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Become a member of myCRMcareer.com and help shape our collective future by taking advantage of the features of this site. Tell us what you want to see in our CRM 2.0 sandbox. With your help, the myCRMcareer experience will grow every day! Paul Greenberg's Experience on the EDGE Listen to Paul Greenberg's recent podcasts. Programs focus on news, trends, recommendations and interviews with CRM luminaries. Greenberg's podcasts are exclusive to myCRMcareer.com and syndicated internationally. Don't miss out on the latest CRM news and trends click here. Rising Expectations by Leif Chastaine We have all experienced poor customer service at one time or another. In my case, a little episode with a parking lot company a year and a half ago lead me to make a commitment that I would not reward companies with poor customer service with my business. As a CRM professional (and as a consumer), I expect more. According to a new survey just released by Accenture, apparently I'm not the only one. Accenture surveyed 3,552 people across the globe and the results are surprising. According to the report, more than half of the survey respondents indicated that their customer service expectations have increased in the last five years. The report also includes this little gem; “Globally, nearly one-half (47 percent) of survey respondents said their expectations were met only “sometimes,” “rarely” or “never.” As a CRM professional, this send chills up my spine, and reminds me that we still have a lot of work to do. Read more by Leif Chastaine. Comment on this article. Blogs are crucial to PR outreach Blogs are rapidly outpacing traditional media as a trusted, influential source of information. According to a recent survey, nearly half of all Americans read blogs – in 2005, that number was only 6% . For many companies, appearing in a top blog can generate more interest than being featured in traditional media like the New York Times. Mike Santoro of Walker Sands Communications recommends that companies include electronic media in their public outreach programs. In his blog entry, Importance of Blogs in Any PR Program, Santoro demonstrates the direct correlation between links in popular blogs like Engadget or Lifehacker and measurable spikes in hits on the websites of the companies mentioned. As blogs become more popular and accepted, focusing on blogs will be a vitally important part of any media plan . Take the SearchCRM.com Survey I'm, Lauren Hoyt, the editor for SearchCRM.com and I'm seeking CRM professionals to take a new survey on our site. What are the top five marketing or sales-related challenges your organization will focus on in 2008? Are you using or considering Software as a Service (SaaS) or on-demand applications? Take the survey and be entered to win one of four $50 American Express gift cards. http://techtarget.searchcrmsurvey.sgizmo.com CRM News Radio Listen to top CRM industry thought-leaders on Technology For Business $ake, a radio program, hosted Brent Leary and Michael Thomas, recipients of CRM Magazines Most Influential Leader Award and co-founders of CRM Essentials. Click to Access Radio Shows: Show: SaaS and the SMB Guest: Zach Nelson, CEO of NetSuite Show: What It Takes To Be An Internet Entrepreneur Guest: Mark Fletcher, Founder of Starupping.com Show: Understanding Wikinomics and the Power of Mass Collaboration Guest: Don Tapscott, author of Wikinomics   Inside CRM Webinar: Tools To Attract & Retain New Customers January 24, 2008 In this exclusive webinar, top CRM expert Paul Greenberg and Microsoft CRM specialist Leo Manson highlight the key concerns facing new adopters of CRM, look at the solutions and offer valuable insight into how to optimize CRM features so you can expand your business capabilities. Find out how CRM can help your small-medium enterprise in this live-exclusive interactive webinar. The benefits of CRM are vast—from improving communication channels to attracting new customers and building loyalty through enhanced responsiveness. Register now to get exclusive live access to the first introductory webinar in the Inside CRM’s Microsoft Dynamics CRM Live - 2008 Webinar Series. Sign up now to stay current and informed about the latest technology impacting your business. Click here to register at Inside CRM. Be Remarkable! by Mark Resch Welcome to 2008! Let’s make this the best year ever! What will make 2008 the best ever? Will it be a promotion or raise? Will 2008 be the best for you simply by improving last year? If it will, then stop reading now. But if incremental improvement just won’t do because you’re reaching for something big—a new job, or getting paid what you deserve, what should you do? About a year ago, Seth Godin shared his secret of success—How to be remarkable. Remarkability lies in the edges—the biggest, fastest, slowest, richest, easiest, most difficult. Being remarkable yourself is how you grow. It makes you stand out, and get noticed. Being remarkable will get you your shot at the big time. When should you start being remarkable? How about now? Read more by Mark Resch. Comment on this article. 