SalesGrok

5 cool concepts @ Dreamforce '11

Dreamforce was in a word, “inspirational”! Salesforce.com brought a massive amount of talent, energy, innovation...and money to its annual 9^th annual Users conference, aka “Cloud 9”.

The experience motivated me to highlight and share five (what I consider cool!) concepts with you…

1)      If the rules don’t support your vision, change the game – Salesforce.com has never wavered from its purist approach to cloud computing, delivering release after release of fast, easy and open hosted software. Since 1999, the company has overcome Enterprise-class competition, including Siebel, SAP and Oracle, survived phishing attacks, minimized the threat of downtime issues as well as expanded its core CRM offering through development, acquisitions and the AppExchange, which boasts over 900 applications from more than 450 independent software vendors (983,599 installs as of this post and counting!).

2)      Innovation in the Cloud is just beginning – with 275+ exhibitors, there were so many new companies and technology, and it’s difficult to imagine less than 400 at Dreamforce 2012. I witnessed so many NCTs – next cool things/trends – I’ll save highlights for another post.

3)      The Social Enterprise is real (and a bit scary) - Marc Benioff’s Day 2 keynote presentation on the Social Enterprise says it all. The power of this concept is the ability to get closer to one’s customers – almost intertwined in fact. Think about a centralized view of your prospect’s public activity – LinkedIn, blog posts, tweets within Chatter, Salesforce.com's "private, corporate" social networking interface.  The delicate part of the equation is information overload. Have you looked at your “overdue” activities lately? I’ll bet 10 to 1 that we’ll see an emergence of “filtering” apps to help customer-facing reps separate the “wheat from the chaff”!!

4)      Sales and Marketing functions are converging – It’s a foregone conclusion that the traditional Sales model has been turned on its head – the funnel has flipped! The way customers buy will continue to evolve in such a way that Marketing will continue to increase its influence on purchase behavior and processes. Never has alignment between these functions been more critical than now! Read a bit on Revenue Performance Management ...is it possible that the Chief Revenue Officer will replace the CMO & CSO??

5)      People Rule! – Certainly the venue,agenda (Metallica anyone?!), content and technology play a major role in the quality of any conference, but people are the difference makers. Of the dozens of conferences I’ve attended over the years, Dreamforce seemed to have the greatest “people mojo” on the largest scale – with the right mix of knowledge, experience, social acumen and curiosity. Information distributed in the sessions was fantastic, but I think I learned more through Q&A on the tail end of sessions as well as in deep conversations with peers outside the classroom. This effect was likely strengthened by the Hawaiian opening greeting delivered by Daniel Akaka – hypnotic!

Over my (long and distinguished…;) career in tech, I’ve watched with awe and sometimes trepidation as salesforce.com blazed the path of creation to dominance of the SaaS industry. After Cloud 9, I’m a believer…how about you?

Here are my favorite posts on the DF11 experience and "what happens next"?

Dreamforce 2011 Wrap up: Our 10 Favorite Blogs about #DF11 by Appirio

4 Event Marketing Lessons From @HubSpot's Dreamforce Strategy #DF11 by Hubspot

Eric Schmidt: The Next Facebook will be Social, Mobile & Local by Eloqua

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SXSWi 2011...what's next?

With over 14,000 attendees and over 20 content tracks, South By SouthWest Interactive (SXSWi) was huge this year. When I picked up my badge and materials, my wrist popped as I hefted the 20 pound show guide. At this rate, next year's book will rival the Yellow Pages! 

When you consider the sheer amount of available content, combined with client meetings and events, 24 hours a day is not enough to soak it all in. Even so, I reveled in the crowd of technology and business enthusiasts from every corner of the world dressed in every manner of thread selling each other (thought not all would admit to it!!) and looking to find the next big thing.

The tracks I focused on were 'Marketing & Branding' (duh!) and "Emerging', led by technology thought leaders in search of the next big thing - perfect! Overall, the sessions where on point and valuable. There were a few that did not live up to their title, especially 'Sexy Dirty Data: Making Your Metrics Matter', which was really a glorified product demo. Here are the top emerging trends for you to layer in to your personal or business brand:

• Social Shopping (e-commerce on Facebook, yay...not!)
• Mobile Apps (yes, more of them)
• Augmented reality ("living" maps, interact with 3-D images)
• Right brain search (Google is left brain!)
• Go here, do this: location + collective action 

Granted, many of these have been on the radar for years (augmented reality started buzzing in '07!), but the technology and more importantly consumers (the market) have developed a critical mass that will accelerate innovation and adoption.

