Just one year ago, Salesforce took a big leap forward to launch Essentials for small businesses at Dreamforce 2017. As I discussed in this post, Essentials replaced Salesforce’s former patchwork of disconnected small business apps with an integrated CRM solution, … Continue reading →

Acumatica may not be the biggest brand on the SMB ERP stage, but the 10-year old company is intent on heading into the spotlight. With ten years of experience in the market, and over 4,000 customers, Acumatica has built a … Continue reading →

SMBs consistently rank “figuring out which IT solutions can best help my business” as one of their top IT challenges. So, I was interested in talking to Sanjeev Kapoor, Founder and CEO of IT Exchange—whose mission is to help SMBs … Continue reading →

HubSpot’s brand is almost synonymous with inbound marketing. But at its annual user conference, INBOUND 2018, HubSpot acknowledged that it takes more than a great inbound marketing and sales funnel to build and grow a business. Here’s my take on … Continue reading →

Laurie:  Today I’m talking with Louis Gudema about his new book, Bullseye Marketing. Louis, I interviewed you about a year ago on your bullseye marketing techniques—but now you’ve written a book on it!  So, I’ll start by asking you, with so … Continue reading →

Today, we can buy almost anything “as a service”—from software to furniture to cars. This approach is becoming an increasingly attractive for many reasons: It helps people and companies to amortize product costs over time, removes procurement, management and maintenance … Continue reading →

Laurie:  Today I’m talking with Kate Bradley Chernis, the CEO of Lately—for the second time—about her company, which we first discussed here. Kate, before we get into an update on Lately, can you provide a quick refresh on yourself and … Continue reading →

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Business Employment Dynamics, entrepreneurs have about a 50% of starting a new business and having that business survive five years. I was just asked to come up with three recommendations for people who … Continue reading →

Hundreds of vendors with thousands of solutions promise to help your business do everything from accounting to project management to sales and marketing. But finding the application that’s just right for your business isn’t always easy. That’s the experience that … Continue reading →

(This post was originally published here on June 11, 2018, by Laura Norman (@Lauranorsf) on the Salesforce blog.) “Digital transformation” is a popular topic of conversation these days. However, for many small- and medium-sized business (SMB) owners, even the mere … Continue reading →