Keeping It Simple is Not So Easy! (KISNOSE)

December 8, 2006 – 12:03 pm
One of the biggest challenges in On2Biz development is to manage a complex set of features required for users to manage their business online, while keeping the interface as simple as possible. One of the gurus of Web application design, Luke Wroblewski describes in an article on UX Matters, a magazine for usability titled “The complexity of simplicity”, about why making things simple is so difficult: Perceived simplicity can often conflict with actual simplicity of usage - Users initially associate simplicity by the lack of options. A ’simple’ interface is perceived to be one where there are very few options. However, that is not necessarily easy to use. An interface that provides ready access to features that may otherwise be difficult to access greatly simplifies the usability of the system. Managing this balance is one of the most difficult skills in designing user interfaces Actions that provide real value — and drive ...

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Lead Management: What is a lead and how to qualify leads?

December 8, 2006 – 6:32 am
Brian Carroll, CEO of InTouch, Inc. and author of Lead Generation for the Complex Sale (McGraw-Hill 2006) maintains a blog for B2B Lead Generation. He is an expert in B2B marketing, lead generation and complex sales. He wrote an interesting article in the Target Magazine which talks about “What’s a Lead?”. In a post on his widely read blog, Jim Berkowitz, another leading CRM expert explains the salient points of Brian’s article: The number one issue for most CEOs and marketers is lead generation - getting more leads to their sales team. The number one desire for salespeople, however, is more selling time with sales-ready opportunities Numerous lead qualification programs have shown that as little as 5 percent to 15 percent of all inquiries are truly sales-ready opportunities The biggest mistake made by marketers is to give mere inquiries to a salesperson There is a systematic process for successful qualification that includes specific steps Define ...

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On2Biz virtual development team, thanks to open source

December 6, 2006 – 12:06 am
I recently met someone who sells Microsoft CRM to companies in the Middle East. When I demonstrated On2Biz to him, he was really impressed with how much we have achieved. But he raised one important question about On2Biz - how can you compete with the likes of Microsoft with their huge development team, marketing and sales channel and deep pockets? Here is the first part of the answer - the development resources that are behind On2Biz are probably as big as the development team of any large product development company, thanks to the open source applications that On2Biz is based on. On2Biz uses the following major open source components. If you combine the total number of developers who continuously support and upgrade these applications, I would venture to guess that the number would be in thousands! Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl (LAMP) - is the server framework. All our development computers also run ...

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Why do you need a CRM or Sales Force Management System?

December 4, 2006 – 10:56 am
As individual sales persons, we are quite adept at managing our sales process. We have been doing pretty well without any “systems”. So why do we need one? The simple answer: To grow your sales! You can drastically improve your sales performance. Not just tweak it, but take it to the next level! Managing customer relationships is like managing any relationship. The work you need to do to manage your relationship with your spouse takes time, effort and constant attention. Without these, the relationship goes sour. Customers are no less demanding than a spouse. The only difference is, there are many more of them (unless you have a harem… wonder whether one can use CRM for managing your harem). And we want even more customers. But the available time, effort and attention get diluted when divided among several customers. The inevitable result is compromise in customer relationships. To handle a growing number of ...

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