By far, the coolest event I attended was the CoTweet & Klout Sunday Brunch. Among the esteemed attendees, many of the "who's who" of Social Media, I connected with Dave Gray of X-Plane, famous for Gamestorming, and Scott Rhodes of Razorfish,a thought leader in interactive marketing who recently published Liminal, a guide to calculating enhanced LTV. And...I got a "#Poopin" t-shirt - neato!

The best presentation I heard was Guy Kawasaki's Art of Enchantment. Guy talked about the 10 pillars of Enchanting your customers by being "likable" and trustworthy with endurable consistency. Listen up...each of these pillars absolutely apply to Sales! Interesting quotes:

• "Default to 'Yes', and you'll be a world class networker..."
• "The higher you go in an organization, the thinner the air...()the higher you go, the dumber the people."
• "Money is the enemy of Enchantment."
• "Ten slides is the optimal number of slides, you'll be lucky if you get 10 points across." (Guy had 50!!)

I walked away for SXSWi with good memories, lots of new contacts and knowledge of powerful and emerging technology and trends that will bring value to my customers. To wrap it up this year, here is a link to Bruce Sterling's smart, but not so riveting SXSWi Closing Remarks.

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speaking of...

Another Christmas past. Hopefully you're relishing a wonderful Christmas weekend with your family and friends. I have to say ours was amazing.

One of the coolest gifts I received was Dragon naturally speaking software by Nuance. In less than 10 minutes to install and configure the software, I'm already speaking on my e-mails, documents and now my blog site. Usually I feel like I'm ahead of the curve, but on speech software I think I was behind it. It's just unbelievable! Here is the site if you want to learn more:


I'm going to have to rewrite the blog on cool technology…I mean respeak it! Perhaps this will translate into more quality posts since I won't have to use my fingers after a long day. In the meantime, here is an instant Sales classic SNL skit of Glengarry Glen Ross in the North Pole - ENJOY. Put that Cocoa down!!

 

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Top 7 Trends Driving Marketing Automation

This is a guest post from Lauren Carlson of Software Advice. Lauren and her firm specialize in connecting software buyers with software vendors based upon the strongest fit. They are what all great salespeople aspire to be...a trusted advisor. Learn more about Software Advice here.

Marketing Automation is one of the fastest growing segments in the CRM market. It wasn't that long ago that people weren't even sure what marketing automation was or how it functioned. Now, marketing teams are aggresively seeking out these systems. Marketing automation vendors such as Eloqua, Marketo and Genius are reaping the benefits and growing as fast as the segment they support. Clearly, the marketing automation industry has a strong tailwind at its back. But where is it coming from?

The B2B sales environment has changed drastically. Sales professionals are finding that it is increasingly challenging to reach potential prospects, and they are changing their business tactics in order to cope. At my company, Software Advice, we have experienced this first-hand through our phone calls with the thousands of software buyers we interact with each day. There are several specific trends that are changing the way buyers purchase, making marketing automation an essential addition to any organization.

The following are seven macro trends that I believe are pushing the growth of marketing automation.

1. Buyers want valuable content.
The traditional marketing jargon needs to be replaced with original content that provides value and education to the buyer.

2. Buyers are hesitant to engage over the phone.
Sales professionals are constantly facing the issue of decreased sales engagement.

3. Buyers require marketing accountability.
Traditionally, marketing ROI was difficult to measure on positioning, collateral and brand building.

4. A down economy results in longer sales cycles.
When money is tight, people are less inclined to buy. Sales professionals are faced with more and more prospects that are more risk-averse than ever.

5. Consumerization of B2B sales processes.
B2B buyers want their sales process to mirror that of their B2C exchanges. They demand clear and concise pitches, simplified pricing, quick implementation and ease of use. They also want to interact with sales as little as possible.

6. Marketing channels have transformed.
With the advent of the Internet, the way we communicate has drastically changed. This means that companies also have to change the way they market.

7. SaaS is the preferred deployment method.
Due to the high number of relatively new entrants to the marketing automation space, many of these vendors are built on a modern, software-as-a-service (SaaS) architecture. This deployment method enables users to get up and running faster than with traditional on-premise models. Also, with subscription pricing, the marketing team can easily add a digestible line item to their budget, as opposed to getting approved for a big capital expenditure.

