A View from the TopLine

Recently I hosted my Pizza and Pop event all about video. We covered why you should use video, many different types, and some hot tips and tricks to shooting your own videos. Oh and of course, we all had pizza! Now that the event is behind us, I want to follow up with some additional video techniques.

Security Memo 1: The Dangers of Ransomware

**This is the first in a series of memos, straight from Dan's desk, helping you understand more about easy security steps for your work and personal use. Dan Boehm heads TopLine's security and IT department.

Each business is unique – either in what it does or how it serves customers. Even within the same industry, businesses have differentiators that align them with specific clients or make them stand out relative to their competition. But in the end, every business is about building products or providing services or solutions.

Business intelligence, or BI, has been a hot buzz word for several years now. A lot of businesses are looking to take advantage of it but getting only limited traction. There are a number of tools out there to help – each one having its strengths and weaknesses.

Salesforce seems to be on a cadence of making a big (and I mean BIG) acquisition each year.

Last year it was MuleSoft, an integration platform for $6.5 billion. I wrote a blog about this at the time questioning the impact for the average customer. I’ll follow that pattern with this more recent acquisition.

What influences your decision-making process for marketing activities and spend?  Many times in marketing we must balance creativity, timing, audience and spend when selecting campaigns.  The success of a marketing campaign is often judged by a feeling.

Since April 1999, I have been involved with CRM implementations. As I reflect on what’s changed over the years, the reason for success or failure has shifted.

Back in the day, databases had to be synced back and forth. That was a fragile process, which has now been virtually eliminated with the advent of web-based CRMs, such as Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics 365. We now have real-time access to our accounts, contacts, opportunities, and activities.

I work with a lot of new entrepreneurs, because I love their passion and enthusiasm! I also want to see them succeed. They generally have a great idea about their products and/or services, but they don’t always know how to put the building blocks in place to get their business off to the best start.

Last week I was reminded of a simple and basic rule of selling: follow-up on your leads! It sounds simple, but all too often Marketing generates leads with email campaigns, events, tradeshows, advertising, etc., and Sales doesn’t follow-up. They often make excuses:

I don’t have time.