CRM Update – May 23 : 2:04 pm

How do you become a real CEO, instead of a CEO-by-default? Part two of a five-part series.Change. Adjustments. Course corrections. Innovation. This is what entrepreneurship is supposed to be all about. If your start-up isn’t working, change it. Even if your startup is working, entrepreneurs are assumed to be at the vanguard of change. Shaking things up. Bucking the status quo.Motivating others to buck the status quo is a powerful but difficult aspect of leadership. Generally, there are two outcomes: You either succeed and get rewarded, or you create too many enemies along the way and end up getting crushed by your adversaries…

Summer is the most difficult time to prospect and land deals. Get ahead of the game now to max out your sales productivity.When you are selling, getting connected to buyers is critical. Whether you are talking about current customers, referrals or cold prospects: You can’t sell to people you can’t reach. They, meanwhile, can’t get approval from people not there to sign–and no one can get buy-in for you when the halls are empty.Welcome to the black hole for decisions–also known as summer…

Linda Gridley, founder of building and remodeling firm The Gridley Company, didn’t understand the nightmare of housing multiple generations until her mom moved in.The year was 1999, and Linda Gridley was faced with a tragic set of circumstances. Her father had recently passed away, and her aging (and still grieving) mother could not live alone. Gridley was faced with moving her mother across states, from Idaho to California. The problem: Gridley’s three-bedroom house was already crowded, with four people, including young children…

The Global Innovation Series is presented by BMW i, a new concept dedicated to providing mobility solutions for the urban environment. It delivers more than purpose-built electric vehicles — it delivers smart mobility services. Visit bmw-i.com or follow @BMWi on Twitter.
Bridges have been around as long as humans wanted to go places. A simple log or tree was used to bridge a gap in the land. Today’s bridges are so much more than utilitarian structures that enable you to get from point A to point B…

With all the wackiness surrounding Facebook, now it appears that during the roadshow there are reports out suggesting that Facebook had reduced the earnings guidance it was giving research analysts. As a former investment banker this is really wild on several levels.

Companies do NOT issue earnings guidance to research analysts or anyone else during roadshows. Anything having to do with earnings guidance is considered material information (meaning that any investor considering an investment decision would want to and should know about it)…

Do you have Timeline? No matter how safe you are, you will eventually get it — and there’s nothing you can do about it.
This is the gist of a new satirical video from Funny or Die, which portrays Facebook’s Timeline as an infectious disease.
Though a bit late (Timeline has been rolling out to all users for several months now), the video raises an interesting point: Online services such as Facebook impose features upon their users whether they like them or not.
Up until several years ago, if you didn’t like a new version of a software, you could choose not to upgrade…

7 Brand Elements Any Company Can Build
Branding isn’t only for major consumer-oriented products (aka CPG products). Business-oriented products (aka B2B), services, not-for-products and solopreneurs also have brands that augment the value of their organizations over the long term.
Being a Millward Brown BrandZ™ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brand translates to profitability over time regardless of economic conditions. (Source: Millward Brown) 

The 2012 BrandZ™ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands had a total brand value of $2…

It was pretty thoughtful of DirecTV to automatically renew Pete’s $198 NFL Sunday Ticket subscription. You know, in case he forgot. He didn’t forget, actually, and he was planning to discontinue his subscription to the package. He can’t. The auto-renew stands, and he won’t be allowed to cancel the package until a month after the auto-renewal notice. You know, just in case he forgets.

As a long-time DirecTV subscriber I’ve always been happy with their product and customer service, but this is shady…

Run your internship program right and it won’t just be an exercise in fetching coffee and making copies. Instead, it will be a great pipeline to the brightest young talent.Sure, sometimes internships amount to little more than free grunt work for employers. But yours isn’t like that. For one, you know that programs asking for free work in exchange for limited learning, while sadly common, are also probably illegal, strictly speaking. Two, you want to offer a quality experience to your interns, because—three—an inspiring internship program is a great way to get your hands on the brightest young talent after graduation…

We at QuestionPro often talk about online surveys as helpful tools to gauge customer satisfaction and test new trends. Another great way to use online surveys is to ascertain whether marketing efforts are increasing sales and brand awareness. A great example of this type of survey is FedEx Office’s recently released “What’s Your Sign?” survey.
 
The FedEx study surveyed 1,000 consumers to gauge their opinions on whether there is a connection between small business signage and positive consumer action, including the impact a sign has on consumer intent to visit a store, make a purchase and more…

Kevin Meehan had climbed the ladder of the culinary scene, but yearned to be his own boss. Now he’s broken out and is pioneering a whole new movement in dining.Chef Kevin Meehan, 35, did all the right things for success in the restaurant world: He studied at Johnson & Wales, apprenticed at a Michelin-starred establishment in Europe, and worked his way up at chic Los Angeles restaurants such as L’Orangerie, Bastide, and Patina before landing the executive chef job at Café Pinot. Why did he decide to give it up to launch a 10-seat pop-up called Kali Dining in February? To find success on his own terms…

It’s not about the worksheets: These tools are what really create success sales.The world is inundated with sales tools: worksheets, playbooks, sales scripts, software, brochures, and so forth.But all of those sales tools put together are insignificant if you don’t have the intellectual and emotional tools that truly create success.Here are seven sales “tools” you need to develop:1. Patience If you’re patient, you let customers decide at their own speed. You realize that nobody ever got a plant to grow faster by pulling at the leaves of a seedling…

Welcome to this morning’s edition of “First To Know,” a series in which we keep you in the know on what’s happening in the digital world. Today, we’re looking at three particularly interesting stories.
Facebook IPO Fallout: What Went Wrong
Three days on the market, and Facebook stock price plunged to $31, down 18% from its initial offer price of $38.
While the IPO may have been successful in terms of investors’ interest in the stock, new details are surfacing each day, casting a dark shadow over the most important day in Facebook’s history…

