Research Tool to Help Your Small Business Succeed: Review of QuestionPro |  |
- Research Tool to Help Your Small Business Succeed: Review of QuestionPro
- Sean Whiteley of Salesforce & Do.com: Live The Life of Your Customer
- My Reputation Usually Precedes Me
- ACTA Dies but Intellectual Property Issues Remain for Online Business
| Research Tool to Help Your Small Business Succeed: Review of QuestionPro Posted: 06 Jul 2012 11:00 AM PDT Most business owners have heard the statistic that 80% of new businesses fail within the first three years. One of the biggest reasons they reportedly fail is because they lack the information and related analysis to make a good decision. You can prevent this by using free and low cost online survey tools. If you are looking collect useful customer data without hiring a professional market research firm, this review of QuestionPro is for you.
I heard about QuestionPro from a marketing consultant colleague. She explained that it had all the power and capability of high-end enterprise software but at a much lower price point that a small business could afford. She liked that it was easy to use, had mobile survey capabilities (that few low-cost platforms provided) and offered ”killer reports” that impressed her clients and made her look good in front of those clients. So I took a closer look myself. Here's some of what I found: When I got on to the QuestionPro site, I have to admit it was a tad intimidating. The site looked more like something a big company would use. Of course, they offer a free trial so I signed up. Once inside the application, I have to admit that it wasn’t the sexiest consumer site – like what you’d find on other web survey tools. This is obviously a no-nonsense site. The first thing you see is a screen where you can start a survey. I’m not sure if I like that or not. It might depend on what work style you have. If you’re the kind of person who likes to read directions before you start something, then you might be disappointed. But if you’re the type of person who clicks first and reads directions later, then you will love it. As I started to create a survey, I realized that QuestionPro actually guides you through the process as you go. The interface is fairly intuitive and you shouldn’t have any problems getting around and creating a good survey in short order. What I Liked
What Can Be Improved
There is a fairly complete help file and some video tutorials, but it’s clear that this tool is targeted to someone who has some basic knowledge of creating online surveys. A small business owner who has never done a survey might find it somewhat overwhelming. If you have made a commitment to do more market research and customer research so that you can make better decisions — then QuestionPro is a terrific tool that you can use. The 30-day free trial will give you plenty of time to create, run and analyze a survey – and if you need more time, the basic plan is only $15 per month — so it’s not a huge investment to try. Online customer service is available and I’ve found the reps to be very helpful and responsive. Overall, I believe QuestionPro is a service that a small business owner can use to discover more about their customers and prospects. From Small Business Trends |
| Sean Whiteley of Salesforce & Do.com: Live The Life of Your Customer Posted: 06 Jul 2012 08:00 AM PDT One thing is for sure, the world of social media has changed the way we do business, with some industries being affected more than others. Sean Whitely, Senior Vice President of Salesforce.com & General Manager of Do.com, feels that the “entire definition of CRM has changed as a result of social.” Tune in as he shares his thoughts and insights with Brent Leary on this timely topic. * * * * *
Sean Whiteley: I had a company in 2006 called Kieden, that integrated Google Ad Words and Salesforce CRM, which was acquired by Salesforce.com in 2006. Since then I have worked on a variety of different initiatives at the company. As you know, Salesforce has been growing by leaps and bounds and there is never a shortage of interesting things to work on. Now, I am actually running a business of ours called DO.com, which is a social productivity platform that has helped people get things done. Small Business Trends: How have small businesses CRM needs changed over the years from when you first got started with Salesforce? Sean Whiteley: I think that CRM and the entire CRM landscape has probably changed more than it ever has historically in the last couple of years. I mean, if you look at the way you live your life, and you look at all of the social, and the ubiquity of communications you have on your various mobile devices, you are always connected. And you are always able say something or listen to something 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That has drastically changed the relationship that businesses have with their customers. In terms of the way they support them, in terms of the information they have about them so they can support them better, and also the way that they sell and market their services to those customers. Small Business Trends: How are these new acquisitions addressing the needs of your small business customers today? Sean Whiteley: You know Desk.com is a social services support application and the whole approach is ‘you need to be where your customers are.’ You need to be on the social media channels like Facebook and Twitter, email and phone. You need to be on all of these places and you need to let your customers decide how they interact with you. So, a big part of it is listening and a big part of it is engaging. That is what the Desk.com philosophy is. DO.com is based on an acquisition that Salesforce has made. The whole idea of DO.com is that you can use it to get things done. It is a shared task list, project collaboration, sharing files, and taking notes. It is really focused very heavily on the utility that people need in their day-to-day life. They are used to taking notes and then instantly translating that into a set of tasks. It hooks up to email, you can forward emails into a task at DO.com. It automatically sits at the top of your task list so you don't forget. The whole thing is really set and designed so that, from the first second that you use it, you already know how to use it. You can use it for personal productivity or you can use it for collaborative projects. Small Business Trends: You mention you are running DO.com as a small business within a big business. Can you talk about why you are doing that? Sean Whiteley: We have a saying at DO.com that ‘we need to live the life of our customers.’ We work very hard to use tools and build for the user persona of a small business. We have a very small office, we are about 16 people. We are not on the core main Salesforce campus, although we go back and forth a lot. One of the things I think a lot of these small agile upstarts do really well is they focus on one problem. They focus exclusively on that problem and they typically solve it very well. We are spending 95% of our time just building new features for the user, which is sort of ideal for a small business. Small Business Trends: You mentioned Facebook. What are you guys doing together, if anything at all? Sean Whiteley: Facebook is, of course, one of our great customers and we are customer of theirs as well. They are right down the road and we spend quite a bit of time with Facebook. I think that Salesforce and Facebook are natural partners in the sense that Facebook has evolved their advertising platform. There are over 900 million people that are on Facebook and they are spending an inordinate amount of time on this service. It's very natural that you want to be potentially experimenting with Facebook ads. You want to be using Facebook insights for analytics. Salesforce is the place where, once you have engaged, you want to start to cultivate that customer relationship from a lead to potentially an opportunity, to potentially a customer. So how you market and sell and support customers in Salesforce, Facebook is, a lot of times, the place where you are going to find relevant prospects. The people that are a good match for the thing that you are building or selling. Small Business Trends: Where do you think small businesses are going to be with their needs for CRM? Sean Whiteley: I think the entire definition of CRM has changed as a result of social. I think that will continue to happen over the next couple of years. Next year, when you look at what is the CRM system, I think it is going to look very different. I think there is going to be more utility. I think it is going to be much more collaborative. I think it is going to be real time. And I think it is going to be a lot different than the CRM systems that you are used to. This interview is part of our One on One series of conversations with some of the most thought-provoking entrepreneurs, authors and experts in business today. This interview has been edited for publication. To hear audio of the full interview, click the right arrow on the gray player below. You can also see more interviews in our interview series.
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| My Reputation Usually Precedes Me Posted: 06 Jul 2012 05:00 AM PDT
“Your reputation precedes you” is one of those phrases you don’t really give a lot of thought. Usually, it surfaces when a person is meeting another and is clearly impressed and maybe a little nervous. But it’s more conversational filler than meaningful dialogue and it’s that quality that usually pops out at the cartoonist in me. Who else might say it? How can I change it? Can I turn it around on itself? In this cartoon, I focused on the “precedes” part and thought it would be fun if everyone was expecting a reputation. But for some reason, it was running late. Although, if you have a bad reputation maybe that is to be expected? From Small Business Trends |
| ACTA Dies but Intellectual Property Issues Remain for Online Business Posted: 06 Jul 2012 02:30 AM PDT The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is dead, but intellectual property issues online remain. Businesses owners whose companies rely upon content may understand the importance of safeguarding the material they create, however some argue that Internet freedom is at stake. Your business’s freedom might be at stake too. As Good as DoneKilling ACTA. The European Parliament vote was an overwhelming 478 to 39 against the controversial trade agreement that some say was created to safeguard intellectual property on the Internet. But critics say the agreement also opened the door for unfounded claims against many, possibly your business too. Torrent Freak Intellectual property lines. With the defeat of ACTA by the European Parliament, it’s become clear that online freedom and privacy remain important issues to the public, to businesses, and to your customers. The question is what will be the next step for defining intellectual property online. TechDirt A New HopeCopyright treaty seeks balance. Those advocating Internet freedom say a renegotiation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership will call for balance of intellectual property rights with exceptions and limitations for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. The exceptions are imperative for the freedom of communication necessary to do business on the Internet. Ars Technica Entrepreneurs fight for freedom. Online business leaders are among the group who are fighting for the Internet to remain open and free. To this end, they have declared a set of guiding principles they say will help protect these rights, including the freedom to operate your business as you see fit. The Verge Guarding innovation. One of the most important reasons to keep the Internet free, say some, is the need to protect innovation. Not surprisingly, innovation is a tremendously important activity for business, whether online or not. Here are two declarations that may protect future innovation on the Web. Computerworld Causes for ConcernBe careful where you link. But those fighting against seemingly impractical rulings on Internet copyright cases may not want to celebrate victory just yet. Witness the case of 24-year-old Richard O’Dwyer who may be extradited to the US. His crime: linking to other sites that hosted copyrighted material. CNET Internet innovator could be jailed. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has launched an unprecedented petition to save O’Dwyer. Could misguided cases built on intellectual property rights potentially imprison the next great online entrepreneur? The Guardian Why this case matters. O’Dwyer’s Website was targeted because he is allegedly guilty of secondary “infringement by inducing” others to post copyrighted content. But if everyone fears linking to your site, and you fear linking to others, it’s clear the free exchange of information upon which online business and innovation are based will disappear. Gigaom Community CautionsWoz weighs in. And just in case you’re wondering how one of the founding fathers of computer-based business feels about this whole intellectual property thing, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has expressed his own concerns over the charges against Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom. Wozniak feels the case against Megaupload opens the door for holding all site operators responsible for what users share. The Associated Press Twitter jitters. Even 140 characters is sufficient to infringe on intellectual property, it seems. The microblogging platform issued its own transparency report mirroring one by Google showing the number of copyright related takedown notices the site has received and the number the number of information requests from the government. The New Web From Small Business Trends |
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