2008 is the Year of the Customer by Sarah Dopp Jim Berkowitz points out the recently published NYSE CEO Report 2008, subtitled "Putting Customers First." He summarizes, "This report, based on a survey of 240 CEOs of New York Stock Exchange listed companies, strongly emphasizes the increasing executive attention being focused on delivering an outstanding customer experience." A company's success relies heavily on sales growth and customer retention -- maybe more so now than it ever has before. Brand and reputation play a key role in this, as do customer support services and relationship management professionals. CEOs this year see the customer experience as the keystone to business growth. Jim comments that this research was completed in early 2007, abd notes from his own experience that "if anything the story is stronger today than when the survey was completed." Read more by Sarah Dopp. Comment on this article. Managing Negativity in Meetings by Melinda Klayman Cheri Baker of The Enlightened Manager has posted some incredibly practical tips for How to Respond to Sarcasm in Meetings. We’ve all stumbled awkwardly through meetings where someone makes negative comments – it really drags down the dynamic of the whole group. If you are leading the meeting, then it’s your responsibility to keep it moving along without snide comments that distract everyone. Here are some tips to manage those situations with grace and tact. First of all, try to determine why the person is speaking out rudely – is it just a bad day, or is this chronic behavior? You’ll want to adjust your reaction accordingly. One option is to ignore it, especially if the behavior is rare, but this won’t work as a long-term solution. You might also call out the behavior or address it head on – either in front of the whole group or privately, depending on the mood of the group and sensitivity regarding the person in question. The option that I intend to use next time I’m confronted with this problem is to seriously, respectfully, and with genuine interest, ask the person who made the sarcastic comments why are they upset. Often this can reveal problems that should be corrected, but that people are unwilling to discuss openly. Click here for the full post. Thanks to Raven's Brain for the link. Read more by Melinda Klayman. Comment on this article. Tangible Marketing: Social Objects by Chris Carfi Hugh McLeod of Gapingvoid fame provides a great primer on the concepts of what he calls "social objects" -- tangible (or sometimes intangible) items that are the reason that people talk to one another; in other words, they are the basis of "word of mouth" marketing. Hugh says, "The Social Object, in a nutshell, is the reason two people are talking to each other, as opposed to talking to somebody else. Human beings are social animals. We like to socialize. But if think about it, there needs to be a reason for it to happen in the first place. That reason, that 'node' in the social network, is what we call the Social Object." Here's the whole article. Some of the best "social objects" I've seen recently come from the art world, in particular John Unger's Great Bowls of Fire. Also, the iPhone is a great social object. (I certainly wanted to talk to someone and take a look at one first-hand when I met someone who was carrying one when they first came out.) In your opinion, what are the best social objects that encourage conversation today? Read more by Chris Carfi. Comment on this article. BetterManagement is pleased to offer this Webcast series, Voice of the Customer. This series explores the Customer Experience, and how best to listen to, learn from, and continuously improve the customer experience. view more...

Community Editors

Call for Participation – Community Editors

You may have noticed some subtle changes on the myCRMcareer website lately – more frequent posts by a wider cast of characters, a dynamic blogroll and podcasts, as well as, optimizing some of the backend code to make the site faster and snappier. More changes are in the works, and we want you to be a part of it.

myCRMcareer.com seeks several Community Editors to submit articles in your area of CRM expertise. These are volunteer positions and will require no more than an hour or two of your time per week. Community Editors will write one or two brief articles (150-250 words) per week and post in the myCRMcareer forums regularly. If you would like to get involved as a Community Editor, please send a letter outlining your experience in CRM and which aspects of the business you would be best able to write about, as well as, a writing sample or blog entry to caitlin@mycrmcareer.com.

