As much of the world now knows, England’s Leicester City Football Club, otherwise known as the Foxes, has come from virtually nowhere to win the 2015-2016 Premier League victory. Nobody saw it coming—a year ago the team was in last place, with 9 games to go.

As noted in more detail in a brand-new ebooklet, Coevera Sales shares a lot in common with the Leicester City Football Club.

Humble Beginnings

Leicester City Football Club began their heroic run in last place. Something—the more superstitious among us would say the reinterment of King Richard III’s remains in Leicester—changed all that. They began winning, then they began totally shutting out the competitors. In the end, they came from nowhere to the top.

Coevera has also come from virtually nowhere, humbly beginning in Vienna, Austria. We made the move to America in 2013, and virtually nobody knew who we were. Since then, we’ve had consistent year-over-year growth of 100%.

No “Stars”

Now that Leicester City has achieved such an incredible victory, a number of its players will now be viewed as stars (notable examples Goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel and striker Jamie Vardy). But prior to its incredible triumph, the team sported no “star power” of the likes of Lionel Messi, for example. The team simply had incredibly talented and experienced players that, in the end, brought them through.

The same could be said for Coevera. While we don’t (yet) have business-fame A-listers, we have a tight, powerful team of great experience that have brought Coevera through to its incredible success thus far. In addition to its 100% year-over-year growth, we have developed an amazing, well-reviewed product that has become a major contender on the world stage.

Up Against the Giants

As Leicester City rose through the ranks, it certainly came up against far better financed and extremely powerful teams such as the Manchester clubs, City and United. Yet no matter the competition, the Foxes faced them down and vanquished them.

Coevera, too, has been up against some incredibly well-funded and powerful competitors, some of which are many times our size as a company. Yet we have not only shown we can grow at rates equal or better than those competitors, but have proven with real statistics how much superior our product is:

• By survey Coevera is over 50% faster and easier to onboard and run when compared to its biggest competitors including Salesforce.
• Review site G2crowd found that when Coevera and Salesforce are compared side-by-side, Coevera wins.

Who Cares? Then…and Now

When Leicester City began its amazing run to victory, very few people outside their home town were paying any attention to them. But as they began their rise, people began paying attention in ever-greater numbers. And today, the whole world is watching.

Likewise, when Coevera first came to America in 2013, almost nobody knew who they were and, as with Leicester City, most didn’t care, either. But Coevera has not only attracted the avid ever-increasing interest of customers, but the media, too: Leading lights such as Forbes and The Wall Street Journal are now watching Coevera with keen interest.

The Best are Simply The Best

The moral of the story? The best are the best—whether well-financed and famous, or unknown yet fantastically skilled and hard working.

Leicester City Football Club has proven it beyond a shadow of a doubt. And here at Coevera, we’re proving it, too!

Find out why we’re the best! Try a free trial.

Concurrent with the release of the Coevera’s breakthrough version Automata, we are also very proud to be releasing a brand new mobile CRM version! The new Coevera Mobile CRM App brings key Coevera functionality to iOS and Android Smartphones.

Coevera acts as a guide through today’s sales complexity, bringing focus and clarity to a salesperson’s job. It is instant intelligence, visualized. But today’s salespeople are most often not chained to desks in offices—they are out and about, visiting sites, giving presentations, attending conferences and trade shows. We wanted to make sure that no matter where a salesperson is located, Coevera is always accessible.

Coevera Mobile CRM brings key Coevera functionality to mobile CRM, including:

Account Management

Access or edit account data right from mobile. For instance, you’re at a trade show, and you run into Bob Smith from the XYZ company, who also introduces you to his colleague Randy Johnson. Both provide cards. Afterward, you look up XYZ company in Coevera mobile Account Management, and you find Bob’s name in his former position at XYZ (he’s obviously been promoted). You update the data in Coevera to reflect Bob’s current situation. Then you find that Randy Johnson isn’t in Coevera at all, so you add him as a contact for the XYZ company. Learn more about Coevera Mobile Account Management here…

