New Tool Simplifies Selling For SMBs

With the release of CrunchConnect, SalesCrunch is taking sales presentations to a whole new level. Part webconferencing tool, part presentation tracker, the Web-based CrunchConnect allows companies to capture and measure real-time customer engagement."Sales success is hard to repeat," says Sean Black, founder and CEO of New York-based SalesCrunch. "About 10 to 20% of any sales team generates 80 to 90% of a company's revenue. There's no training; it's sink or swim."

At the core of CrunchConnect is a webconferencing tool that allows salespeople to meet online with prospects and customers to go over presentations (or "decks," in webconferencing parlance). Before an online meeting begins, attendees gathered in the virtual waiting room can get acquainted by checking out each other's LinkedIn and Twitter accounts. There are assorted other icebreakers, too, such as local weather and news.

There's no software to download and attendees always know where to find you--at your own personal URL. Meeting hosts can even tell who's engaged and who's not as they progress through the slides of a presentation. Example: You're at slide 15 and you've lost Jed. How do you know? There's a red border around Jed's on-screen picture or avatar. You can let Jed be and see if he comes around in a few more slides, or you can be a little more proactive and ask Jed what he thinks about the content of slide 15. Think of it as a "virtual nudge."

But here's the most exciting part (at least to me). You can e-mail these presentations to anyone, and you can track everything. No more hitting the "Send" button and then waiting and wondering whether the recipient actually opened your e-mail. Send it return receipt, you say? Yes, that's an option, but you still won't know whether the person on the other end actually took any time to look through your presentation.

With CrunchConnect, you get metrics--analytics--for anybody who opens your presentation. And the numbers get granular. You can see, for example, how much time Prospect A spent viewing each slide in the presentation. And based on that data, you can customize a follow-up message.

You can also record meetings and use them as training tools. "Let's say you just closed a big deal and certain comments from meeting participants reveal what you did right to win the customer," Black says. "You can snip out some sound bites and send them to your salespeople so they can repeat the success."

That brings us to SalesCrunch's mantra: "Taking selling from fuzzy art to repeatable process." Catchy, isn't it? The beta is available for free right now, but you have to be invited to use it. Visit the SalesCrunch website to get an invitation.