Small Business Technology

Many companies use tradeshows to generate customer and distributor leads. However, more than 95% of companies exhibiting are missing a huge opportunity to supercharge their leads.

Tradeshows can be expensive. By the time you add up the costs for the booth space, the booth display itself, transportation, having employees out of commission during the show, food and so on, it can be thousands of dollars to display at a tradeshow.

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Why do companies spend the time and money to implement a Customer Relationship Management system? The reasons vary, but near the top of the list you’ll almost always find:

1. Generate more sales.
2. Get control of their contacts with a central database.
3. Reduce operating inefficiencies and costs.

Companies get sold on how slick everything fits together and the flashy reports that will give magical insight into their business. CRM demos are designed to give maximum WOW factor and all of the scenarios used in the sales presentation are tailored to show off the CRM system at its very best and completely side step any product deficiencies. Those selling CRM systems get good at selling the “sizzle”.

However, the “steak” usually falls well short of expectations. And that’s because the sales process they’re using has been purposely designed to distract you from a critical fact.

More on that later…but first…

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I've been noticing a disturbing trend in CRM that could have a major impact on small business...the move to eliminate single license versions of products.

Case in point: FrontRange has officially dropped their GoldMine standard product. The option available to new users is to buy their GoldMine Corporate product which comes with a 5 license minimum.

And FrontRange isn't alone.

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