crm

First Job – Fraser Suyetsugu

/ Robert Pease / Leave a comment

Fraser

Here's another first job story from a friend here in Seattle - Fraser Suyetsugu. Fraser is a great guy and Salesforce.com master who has helped me many times with questions related to it and customer relationship management (CRM) as a whole.  You can also follow him on Twitter @Frasuy and be sure to check out all the First Job posts.

From Fraser:

1st job – was a paper route carrier starting at the age of 13 I believe. Peddled the (defunct) Journal American and Seattle Times through the Lake Hills and Chevy Chase neighborhoods by 6:30 am. The other half of that job was a ‘collection agency’. Back then you had to chase down your customers and collect their money or you didn’t get paid. Did that job for almost 4 years I believe. Shoot, if they had a 401k I could plan my retirement a couple of years earlier.

2nd job – courtesy clerk and stock boy at the (defunct) Overlake Market which is now a Goodwill center in the Overlake area. Great job since it was customer facing and I was making bank ~$6.00/hr. Who-hooo!  I remember learning about unions because I was mad that some of my paycheck was siphoned off to pay member dues. I am pretty sure that was my first “real” job since you had to be 16, had to fill out an application and interview. It was the big time!

There are many others along the way but those are the two that ordained me to the working/responsibility world.

Great stories and the second one about a newspaper route.  My guess is that you won't hear too many of those in the future given the changes to news delivery and consumption.

If you have a first job story you'd like to share, send it to me and I'll post it here. Be sure to read about my first job too.

Busy couple weeks

/ Robert Pease / Leave a comment

Apologies for slow posting over the past couple weeks.  I've been bouncing around a bit as we continue to roll out Gist at a series of events around the US.  You can always keep up with me on Twitter – ReplytoAll as it is sometimes easier to do a short update while in motion.

Made some great new friends, recruited lots of new Gist users, and even had the chance to reconnect with some old friends.  A few more events through the end of the year including Defrag in Denver and Salesforce.com's big Dreamforce user event in San Francisco.  If you'll be at either, let me know and we'll connect.

Gist is open, come on in!

/ Robert Pease / Leave a comment

Gist_logo

Winding down a seriously busy week that included the public beta launch of Gist.  This project has been in the works for some time and Tuesday marked the public debut.  If you have not tried it out yet, please do. 

I have done many product and company launches with varying results over the years.  Launch something no one cares about and the sound of the crickets is deafening.  Launch something people want and the ride is exhilarating.  The Gist launch was the latter and here is a sampling of the coverage we generated:

Most amazing was watching Twitter come to life with people talking about what we built and their thoughts about it…in real time.  Trust me, Twitter has a purpose and is one of the more revolutionary sales/marketing/support platforms to come around in a long time.

There are still many things to figure out and no shortage of work to be done but we are off to a strong start and it only gets better from here.

So, what is Gist?

/ Robert Pease / 1 Comment

Arguably, we have been perfectly vague publicly about what Gist is, what it is used for, and how it fits into your daily life.  This is due in large part to being in a limited release where we continue to add features, refine the product, and incorporate feedback from a phenomenal set of beta users. 

So the question remains, what is Gist?  Is it a contact manager, better contact management system, new way to think about CRM software, a new type of sales or business intelligence software?  I guess the answer is that it embraces a bit of all of these things focusing on blending how your contacts, connections, and all the associated content you share and they generate comes together for your use.  Kind of a whole new approach to personal relationship management that combines elements of all of the above.

I use it daily because a) I work there and b) because it fits with what I do – contact people, respond to people, follow up with people, look for a reason to reach out, etc.  Ultimately, Gist takes the broad set of people that you communicate with or desire to communicate with, aggregates information about them, and serves it up to you in rank order with you having to do pretty much nothing. Oh, and it really shines when you use it inside MS Outlook or Salesforce.com (supported in our most recent beta release).

Sound cool?  Watch this video for a more detailed product tour by yours truly and drop a comment or email to me – robertcpease at gmail dot com if you want to try the beta.

Marketing Mayhem

/ Robert Pease / Leave a comment

Over the past year plus, I have been working with a whole new set of tools to understand and reach customers/prospects/users.  This includes Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook, blogs, blog comments and the associated technology to access and analyze what is being said and who is saying it.

Unlike mainstream marketing thinking, what I have been doing has cost very little money and utilizes new tools to reach people in the new places they are spending their time.  More importantly, the leverage in selling resides disproportionately with the buyer these days.  They have instant access to information about you, your competitors, and even the ability to connect with your current and former customers all without your help or involvement.  Understand this is reality and embrace it.

So, what should you do if you are trying to sell something, launch something new, or just expand market share within existing target market?  Set up and make use of a Listening & Engagement Framework.  Check out my previous posts on it to understand what the heck I am talking about.

I have been making extensive use of this type of framework at Gist and put together the presentation embedded here to highlight both what we have been doing as well as the thinking and assumptions behind it all.  Check it out and let me know thoughts and feedback.  One thing I have learned is that the rules are still being written and best practices emerge daily on the best way to use all this stuff as a business.

Marketing Mayhem – Can You Hear Me Now?http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=marketingmayhemnewrulesv1-090822185333-phpapp02&stripped_title=marketing-mayhem-can-you-hear-me-now

View more presentations from robertcpease.