Inbound Marketing: A non-traditional way to marketing to prospects through providing valuable content and thus becoming a trusted advisor.
We transformed our business two years ago with Inbound Marketing and we want to spread the love! There is an entire conference on Inbound Marketing now, and if you’re into it as much as we are, you should go.
BrainSell was at the Inbound Marketing summit last fall in Boston, and we loved it so much that we’re doing IMS this February in the Big Apple too!
This year, they’ve done things a little differently. The conference will be broken out into topics, Inbound Marketing, Mobile Content, Content Automation, and Convergence.
Speakers include Chris Brogan, Laura Fitton, Tim Hayden and more. The Pulse Network puts on the show, and this year, they invited us into their studio to shoot some video on BrainSell’s obsession with Inbound Marketing. Check out the videos below.
About the Author: Ron Buchanan is a BrainSell Sr. Technical Engineer. He’s a certified Sage SalesLogix master developer and has recently been thrust into the world of SugarCRM. Ron recently attended a SugarCRM code sprint. This is his take on Sugar as a company and platform.
SugarCRM is OPEN!
To me, one of the biggest differentiating factors between SugarCRM or say SalesForce or NetSuite is that it is an OPEN architecture. So OPEN , that the product managers of SugarCRM invite over 50 developers from around the world to participate in what they call the SugarCRM CodeSprint. There are three CodeSprints planned already during the first 6 months of 2012 ( in Belgium, the US and the UK).
In the last session I attended, the theme was “The First 30!” A sprint to improve the perception of SugarCRM in the first 30 minutes a user touches the product and the first 30 days the user tries the product. The goal… to create features than can enhance the user experience.
During the CodeSprint and the opening session, the partner sponsor and developers create lists, lists and more lists. These lists are of the good, the bad and the ugly. Features within the product that are lacking functionality, features that need improvement or features that enhance the product. The numerous list items are boiled down to an actionable project list.
Within TWO DAYS, with the developers working almost 24×7, they immerge from their sessions with fully operational enhancements to be included in the next general release of the product.
So why the excitement? It’s my opinion that no other CRM provider is doing this in a manner that SugarCRM is developing. And because the other CRM systems are not built on Open Architecture, the feature functionality availability will never come at the speed of SugarCRM!
The next SugarCRM CodeSprint session theme is “Spring Cleaning”… I can’t wait to see what develops!!
Lucky number three! BrainSell welcomes Source Business Systems to the family. This is the third Colorado acquisition in January for Boston-based BrainSell. Source Business Systems still stays in tact, but BrainSell will take over their Sage Accpac customer base.
“This acquisition will give us an opportunity to not only provide our clients with an even broader level of sales and support for ERP software products and services, but expands our ability to offer CRM and other business management software products and services,” said Jim Brummett, president of Source Business Systems.
Source customers will benefit from BrainSell’s slew of Accpac engineer and also other expertise and product offerings.
“Providing our customers with a greater depth of knowledge of ERP, CRM and marketing automation solutions is our main objective in this acquisition,” said BrainSell President and CEO, Jim Ward. “We are extremely enthused to work with Jim Brummett in Colorado Springs to add value to all of his clients as well as build on his experience within the business management software market. In addition, I’m focused on strategic geographic locations to service clients throughout the United States as we work toward continued growth providing business technology to the SMB market.”
BrainSell is please to announce their acquisition of The CRM Connection, the second Colorado acquisition that BrainSell has made this month. The CRM Connection (www.thecrmconnection.com) joins BrainSell with a plethora of CRM expertise, including ACT!, SalesLogix and SugarCRM. We’re super excited to welcome The CRM Connection into the BrainSell family!
“We are very excited to have joined the BrainSell Technologies team,” said The CRM Connection’s Managing Partner John Kaufman. “Our clients and alliance partners will all benefit from the additional resources and software solutions they provide.”
Current CRM Connection customers will continue to receive the same caliber of support from their existing contacts. However, customers will also benefit from BrainSell’s extensive team of Sage ACT!, Sage SalesLogix and SugarCRM engineers, as well as ERP and marketing experts if they choose to increase sales with cutting edge technology like Marketing Automation and integrated ERP.
