Jaret Manuel

Get Active. Get Social. Get Business!

Ask me anything, Forms, and Surveys with Formspring

Blogging or life streaming made easy with Posterous or  Tumblr.

Customer Feedback with Get Satisfaction.

Digg and contribute worthy information.

Everybody wants the Gist : contact aggregation.

Facebook : Need I say more…

Geo socialization is all the buzz with Foursquare.

Have you considered a Facebook Like Button for your website? You should.

Is your comment system up to par? Let’s Disqus.

Justin.tv is another easy to use live video streaming platform (see UStream Below).

Killer Analytic tool Konagent is your ticket if you are trying to cash in on Facebook.

LinkedIn: the business equivalent to Facebook.

Mo emails, mo problems, in my town or yo town, Flowtown turns those emails into social gold.

No need to play phone tag for a meeting – socialize your availability with Tungle.

Optimize your website with Google Analytics.

Plancast let’s your friends know your plans and upcoming events you plan to attend.

Quora: Ask Questions, Get Answers.

Reddit is another great social news aggregation service.

StumbleUpon is a social bookmarking service.

Twitter Start Tweeting. It is easy, and focus on quality not quantity.

UStream makes Live Video made easy.

Vimeo is Video creation & sharing made easy and an addition or alternative to YouTube (below).

WordPress is a very flexible blogging tool & content management system (CMS).

Xylophagous (Wood Eating) cannot be very Delicious: Another Social Bookmarking site (Cheesy I know but can you do better with X?)

Youtube Having a YouTube video channel for your business is a wise move.

Zoom, Snap, and socialize your Photo’s with Flickr.

@JaretManuel

So you say you have no mentors, nobody that you can lean on for sound “been there, done that” startup advice or tech information?  Humbug I say, so quit your non-sense talk, tune into twitter, and you’ll be surprised who will help you if you only reach out.  The following are people I listen to, engage with, sometimes ask for advice, debate with, and ball bust for fun.

Either way, there is an abundance of experience & knowledge at your finger tips, and I am only happy to share with you some of the people I follow & look up to on Twitter.  Almost all of the following are fairly to very active in the Twitterverse, making their TweetGreed very low which is awesome. I have a domain set aside called TwitHead.com.  TwitGreed may be a good idea to measure.  Bi-Directional tweets in proportion of followers/following, etc.  Just a random thought.

@albertsupdates Made first cool million at 16, sold a couple companies since, and now a Garbage collector @Kontagent in San Francisco. Had the pleasure of meeting here in Toronto. Awesome & very humble guy, hence his garbage title.

@wbrettwilson Very successful businessman turned investor, and a part of the infamous Dragon’s Den on CBC here in Canada. Very humble & often responsive in the twitter community.

@dharmesh Awesome & humble presenter, and super smart. Founder at Hubspot.com (I think this is his 9th company he has been a part of) and creator of OnStartups.com, and author of Inbound Marketing. Great guy and constantly giving back.

@ericries lean startup movement. Very informative tweets. There is more I should be saying so feel free to chime in.

@danmartell Hails from New Brunswick, transplanted to San Francisco after selling a successful startup, and now founder of ever popular Flowtown.com. Always seen mixing it up in TwitVille.

@davemcclure Founder of StartupVisa.com Movement, Geeks on a Plane founder (I think), large & in charge in the valley, ball buster, swears like a sailor, and just managed to get in front of Hillory Clinton for the Startupvisa movement.  Love his no holds barred, say it how it is style.

@zappos Tony Hsieh “Shay”: CEO of online shoe retailer Zappos. $1 Billion anybody? Sure, my name is Amazon and I want to buy you. Sold. Screw gambling, book a trip to Vegas to get a tour of Zappos.  They are all about it. Very impressive story.  Wait a minute, Tony sold another company to Microsoft for in excess of $200 cool ones, yeah you got it, pimp daddy millions. But you would never know it from Tony.

@FredWilson A “Reputable” VC Holding down NYC, like Jay Z being Breeze E on 5th Avenue. I could easily go on and free style you some what you know about my writes? (De La Soul if you got lost during my flow). Fred is very respected in a not so always the case Venture Capital community.