Featured Authors

This section highlights the contributions of our Featured Authors, individuals who are recognized for their achievements in advancing practice of Customer Relationship Management both within the U.S. and internationally. We are pleased to announce a stellar line-up of contributors including: Dick Lee, Jeff Tanner, Wayne Thompson, Michael Chuchmuch, Jeff Pedowitz and many other CRM industry luminaries. Writing the CRM Resume Jeff Tanner, Ph.D. When it comes to getting any job, all that you have already learned about writing resumes is sufficient. When it comes to getting the CRM job of your dreams, however, just any old resume won’t do. In less than a minute, you’ve got to catch the attention of a hiring manager, and in less than three minutes, convince that manager to give you an interview. A resume is like an advertisement or a brochure. In most cases, you aren’t there to speak for yourself, so the resume stands on its own. Even if you have to use some standardized online format, you can still adapt the principles described in this article to sell yourself and get the CRM job you want. Begin by listing what is required of someone in the job you desire. The more accurately you can predict the job description, the more likely you can include the proper elements in your resume to prove you fit in that job better than anyone else. Once you’ve written that job description (or secured a copy from the company you want to work for), you can start on your resume. The Layout Employers, consultants, recruiters, and professors who study business communications continue to argue over how to lay out a resume. Nothing sparks the argument as much as the question of whether to start with an objective, a summary, or just start listing credentials. An objective makes perfect sense for the new college graduate or relatively inexperienced candidate. If you have significant experience, a summary can be useful. As a professor with an active consulting practice, I see a lot of resumes, many from students or former students. I recently got a reume from “George,” a friend of a former student. After looking it over, I could not determine what type of position “George” was looking for; as a result, I couldn’t help much. Even if you are responding to an advertisement for a specific position, having either an objective or a summary can help any reader match you to a position. The argument against is, of course, that you can’t be pigeonholed. Well, if you can’t be pigeonholed, you are asking someone else to determine who you are and what you can do. Few are going to take the time or effort to make those decisions for you. If you don’t have a specific objective in mind and you have good experience, begin with a short summary. For example, “Team leader and team player, with experience in creating and executing business plans for significant growth,” or “Developing career in marketing consumer package goods through building online consumer communities,” can describe one’s experience. The first would indicate someone with business unit leadership experience that should be transferrable across industries and company size; the latter illustrates a young, rising professional in a vertical industry. Other elements that can be useful in a summary are descriptions of company size and special attributes, such as “experience in stretching resources in high growth situations.” As with all positions, CRM employers want what you can do, not what you know or what you have. A key challenge in effective resume writing is converting what you know or have into what you can do. “Knowledge of Salesforce.com” is good; “Customized reports and served as the local helpdesk for Salesfoce.com in a sales organization of 40 salespeople” is much better. Use verbs specific to key activities that you have already done so that potential employers can easily understand your capabilities. Similarly, experience is great but growing experience is better. Paul Nelson of IBM said, “I don’t need someone with one year of experience repeated ten times; I need someone with experience that shows growth in responsibility, ability, and results.” The challenge is how to present that experience in terms of what you have to offer. Verbs like developed, created, implemented, executed, and grew can illustrate what you learned and accomplished during your experience. The conventional resume layout is to list your job titles in reverse chronological order, starting with your current position. As you’ve probably figured out, listing titles and responsibilities is simply not sufficient. If you want to get the interview, you’ve got to prove that you can perform. To Get the Interview, Prove Performance CRM is a results-oriented field. While CRM requires soft skills such as those that make for effective customer service and creative marketing communications, CRM success is measured in additional sales and conversions. One of my former students took his first job in CRM with a local bank. When he sent a resume to a major airline for a CRM position, he was able to list examples of CRM campaigns he developed along with the results. For exemple, if your CRM history includes working on campaigns, report the lift you’ve achieved. If you worked on a new loyalty strategy, describe the results. Even if it is something as short as “Team member for loyalty campaign development and execution resulting in 125% of sales goal,” you can