Articles by Christopher J. Bucholtz

Had a hard time hiring sales talent lately? You aren't alone. And guess what? It's only going to get worse! There are a lot of headwinds confronting sales recruiters these days, according to data from recruitment company Princeton One. The strongest may be these:...

There's something to be said for consistency. Baseball Hall-of-Famer Tony Gwynn hit over .300 19 years in a row. The swallows have returned to Mission San Juan Capistrano every year since 1812 (although the numbers have fallen in recent years). Richard Belzer played Detective John Munch in nine different television series over 23 years. Doing thin...

In a year when it seemed that CRM continued to blur into other technologies -- artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, analytics and predictive tools, plus a host of other older technologies -- there was no shortage of things to blog about. However, only a few bloggers really captured what was going on in CRM in 2016 and reflected the evo...

The cloud revolution has made an enormous contribution to the evolution of sales and marketing software, as well as to business software of all types. There's a long list of benefits it's conferred on its users -- from the ability to outsource security and maintenance tasks to the avoidance of manual upgrade processes, to -- most significantly -- the switch in payment modes, to a model more affordable for more businesses...

A technology conference staple is the over-the-horizon announcement: a proclamation that something that isn't quite here yet is the next big thing, often accompanied by simulated screen shots, hypothetical use cases, and demonstrations that veer closer to fantasy than reality Even Salesforce has indulged in some of this in the past, and this year's...

Anyone who works with sales people knows that their ultimate incentive is their commission check. Since the first time that "sales" was identified as a profession, we've been paying the people who sell based primarily on their results This has worked well -- but things are starting to change. The drive for results at the expense of all other consid...

Why do companies invest in CRM, sales performance management software, business intelligence, and every other component of the customer-facing technology stack? The obvious response is that they pay returns on the investments. CRM paid back US$8.71 for every dollar invested in it, Nucleus Research reported way back in 2014.

When gamification was just starting to catch on several years ago, I recall sitting next to the CMO of my then-company at a Gartner conference session. The presenter walked the audience through the concept of using ideas borrowed from gaming as a motivational tool, and about two-thirds of the way through, the CMO turned to me and whispered, "This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen."

CRM is often described as a discipline and a technology that will transform the entire business. Sales and marketing can get on the same page, support will have visibility into what sales and marketing are doing, and every interaction can be captured and used to create a complete and comprehensive view of every customer CRM has some weak links, how...

In an era when technology is changing the ways people conduct every aspect of their lives, it's not a surprise that business leaders have come to depend on it as the lever that will elevate their sales and marketing performance to the next level. Productivity has increased in all aspects of business because of technology, and the implementation of...

If you love studying technology trends and imagining what they will do for your business, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that you have a vision of how things will be, while many of those you need to partner with to achieve that vision still are trying to master the reality of today Congratulations -- you have a combination of curiosity, presci...

Sometimes, it takes something drastic to change a business' behavior. Standard procedures can remain in place long after they've become detrimental to the business, but sometimes it takes a tipping point to drive home the fact that failing to change is the surest way to fail For example, the Ford Pinto's easily ruptured fuel tank could have been re...

Respect is a vital ingredient in any mutually beneficial relationship, and that's never truer than in the case of business-to-business buyers and sellers. The most elementary way a seller shows a commitment to a healthy customer relationship is through an ongoing display of respect That doesn't mean some single, impressive gesture, like giving a po...

Despite the numbers that show how lucrative retention is in an increasingly subscription-driven economy, the emphasis has been on new customer acquisition That is still true, according to Target Marketing's most recent study. Forty-two percent of the firms it surveyed said they were increasing their budgets for customer acquisition, while only 33 p...

I hate the idea of chopping our population into generations: the Greatest Generation, the baby boomers, Generation X, Generation Y, millennials and so on. The assumption is that everyone born during an arbitrarily selected time period shares certain traits It also results in people projecting ideas -- often romantic ones -- onto huge groups of peop...

We're almost a quarter century removed from the coining of the phrase "sales and marketing alignment," a concept that dates back another 30 years. Businesses have been wrestling with the idea of coordinating two teams of people with different skill sets, ideas, personalities and (often) goals ever since the emergence of marketing as a profession Me...

The Top 20 CRM Blogs of 2015, Part 1 Almost a decade ago, the first edition of this list was tough to compile. There simply weren't that many CRM blogs that were consistent (we set the annual minimum number of posts at a mere eight), vendor-agnostic and -- most important of all -- high quality....

What makes a great CRM blog? Generally, the same things that make a great CRM implementation: good planning, thoughtful responses to a changing market, consistent posting (the "adoption" part of blogging), the right technology, and people with the right personality. It's the classic "people, processes and technology" trilogy, really Do a Google sea...

At this time of the year, there's a great clamoring among the business publishing class for predictions. That is partly because prediction stories are considered easy to write, and once they're done the staff can go celebrate the holidays while their publication continues to deliver content. However, having written a lot of prediction stories in t...

The amount of effort spent on talking and thinking about the best ways to connect with customers truly is incredible. The amount of ink spilled -- real and virtual -- the number of conferences held, and the dollars spent on efforts and expertise are vast The irony is that businesses often start out with a natural ability to behave in a customer-cen...