A reader and great friend to the entrepreneur,

Cheryl Liquori, asked me the following:

“Do you have any knowledge of, or experience, working with ZOHO.com for CRM?  I’m not interested in the desktop applications, but only in the CRM.  I\’ve read reviews, but they seem to focus on large enterprise applications.  For the sole propriator on a shoe string, wrestling with excel and overwhelmed by user-unfriendly ACT, I was wondering about zoho as an alternative.  Your expert thoughts?”

Now you all know I support Landslide as the ultimate Workstyle system. If you need something that focuses o the sales process, YOU MUST ADD LANDSLIDE TO YOUR TOOLKIT!

What you do not know is that I am designing a fully automated CRM system for a client that is based on the combo dialer-crm Insidesales.com. These guys have designed a complete system that allows you to do anything via javascript. I am literally making it so reps can make 200-300 quality calls a day with almost no admin work. EVERYTHING IS AUTOMATED BY A BUTTON CLICK!

If you are CRM hunting, let me know, as I get a referral fee for either of the above.

Now back to the question. What a coincidence! I found Zoho and have loaded one of my clients into it. Mind you, I havenever talked to the company, but intend to!

As their sole sales person for my startup client I have started using it for everything. Frankly, it is awesome! I believe it is based on SugarCRM, but SalesForce look out. At a price of $12/mo after 3 FREE USERS, this is going to get the small businesses, entrepreneurs, individual consultants… onboard and adopting.

So far:

1.  Fast, I mean super fast

2. Complete sales and marketing system with all of the trimmings

3. The reporting is easy to use

4. Forecast tool is great

5. Opportunities are called potentials, how adorable!

6. Uploads work really well.

7. Mimics the standard SalesForce, SugarCRM, Netsuite methodology of lead to accounts.

8. Really flexible design

9. Did I mention that the first 3 users are free?

10. Upgradeable to an enterprise system with a load of featers for $25 a user. YES I SAID $25 A USER!

I would strongly recommend any small budget player with little demands on automation to play with this system prior to looking at anything else.

Wouldn’t it be nifty if you could send an e-mail, and the moment it was opened get notified? Wouldn’t it be even better if you could see exactly what link the prospect clicked, and from there what pages they reviewed and for how long?

Well, guess what, there is a product called Sales Genius does all of this and more. Not only that, it has been around for over 2 YEARS! If you and your teams are not using it, you have lost your mind! People that use this tool have an inside advantage regarding what leads and prospects are really ready to discuss what you are offering. More, you have intel of whaat they are looking at and can use that to your advantage. Talk about doing your homework, the studying part is done for you.

(more…)

So I am in the process of setting up a sales training show on one of the big web TV sites. Please let me know what topics you would like.

The show will be 30 minutes once a week (suggested times anyone?) The trainings will not be gimmicks to buy somethin but complete sessions or done in parts. You will get something out of every one.

An initial focus on staratups and evangelism will help all of you in growing companies. That said, I intend to invite some of the worlds brightest sales consultants and business experts for guest appearances.

Also and this is IMPORTANT. I AM NOW THE CATEGORY LEADER FOR SALES TRAINING ON ki work. ki work is an amazing site that is designed to unify the fragmented global market of remote work, offsite training, regional opportunties, and outsourced projects. As the leader in sales training I will be looking for other training experts to join my group and offer their services to the ki work community.