Oracle is buying Vitrue, a cloud-based social media marketing firm that helps major advertisers market themselves on Facebook.
Though terms of the deal were not disclosed, TechCrunch is reporting that Oracle is paying $300 million.
“In a blog post explaining the move, Oracle wrote:

The proliferation of social media has changed the way that organizations and consumers interact. Vitrue’s social marketing platform helps organizations enhance their social marketing efforts to the next level of social engagement by giving brands the ability to scale across multiple social networks, target messages from global to local, create unique and consistent brand experiences, and publish content that engages fans and drives leads…

There are big opportunities in residential housing development, where revenues are projected to rise an average 10.4% annually for the next five years.Why It’s HotAfter being hammered by the recession, homebuilders are back at work. New construction projects have been stalled for so long that there’s actually pent-up demand, says Andrea Alegria, industry analyst at IBISWorld, a market research firm. According to Plunkett Research, which also covers the industry, single-family housing starts are expected to reach 360,000 this year, an 18% increase from 2011…

Are you looking to use social media to promote your blog?Sharing your blog posts on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and even Tumblr can help your content gain significant exposure.But each social media platform is distinct with different benefits and abilities. You need a simple process to tailor your social sharing to generate as much engagement as you can on each of these platforms.Here’s a process you can use to ensure your posts get maximum mileage. Consider these steps and adapt them to the social platforms where you find your customers…

Kara is a totally great daughter, which is why she sent her dad a box of Omaha Steaks for his last birthday. She isn’t as great at typing in his address, though, and the box had been delivered to a neighbor’s house. This neighbor quietly signed for and ate $70 worth of gift meats. While the good news is that Omaha Steaks went above and beyond, correcting Kara’s error and sending replacements, this still means that her dad has to live next to some jerk who ate his birthday present…

The finger-pointing over Facebook’s disappointing IPO continued Tuesday night as Massachusetts Secretary of Commonwealth William Galvin subpoenaed Morgan Stanley over one of its analyst’s critical report of Facebook prior to its stock market debut.
“The Securities Division has put out a subpoena to Morgan Stanley in connection with the analyst’s discussion with certain institutional investors about the revenue prospects for Facebook,” a rep for Galvin told Reuters…

AT&T is taking advantage of the personal nature of social media with a new campaign called “Thank You Notes” that includes more than 50 customized YouTube videos thanking fans in song.
For instance, the video above thanks “Mary C.,” an AT&T fan, with a nerdcore rap. Other genres include soul, doo-wop and hip-hop. The full list of videos is available on AT&T’s YouTube page.
The effort, which began Tuesday, is a celebration of the brand hitting 2 million fans on Facebook…

A former Microsoft Windows Azure evangelist offers some advice for what to move to the cloud and when.

I too use s.t whenever pages content change under tabs. But someone told me using s.t is not advisable since its(generates) primary server call. any thoughts

Trying to speed up your sales cycle? These organizational changes should make your team more nimble.Is your sales organization suffering from a lack of velocity? High-speed sales teams tend to outperform industry standards, turning out a large work product on time and with limited resources.But these high-velocity teams don’t just happen—they are built by experienced executives and supported by smart product management, then bolstered by dedicated, skillful sales reps.If your sales team could stand to move a little faster, start with these four strategies…

We volunteer at soup kitchens. We tutor kids. We donate. Not only is helping your community the right thing to do–it’s also good business.I was urgently needed to attend a meeting downstairs. Something seemed odd—I didn’t remember planning a meeting—but I went with it.Seconds after I arrived downstairs, 10 people dressed in capes came marching into our office banging drums. One of them stood on a desk and unrolled a long scroll and read the message from Rick Shadyac, the CEO of ALSAC (the fundraising arm of St…

Target is expanding its partnership with Shopkick, a mobile couponing app that allows shoppers to collect and exchange points for rewards.
Beginning Wednesday, shoppers equipped with Shopkick on their iPhone or Android devices will be eligible to collect points, or “kicks,” as soon as they step foot in one of Target’s 1,764 stores. They can earn more points by scanning various products in the store using the app, and then redeem those points for items such as Target gift cards, Facebook credits, dining gift certificates, iTunes downloads, charitable donations, etc…

Hey, who doesn’t love gift cards? Target sells a few as impulse items at the checkout, and Reader Cheryl noticed something curious. The gift cards had the same “as advertised” tag that sale flyer items at Target get, but they weren’t on sale. They were being sold at face value. As gift cards generally are.

“Attachment shows the ‘as advertised’ signage on $25 restaurant gift cards,” Cheryl wrote in a note with the photo. “Advertised price? 25$.”

Well, just because you advertise something, that doesn’t mean it has to be on sale…

Mexican fast food chain Chipotle announced yesterday that it’s the subject of an investigation by federal prosecutors into the possibility that it violated criminal securities laws with its hiring practices.

Chipotle said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it found out about the investigation on Monday, when contacted by the U.S. Attorney’s office for the District of Columbia.

This isn’t the first time Chipotle’s name has come up in regard to hiring practices: In 2010 and 2011 Chipotle fired hundreds of workers, after audits by the U…

Shareholders have sued Facebook and CEO Mark Zuckerberg over the company’s bungled IPO, charging they hid bearish forecasts prior to going public, according to a report.
The suit charges that Facebook and its lead underwriter concealed “a severe and pronounced reduction” in Facebook revenue growth forecasts before the company’s shares were offered to the public, according to Reuters.
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, according to Reuters, which did not provide further details…