still get the message across that you achieved real results. Combining soft skills with results can be a special challenge in the CRM profession. Few other areas of the organization require the same degree of technical and soft skills; a good resume communicates your abilities in both areas. The key is to specify what those soft skills are. For example, the communication skills developed by salespeople are different from those developed by managers. Can you demonstrate how you inspired others? How your questioning, listening, and presentation enabled you to grow sales? Or how your ability to understand the needs of others enabled your team to be successful within a vast and seemingly impersonal organization? Have you had experience training others? Soft skills often have hard results. Effective salespeople sell more. Top customer service representatives deliver higher customer satisfaction ratings. Inspiring team leaders enjoy higher performing teams. At the same time, however, soft skills have soft results. The hard results have to be there but flesh out the effectiveness of soft skills. The extent that you can demonstrate both skills, the more complete picture a reader has of your abilities. For example, “Developed team of customer service personnel, three of whom now lead their own teams” illustrates that your abilities to develop include the ability to grow the organization. Similarly, “Strengthened customer-oriented culture through training, visioning, and advocating for customer service team,” shows that you represented your team to the rest of the organization, improving the customer culture for the organization. Add in the hard results, such as growth in repurchase rates, and you’ve successfully combined the soft and hard skills. Test the Resume Few of us would dream of sending a resume out with a typo or spelling error. Yet few of us actually test that the resume we send out says what we want. Grammatically and visually, the resume may be perfect but if it doesn’t communicate who we are and what we want, it is a failure. Consider borrowing a trick from marketing researchers called protocol analysis. This method of research involves having someone read a marketing communications piece aloud and simply stating what it makes them think of. Have someone read your resume aloud in your presence. Then ask them what each portion of the resume says. Probe for understanding involving different words – if they can paraphrase in different words what it means to them and that meaning is what you intend, then you’ve done well. If you try protocol analysis, it is a good idea to get someone who doesn’t know you well. If they know you too well, they fill in the blanks from their own experience. Further, if they know the field, you can probe to determine where they see you fitting. If they don’t know the field, they can still give you an idea of where you would fit in their organization, an idea that can further provide direction for improvement. Getting the Job Of course, getting the CRM job requires more than a resume. For some readers, this article might spark some planning on how to build, not write, a resume. If you can’t demonstrate hard results, how can you get to a position where you can? What are the soft skill results that you can prove? Getting the job also means sailing through the interviews. We’ll leave that to future articles on www.mycrmcareer.com. AVOIDING SIX SIGMOIDOSCOPIES Dick Lee Principal High-Yield Methods Once upon a time, as recently as 15 years ago, when we used the term “process” most people understood what we meant. If we were referring to manufacturing process, they absolutely understood, because that was the only kind of process practiced back then. But then along came Sales Force Automation and Customer Relationship Management. The business world had its eyes ripped open to the reality that process does exist outside of manufacturing, or at least it should. So we started mucking around with sales process contact center process and occasionally even marketing process. Most efforts to apply process to these customer-facing functions were, to be frank, amateurish, and marginally effective at best. So, in stepped some manufacturing process consultants ready to show the CRM world how to do process right, and also to pocket some hefty fees for dragging rigid manufacturing process approaches into flexible, variable environments where they don’t belong. Then, funny things started happening on their way to “showing us.” The outcomes of applying six sigma and Lean, the two primary manufacturing approaches these consultants employed, ranged from fair to dismal. In fact, some efforts to apply six sigma left deep scars. Small wonder. Here’s a process methodology that thrives on improving and standardizing how individuals work at their workstations; it microscopically measures variances in how work is performed; it requires very high throughput of repetitive work to measure at such infinitesimal levels; and perhaps worst of all, is that it treats workers as machine parts in a classic “command and control” manner. “Hey, we tell workers how to work, and they do what they’re told.” Seriously, why would anyone want to walk into a work environment where most process breakdowns occur, not at the individual work stations, but in the hand-offs of work and information among functions and stakeholders; where managing cross-functional workflow and