Contact Management

Keeping prospect and client contacts accurately recorded in CRM is crucial to selling—you want to make sure you are reaching the right contacts, at the right companies, at the right time. For example, one day you’re out at lunch and remember there is a contact at one of your prospect companies that you really would like to reach out to. Contact data is just a click away—and you’re able to do so. Learn more about Coevera Mobile Contact Management here…

Lead Management

Leads are the lifeblood of any sales organization–and in reality, of any company. Therefore lead management doesn’t just happen when a salesperson is at a desk in the office–it can and does need to happen anywhere. For instance you’re at a trade show, conference or other similar function, and collect a lot of business cards. In off moments, you can enter the new leads into Coevera through the Coevera Mobile App. Learn more about Coevera Mobile Lead Management here…

Opportunity Management

Since a salesperson is often away from the office, their Smartphone may be their only connection with CRM, and the opportunity data they need to view and update. For example, you’re waiting in the airport after a successful client visit, and receive an email that your deal with another prospect has closed! You can enter that fact into their opportunity data in Pipeline mobile so that your manager will see it. Learn more about Coevera Mobile Opportunity Management here…

Additionally, Coevera Mobile CRM brings these additional Coevera features to mobile:

• Automatic Sync
• Profiles
• Full Customization
• Mobile-Specific Features

Try a free trial of Coevera now. It’s Instant Intelligence, Visualized!

Coevera’s newest and most powerful feature is Coevera Navigator—the first view seen when Coevera is opened. Navigator takes CRM far beyond the traditional dashboard view, providing instant intelligence specifically tailored to that user, allowing them to easily navigate complexity and focus immediately, in real-time, on what is most important.

Once you use Navigator, you’ll see how far it exceeds any similar feature in other CRM applications. There is very sound reason for this—Navigator is based in very proven and powerful economic and scientific principles.

A Brief “Behind the Scenes” History of Coevera

Coevera has, from the beginning, had its roots in such principles. Several years back we had been studying the Austrian School of Economic Thought, which places the entrepreneur front-and-center in economic theory. At the time we realized that a salesperson is actually an “entrepreneur within the enterprise,” and coined a new term to describe the salesperson: salespreneur.

We then realized that the concept of Coevera also embodied various economic principles from the Austrian School of Economic Thought—and so we brought these into the program as well.

Moving forward, we realized that sound management principles were also needed. In truth, there is good or bad management—there is no in-between. In our own company we adopt and follow the management principles of economist and management scientist Fredmund Malik. So we incorporated these into Coevera, too.

Today we see that the complexity in the world is only increasing. We certainly witness such complexity in sales—with data, leads, opportunities, the sales cycle, multiple pipelines, multiple companies, multiple product lines, tier pricing, and much more.

So today we have arrived at the best possible way to face and deal with this complexity.

Cybernetics and Complexity

The best definition of the word cybernetics that I know of comes from cybernetics pioneer W. Ross Ashby, who defined it as the “science of simplification.” The science of cybernetics is employed to approach and understand complexity.

Cybernetics simplifies complexity by providing models of systems that are too complex for the viewer to understand without some kind of assistance. These models act as dynamic moving maps of these complex systems. They are real-time navigators that enable shared understanding and communication.

Interestingly, the root of the word “cybernetic” is the Greek kubernētēs, which means “steersman,” one who steers a boat. With cybernetics as a background, we have designed Coevera Navigator for the purpose of safely navigating a sales representative—and therefore a sales team and business—through the world’s growing complexity.

Visual Models

With Coevera Navigator we are presenting a rep with the data they should have to proceed—much as the navigator on a ship or an aircraft would present navigational data to the captain. It is still up to the captain to guide the ship in its actual voyage.

Put another way, we are presenting the salesperson with visual models to plot a course to success. The sales rep can then take that data—that instant intelligence, visualized—and utilize it to proceed forward toward the target in the most efficient way possible.

Such a powerful tool takes a salesperson’s attention off of all the details—now details are right there in front of him or her, not inside their head. They can put their full attention on moving forward toward that target.

