cultures and an undeniable producer of productivity and payback. But what exactly is employee engagement? There is no consensus answer. However, I gener...
How to Measure Customer Centricity
By Chuck SchaefferCustomer-centricity is integral to culture, a precursor to strategy and essential for sustained customer growth and retention. However, companies don't get to decide how customer-centric they are. That's decided by their custome...
Association and Nonprofit Best Practices To Acquire, Grow and Retain Members
Membership organizations, which include associations, non-profits, clubs and other member-based groups, are under increased pressure to acquire and retain members. According to this year's Association Survey Results by GrowthZone, 58 percent of Associations report a decrease or no growth in membership size. This is...
Microsoft Dynamics 365 – Hits and Misses in the New CRM Release
Microsoft shared the 2017 Spring (version 9) Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement release (previously known as Dynamics CRM.) From my perspective, the biggest enhancements are a new user interface (UI), more componentized platform design and new SMB CRM sales and marketing suite. Based on my...
How to Design Your 360-Degree Customer View
The often cited but seldom realized 360-degree customer view is a holistic customer profile record that captures five types of customer data from across channels and systems, aggregates that data to understand what's important to customers, and applies those customer insights to deliver personalized...
The Top Reasons CRM Fails
It's no secret that among the five biggest types of business applications, CRM software has the highest failure rate … by a landslide. The analyst firms report that 30-50%+ of all CRM deployments fail to achieve their objectives or fail outright. Research also shows the...
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2017 — What Matters Most in the New Release
Microsoft released Dynamics CRM 2017 today. However, with the new release comes a new name of Dynamics 365 Enterprise customer engagment apps. From my review and perspective, the most significant new features include customer Insights generated from Azure machine learning, a new visual workflow...
Dynamics 365 – The Future of Microsoft Dynamics
Dynamics 365 was announced today as the next generation of Microsoft's Azure-hosted business services. From an ERP and CRM software perspective, Dynamics 365 is mostly a change to branding and bundling. While the ERP and CRM software hasn't changed, the messaging is clear that...
CRM Software Market Share Report 2016
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software buyers often consider CRM market leaders to have staying power and be relatively safer bets. CRM software publishers use market share figures to jockey for competitive position, convey strength and infer buyer confidence. However, most CRM software leadership claims...
Agile Best Practices for CRM Software Deployments
Agile is a group of principals which promote collaboration among self-organized and cross-functional teams, close customer involvement, iterative and adaptive implementation methods, and the frequent delivery of incremental software releases. Agile methods are built on the empirical process which embraces the three pillars of transparency,...
Salesforce versus Microsoft Dynamics CRM
A Head to Head Comparison of the Top 2 CRM Systems 1. User Experience Advantage: Salesforce 2. Sales Force Automation Advantage: Salesforce 3. Marketing Advantage: Salesforce 4. Customer Service Advantage: Dynamics CRM 5. Business Intelligence Advantage: Dynamics CRM 6. Platform Advantage: Dynamics CRM 7. Tools…