A Little CRM Magic for the Holidays

This week on Funnel Frontier: Pipedrive's Marketplace Secrets, Salesforce Goes Green & AI's genImpact on Retail

This week, we’re going to be talking about:

• Twisty tale of app integrations

• Net zero for big biz

• What GenAI will make you buy 

   

Stat of the Week 

Between 2010 and 2020, CRM revenue went up 393%.

(CRM.org & Statista)

Integrations are trending, yet ponderous

Pipedrive, the little CRM engine that could, is doling out its yearly wisdom in the form of a marketplace survey.

The main takeaway? Small businesses into integrations clinch 1.5x more deals than their tech-shy counterparts.

According to Sean Evers, VP of Sales & Partner at Pipedrive, it's all about SaaS-savvy sales teams who’ve skedaddled out of the manual input mire. 

The 1-2-3 most popular apps on Pipedrive Marketplace—which hosts 400+ integrations for the CRM—are Zapier, Google Meet, and Zoom Meetings.

For lead nurturing, it's all about Microsoft Teams, Dealbot for Slack, and Pipechat. The chat app never dies.

When it comes to qualifying leads, 2023’s frontrunners were Dealfront, Outfunnel, and Fireflies.ai. 

But wait! In a torrid twist, API integration maker Merge released a similar “State of Product Integrations” report. 

That report finds a staggering 83% of B2B SaaS companies are scrambling to prioritize product integrations—perhaps the hottest trend since Edison bulb/exposed brick/avocado toast. 

However, there's a catch. Building these digital bridges isn't a walk in the park.

Companies are drooling over the idea of churning out 15, or even 30, integrations next year. Yet they’ve got the pace of an old jalopy—71% say they’re taking at least three weeks to roll out one.

Merge, with its Unified APIs, kindly promises to save these SaaS firms from un-integrated doom. 

The question is, when you “Merge” their findings with Pipedrive’s, do you call it an integration? 

The Week @ CRM.org

Open Source Accounting Software. For those into crunching both numbers and budget.

Office Suites: Paid and Free. Transforming “I think I emailed you that doc” to “it’s in the shared folder.”

Sales CRM. Fine-tune the art of persuasion with data points and dashboards. 

Best Event Management Software. Because “there’s free food” ain’t enough these days. 

CRM for Small Business. Narrowing the enormous field: our top 23 for 2023.

Weekly Bloom 

How to Retain Employees. Voluntary turnovers go up. 20 strategies for keeping talent.

Force-ing net zero

In an era where “net zero” is no longer a buzzword, turning the green tide is serious business. 

The UN Climate Change Conference, COP28, wraps today. Meanwhile, Salesforce’s Chief Impact Officer, Suzanne DiBianca, has spilled the CRM megacorp’s green beans in a BBC interview. 

Suzanne's mission? To make sustainability a boardroom blockbuster. 

With a pinch of data dark arts and a dollop of employee engagement, they're aiming to plant a cool trillion trees by 2030 while teaching teams how to code without frying the planet. 

She said that, after developing the “carbon to serve” metric, they reduced software dev-related emissions by 26.4%.

Under her eco-warrior helm, Salesforce has morphed into a renewable energy-powered, no-red-meat-at-events, plastic-bottle-banning corporate green machine. 

They’ve also put $150 million investment into “ecopreneurs” who are into decarbonization. 

It’s the classic story of selling better karma via business sense: if you save money on energy and travel, you can increase the bottom line. 

Also, if the planet’s ecology doesn’t implode, you can keep doing business!

GenAI for the holidays

ChatGPT gatecrashed the retail party one year ago—now it holds court like “The Most Interesting Man in the World.”

Case in point: genAI for the holidays. A new article at CIO suggests this will be a record season, all watched over by loving machines.

Salesforce foresees genAI ringing up a cool $194 billion in global online sales. A quoted Deloitte study finds it'll be a busy elf across chatbots, SEO, and supply chain management.

Retailers, awash in festive spirit, are eggnogging genAI, sipping tools like ChatGPT and DALL-E to access the id of consumer desire. 

GenAI is nudging customers with personalized cross-sell and upsell recommendations that make CRM data instantly actionable.

Supply chain woes also get a sprinkle of genAI magic, predicting the Next Big Thing before it's a twinkle in a marketer's eye. 

And let's not forget the smaller retailers. They're getting a pie slice, punching above their weight via far cheaper, easier access to advanced analytics and content creation tools.

Nelson Haung, Freshworks’ Senior Director of Product Marketing, declares that “every retail brand has embraced genAI.” 

So this holiday season, picture chatbots not just chatting but holding meaningful conversations, like your aunt.

Tasty Tidbits

CRM blips from around the web

Report on global call center market drops. CRM is dubbed “a shot in the arm for call centers,” while the market’s forecasted CAGR is 5.8% for 2022 to 2030. 

Real Estate CRM Cloze and RealScout have a new integration. Cloze pairs with the agent-client collab platform for more AI, automated nurturing, and contact sync.

Pipedrive gets new VP of Customer Experience. It’s Daniel Martin, formerly of Maxymiser and ASOS.

Keller Williams real estate CRM gets updated. GenAI-assisted ad copy, vendor tracking, and an onboarding portal are among the features added to KW Command CRM.

Stocks of the Week 

Significant Moves (12/04-12/08)

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