CRM No More
#sales hashtag#crm hashtag#salespeople hashtag#salesprocess hashtag#businessdevelopment hashtag#timemanagement hashtag#cio hashtag#executive
My job as CIO is typically divided into 3 parts - set strategy and make technology decisions, manage people & projects, help bring new technology or services that can help Goya. As part of this, I get a lot of sales emails and social media solicitations... daily.
What you may not know, is that I look at every one of these solicitations. As you may know, I do NOT respond to all.
Today I got two emails that I want to bring to your notice. One, a typical quick email -
Re: Retracted Name via LinkedIn
Hi Suvajit,
Hope everything is going great! I'm reaching out to see if you're available for a quick call later this week or early next?
I’d love to learn more about your active dev projects and explore ways we can provide the necessary US-based talent to support your team.
We can provide individual talent all the way up to full agile teams. Ready to start immediately at competitive rates with no minimum term or commitment. Giving you the flexibility to scale your software development resources up or down on-demand.
We’ve been able to help clients like Vxxxxxx, Uxxxx Axxxxx, and Lxxxxx significantly shorten their SDLCs and reduce development costs by more than 30+ percent.
Let me know a couple dates/times that work and I’ll send out the calendar invite.
Excited to talk and looking forward to our conversation!
Best Regards,
Name Retracted
Director of Business Development
and, a second one ...
Re: Achieving the American dream through technology
Suvajit - I enjoyed your article and the nugget of starting with a mid-size facility and working outwards once success has been achieved. I had remembered that Goya was running the Lawson S3 Financials product and interested to see you went with the Intentia (now Infor) M3 solution for Mfg/Distribution - one of the surviving mid-market products that actually had continued development vs. run for customer maintenance $ until they all leave.
However, I digress. What I wanted to understand was How is IT helping Finance become more efficient and also retain existing talent? I am not sure how familiar (if at all) you are with XXXXX Corp.
Especially in times and industries where margin is continually shrinking, world class organizations are looking to improve their capacity (time) by becoming more automated and efficient. We do this for the finance area where typically intelligent and expensive people are repetitively spending days each month ticking & tying transactions for reconciliation probably with Excel. Whereas, they would like to be using their time to focus on more strategic initiatives and goals that can progress Goya forwards.
IF you have any interest or even a desire to see where finance time is spent (we have a free XYZ tool), then let's have a short conversation to see whether we can add value to you and Goya.
I will ask my inside team to attempt to follow-up and put something on the calendar.
Retracted - Link to sample tool.
Regards,
Axxxxx Wxxxxx
Account Executive
Retracted - Detailed Contact Info
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When I read these two emails today, guess which one I responded to?
The second one. Why?
The second person showed he did his research about our organization.
He had a catchy and thoughtful WRT line.
He knew the tools we are using.
He showed he knew the industry and software industry.
He then made a specific business case - efficiency, finance, reconciliation.
He knew exactly how to set up a meeting.
In the end, he clearly showed me his contact info with his role. No fear or apology that he is trying to "sell" something.
In the signature, the Title is important to me. The role is very important to me because this person who reached out is most likely a senior executive or a "professional" sales person, he is a business person. I am almost sure he is NOT a new business development rep who will basically waste my time and hand me over to another rep! The first email is just churning through his emails!
All this means, is the second person values my time and his. I felt he can most likely help us. I responded to the second person, "...lets talk next week and have a great weekend."
PS: I even wrote a post about this experience, to help you Mr Sales & Mr BizDev!