@JasonFried 37Signals Founder, Author of Getting Real and latest book ReWork. Hater of poor design and over complicating things.

@dhh David Heinemeier (@37signals co-founder) & founded Ruby on Rails.

@AustinHill Akoha.org, Investor in Bumptop & StandoutJobs.com. Straight out of Montreal & often in destinations unknown.

@Pkedrosky Always has an interesting perspective on the economy, the valley, startups, VC, and he is Anti-Facebook (to the best of my knowledge).

@pegobry 10 Things you Should know around 6AM on Silicon Alley Insider. Informative.

@balsamiq Founder Awesome Web Mockup Tool Balsamiq.com. Great Guy from what I hear.

@HnShah Founder of Kiss Metrics.

@bsaren Citysquares.com Founder. Funny Guy.

@Zeldman Web Design Guru, Author, Founder at Happy Cog, and publisher of  A List Apart.

@MattMireles SpeakerText.com CEO. Interesting information. A straight shooter from what I have seen so far.

@MattCutts He quit Facebook, so by default I am impressed, and he is a Google dude, so no doubt he is super smart.

@MarkRuddock multiple successful startups under his belt. Viigo.com was the latest to be gobbled up (by RIM).

@DrewHouston Founder of amazing service that I tell all my friends/family DropBox.com.  Offers solid advice for startups also.

@kn0thing Alexis Ohanian Co-Founder of Reddit (successful Y Combinator Grad), Breadpig.  Great speaker, funny, and an awesome contributor to this world. AlexisOhanian.com

@yegg Gabriel Weinberg is Founder of @DuckDuckGo, the alternate to Google Search, and he has a very informative blog. In fact, I see a February Video up of Alexis (just above) there right now.  How ironic.

@EnglishPaulM Huge fan, never met. PaulEnglish.com, huge success.  Btw..  He is not a heavy user on Twitter but dig up what you can.  Seems like an amazing guy.

@CDixon Chris Dixon absolutely Rocks. I paired down my toolbar and I absolutely had to add ChrisDixon.org back in.  Amazing resource & informative content.

Who am I missing? Who is on your list?

I am sure you could add to this list of people you look up to, respect, and reach out to for mentoring, startup advice, guidance, and tech information, etc.  By all means, the floor is yours.

@JaretManuel

I recently had a little debate with some friends back east, and I basically said some of their web work was crap because they were using a Dreamweaver Template tool and I thought that approach would be a mistake for helping another friend with their business.  Harsh I know. We bust each others balls a lot, and it was written in an SMS text so some things may have been taken to heart, and I apologize for being a ball buster and the way I approached it. My bad but get over it. My other friends are starting their new SUV Limousine service in St. John’s, Newfoundland, I think to be named Elite Limousine, and they are getting this friend to help them and I am sure it will rock.

If one was going to design this limousine site from a template angle I would highly consider wordpress because it is agile, lean, and extremely cost effective to the point that someone like myself, who is not technically inclined, could produce something of a professional design, and fast with a boat load of tools to boot. Don’t believe me? A friend of mine manages two high traffic sites that runs off of WordPress: Screenrant and Notebooks. The website could be designed in numerous ways such as HTML, PHP, HTML5 (this will be the new de facto way, bar none. It’s Kick Ass), or the template approach, etc.  If you want to see some great design then I highly suggest TheFWA and I would recommend something more extensive beyond WordPress for a business, but if you need something fast and cost effective, then it will more then do the trick. If you don’t know people to design a site for you, then you code look into Top Coder and host a contest but take more time in this area as it is easy to get plenty of crap in return.

