Is Salesforce.com Outgrowing SMBs?

September 7th, 2011

Salesforce.com’s Marc Benioff is a great visionary with a big appetite for change. From packaged software to the cloud, from CRM to platform-as-a-service, he’s painted a color by number picture for businesses to emulate. But does his latest work, “the … Continue reading

Reflections on Dreamforce 2011: Now the Cloud Can Ride the Waves

September 6th, 2011

This year, Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce event–with a record-setting 45,000 attendees–got me thinking about the early days before the cloud was the cloud, how far its come, and how perfectly poised it is to ride the waves now driving technology adoption–mobile and … Continue reading

Recap of Joint Social Business Webinar with Radian6 and CRM Essentials

August 10th, 2011

Today I had the pleasure of joining David Alston from Radian6 and the legendary Brent Leary of CRM Essentials for a webinar live from CRM Evolution. We had a lively conversation about some of the key social business findings that … Continue reading

Is Your Business Suffering from Social Media Denial?

June 23rd, 2011

Kevin Casey, intrepid journalist for InformationWeek, rang me up this week for input on his article, “Do Nonsocial SMBs Know Something We Don’t?” In the article, Kevin’s ponders whether SMBs that haven’t bought into social media have good reasons to … Continue reading

Is There a Method to Social Media Madness?

April 13th, 2011

By Sanjeev Aggarwal and Laurie McCabe, SMB Group, and Brent Leary, CRM Essentials SMB adoption of social media for sales, marketing, product development and customer service is on the rise – but how are SMBs tracking, analyzing and measuring the … Continue reading

Changing Customer Service Channels: The Gap Between Social Media Haves and Have Nots

March 23rd, 2011

Co-authored by: Laurie McCabe and Sanjeev Aggarwal, SMB Group, and Brent Leary, CRM Essentials How quickly is social media catching on as an engagement channel for SMB customer service and support? It depends on who you ask—and has significant implications … Continue reading

Social Business: Why Having a Plan Matters

March 21st, 2011

Co-authored by: Laurie McCabe and Sanjeev Aggarwal, SMB Group, and Brent Leary, CRM Essentials Good plans shape good decisions. That’s why good planning helps to make elusive dreams come true. Lester R. Bittel, The Nine Master Keys of Management This … Continue reading

Dell 2.0: Top Takeaways from Dell’s Virtual Era Event

April 6th, 2010

A couple of weeks ago, I attended Dell’s Solutions for a Virtual Era analyst and press event in San Francisco. At the event, Dell unveiled its new strategy to help companies more readily and easily provision computing capabilities to in the … Continue reading

Getting in the Social Media Management Game

April 2nd, 2010

Social media management for small businesses is a very hot area. A few weeks ago, I posted a blog about social media management solutions available to help small businesses manage their online and social presence more efficiently and effectively. While this is … Continue reading

Top Trends Most Evident at the 2010 Small Business Technology Summit

March 18th, 2010

Back in the beautiful Live Free or Die state after attending the 2010 Small Business Summit earlier this week. This is a fantastic event coordinated by Ramon Ray and Marian Banker, and held at the Digital Sandbox in the financial district … Continue reading