I recently had a kickoff meeting with one of our customers, and it was quite refreshing. These meetings are sessions where our Professional Services delivery team meets with a customer’s key stakeholders to “kickoff” a PlanPlus Online CRM implementation. In this particular meeting, the leader on the customer side began the session with a bit [...]
The Dangers of Taking “Simple” for Granted These days, many cloud-based CRM software applications are pretty simple to use. In fact, many software vendors have done such a good job of touting the simplicity of their applications, with terms like “ease of use” and “user friendly”, that some of their customers take implementing and using [...]
Are you an organized person? We hope so. Of course, there are numerous degrees of organization. If you're familiar with martial arts, you know that most disciplines will have different degrees or colors of belts based on the level of skill that a person's demonstrated. You might start out as a white belt, move to [...]
Organizational culture can be difficult to define because its meanings and varieties can be as numerous as the companies that exhibit it. In the most general sense, however, organizational culture represents our group behavior and our shared values. It drives the way that we interact within an organization and the way we interact with external [...]
I'm a huge advocate of goals! Goals have tremendous power. In fact, goals have the power to focus the potential of mankind. Goals have the potential to send a man to the moon, to cure cancer, and to change lives. Unfortunately, in much the same way that nuclear power can be used to power cities or [...]
The difference between a business that achieves consistent greatness versus a business that achieves occasional goodness is well-executed systems and processes. Creating functional and friendly systems in every department is essential in today’s business environment. It's vital that companies create user-friendly manuals and training programs to encourage individuals to put systems and processes in place in order to [...]
The habits you develop can have a huge impact on virtually everything in your life--including what you have, what you become, and the company you keep. Developing good habits can help you make positive changes in your life, and it can make a difference in how you perceive others, tackle challenges, and accomplish goals. When [...]
Productivity is the buzz word of the business world. While it is something the average employee works toward, it can often be confused with simply being busy. Busying oneself with extraneous tasks does nothing to help the company go forward and may actually hold it back from real growth. There are few key elements of [...]
Building a sales process for generating new customers in a B2B sales environment can actually be broken down in to a number of smaller processes. Each of these processes is a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end result. By connecting the successful results from each preceding process as the beginning [...]
Question: "Do you do Time Management?" Answer: "Time management doesn't work for me in my job. My job is too reactive to customer needs" Are you trying to manage your time with a calendar? Try this instead... Over the past few weeks I have encountered a few people who have said that “Time Management” doesn’t [...]
List people. If you're one, you probably know it. If you aren’t one, you probably know someone who is. What's a “list person”? Quite simply, list people like to make lists! They (or more accurately, we) like to make lists of activities that need to be done. These lists can be on Post-it notes, they [...]
This week the spotlight is on the 5th building block of culture: systems and processes. PlanPlus Online prescribes 5 building blocks for building Culture: Shared Values Communication, Language and Symbols Rituals and Routines Habits of Effectiveness Systems and Processes The right systems and processes streamline tasks and increase efficiency. No one knew this better than [...]