How to get a Website up in 1 day:

1. Register your domain name.  There are many but Godaddy is solid (just ignore all the bells & whistles they try and sell you. Get the domain, and that’s it). $10-15 /year.
2. Run your domain off of Google Apps (up to 50 Users free). For example, steve@BrownieBus.com . If you use this and you use Firefox, then WiseStamp is a great Email Signature tool.
3. Help Pointing Godaddy to Google for Email.
4. Get hosting for your site.  There are a plethora of hosting sites like Dreamhost, Godaddy, & I prefer IX Host . $60ish per year.
5. Design your site using a template, a web designer (this may take more then a day), or you can download WordPress for your domain. You will need a WordPress.com (the previous link is wordpress.org to download the file to put on your host account) Account for some API keys, etc as well.
6. You’ll want a WordPress Theme.  There are many and the link is a suggestion only for free templates. For a Limo Site, I would keep it Photo rich. If you know PHP really well then you can design your own.
7. If you go with WordPress, then you want to have Smartphones accounted for with the WordPress Mobile Pack.
8. WordPress SEO Pack is a must as well.  Once your wordpress is installed you can search plugins and download them internally. Research core plugins for pertinent to your site, but try and avoid getting caught up in Plugin overkill.
9. How are you going to manage your information regarding your customers/leads? CRM or Customer Relationship Management is something you should strongly think about. 37signals and Zoho are cost effective, and Salesforce (Group Edition is $25/user/month) is more expensive but far and away the leader. Plus, Salesforce now has WordPress to Lead Integration. If you choose a web design other then WordPress, and you go with Salesforce, you can use their Web to Lead function built in their Group Edition.  Even in a limo business, you should keep data of people & businesses inquiring, and ultimately using your service.  These people are a great recurring and referral revenue source, so stay in touch with them, and thank them for using your service, and you can send them links to the cool video you are about to make.
10. How are you going to handle your accounting and invoicing to businesses, etc?  Look no further then Freshbooks. They have 1 million+ users and make your invoicing task easy. I am not certain the cost, but it is cheap.
11. Are you going to accept online payments?  This will take more then a day to setup but in Canada I would advise Moneris.
12. Get a Twitter account and post a twitter icon on your site.  See my Hockey Site PuckDrop.ca. Twitter is not hard. You simply need to know Hash tags that people search on like: #limo #stjohns #GeorgeStreet #HavingATime #DonnieDumphy, better yet, create one and run with it… like #PuckDrop . Once you have a Hash Tag of your own, get people tweeting and taking pics with that hash tag, and you can linkup to CrowdReel or spread the word about it. Use it, get your friends following you, and chatting it up.
13. With Google Apps (See 2.) it comes with a pretty solid calendar that you can share with your team privately, and I would integrate it with Tungle, and link your Tungle URL on your website so that your Calendar (Free/Busy Slots Only) can be shown public. Tungle is free.
14. Get a Vimeo (It’s like Youtube but better for posting videos) account. Here is a super simple video to show you how to embed Vimeo in WordPress.
15. Do you have a professional phone service?  Grasshopper or Ringcentral.ca is the way to go.
16. Facebook for websites (a little more advanced but give your nerdy friend something nice and they will hook you up). This basically makes your site a fan page all unto itself. And of course, promote your site on Twitter and Facebook.

Now you are up and running.  How do you market your site?  Well, there are many ways and you can start by putting Vimeo to good use and make a funny video that your friends talk about and share.  Drive around St. John’s, Signal Hill, the Lighthouse, Cape Spear, and make something funny. The JK Wedding Dance is almost at 5omil views so anything is possible and that didn’t cost them much if anything to make. Be funny, creative, and really think around social media that your friends will find funny and want to talk about, and share on Facebook, etc.  Traditional ads are expensive, and hard to track… on that note I almost forgot. You should also utilize Google Analytics. This is more important for broader geographical marketing and more in depth traffic analysis, however you have the link in case you need it.

When you are in Newfoundland & you need a good photographer: Photos by Tom.

If you have ideas then by all means feel free to comment.

As a proud Canadian I love our country and think we have it pretty damm good here.  I mean we have a boring leaderless government and political opposition but the upside of that is that we are not out pissing off other countries too much.  We have great people, some rave about our health care, and of course there is our crack like addition to Hockey.