information flow is key; where effective measurement occurs at the macro level; where frequencies are low but variability is high; and where employees are significantly empowered, and then try to implement six sigma? Not smart for the consultants, and painful for their clients. Which is why I call these implementations “six sigmoidoscopies.” But then, the whole six sigma in the front office bit got flipped on its ear. A bunch of folks scattered around the globe, mostly trainers and sales consultants, wanted to dive into front office process to work in sales and marketing and customer service. They saw the CRM boom underway, and they wanted a piece of the action. Lots of people did. No crime there. But what sets these critters apart is that they decided to empty the six sigma toolbox of everything six sigma, leaving only basic, generic process engineering tools, and then, audaciously, still called it “six sigma.” Not a great way to impress companies and managers yet unaware of the six sigma flops. Worse yet, they started becoming aware of each through the web, and they actually began holding conferences espousing “six sigma in sales and marketing.” Shifty or what? Hey, it’s a free world, some of it anyway. Even though smarmy stuff like this “faux sigma” offends me, I might have ignored the whole gambit except one of the ringleaders, who I once considered a colleague (“once” being the operative term, here), called me looking for my endorsement of this sorry stuff. He also wanted me to speak at one of their conferences. I said something to the effect of, “Bill (named changed to protect the guilty), you don’t know squat about six sigma. And what you’re practicing sure isn’t sigma.” Guess what he said back? Something along the lines of, “Yeah, Dick, I know, but my practice needs more buzz.” I told him what I thought, which I won’t repeat here, but he kept bugging me about this stuff. Finally he got me to agree to participate in a global teleconference he was hosting for his fellow “faux sigmeys,” hoping I’d be convinced. What I heard on this conference call made me want to hurl. These guys (and gals) were so full of themselves that I couldn’t get a straight answer from any of them to my questions. Questions, such as, which six sigma elements they were applying that differentiated what they were doing from dumbed-down, generic process. Lots of fluffy answers. I got a tad irritated. And I pressed them to differentiate their stuff from the marketing and sales process practices introduced by Joe Lethert, the founder of lead management company Performark, back in the 1980s - practices that were more sophisticated than what I’d heard on this call. Joe happens to be a dear friend of mine, and these six sigmeys naively claiming credit for some of his innovations 25 years ago rubbed me the wrong way. Their response? “We’re different because we’re measuring outcomes.” Huh? I had to scrape myself off the ceiling. “That’s why you claim you’re practicing ‘six sigma,’ because you’re measuring outcomes?” I finally extracted a grudging acknowledgement from some participants that the sole basis for labeling what they were practicing “six sigma” was, indeed, measurement. Too bad they hadn’t yet reached the level of measurement sophistication Joe and Performark had attained decades ago. Guess who they never asked to participate in one of their conferences again? But without asking for my opt-in, they did sign me up for a newsletter about six sigma in sales and marketing. I received one in the mail the following week or so. Guess what the cover story was about? It was a rebuttal to all the critics of “faux sigma,” insisting that that they were practicing six sigma because they were measuring. C. Edwards Deming, the father of modern process, must have been rolling over in his grave. What a crock. But some companies fell for it. And paid for it. But that’s their problem. For right now, if you ever hear the words “six sigma” in connection with CRM, run for your life! It doesn’t matter whether it’s the real thing or a sham, implementing it still hurts. Didn’t know companies had their choice between two different varieties of sixsigmoidoscopy, did you? Fortunately, we don’t have to end on this negative note. At least a few process professionals, joined by some non-process trained business side folks, are doing real work to improve process in sales, service and market and in many other variable work environments. They’re off to a good start. The fact that the process tools they’re developing work outside the front office should prove a market builder that draws even more heads-up folks into the effort. Hey, before long we could have a budding variable process industry, which would be great for CRM, where most process work to date has been anemic. Having a cadre of folks who are process-experienced and do respect the unique process needs of the front office can only improve CRM outcomes, which still need lots of improving. CRM and corporate alignment consultant Dick Lee is founder and principal of St. Paul, MN based High-Yield Methods. HYM is the originator of the Visual Workflow process methodology. Dick has written several books, including The Customer Relationship Management Survival Guide and Strategic CRM. He’s hard at work writing his next book, Process to the People. For more information about Dick and HYM, visit www.h-ym.com.

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