Using Cloud Analytics to Transform Sales

Posted on April 25, 2012 by Jon Bock

Analytics has changed the way that organizations do business. Starting with the first spreadsheets, continuing through the evolution of Business Intelligence, and now with the intense focus on analytics for Big Data, extracting more value from the constantly increasingly amount of data available continues to pay dividends.

More recently, Cloud has been one of the biggest disruptions in technology, changing the way that organizations think about not just their IT infrastructure but also the services that they build on top of their infrastructure.

Posted in: Customers on Cloud9, Events, Sales Forecasting, Sales Management, Sales Performance
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Participate in Aberdeen’s Annual Sales Forecasting Survey

Posted on April 10, 2012 by Tracy Eiler

As one of the leading research survey firms focusing on sales forecasting, the Aberdeen Group is looking at leading companies to understand sales forecasting best practices of best-in-class sales organizations.

Cloud9 customers are invited to take part in this survey to:

Compare your experiences in sales forecasting and analytics deployments with those of your peers
Benchmark your performance
Learn how you can achieve best-in-class results

As a thank you for participating, Aberdeen will provide you complimentary access to the full benchmark report as soon as it is published (a $399 value). Take part in this research project by clicking here.

Posted in: Sales Management, Sales Performance
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Cloud9 Wins Gold at the Stevie Awards!

Posted on March 6, 2012 by Tracy Eiler

Last week, the winners of the 2012 Stevie Awards were announced. Cloud9 won the Gold Stevie® Award in the “Sales or Customer Service Solutions Technology Partner of the Year” category. In addition, Cloud9 customer Stanley Black & Decker was awarded a Gold Stevie in the “CRM Implementation & User Adoption Program of the Year” category for its implementation of Cloud9 solutions. Continue reading…

Posted in: Awards, Customers on Cloud9, Sales Performance
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Introducing Intelligent Forecasting

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Jim Burleigh

Forecasting is a whole lot more than just turning in a number. sales chart

Submitting a forecast number is the most obvious, visible part of the traditional forecasting process, but it’s really the most trivial. In fact, turning in a number is nothing more than the culmination of the administrative portion of the process.

To provide context for our announcement today about the release of the Cloud9 Intelligent Forecasting Suite, I wanted to step back and take a broader look at forecasting. Continue reading…

Posted in: Pipeline Management, Sales Forecasting, Sales Management, Sales Performance
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Improving Sales Performance through Better Forecasting

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Jon Bock

If you’re like most organizations, sales forecasting is only a bit better than using a crysta Crystal ball l ball-each sales rep looks at their list of target opportunities, puts their finger to the wind, submits a number up their management chain, and then goes back to what they were doing. Not surprisingly, the resulting forecast is generally not very accurate.

Up to now most organizations accepted that as the best they could do. But recent research has shown that there’s a very strong link between sales effectiveness and better forecasting-organizations that are better at forecasting are also organizations that have higher win rates, better revenue growth, and more effective sales teams. Continue reading…

Posted in: Events, Sales Forecasting, Sales Performance
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Data-Driven Sales Management

Posted on January 5, 2012 by Swayne Hill

Sales has always been largely an art, built on top of intuition and instinct developed through years of experience. During my career I’ve witnessed the advancement of CRM systems and had an inside view of the emergence of business intelligence, both of which have given sales organizations more data and more ways to access that data than ever before. But in many ways that can actually made sales management harder-there’s so much information that a sales manager could look at that it’s overwhelming. After looking at all of the possible variations on dashboards, reports, and spreadsheets possible, it’s often still hard to answer the question “what do we need to do to close more deals faster while keeping a healthy margin?” Continue reading…

Posted in: Pipeline Management, Sales Forecasting, Sales Management, Sales Performance
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Cloud9 Awarded Silver Medal in 2011 Top Sales & Marketing Awards

Posted on December 21, 2011 by Tracy Eiler

We just got news this week that we received the Silver Medal in the Top Selling Solution category of the 2011 Top Sales & Marketing Awards! The award, which was selected based on a combination of public voting and review by a panel of industry experts, recognizes solutions for helping organizations improve top line results and streamline their business processes.

We’re proud to have been chosen for this award. It puts us in great company-medalists in other categories this year included Salesforce, LinkedIn, and Facebook. It’s great validation of the growing interest in solutions for forecasting and pipeline management.

To learn more about the award, take a look at http://www.topsalesawards.com/.

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Cloud9 at Cloudforce New York

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Jon Bock

The Cloud9 booth before the show floor opened

Cloud9 had a great opportunity to connect with the New York area Salesforce user and partner community at the recent Cloudforce held in the Javits Convention Center. Cloud9 generated a huge amount of interest among the crowd, keeping us busy answering questions about sales forecasting and pipeline management throughout the day. A constant comment was “We definite need something like this to help us with forecasting”. Mike Rossi provided a sneak preview of some new forecasting functionality that Cloud9′s been working on that got a lot of people excited.

Thanks to everyone who stopped by to chat with us, both current customers and people whom we hadn’t met before. If we haven’t answered all of your questions, we’d love to hear from you-give us a call or send us an e-mail.

See you at the next Cloudforce!

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Congratulations to 2011 Customer Achievement Award Winners

Posted on September 2, 2011 by Swayne Hill

At the recent Cloud9 Customer Summit held in San Francisco, we announced the 2011 winners of the annual Cloud9 Customer Achievement Awards. These awards recognize organizations who have delivered significant results in their efforts to maximize sales performance. Continue reading…

Posted in: Awards, Customers on Cloud9, Events
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MuleSoft Deploys Cloud9 For Sales Pipeline Predictability

Posted on April 14, 2011 by Jon Bock

MuleSoft, the provider of web middleware built on leading open source projects Mule ESB and Apache Tomcat, has selected Cloud9. The company joins a rapidly growing list of “who’s who” in leading-edge enterprises that have deployed Cloud9 sales forecasting and pipeline management solutions to boost sales team productivity and pipeline predictability.
Michael DiFilippo, CFO of MuleSoft, said, “We use salesforce.com heavily at MuleSoft, and while it’s great for helping us manage our contacts, accounts, and opportunities, we needed to be able to put history to work and understand why things happened the way they do. Cloud9 provides visibility into pipeline dynamics that we never thought we could get very easily, and the result is better predictability, not only for sales, but for the entire business. Being data driven helps us make more insightful decisions – about how best to move the business forward. ”
Read the full press announcement here.

Posted in: Customers on Cloud9, Pipeline Management, Sales Management
Tagged: Cloud9, CRM, sales forecasting, sales pipeline, salesforce, win rates
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