Please visit the original post on the Software Advice blog for a more in-depth look at each trend and to leave your comments on the topic.

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5 Cool Apps that Power Sales!

What do you get when you mix Sir Richard Branson, Dick Costolo, Rob Solomon, Mike Murphy, Mitch Joel and Larry Ellison? Amazing insights, inspiration, excited audiences and lots of travel. No kidding, I was fortunate to attend 3 world-class conferences in September, including ExactTarget’s User Conference - Connections, Oracle Open World and Shop.org.

I’ll save the write up on the highlights for the next post – perhaps a “stream of consciousness” where you canmatch a myriad of quotes to the conference and speaker…;)

Without further adieu, here are the top 5 sales technologies that will turn your Salespeople into Sales machines:

1) InsideView – We brought InsideView into our Sales group at Pervasive Software and what a difference it made. Think about how many websites you need to tap before you dial your executive prospect – CRM, Hoover’s, LinkedIn, their corporate website, Edgars – to 1) make sure you should be calling and 2) to make sure you know enough to have a targeted, relevant conversation. What if you had all that information aggregated at the company and contact levels in your CRM system? With recent enhancements to include Social network linkages, this is a no-brainer!

2) Cloud 9 Analytics – Another no-brainer for Salesforce.com shops. Cloud 9 takes the guess work (and time suck) out of sales forecasting and revenue performance management. With Cloud 9, “spreadsheet hell” goes away for reps and their managers through near real-time synchronization with opportunities. There is also a cool widget reps can plug into PowerPoint to present quarterly and annual business plans.

3) Tinderbox – I’ve been in Sales for over 15 years and not much has changed in how we deliver proposals. Sure, you can take a word doc and parse it into a presentation delivered online or onsite, but it's difficult to avoid the “proposal black hole”.  What if you could deliver an interactive proposal with static and dynamic content based on customer needs then track the interaction on the prospect’s end? This is a game changer!

4) 7 Degrees – Literally, a visual mind map activated at the CRM contact record which shows the Salesperson linkage to the contact. PeopleMaps Safe Contact Sharing identifies when someone in your organization is directly connected to a sales prospect or can make an introduction to someone who can connect you to that sales prospect.

5) ExactTarget for CRM – What a surprise, Salesgrok promotes the company he represents! Yes…the plain, static emails produced through the typical CRM system will not draw the level of engagement we Salespeople need to grab the attention and interest of prospects. The ability to leverage branded, creative content from Marketing with 1 to 1 messaging and DRIP campaigns is mission critical!

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Grokking South By Southwest Interactive 2010

This year’s South by Southwest (Twitter: #sxsw)  Festival in Austin, Texas flew by just like every year. Time flies when you’re having fun, eh Austin?! Over the last 24 years, SXSW has become one of the largest music and interactive festivals in the world. Just look at the sponsors on the home page to witness the power of “South By”!

The main attraction for us technophiles was the SXSW Interactive Festival. I got in some of the action at the CoTweet party hosted by ExactTarget. Sunday morning. Sort of chilly. Amazing how many folks ended up on the 2nd floor patio at Whole Foods HQ. It was a complete reinforcement of the power and value of Twitter for brands. Some of the biggest and the brightest were there to mingle, including execs from huge brands like @Dell, @RedBull and @PizzaHut and industry gurus Guy Kawasaki, Jay and Joshua Baer (they’re not brothers) and David Berkowitz.

While I did not have the pleasure of attending more than a couple select events last week, I have enjoyed a near-there experience through the creative productions of the people who did. Just in case you missed it, here are some relevant, content rich resources, blogs and videos from SXSW Interactive for your viewing pleasure:

Cool SXSW promo video - If you love crowds, hip music and fun, this is the place!

13 SXSW Observations by Jay Baer (@JayBaer) of Convince & Convert  - awesome observations from a Social Media Jedi - especially dig # 2, 9 and 13.

Gary Vaynerchuck (@garyvee) and his book Crush It have inspired thousands. Check it out on YouTube.

Who knew ABC had something factual to report? Here's a good one "Best in Show: 19 Web Sites to Watch" .

Best of SXSW by Traveling Mamas  - This is actually better than it sounds...

Twitter’s Evan Williams Keynote presentation on @Anywhere (wow, Jay Baer was right!) on YouTube.