All of that good stuff aside, our government seems to embrace a lack of competition for certain industries.  Take the telco industry and the very recent CRTC decision to slam and shut out Globalive as a fourth national wireless carrier.  What, you mean that would entail more choice for the consumer?  Heaven forbid Watson, we mustn’t do that…. The Oligopoly would be bruised.  It seems our government wants only a few telco players, and that down right sucks.

Which leads to the “How to Piss Off a Customer!” part. Fido, now a wireless brand under Rogers, used to be a company called Microcell.  Back when they where around, they had these amazing phone packages (that were probably losing money) by Canadian standards and they got Grandfathered when Fido bought them out and they still are today under Rogers.  800 LD North America minutes, 24/7 unlimited local calling anywhere on the FIDO network, no access fees, and the list goes on.  I got super lucky and it is a plan that Rogers/FIDO simply would rather not have me on and I have to sign a 3 year contract in order to keep it.  The plan is amazing so I bite the bullet.

So the iphone comes out a while back and I wouldn’t mind getting it so I make a call to FIDO, and see how I can get one. Well sir, you can’t get the iphone because you are in a contract and you have to wait 6 months until your agreement is up before you can entertain that.  I tell them “are you kidding me? I praise you guys up and down the line, and your service is great but this is a bit much”.  Tough luck, no dice.

So a while goes by and I determine I could use the business apps on the iPhone so it moves towards a Need vs. a Want. So I call again. Same thing, no go. 3rd call, 4th call, and then I go on Jigsaw to find the first EVP that I could find and I cold call one of them in Montreal and some executive assistant tells me he is no longer with the company so I say put me through to retention as this has gone too far. I get a nice lady on the phone and I simply told her that I will call everyday and drive you guys crazy if I don’t get that phone.  She said there is nothing you can do. I said put me on with someone who can make it happen and that I am willing to sign a new 3 year agreement.  I mean, I am the customer so give me what I want but they realize they don’t have to because there is no true telco competition in this country.  Well, this lady ended up being awesome and she somehow (magically made it happen) and with some further negotiating I got the phone. Woo Hoo, love the phone, but I am not a happy customer.

If FIDO was smart, they could have embraced the fact that I loved the service, the package and they could suck up the fact they are not making enough money off of me and appreciate the fact I tell friends how great FIDO was.  Instead, they pissed me off because they were offering something and as a loyal “locked in” customer, I cannot have it (not to mention I upgraded the data plan, hence more Revenue for them).

The second part of how they continue to piss me off is that not only do they not want me on the plan, they send me mail saying what a great deal I can get with their latest offer.  The problem with this is that their offer is about 1/10th of what I have right now, which tells me their promotions department doesn’t even know which plan I am in, which means they are wasting trees and money, which means they are clueless, and what does it say to me as a customer.  They don’t care and until Globalive gets the CRTC stamp (or other serious competitors emerge) they don’t have to care because there is no imminent threat.

If you want a sure fire way to piss off your customers, threaten them with the plans you have them on now (if you have plans that are grandfathered.), send them offers that don’t compare to what they already have, and wave it in your face that there is nothing you can do about it, and do not reward locked in loyal customers. FIDO has me because I lucked out with my plan and there is nothing close to it being offered otherwise I would have left. But as a customer, I am still pissed and maybe the telco exec’s were pissed (loaded) last night in joyous celebration that a potential “real” competitor got rejected.  For now at least.

In the meantime, Globalive’s Wind Mobile Videos say it best:

The founders of Hubspot and MIT Alum Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah  have produced a knock out punch with their new book called Inbound Marketing: Get Found using Google, Social Media, and Blogs.  What I liked the most about this book is that it was very simple to read, and it is not just a great book but it is a fantastic resource that you can resort to often.

Every chapter has easy and practical tips to help your customer base find you in a language that anyone can understand, regardless of your technical ability.  Gathering attention in this noisy, busy, and cluttered world doesn’t have to be as hard as you think if you apply their useful suggestions. From blogging, Google, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, YouTube, and more, Dharmesh and Brian have it covered in spades.

