Salesforce CRM Shifted My Paradigm

When I see something like this recommendation by Jim Cramer and the excitement that Jim and Marc Benioff exude, I continue to say to myself  ”I want to be part of that”.   Last year, after having tunnel vision to any other CRM products and only offering GoldMine sales and support for several years,  I opened my eyes and looked at Salesforce.com.

I read the CRM Magazine Issue that had Marc Benioff on the cover.  I ordered Benioff’s book, Behind the Cloud. I liked the product.  I liked the company.  I liked that I knew the name of the CEO.  I liked their Philanthropic Philosophy.  (Did you know they offer their product for free to non-profit organizations?) I liked that  Salesforce was compatible with Windows 7 as soon as it was released.   I took a week off and studied Salesforce and became a Salesforce Certified Administrator.  Since then I have helped to move GoldMine users to Salesforce.

Earlier this  month the CRM Market Awards were announced and Salesforce won each category.

At this time, I am continuing to  support GoldMine users as well as working with companies moving from ACT!, GoldMine or even Excel to Salesforce.

Am I jumping on the bandwagon?  Probably, but so what.   It feels better to swim with the current than against it.

GoldMine Price Promotions now through October

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Current GoldMine Promotions

Welcome Back to GoldMine

For Corporate Edition customers who are currently off maintenance and have been off maintenance for over 6 months.

Offer: Until October 29, can come back on support for a one time fee of $1,000, regardless of the number of licenses owned. In addition, you can upgrade to GoldMine Premium Edition for $419 per seat including the current version of MSSQL 2008.

Order must be for a minimum of 5 GMPE licenses with maintenance required on all seats. However not all license must be upgraded to be eligible. In addition, a customer can order additional seats for the same price if the additional seats are included on the same order. Maintenance and Support will be required for all seats. Offer good until October 29th, 2010.

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Standard Edition to Premium Edition Upgrade
For all GM Standard Edition customers off Maintenance.

Offer: Until October 29, upgrade to GoldMine Premium Edition at the special price of $479 per seat.

Order must be a minimum of 5 GMPE licenses with maintenance required on all seats. In addition, a customer can order additional seats for the same price if the additional seats are included on the same order. Maintenance and Support will be required for all seats. Offer good until October 29th, 2010.

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Corporate Edition to Premium Edition Upgrade
For all GoldMine Corporate Edition customers who are current on maintenance.

Offer: Until October 29, upgrade from GoldMine Corporate Edition to Premium Edition at the special price of $355 per seat if the order is placed by October 29th, 2010.

Order must be a minimum of 5 GMPE licenses with maintenance required on all seats. In addition, a customer can order additional seats for the same price if the additional seats are included on the same order. Maintenance and Support will be required for upgrade and additional seats. In addition, the upgrade will include the appropriate version of MS SQL Cal as determined by FrontRange Solutions. Offer does not include an upgrade to Crystal Reports. Offer good until October 29th, 2010.

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Promotional Bundle #3 – 5 user licenses
For individual user who want to purchase 5 user licenses of GoldMine Premium Edition.

Offer: A user can buy 5 licenses of GoldMine Premium Edition for $2,995 including maintenance for one year. This offer includes MS SQL 2008 Workgroup. Offer good until October 29th, 2010 only.

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Please note that Maintenance & Support (M&S) for all Products is based on List Price, not the discounted price, and must be included in each order. Only one promotion may be used at a time; promotions cannot be combined or altered. Availability, pricing, eligibility and terms of promotions are subject to change at any time. Whether an order qualifies for any promotion is subject to FrontRange’s sole determination. The promotions are intended for end users only, and FrontRange reserves the right to confirm that the value of promotions are presented to the applicable end user and not to any other party.

Introducing GoldMine Premium Edition 9.0

From FrontRange Solutions:

Join us for an upcoming webinar event!

Most of our customers on maintenance now run PE!  Now is the time to step up to the latest version of GoldMine. We will discuss and show the benefits of working with Premium Edition as well as answer your questions.

Date:  August 24, 2010
Time: 1:00pm – 2:00pm  PST
Register Now!

Date:  September 15, 2010
Time: 10:00am – 11:00am PST
Register Now!

Date:  October 13, 2010
Time: 10:00am – 11:00am PST
Register Now!

If you are considering GoldMine for the first time or upgrading your current GoldMine, we’d like to invite you to a brief event to show you the benefits of the new features of GoldMine Premium Edition 9.0.
Built on the powerful interface of Premium Edition, version 9.0:

-        New real-time dashboards for graphic displays of forecasted sales, customer service cases, and activity tracking – 8 out of the box dashboards in all – with filtering and drill down capabilities

-        An Outlook Client allows you to expand the benefits of CRM to more user with simpler needs

-        Customer Service Case Management to manage case activities to solve issues in real-time increasing customer retention and improving customer support

-        Latest Microsoft Compatibility to keep ahead of the technology curve with support for Windows 7, Server 2008 32 and 64

All new GoldMine customers and upgrade clients will get Microsoft SQL 2008 for reliable and easy data management administration.

2010 CRM Market Awards

The awards for best CRM products were revealed and you can see that the cloud is winning:

From CRM Magazine “Recipients were determined through an extensive three-month process and a proprietary rating formula that involves industry analysts, financial and corporate information, product and functionality assessments, and scores reflecting customer satisfaction.