Quick SXSW Interactive Walkthrough - Infectious tune by Miike Snow

FourSquare presentation featuring Dennis Crowley (Foursquare), Christopher Barger (GM), and B. Bonin Bough (Pepsi):  (1,000% growth in the past month??!) Compelling Interview with Tristan Walker of Foursquare on PBS (I can see the appear to generation Y-, but maybe us older folks are still reticent to share our location in real time??)

And finally, the Austin Chronicle SXSW blog roll - lots of good stuff here.

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To Social or Not to Social - Twitter for Salespeople?

To continue this series, let me start by telling an old sales joke that I modified for Social Media. One Sales guy says to another, “Hey man, I haven’t seen any posts on Facebook or Twitter from you in weeks. What’s going on?!” The other replies, “I know, I know…I really dig that Social Media stuff, but I figured out that I’ve got to actually sell to make money here.”

After a year of searching for prospects and building a following, it is apparent that Twitter is not the place to go to build a pipeline. Even with its 55 million monthly users and 20% of internet users 25-34 years of age, Tweeting will not help you make your numbers. The struggle that I have as an individual contributor (not a brand) is similar to that of Twitter’s management…how do you monetize Tweets (other than the multi-level, get-rich-quick scammers) and as important, how do you measure return on investment?

Don’t get me wrong, I believe there is value for us salespeople to participate on Twitter. In short, being involved in the social community provides credibility. Call it an edge or the “X-factor” when you can use info from Tweets or interactions to “get in” or to build rapport. There is information here you can’t glean from corporate websites, such as customer complaints or internal meetings*.

Last week, I attended a Social Media Panel with Kyle Lacy, CEO of BrandSwag, Jesse Engle, Co-Founder of CoTweet and Lee Hammond of Interscope Records. I loved the quote Kyle used to open up his pitch, “If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.” – General Eric Shinseki. His prediction: 2010 will bethe year of “One powerful experience” for users to leverage a single system across multiple Social channels. According to Jesse, 54% of Fortune 100 companies use Twitter,  1 in 5 Tweets reference brand names and Twitter users are twice as likely to engage brands (over Facebook fan pages, et al.) Lee shared some cool stats on their artists’ fan following demonstrating the power of Social. For example, Lady GaGa (2009) had ~2,600,000 Twitter fans to Eminem (2003) ~451,000. Biggest takeaway for me: the average Twitter click brought $.65 per and the average conversion was $56...reinforcing the premise that Social Media pays the highest returns to brands, not individual contributors.

Here are some essential tools for maximizing your Twitter experience. My favs are HootSuite (for managing multiple accounts, Ubertwitter (Blackberry mobile support, iPhone apps here), Twitter Grader (measures relevancy), and CoTweet (key word search and automation).

So use Twitter and these tools to keep up with the pulse and gain the x-factor. As for me, I gotta run…gonna upgrade my LinkedIn account and go sell something!

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*Side note: Please DON’T tweet about calls or meetings with companies that are not yet your customers!!  Mentioning this may tip off the competitors I follow, but I feel like I should say something for the greater good…

To Social or Not to Social

Another chapter opened this week when my 9 year old son launched his email account.  Doubly so because my 6 year old daughter could not be left behind.  Getting email from my kids makes me smile.  How could you not with messages like "i love you daddy hope you are having a great day"? 

I'm gonna make the most of it before the inevitable evolution (or devolution?) to the SMS text "dad, gonna miss curfew can't find keys" or the Facebook post about a crush or some crazy party - yikes!

This got me thinking about the second hottest topic after The Cloud...Social Media.  There is no question that Social has changed the game, but what should you use and how should you use it to drive Sales?

Stop here and check your company policy.  Robert Half Technology just completed a survey that indicated 54% of business block access to Social networks completely while 19% permit it for business purposes.  You good?  OK, we'll chew on this in a few parts.

First, what aspects of Social Media should you be using now...Next, how you can leverage Social to promote your company and your personal brand...And finally, we'll dive into best practices and futures.

With more than 500,000,000 users of social networks, chances are you have LinkedIn, Facebook or MySpace account. 

LinkedIn is a vital Social tool for business.  It's a no-brainer...#1 it's not what you know, it's who you know. You'll rarely need to make a "cold call" when you realize that nearly every one of your prospects is 2 degrees away.  Major media and technology companies are using LinkedIn as pre-requisite for their receuiting, i.e. how the hell are you going to contribute if you can't even use it??

Quick note of LinkedIn etiquette: Make sure you get a chance to know someone before you "link-in".  It's sort of weird to go to a trade show, talk with someone for 5-10 minutes and then receive an invitation.  Don't be that guy! I like Thom Singer's rule "coffee, beer, meal" as the minimum interaction to bring someone into your network.