Navigator visually prioritizes a rep’s tasks, activities, and opportunities. In Navigator’s target view, the rep can see, in real-time, how they are proceeding toward attaining their target. This display can be customized by target type, by quota and by time period so that they really understand what is needed to make it.

At any time, the salesperson can drill down and readily see any of the opportunities that make up the target, and what needs to be done with that opportunity.

Sales Manager

Navigator is an extremely useful tool for the sales manager as well. The sales manager can utilize Navigator, through Coevera’s Profiles feature, to look at the opportunities, tasks and priorities for any single rep, a sales unit or the whole team. Of course, the sales manager can also utilize Navigator for their own tasks and priorities.

The Future

The future for Coevera will always go along the lines of proven scientific concepts and principles. Join us in our journey—for your business success!

If anything could be said about today’s world, it’s certainly filled with complexity. Today’s sales landscape is reflective of this trend: complexity in data, leads, opportunities, the sales cycle, multiple pipelines, multiple companies, multiple product lines, tier pricing, and much more.

How can salespeople and sales managers deal with all this complexity? Well, we have at least one answer: with Coevera, and it’s new version: Automata.

Okay, What’s With the Name?

Automata was a work written by Greek mathematician Hero of Alexandria (c10-c70 A.D.). It was a description of machines which enabled wonders in temples by mechanical or pneumatic means. Two thousand years ahead of its time, Automata is considered some of the first formal research into the science of cybernetics.

Cybernetics

Cybernetics is the study of how machines can be created to think and act like humans. But cybernetics is also described as the “science of simplification” and is used to approach and understand complexity.

Cybernetics simplifies complexity by providing models of systems that are too complex for the viewer to understand without some kind of assistance. These models are real-time navigators that enable shared understanding and communication.

And with that concept, we move right into Coevera Automata.

Navigator

The prime feature of Coevera Automata is its new Navigator feature. With Navigator, Coevera has totally parted ways with the traditional concept of a CRM dashboard and is providing far more innovative and targeted ways to deliver instant intelligence to the user. With it the user can cut out the noise, navigate that complexity and focus right in on what is most important.

Coevera Navigator is composed of 5 basic components:

• Activity Stream—This is a list of activities, tasks, and opportunities in date order, beginning with the closest to the present, displayed on the right-hand side of Navigator. You can click on any item to drill down and get the full information on what needs to get done. All priority items are here, in one convenient, visual location.
• Target Overview—This component combines our Dynamic Target feature with a Target Trend graph that displays progress toward a sales goal over a specified time period, using 3 different metrics. Coevera users always know where they are at in relation to a target, and what needs to be done to get there.
• Notifications—This section contains “Tasks,” “Missed Close Dates,” “Velocity Issues” and “Largest Open Opportunity”–all important notifications of various issues within a user’s pipeline.
• Suggestions—In this section can be seen other areas in which actions should possibly be taken. These include Cold Accounts, Inactive Accounts, Inactive Leads, Stuck Opportunities, New Leads and more. This component is always providing guidance to help improve a rep’s performance.
• Business Overview—This section provides a graphical display of Open Opportunities, Open Sum, Won Sum, and Lost Sum—for the user-defined date range for which Navigator is currently set. A user can look in the rear-view mirror to see what has already happened, and look forward to assessing where they are going– allowing them to make the necessary adjustments for the road ahead.

Forecast Report

Automata introduce a new Coevera report: the Forecast Report. It allows a sales manager to set quotas for each member of a sales team, and track quota achievement through a sales period for each quota set.

Like many Coevera features, the Forecast Report is fully customizable can be filtered with profiles, and shared with team members.

Dynamic Dropdowns

This new functionality allows user-defined drop-down menus to dynamically relate to one another. For example, if a particular sales territory is selected, then another dropdown menu of “sales reps” would only be those reps for that territory.

User Rights Management—Greatly Simplified

Administrators will be very happy with the ease of which user rights can now be managed, within Coevera Automata, in several different areas.

