7 Ways to Avoid “My CRM From Hell”

Some of you who watch the Animal Planet channel may know about a show called My Cat from Hell. In each episode Jackson Galaxy, a musician by night and cat behavioral expert by day, works with cat owners who are at their wits end and are desperate for a change in their situation. As it turns out, the owners are often more responsible for how bad things have gotten than the cats.

To anyone who has gone through an implementation of CRM, does that sound somewhat familiar, at least in some areas of the project? We bring home a cat (or CRM) with certain expectations, not necessarily having thought it out correctly and figuring that things will just work out. When it starts to go south we scratch our heads wondering why? (more…)

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Should I Stay or Should I Go? (with apologies to The Clash)

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 is out and everyone is raving about it. Sales and Service management, as well as mobile CRM have never been easier or more affordable. Native integration with Outlook, Excel, SharePoint – Wow! Everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon. That includes users on legacy versions of Dynamics CRM as well.

Should I stay or should I go? Those of you on a legacy version of Dynamics CRM should take a serious look at how Dynamics CRM 2015 can promote sales best practice, give your mobile sales force a truly touch-friendly interface, and let your users sync emails to CRM from any device or email client.
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Microsoft Dynamics CRM Basics for Sales Pros: 4 Tips for Sales Managers


In our series — Microsoft Dynamics CRM: Basics for Sales Professionals — we’ve covered CRM from the perspective of Sales Representatives responsible for closings sales. In this blog we’ll look at CRM basics for Sales Managers. Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides several ways to manage and help your Sales team get the results your organization needs. To keep things simple, let’s look at 4 CRM management basics that will help you direct your team more effectively:

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That One Microsoft Dynamics CRM Story

There is this one story that gets told almost every time I get together with some of the Dynamics CRM MVP folks in the community. Usually over adult beverages at some conference. The problem for me is that it’s a story of one of my failures.

The story outline is this – 10+ years ago, the company I worked for signed a CRM deal in the early days of Dynamics CRM. We were fledgling CRM implementers at the time and signed up for more than we bargained. Long story short, we failed and someone else came in (one of the current CRM MVPs, who will remain nameless) and saved the day for that client. It was their first CRM project and made a nice addition to their already successful business and, ultimately, turned out to be an huge boon for the community as a whole. I failed, they didn’t, the CRM community got a couple GREAT MVPs. (more…)

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Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 Basics for Sales Pros: Working with Activity Records, part 2

This is part 3 in a a series of blogs designed to help Sales Professionals with fundamental concepts in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015. In my last blog we introduced CRM Activity records, what they are and how to use them to help organize and manage your sales-related activities. This blog extends that discussion to include how you’ll use Activity records to communicate with and collaborate with your fellow CRM users.

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NDA Has Been Lifted

Well the wraps are finally off and Microsoft has lifted the NDA on the Dynamics CRM Online Spring 2015 release. While that is a bit of a mouthful, this Spring release is full of enhancements and functionality that users and partners have been clamoring for. Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, started the parade this morning at the Microsoft Convergences event in Atlanta. (more…)

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Dynamics CRM Basics for Sales Professionals: 4 Sales Records You’ll Use the Most

If you’re like most Sales professionals, you don’t aspire to be a Dynamics CRM expert. You want to know enough to keep the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system working for you, i.e., help you stay organized and close more sales. Understanding basic CRM concepts will help you get up to speed faster on your new CRM. That’s what I’ll be tackling over the next few months with my blogs. Let’s start with some background on 4 basic types of sales records: Account, Contact, Lead, and Opportunity.

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