Next, Facebook (and MySpace) is for personal use, period...unless you are a brand and you can set it up for 100% business use.  It just doesn't make a lot of sense for your clients (and coworkers) to see pictures of you beer bonging at Spring Break 5-10 years ago - enough said!

Then there is Twitter and the rest.  According to Wikipedia there are about 200 "major" networks. I'm not suggesting that you use FriendFinder or Classmates.com for business, but there may be smaller networks that will pay off for you.  It's analogous to "the Cloud" and "private clouds", there are smaller, niche communities that qualify as social networks.  For example, Ning enables users to build their own networks to the tune of 125,000 at last count and my firm, ExactTarget, built a user community that serves more than 15,000 users called 3Sixty.

Stay tuned for the rest of the series.  Do you Grok it?

Selling the Cloud part II

We're going to continue the conversation about where our industry is headed, namely the Cloud...but before we go there I have a little RIF to share.

Aren't you getting sick and (expletive) tired bit tired of almost every advertisement, news story or editorial opening with the tag-line, "In today's economy..." or "in these tough times..." or "the economic crisis...", etc., etc.?  With the talking heads repeating these negative sound bites every minutes of every hour of every day, it's not easy to keep your focus and attitude as sharp and positive as you need it to be to achieve your numbers.  The good news is that forward-thinking business leaders continue to invest in the future.  They need your solutions whether you sell CRM, ERP, business services or consulting.  Now more than ever it's critical for you to stay positive, motivated and focused.  Turn off the TVand throw away the paper NOW and get cranking!

Last we spoke about Selling the Cloud, we talked about the business and technical benefits as well as opportunities and challenges as perceived by Information Technology leaders.  I found a great article in Computerworld that will help us understand the most prevalent misconceptions about Software as a Service (SaaS).  We know that uncovering and eliminating objections is key to sales.  "5 SaaS myths busted", by Jeffrey Kaplan of THINKstrategieswill absolutely help you sell more SaaS...or sell against it!

For your convenience, here are the top 5 SaaS myths:

Myth No. 1: SaaS is a peripheral trend

Myth No. 2: SaaS offers just one type of application

Myth No. 3: SaaS just offers skinnier versions of more sophisticated applications

Myth No. 4: SaaS is less reliable and less secure than on-premises applications

Myth No. 5: IT professionals are uniformly opposed to SaaS

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Selling the Cloud

The Cloud is REAL.  The Cloud is HOT.  The Cloud is NOW!!  The Cloud solves all of your problems and...it even makes breakfast for you every morning!  A bit of embellishment there at the last, but you must agree that the industry noise is as loud as the15" Kicker Solo-Baric Subwoofers you wanted back in high school.

The industry buzz is so extreme around this technology, I hereby predict that "the Cloud" will be win the top spot in 2009 on the list for buzzwords customers most despise. Pretty safe bet given that executives surveyed by Network Computing marked "Web 2.0" and  "SOA" as the most loathed in 2008 and 2007 respectively.  Whether customers love or hate the terminology, there is no denying that demand for this technology will grow to epic proportions.  With that, I wanted to start a conversation about what Sales needs to know and how we can benefit.  Consider this part one of a series...

So what is the Cloud anyway? After reviewing too many sites to name, I found the coolest definition of Could computing on a fairly new Berkeley University blog, Above the Clouds: "Cloud Computing refers to both the applications delivered as services over the Internet and the hardware and systems software in the datacenters that provide those services. The services themselves have long been referred to as Software as a Service (SaaS). The datacenter hardware and software is what we will call a Cloud."

Many of us in tech sales have been selling Cloud stuff for years - at the simplest level, the Cloud is really "the Internet" - a bunch of hardware and software running in data centers around the world. 

Talking with executives across industries, I have found that the main differences between then and now center around power, packaging and value.

With the Cloud, business leaders have gained enormous power to deploy business systems faster and cheaper than ever.  Another power element is vitually unlimited bandwidth and processing

power (think of the effort of bringing up a 1,000 servers for a few days to support a Superbowl ad campaign vs. renting the space on Amazon EC2). The Cloud ostensibly frees the business from onerous investments in infrastructure and waiting in line behind IT other IT imperatives (like getting Sharepoint to work!).  The value components include the financial benefit of realizing the acquisition as an operational expense vs. a capital expense (and all the committees that go with capital appropriations requests (CAR)) and the shortened return on investment (ROI) cycle.  Nevermind that the average SaaS subscription exceeds the total cost of ownership of traditional software within 3 1/2 years...the name of the game is speed (It's not the big that eat the small, it's the fast that eat the slow- great read BTW)...and SaaS delivers speed (or as a Marketing wizard might say....business agility!).

