Ask not what you can do for your marketing chicken headless

Two weeks, more or less, has passed.

Yeah, it has been crazy. I focused mostly on converting existing data into our new CRM tool, SalesForce.com, and updating the website.

A CRM tool is a good thing, theoretically. It takes a lot of the thinking out of the marketing and sales process. The downside, however, is that, like all computer solutions, its usage and limitation is not always exactly what you wanted.

SalesForce.com is a hosted service so it is kind of nice that way. Our new VP of Sales is a fan and, having no strong opinion on the issue, I am as happy with it as any other choice. So, my biggest challenges are mostly in the realm of loading data onto the database. There are several spreadsheets of existing customer information and marketing information that needed to be consolidated into one. Being an old COBOL programmer who worked with DB2 extensively, I know my way around loading data. This is one of those things that ain't too difficult but tricky enough that if you ain't careful, you can screw yourself royally.

What bugs me about SalesForce is that the standard field "Lead Source" is a picklist and can only have one entry. Logical but not useful. From the same lead (person), there could be multiple ways of contacting us. For example, if a person received a whup-ass e-mail then requests a product demo as well as a whitepaper, SalesForce does not allow me to provide the kind of granularity I need. If you think I am just nuts for wanting that kind of info, it gives me the opportunity to come back later and do con-joint analysis on the selection/request preferences and the ultimate outcome. (And people thought marketing is all frou-frou.) Anyway, I came up with a method of capturing that information that does not look too ugly on the database structure without dragging down the performance.

Website is coming along. Pushed the new sales process update onto the live site. My next major objective is to get the text changed so that the website reflects the new corporate focus. This will help the search engine ranking. With all the band-aids in, I will be able to sit back and think though the whole website re-vamping process. Part of the problem with the current site is that it has a very year 2000 look. Hope to put in a few fixes to make it look younger.

After staring at the website for so long, my favorite method of taking a break is to put in all sorts strange stuff onto the site. So, far, I have added Bevis and Butthead onto the corporate banner, added one of the exec's photo and added mustache onto the home page. Good thing that everyone enjoys the gag. It is a shame that some of the more inspired graphics and languages will never be shown on the live site.

Oh, also got some budget to upgrade the Hoovers account. Did you know that if you use Master card to pay for Hoovers, there is a discount? In my case, it amounts to some 20% off. I always thought that Master/Visa target consumer markets. But, I will take the discount.

The blasting program continued until this week. One of the particular memorable lines, I thought, involves a paraphrase of the JFK's "Ask not what your country can do for you..." by juxtaposing our product against the solutions that we are suppose to replace. It was cute.

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