Coevera Automata is a major leap forward for Coevera. If you have yet to try Coevera, the time has never been better! Do it today.

In this series, we’ve covered why CRM has failed in the past, what is really needed for a CRM today, what we at Coevera are doing about it, just how Coevera empowers salespeople, and where CRM should be in the future.

For our final article in the series, let’s talk about why CRM is so vital today—and why it is that, if you don’t have it, you’re not going to make it.

The Internet and the digital revolution has created an “age of the buyer” in which the buyer wants to be addressed personally, individually, and very clearly.

On top of that, today we’re in a global economy. That means customers are, quite literally, everywhere. And as businesses become more decentralized and more people are working remotely, so are the employees quite literally everywhere (note: this is a description of my own company). For both these reasons SaaS businesses continue to boom tremendously.

It All Leads Back to Processes

All of these things create a crucial demand for processes. Everything done in a company is done on a process, and requires a process. A process is how things get done—how staff know to, speaking figuratively, pick up the ball and pass it to the next player.

The demand for exact processes goes back to manufacturing. The original master of process creation was Jack Welch, former Chairman and CEO of General Electric. In the early to mid-1980s Welch pushed manufacturing to a whole new level—and it was all through optimizing processes. It is worthy of note that during his tenure the company’s value rose an astonishing 4,000%.

Processes in the Digital Age

Today the requirement for processes has become extremely acute—if you don’t have every one of your processes optimized, your business runs less efficiently, which of course can lead to a loss of marketshare or even failure. Hence the digital revolution is constantly forcing people and companies to think in processes.

It’s a cold, hard truth that whether or not you create and hone your processes, your competitors will. They’ll be continuing to address customers, vendors and needs with digital processes, and with ever-improving agility. As stated by Pierre Nanterme, CEO of Accenture: “Digital is the main reason just over half of the companies on the Fortune 500 have disappeared since the year 2000.”

0So it has become a very salient fact that without core processes—whether they be for accounts, contacts, activities, sales, HR or whatever—your business is lost and will not survive.

Processes and CRM

Which of course leads us back to our main topic: CRM. For it is CRM that is expanding to incorporate all of a company’s processes, beginning with its most important activity: sales.

In order for a CRM application to stand up to the demand for processes, and in order for it to integrate and run with them, a CRM:

• should be reasonably priced, so that companies can acquire and implement it with relative ease.
• should be easy and fast to get up and running. Companies can no longer afford administrative runways of months on end, and fortunes spent on administrator training.
• should be intuitive and easy for users to train on. Training times of weeks and months are no longer acceptable—should be hours or, at most, days.
• should empower users, no matter where they exist inside or even outside the company. Users should have their jobs made easier, not more complex.
• should be extremely flexible and customizable, as no 2 companies are alike.

These are the deciding factors of who will in the battle in the CRM industry. While it may seem that Salesforce today has all the good cards, user polls clearly show that users don’t like Salesforce.

So the question remains, based on the above deciding factors, who is really the winner?

I’ll leave you to figure that out for yourself.

Get your free trial of Coevera now.

If one flat statement could be made about today’s sales environment, “It is really complex” would certainly serve. Going back in time, there were 2 basic sales jobs—a salesperson and a sales manager. Today we have field sales, inside sales, SDR sales, vertical sales, horizontal sales, and more. Sales has become a complex team sport which requires precise coordination.

On top of that, we’ve also moved into the digital age. We have multiple systems gathering data. We’re constantly seeking to integrate further data sources, more inputs, and greater and additional technology. The digital age has also meant an enormous diversification and proliferation of sales channels that must be monitored, acted upon and supervised.

Complexity is also reflected with customers, especially in B2B sales. It’s not simply a matter of a buyer approving a purchase—now there are committees and multiple decision-makers, all of which a salesperson must keep track of and deal with if a sale is to be made.

For sales, all the above can unfortunately boil down to one thing: losing track of the person on the other side of that screen: the prospect, the buyer, the customer. In other words, the one individual or group of individuals that in the end will mean a win or a loss.