• Enterprise Suite CRM — Winner: Salesforce.com
  Leaders: Microsoft, Oracle, RightNow Technologies, SAP
  One to Watch: NetSuite
  .
• Midmarket Suite CRM — Winner: Salesforce.com
  Leaders: Microsoft, NetSuite, Oracle, RightNow Technologies
  One to Watch: Sage
  .
• Small-Business Suite CRM — Winner: Salesforce.com
  Leaders: Maximizer Software, NetSuite, Oracle, SugarCRM
  One to Watch: Consona
  .
• Sales Force Automation — Winner: Salesforce.com
  Leaders: Microsoft, NetSuite, Oracle, RightNow Technologies
  One to Watch: Sage
  .
• Incentive Management — Winner: Xactly
  Leaders: Callidus Software, Merced Systems, Synygy, Varicent Software
  One to Watch: Softscape
  .
• Marketing Solutions — Winner: Unica
  Leaders: Alterian, Aprimo, Eloqua, SAS Institute
  One to Watch: Oracle
• Business Intelligence — Winner: IBM
  Leaders: Oracle, SAP BusinessObjects, SAS Institute, Tibco
  One to Watch: Microsoft
  .
• Data Quality — Winner: Informatica
  Leaders: DataFlux (SAS Institute), IBM, SAP, Trillium Software (Harte-Hanks)
  One to Watch: Talend
  .
• Open-Source CRM — Winner: SugarCRM
  Leaders: Compiere (Consona), Concursive, SplendidCRM, vTiger
  One to Watch: xTuple
  .
• Consultancies — Winner: Deloitte
  Leaders: Accenture, Capgemini, IBM Global Business Services, Infosys
  Ones to Watch: Innoveer”

You can see the article in its entirety here.

Which job will grow the most this year?

Which job will grow the most this year? Take my LinkedIn Poll – http://ow.ly/1q5cc

GoldMine Price Discounts for Single, 3 and 5 users

FrontRange has listened to the input of the partners and customers and is offering a few bundles that provide discount pricing for the single user and bundles for 3 and 5 users.  No more 5 user minimum on the Annual Maintenance and Support.

Look here for details.

GoldMine Upgrade Promotion

FrontRange has announced added upgrade incentive for those on Corporate  Edition whose maintenance been expired for 6 months or longer.

Look here for the details.

Free Lunchtime Class on Thursday

Does your GoldMine database need a bit of cleaning up?  Does it bug you to see  duplicate companies or contacts when you are searching for someone?

Sign up to attend my free ”mini class” on Thursday at 12:15 p.m.  I will show you how to merge duplicate contacts together while retaining all the history for all contacts.

Check out my training page and sign up today!!

Create a Group from a SQL Query and Schedule a Call

Filters in GoldMine are great if you want to pull records using criteria in the fields (Contact1 and Contact2) but if you want to pull a list based on email address, history, pending or details you will need to use a SQL query.  And then what?  You can run the query but you can’t activate to scroll through or schedule an activity for all the contacts.    You can create a group, though, based on that query.  Here’s how:

Create your query using the Build or write your own.  In this example I want to schedule a call to all customers who do not have an email address.   Go to Tools>>SQL Query.  Below is my query:

To add to a group, click on “Query” to preview the results.  Then click on the Groups Tab.  right-Click in the Top Section and choose “New”.  Type in a Group Name and check “Build the Group”.  OK.  In the Group Building Wizard select SQL Query records.  Plug in a Sort field if needed and click “Next” and Finish.

Now you can activate your group just like a filter or you can Schedule a Call for all of the group members.  Choose “Select Filter or Group” from the Lookup Button on the Call Dialog.

Choose your Group and fill out the rest of the window to schedule the call.

5 Most Underutilized GoldMine Features

As I work with businesses installing, customizing, or training on Goldmine I have found there are features that many companies do not use even though they would find immediately benefit from them.  Following is my list of the 5 Most Underutilized Features in Goldmine (most of these are found in Versions 6.7 and greater):

GROUPS

Building groups in Goldmine is a manual process like creating a filter but you can create a group based on anything you can query on.   You can create simple groups such as “who are all my prospects” or more informative groups such as “who are all my customers who purchased Product A in the last 6 months”.  Once you have a group activiated, you are able to isolate your activities to only focus on that subset of the database.

To kick it up a notch, just add GoldBox (the most powerful GoldMine add-on) and you can have any number of groups auto-built each night ensuring you do not miss a record.

HTML EMAIL TEMPLATES

Most of us know what HTML Email Templates look like.  They have color, graphics, backgrounds, logos.  In Goldmine you can create and store HTML Templates for the whole company to use.  Using just a few clicks, you can send a personalized email to one or many contacts.

GM+VIEW/BROWSER

GM+View is a tab in Goldmine that allows you to view all types of data:

• Launch a Google map based on the contact’s address,
• View data in an external database,
• Open the website of the King County Property Tax Records and fill in a parcel number from a Goldmine field,
• Quickly jump to a client folder on the server to find all your documents insteading of browsing through the network folders.

If you want to start with the basics, write to me and I will send you a few of the standard views for FREE.

AUTOMATIC DATA ENTRY

Have you ever thought it would be great to automatically change a field based on another field?  For example, populate a Sales Person field based on the State.  This can be accomplished with a file called “lookup.ini”.   You can have several rules in this file such as assiging the sales rep, parsing out the first or middle name or even creating a currency format ($ and ,) based on the number that is entered.

CRYSTAL REPORTS

Crystal Reports Designer and Viewer is shipped with GoldMine on certain Corporate or Premium Editions.  It is a wonderful program to help create formal reports and charts to analyze the data you have in GoldMine.  All Crystal Reports can be set up for users to access within Goldmine without having the program installed on their computer.