The days of interrupting and “pushing” are increasingly less effective because it is easy for consumers to block and tune you out.  That doesn’t mean there are less customers out there, in fact, they will beat down your door if you have what they are begging for, and this book shows you how to “pull” them in via Inbound Marketing without annoying the hell out of them.

Gravity is always at play where you can fight or you can harness this force by working with it. Inbound Marketing is the smart and efficient approach that can be accomplished with a low to no cost, and the potential return is astronomical.   This book is a must read for businesses big and small wanting to attract more leads, exposure, buzz and revenue, as well as bloggers striving to gather a larger audience.  I highly recommend you buy it for you and your employees.

*Dharmesh Shah also Blogs on a kick ass startup site called: Onstartups.com. Inbound Marketing can be purchased on Amazon.com, Chapters, etc, and their site is inboundmarketing.com/book.

Success in war lies in scrutinizing enemy intentions. And going with them. ~ Sun-tzu

An interesting and quite funny video of Larry Ellison (useless fact: Ellison is named after Ellis island) bashing “Cloud Computing” and Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff was brought to my attention recently.  In this video he rants about how cloud computing has been around for years and he basically calls the whole concept idiotic and pretty much laughs at Salesforce. I actually got quite a laugh out of the whole thing and I think Ellison has been previously quoted for saying “there is little correlation between wealth and intelligence”, and I have to agree with him in this case.

The man is far from stupid, however I failed to get the point of his useless rant. Sure, Salesforce.com’s marketing slogan de jour may be Cloud Computing but they are not saying they invented it and they do not deny they utilize Oracle’s database infrastructure. A business has two choices to store data: they can buy servers and store it in house better known as on premise or they can utilize outside servers known as a hosted environment or cloud computing as it is now being referred to. Nothing really idiotic there is it?

In my Salesforce days, we were using SaaS (or Software-as-a-Service) and On Demand as a term and Cloud Computing is gaining acceptance across the board. It is much easier to understand so kudos to the Salesforce Marketing department.  Samurai Larry can bash Cloud Computing all he wants but the fact of the matter is he presviously sat on the Salesforce board and he held or holds a considerable amount of their stock.  Furthermore, he is a major shareholder of NetSuite so all of this talk about Cloud Computing being idiotic and water vapor is quite intriguing, not to mention the fact he maintains a good personal relationship with Benioff behind all the smoke and mirrors.

Couple this with the fact Marc Benioff is slated to go back to his old stomping ground to speak at Oracle’s upcoming Open World event leaves one wondering why?. Maybe Larry is having one of his Samurai swords shined and sharpened to slay his protege and rein in the king of water vapor.  Keep in mind, Salesforce.com was the first B2B to reach $1bil in revenue via the internet, Software-as-a-Service, Cloud Computing, or as Larry calls it, Water Vapor.

It will be interesting to see what Oracle Larry does with all this hot selling steam.  In the meantime, here is a great video on cloud computing if you don’t know what it is but don’t tell Larry because he may think you are an idiot!

So first and foremost, I was just kidding and Dharmesh is certainly not a liar. Far from it.  I have a great admiration for his success, love reading his onstartups.com blog (it is in my blogroll), and I tell everyone I can about Dharmesh, his multiple success, and Hubspot.com (the king of getting your company tons of the right traffic to your doorstep!). I had an opportunity to do business with Hubspot and these guys are awesome. Dharmesh, I hope you find humour (Canadian spelling for my friends down in the Bars and Stars) in this post, and if not, my apology in advance. So why did I jokingly call him a liar?

Well, it relates to his recent post Building Startup Sales Teams: Tips For Founders and he says he is not in or never was in Sales. In his view and most others he is absolutely correct, but in my view everyone is in sales and I kind of find it funny the stigma that has been bestowed upon sales as a whole (unfortunately there are idiots out there causing a few bad apples to make a nice tree look bad).  Think about it, do you have kids? They are the best and most relentless salespeople in the world constantly asking parents and others for things. Can I have this? Can I have that? Please Mommy, please Daddy… The hall pass you are looking for from your husband or wife (hopefully a hall pass is not required) to have a night on the town with some friends, etc. That job you are looking for, that favour you are seeking from a friend, and the list goes on.  My point is that we are constantly trying to sell ourselves onto people in personal life and in business, and Dharmesh is no different.

