I woke up this morning to an early Christmas gift from Jonathan Blum at TheStreet.com. He posted a great review of BatchBook this morning entitled “To Sell Better, Sell Smarter.” While Jonathan had some very nice things to say about the simplicity of BatchBook as a CRM tool, he also had some very insightful criticism as well.
Jonathan writes that “BatchBook is no CRM final solution. As with all CRM tools, BatchBook is no miracle.” I could not agree with him more. I wrote an article for Network Solution’s Grow Smart Business blog a few months ago titled “For Start-up Businesses, CRM Software is Not the Answer”, where I argued that CRM software is a tool that can help small businesses collect and share information across the team as they learn together what their winning sales strategy will be. I argued that “there are no magic growing beans for new businesses. The fun part is figuring it out as you go.”
CRM software that tries to sell a small business the right sales funnel or the winning pipeline is selling magic beans. Even within the same industry, same market and same product offering, two competitors are going to have very different sales strategies. If not, neither is likely to succeed. What your CRM software should do is make it easier for you, your team, your network and your customers to work together to find the right way to make your business successful.
As Jonathan notes in the article, “Cleaner, faster, leaner selling will be job No. 1 in 2010. Or you can expect not to make it to 2011. And BatchBook is as simple a way to fight that fight, as I have found.” With BatchBook, we’ve provided a tool to help small businesses be more successful in managing their contact network. In 2010, we look forward to both expanding our tool set and helping our customers better manage their workflow processes.
Here’s a quick round-up of some posts from users and reviewers of BatchBook.
Adam & Cheap Trick: A match made in CS heaven
If you’ve ever spent any time in the BatchBlue Forums, you’ve probably experienced the magic that is Adam Darowski. Adam is our User Experience designer known for his passion for good design, our customers and music. So the fact that he crafted an email to someone who was considering BatchBook that included a link to a Cheap Trick song came as no surprise to any of us. But the (potential) customer was so impressed, he wrote up a blog post about it, which was tweeted all around the socialsphere. And the best thing is that we have a new customer who appreciates our sense of humor.
Bedazzled by BatchBook brilliance
Robert Mattar wrote up a nice piece over at Posterous about his experience searching for a CRM that would work well for small businesses. His conclusion? He calls BatchBook “one of the most versatile and affordable applications” out there and even calls us “brilliant” in the post’s title. Thanks, Robert, we’re so glad BatchBook is working out for you since we think small businesses are where it’s at!
We love lists
People love lists and so do we, especially when we are on them! So here goes:
Our friend (and frequent @sbbuzz participant) Bradford Shimp posted this cool list of 9 Businesses to Follow and Get to Know on Twitter. He has fabulous things to say about BatchBlue, our @sbbuzz weekly chat session, and our own Queen Bee, Pamela!
And last but never least, social media pirate Chris Brogan reveals what’s in his software booty chest (including BatchBook) in his recent post entitled A Quick and Inconclusive List of Software I Like.
Our very own Michelle Riggen Ransom (@mriggen on Twitter) was part of a panel on Twitter this week. The panel was hosted by The Perry Group and called “The Twitter phenomenon explodes in Rhode Island: What it means for you, your business and your brand”. The local news was present, and Michelle (among others) was interviewed in this segment:
We’re back and finally somewhat recovered from the madness that is SXSW. This year, Michelle, Pam and Matt attended (Michelle’s usual partner in social media crime, Adam, was out having a baby – congrads, Adam!)
Like last year, the event was blur of meet-ups, panels, interviews, intense hallway conversations and non-stop activity. Sadly, the BatchBlue team didn’t get to attend too many panels, but as a networking event, it was great. And a lot of cool stuff came out of it.
In the days (okay, more like hours) leading up to SXSW, we put the finishing touches on the beta of BatchBook sync, which was hugely exciting for us as it brings us one step closer to the idea of true data portability. Our plan was to soft launch BatchBook sync at SXSW, then return home to do some tweaking and de-bugging before really getting the word out. But like many well-intentioned plans (especially as they pertain to SXSW), this got tossed out the window and instead we found ourselves buckling our virtual seatbelts for a wild web app ride. Lots of new traffic and an ill-fated server move resulted in some growing pains for BatchBook, but thanks largely to the superhuman, nocturnal efforts of Sean and Matt, we’ve made it through and are better than ever. We also give a huge thanks to our customers both old and new for bearing with us through that rocky week.
T-Shirts and a Texas-sized small business brunch Since we knew how much people depend on Twitter in Austin to help them plan, we brought a bunch of “BatchBook Social CRM” t-shirts with us that had a space for people’s Twitter handles on the front. The t-shirts were a big hit: we literally had people chasing us down to get one! Thanks to our friend and unofficial BatchBlue mascot TJ Sondermann for the concept.
On Sunday, we planned on hosting a Small Business Brunch with our friend Shashi Bellamkonda of Network Solutions. We expected maybe twenty or so folks to come by the delicious Moonshine Cafe to meet up, network and talk small business. We were pleasantly surprised when more than double that number showed up, thanks in large part ot Shashi’s mad Twitter skills. The restaurant was extremely accommodating and graciously set up extra tables so everyone could enjoy their delicious Sunday brunch. We hung out with social media man Jeff Pulver, Lisa Rodwell from Moo cards, Saul Colt from Freshbooks, Becky McCray from Small Biz Survival, and many many others. Perhaps the most important connection made that morning was when Matt learned chicken-fried steak is best eaten with gravy.
It’s been a while since we’ve done a round up of all the nice things people are saying about us and how they are using our product, so we thought we’d give you an update on what’s been going on in the Wonderful World of Press.
BatchBlue on TV
Since we last checked in, we’ve been on TV (well, Hubspot TV) talking about using social media tools for business. Adam and I touched on many of the topics we cover in our Social Media for Small Business Blue Paper and we enjoyed a nice sushi lunch with one of our favorite Hubspotters Rick Burnes afterward. Fun! And delicious!
All the Chrises in the house
Chris Penn, who runs the successful Financial Aid Podcast, wrote an excellent post about how job hunters can use BatchBook, which is very timely in light of the present economic climate. And social media wunderkind Chris Brogan proved he’s not just another pretty face by showing us how he uses BatchBook to help him beat Dunbar’s Number.
@sbbuzz is buzzing
As Pam wrote last week, we created @sbbuzz after receiving a plea from a small business owner to help her better understand what tech tools are out there and how your average small business owner should be using them. @sbbuzz is a weekly conversation taking place between techies and business owners on every Tuesday from 8pm-10pm EST addressing these very issues.