Technology Must Help, Not Complicate

Here at Coevera, we’ve been watching this complexity evolve since the beginning of our company. Because of it, we started out on a completely different footing than traditional CRM applications. We designed a CRM solution to empower sales teams, not weigh them down with data entry and administration.

Technology is only as good as the results that come out of it. If technology is not helping to deal with and solve that complexity, then all it’s doing is making complexity more complicated. Which, unfortunately, has been the end result of many of the leading CRM applications over the years.

Enter Cybernetics

Now there is a word you probably didn’t figure you’d hear in a blog post about sales and CRM—cybernetics!

What is cybernetics, and how does it apply? Well, cybernetics is the study of closed cognitive learning systems—specifically the study of how machines can be created to think and act as humans. But moreover, the science of cybernetics is used to approach, understand and deal with complex systems.

Coevera’s next version, due very shortly, will incorporate cybernetics. It is the next quantum leap in CRM technology—and will assist sales teams, organizations and companies to squarely face today’s complexity head-on, instantly sort it out and navigate it.

Stay tuned for further news!

In this series, we’ve covered why CRM has failed in the past, what is really needed for a CRM today, what we at Coevera are doing about it, and just how Coevera empowers salespeople.

Now, where should CRM be as we move out into the future? And how should CRM relate to the ongoing digital revolution?

Avoiding Extinction

Today if a business is to survive, it must embrace technology. Many companies have disappeared simply because they didn’t embrace it—and they really had no chance.

Businesses and society seem to be undergoing one of the most fundamental transformations in history. What is happing might better be understood as an Old World dying because a New World is being born. There will hardly be any bridges back to the old state of affairs. Perhaps the most practical premise to navigate by is that whatever can change will change.

— Fredmund Malik

Relation to CRM

So what does this mean for a CRM solution? First, it means kind of a reverse look—in order to be embraced by those seeking technology, CRM must in turn deal directly with the business pains that need to be addressed.

There are 3 main parts to a CRM today, and any CRM that is to survive must contain all 3:

1. It must be easily scalable
2. Integration of data into it must be easy
3. It should replace multiple tools

Cutting Down the Multiple

Focusing in on #3 there above, there is an issue that is becoming ever more problematic when it comes to the sheer volume of solutions out there. There are many thousands of applications a company can avail itself of. Companies attempt to play it smart hunt out the “best of breed” for such applications—but in so doing they find the financial outlay to be considerable. Then when a company purchases them, or subscribes to the SaaS, it becomes even more expensive because these solutions require regular updates.

In my opinion the industry is headed for considerable risk because of this. A company can buy yet another app to address just about any problem, which means mounting costs. On the other hand, vendors cannot make such solutions too cheap, else they themselves won’t survive.

The risk factor is that some of the applications aren’t bad—but if left to stand alone they couldn’t survive. They themselves depend on other applications because they are too specialized. If you have too many specialized apps in a company, not only is it a financial problem but one of complexity.

I believe that in the next 2 years companies will be advised to cut down on the volume and complexity of such applications. CRM solutions such as ours are stepping in to pick up the slack.

The 6 Deadly Sins of CRM

Additionally, as we move into the future, any CRM solution to survive must avoid these 6 deadly sins.

#1: Don’t be a “Big Brother”

George Orwell’s famous novel 1984 gave us the term “Big Brother.” In the story, and as it’s used today, the term means having someone constantly watching and monitoring you in order to control you. Nobody likes to live like that—including salespeople or other CRM users.

Coevera set out to totally avoid the “Big Brother” syndrome right from the start. Coevera is completely designed to empower salespeople, not to control them.

The magic of such an approach can be seen in any company that has implemented a CRM such as this: one of the primary CRM issues is solved—that of correct data in CRM. If users are happy, and using the system because it brings them benefit, the data entered is going to be correct. Correct data is fundamental to everything, including all of your reports and forecasts.

So a CRM shouldn’t motivate with control—it should motivate with actually helping.