I actually think Dharmesh is a huge salesperson and a damm good one.  He is silently selling and promoting, and more importantly he is giving back to the community of would be entrepreneurs and marketers.  His modest personality and approach is effortlessly brilliant (at least he makes it seem that way).  He writes one of the most practical, no non-sense, get it done and basic blogs out there for start-ups.  I love it and many others do as well.  He is constantly putting in subtle plugs to his business but in a very lite manner, not pushy, and helping the community at the same time. Brilliant.  He has sold me and many others on his blog. He also is selling by his frequent travels and speaking engagements at various marketing events and he is an awesome presenter despite what he says.  I can’t wait to hear him speak live!

I really enjoyed this post and love how he points out to stay lean, stay agile, and to focus on efficiency while protecting what little cash you have because cash is king to survival.  In point 8 he mentions about not focusing too much on rewarding the Salesperson for just the sale.  Salespeople should really be focusing on relationships not sales, the long term, not short, making friends not customers.  This may take longer but in this increasingly connected world it will reward you handsomely in many many ways.  There are previous customers of mine who will continue to get a card from me during the holidays, etc.  Why? Because I care, I believe in karma, and what if I need help down the road.  Those people will jump off a cliff to help you when you ask because they will want to help you.  Salespeople all too often focus on themselves and their greed glands when they should always be thinking of the customer.  An employer allows a salesperson a chance to earn an income but it is the customer who allows them to pay the bills, earn a great living, and put food on the table, and ultimately keep their job. When I was a kid I helped my family business pretty much every Christmas take a wrapped box of chocolates and a calendar to the senior citizens home in my small town.  You should have seen those people in delight and every year they came to expect it and it was the talk of the senior citizens home.  My family didn’t have to do that but they appreciated their business and they wanted to show them gratitude.  For some that was the only gift they received. So where do you think they came to shop? Not only that, I don’t know how many days I spent with my father as he went around plowing out peoples driveways that were filled in from snow blizzards.  He would plow for hours on end and what did he charge them?  Zero.  He wouldn’t take money from them. The competitor didn’t hold a candle when it came to competing.  Be skimpy, be cheap, and you’ll pay dearly.  Give and you’ll get.  It is a pretty simple concept, however common sense is not all that common!

Point 11. Yes track data like a maniac from the get go, however do not, I repeat, do not use a spreadsheet. I posted a previous article on Salesforce and at some point using them is a very wise move but if you need to go free (to save cash) Zoho offers up to 3 users for free.  Use them until Salesforce is feasible. It is easy to migrate and import the data over and it will spare you spending too much time in spreadsheets.  By the way, Hubspot has an amazing integration with Salesforce.com once you reach the professional edition.

So Dharmesh, this was a fantastic article, and I always look forward to your articles on the feed.  They are inspiring, fun, and will help me and many others avoid many costly mistakes as we try and emulate your success as an entrepreneur.  Keep up the great selling!

Jaret

Disclaimer: I worked for Salesforce.com for two years so you should know that before you read the following.

How are you managing your business, keeping track of your growing vault of gold, no better yet, your diamonds?  I am referring to your customers. You know the people who keep you in business, pay your bills and the people who allow you to earn a living, and if you are successful and if you have created plenty of luck (and got a little along the way) then maybe just maybe they are helping you earn an awesome living.  To those that are, congratulations, and I bet most of those successful business people know a lot about their customers and they are managing their information well.