SaaS salespeople have gained extraordinary leverage through the Cloud delivery model because they can sell more effectively top down.  With a greatly reduced need for IT interaction, it has become practice to accelerate sales cycles to a fraction of the norm with support from the executive suite...so much so that IT has limited to zero visibility to what is coming.  As eWeek cites in a recent article, "Fear and Loathing of Cloud Computing"IT is finding new ways to resist the Cloud beyond security and control issues.  In the end, such resistance will serve as an opportunity for leadership as IT executives and their counterparts strive to "strike the right balance between cloud computing services and on-premise applications to (maximize) benefit of the business they serve."

The "2009 Cloud Computing survey", conducted by Kelton Research, interviewed 502 C-level executives and IT decision makers across 17 countries provides more insight on the opportunities and challenges for selling the cloud.  Here is a brief summary:

Opportunities
-71% of global executives overwhelmingly agree that cloud computing is a real technology option
-4 out of 5 respondents report that existing internal IT systems are too expensive
-Top benefits for Cloud computing as "recognized" by respondents:
+ Improve ability to be flexible (70%)
+ Focus on the core business (65%)
+ React more quickly to market conditions (62%)
+ Gain access to the latest technologies (51%)
See any problem with these top benefits?  The survey indicates that these benefits were "recognized", but not necessarily "realized" - why?  I'll wager the inability to realize these benefits are directly correlated to the extent to which the benefits can be measured in tangible terms.  These buckets seem to general to measure don't they?  Where is the reduction to OpEx, for example??

Challenges
-By a 5-to-1 ratio, executives report that they trust existing internal systems over cloud-based systems due to fear of security threats and loss of data and system access
-The majority of companies (61 percent worldwide) are not using cloud computing systems at this time.
 -More than 80 percent of those who use only internally owned IT systems do not plan on integrating any form of cloud computing in the next 12 months. 
If this data (while somewhat counterintuitive) could talk it would say, "If you want to make your quota, you'd best focus on companies that have adopted SaaS!"

In summary, Cloud computing will be a force for market and revenue growth for years to come.  SaaS, Business (or Managed) Service Providers (BSP/MSP), and other companies that leverage Cloud computing at the core will maintain a distinct competitive advantage.  So if you're not there, I recommend you take a strong look.  If you are there, congratulations...and tell the rest of us how it goes!

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Tech Update - Not Too Shabby

What a rollercoaster ride since the last post.  We’ve seen a giant maelstrom of economic bad news cripple consumer and investor confidence.  The irony is that the market will not rebound until confidence is restored, but this won’t happen until the positive news outweighs the negative.  Good luck with that if you happen to watch television or read the paper.  You’d think these talking heads get paid variable on the number of negative stories they report – hell, maybe even commission on every negative word!!

Web 2.0 Sales

Selling Power and every other sales rag has been running articles and web videos about the impact of Web 2.0 and Sales for the past few months.  Most of the discussion centers around innovation in business applications, like salesforce automation (Force.com), info mash-ups (InsideView), closed loop Marketing (Eloqua), compensation management (Xactly) and social/business networking (LinkedIn).  

No doubt that these business applications are a critical part of our success, but I'd like to focus in another aspect of how the world of Sales has been forever changed by Web 2.0.  

Ready, SaaS, Integrate

Over 100 business people attended the the Softletter SaaS (Software as a Service) conference in Altanta, GA.  Softletter, headed by Merrill R. (Rick) Chapman, produced a stellar event filled with valuable topics from start-up financing to delivering managed services and knowledgeable speakers, including Zach Nelson (NetSuite), Peter Lee (Salesforce.com) and Mike Hoskins (Pervasive Software). 

Almost everyone at the SaaS conference had integration pain.  This fact was interesting to me because 1) IT and traditional vendors have been calling data integration the “Achilles heel” of SaaS since 2003, 2) Executives from Zach Nelson (SMB XML) to Tim Minahan(SupplyExcellence blog master) have been saying integration for SaaS was a minimal issue or solved since 2004 and 2007 respectively and 3) Solving integration pain pays my bills!