“This is a win-win acquisition,” said BrainSell President and CEO, Jim Ward. “BrainSell brings onboard a top reseller of Sage ACT!. Heck, they ended 2011 as ACT!’s 11th largest selling reseller in the U.S. They also have SalesLogix expertise, which is a fantastic added resource to our top SalesLogix team. On top of that, The CRM Connection recently added SugarCRM into their portfolio, which brings perfect synergies to BrainSell’s portfolio and helps our rapidly growing SugarCRM practice keep up with demand. Put that together with our two acquisitions of ERP partners this past month in Colorado and we have a fantastic western region team.”
The CRM Connection is based out of Denver, Colorado, but they also have offices in Michigan and New York.
BrainSell is pleased to announce its acquisition of AccSoft Associates, a Denver-based Sage Software business partner focused on Accpac ERP sales, customizations and service.
This is the first of three Colorado acquisitions that BrainSell has made in the past month. BrainSell continues to grow from product diversification and strategic acquisitions, which BrainSell has made five of in the past three years.
“BrainSell has an acquisition strategy that’s providing geographic locations within the United States,” said BrainSell President and CEO Jim Ward. “What’s old is new! Where many companies have gone virtual, we’re working to provide local expertise across the U.S. We are extremely enthused to work with the AccSoft team as they bring immense experience and a strong skill set in Accpac ERP and will help us to grow the western region.”
Current AccSoft customers will continue to receive the same caliber of support from AccSoft proprietors Pat Smith and Andrea Appleby and the AccSoft technical team. Customers will also benefit from BrainSell’s extensive team of Accpac engineers, as well as CRM and marketing experts if they choose to increase sales with customer relationship management tools.
“The acquisition will give us an opportunity to provide our customers with an even greater level of sales and support for Sage products,” said Andrea Appleby of AccSoft. “By joining BrainSell, we’ll also be providing in-depth business solutions, like social business strategy and inbound marketing services. We’ll be able to go beyond providing accounting software and help our clients to impact sales and cost efficiencies.”
2011 VAR Stars have a practice involving the sale of mid-market financial software and while most derive significant revenue from other sources, accounting software is the core to their business.
Revenue is not a factor in selection and VARs are not rated. The No. 1 and No. 100 members of this list have equal standing. Factors taken into consideration included growth, industry leadership and innovation. There are very large and very small dealers in this list. An effort was also made to selects resellers who represent a broad range of products.
This year, VAR Star candidates were asked what they have done to respond to the economic conditions. Several common areas emerged from those VARs who commented (not all provided this information.) Few of these were surprising, but all are important.
They are as follows:
Diversifying product lines.
Holding onto talent.
Maintaining or increasing marketing budgets.
Performing mergers and acquisition.
“We’ve sustained tremendous growth for the past two years due to strategic acquisitions, product diversification, and by constantly working to delight our customers,” said BrainSell founder and CEO, Jim Ward. “We’re honored to be named as a VAR Star again and hope to keep our growth trend going in 2012.”
Bob Scott’s Insights provides the mid-market reselling community with news and analysis giving them insight into the issues that affect the business of resellers and vendors alike. It informs and entertains, giving this critical market a quick-and-easy read that is both instructive and interesting.
We have a lot of people coming to us, asking about the differences between Salesforce.com and SugarCRM.
There are TONS of CRM applications out there, and overall, they do the same basic stuff. The devil is in the details. So we’ve made it super easy for those of you comparing Salesforce.com and Sugar. Download the VERY thorough feature checklist below to see how the two popular CRM’s stack up.
You’ll notice that SugarCRM Pro is comparable to Salesforce.com Enterprise. Price is the biggest differnece between the two…
SFDC Enterprise $1500/user/year Sugar Pro $360/user/year
Companies with 50 users would spend $75,000 per year on Salesforce.com. 50 users of Sugar would cost $18,000 per year.
That’s a savings of $57,000 per year. No wonder people are asking about Salesforce vs. SugarCRM!
You be the judge. Get the entire feature comparison below.
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