Unfortunately, this is not always the case and it is amazing that I still come across companies that are losing plenty of revenue and customer relationships because they do not have a handle on their customer information.  Further, there is a continued misunderstanding or a lack of education placed on Customer Relationship Management or CRM.  Think about this for a moment: Customer Relationships.  Do you know what all your customers are buying?  Ok, some of you may, however that is only scratching the surface.  Why not to get to know your customers as human beings by knowing their birthday, more about their interests, their family, etc?  All of this is invaluable information about your diamond (Customer) in the ruff of competition that will help you sell more and sell deeper, and keep your hard earned customer hooked longer if you are deserving of their business. Not only that but do you have visibility into your sales (what they purchased in the past), marketing, and customer service (what past issues they may have had) efforts whether it be a high level view of your business or a granular view of a single customer or segment?  These are very serious questions and I find it puzzling that many small and medium sized businesses fail to gain a stronghold on their customer data and their business at large.

I haven’t been with Salesforce.com in well over a year, and I continue to scream praises at the mountaintop about this amazing company and Marc Benioff and team.  I was in a position to sell Microsoft product for a company and some of their product is stable such as Microsoft office, however I flat out told my customers, if you ever need a CRM I cannot for the life of me allow you to purchase Microsoft CRM.  I had to use it and it was terrible and junk is a mild word to put it at best. I described it something to the effect of those guys back in the day hand pumping a dolly on the train tracks except the wheels were square and made of wood, while on the adjacent track there is this train that you can barely see it because it is moving so fast and smooth, and it is using Maglev (Magnetic Levitation) technology. Well, Maglev in this case is Salesforce.com, and although they are not perfect they are pretty damm good!

Salesforce.com is the Ondemand leader in Customer Relationship Management, the first Ondemand company to reach $1 billion in revenue, and to legitimize the business internet as much as ebay and amazon proved for the consumer space. Much of this misunderstanding with many businesses is that many think Salesforce.com is simply another contact management system like Act or much of the other crap that is out there.  Salesforce.com is actually much more then a CRM, and it can drive a newbie crazy or scare them off if they try and take in all the functionality.  There is zero need to be scared.  Take a deep breath and keep reading.  Break it down to what is important and work it from there and start with the basics (it is so easy to upgrade editions. Think about turning on the lights when you come home. It is that easy and you don’t have to move around your data).  The bottom line is that Salesforce can be very simple or as complex as you require it to be.  The users of Salesforce.com vary from massive companies with thousands of subscribers to someone like myself as one user who uses it as a personal Rolodex (I also use it for another business I am involved in).

So let’s think about this for a moment.  You pay Salesforce.com basically to rent this kick ass space to store your data.  Not only do they store this data in a fancy storage center ($100 million+ data infrastructure with disaster recovery on redundant services, etc…. they take this very very seriously and companies like Cisco and the government would not be with them if they didn’t)  you can move anytime (there are many people out there that think Salesforce can retain the data and that is completely bunk. The bottom line is you own your data and you can do what you want with it. So as I was saying you have this fancy storage to the effect do you want heat (I am using an analogy if you are puzzled)? You get heat. You want it freezing, have it your way.  You want shelves, you get shelves.  It is your space, do what you want with it.  But Salesforce takes it one step further.  If you want to change fields and move things around, you never worry about coding if you don’t want to as they handle all the heavy lifting.  Salesforce.com doesn’t really have leaks in their storage roof but they are always open to improvements, ideas, and suggestions so they are constantly making updates (about 4 releases a year, maybe more now) to improve your storage and user experience while nothing changes with your data as they simply add functionality around it.  You login the same way you always did, no matter where you are in the world as long as you have an internet connection.  Salesforce has become a full business platform enabling you to handle plenty of other functions and data within Salesforce.com (eg. HR, Time Tracking, Email Campaigns, and integration with Accounting, ERP, etc).

Some businesses try and scurry around their data issue and often go cheap only to find the solution did not work so then they have to double track and eventually end up at Salesforce.com which has them often spending even more money and more headache. I agree in pinching pennies especially when you lack revenue or cash, and you are trying to keep the lights on. Don’t buy that fancy desk, chair, business cards, etc but there is no point to skimp on your area of data and customer relationships. Save yourself the trouble.  Here is a link to some information and a trial (yes, I am on a referral program with Salesforce.com) link and I am happy to answer questions and consult for those who have decisions to make in this area.

Try Salesforce.com for 30 Days!

Jaret Manuel