#2: Don’t make an easy system complex and difficult

A CRM system (such as ours, for example) can be designed to be totally easy to customize and use. But at the same time, when the system is implemented, it can be overloaded with mandatory fields and be made to require twice the data that is really needed.

In addition to being easy to customize and use, a CRM should be intelligently implemented. What data is really needed for users to use it? All customization should be targeted directly to helping users do their jobs better.

#3: “Always access” to CRM

Despite the fact we’re living in the 21st century in a very technical age, there are still many places in the world—even in fully developed countries such as the US—without Internet access. Anyone using CRM, especially salespeople, must have access to the full system with or without Internet access.

A CRM should make it possible to get the job done online or off.

#4: Don’t kill your adoption rate before you’ve even started

Steering clear of these CRM deadly sins, especially #1 and #2 above, you will make CRM something users desire to use and will adopt. A complex, control-oriented application that users will find difficult to take to will mean a low adoption rate—and your CRM project has died before it was ever born.

#5: Don’t make CRM an island

Although it should certainly be central, a CRM should also not be the only tool that a company or even a sales force depends on. CRM is important, and is becoming more and more the heart of an organization (as we’ve noted, the term “CRM” is no longer correct because it does far more than simply “manage customer relationships”). But even so, CRM should not be an island. It should not be isolated, it should be integrated. When you don’t integrate CRM with your other main systems, it becomes a silo—and the age of the silo is long over.

#6: Don’t choose a CRM that is slow to set up

Don’t choose a CRM that has a ramp-up time like many of the traditional ones do—3–4 months or longer, and long training periods for users. In addition to being intuitive and easy to grasp and understand, a great CRM works best when it has context-sensitive help that can be rapidly accessed when a user doesn’t remember an operational point or needs to learn it newly.

When a CRM is slow to implement and hard to learn, the motivation for using it starts dipping into minus territory—and you’re back into Sin #4 once again.

Heading into the future not only means adopting technology, it means adopting the right technology, and ensuring that your CRM solution conforms to the same standards.

What makes Coevera the CRM to bring you into the future? Find out!  Get your free trial of Coevera now.

In this series, we’ve covered why CRM has failed in the past, what is really needed for a CRM today and what we at Coevera are doing about it.

Now let’s take a look at how and why Coevera factually and practically empowers salespeople. If you utilize CRM anywhere at any time, this could be very valuable information for you.

Lowered Value Across the Boards

As we’ve gone over, traditional CRM applications were crippled by the technology available at the time of development, plus the incorrect approach of turning the user into a data-entry clerk without providing any kind of return on all back to that user. In other words, for all that data entered, they were provided no help in making their sales. CRM was basically put there so management could monitor sales, but not so salespeople could be better or more efficient at selling.

Because salespeople abhorred CRM, they were entering the least amount of data possible. They didn’t care all that much—they weren’t going to get anything out of it anyway. The result? A CRM application that cost the company a great deal of money, time and resources that was anything but a return on investment.

The real irony is that the CRM application was supposedly there for management. Yet if you go into just about any organization running traditional CRM, you’ll find sales managers chasing all over the place to obtain up-to-date information about sales: calling and emailing the reps, and holding lengthy sales meetings to get the latest—instead of getting this data from CRM, simply because full information isn’t in CRM. So CRM hasn’t even fulfilled the purpose it was put there for.

Reverse Approach

When we set out to develop Coevera, we knew that CRM was not assisting salespeople, simply by the phrase we heard from them again and again: “CRM sucks!” We decided then to reverse the approach of CRM, and make it more of a bottom-up than a top-down model. In other words, we were out to develop an application that would truly empower salespeople, and make it totally worthwhile for them to use CRM.

We knew that if we did so, the quality of the data being input into CRM would be greatly enhanced. That meant that not only sales reps would benefit, but sales management would have a single, central real-time repository for sales data, to which they could look at any time and gain an instant understanding of the current sales scene. Or, as we like to say, instant intelligence, visualized.

The Daily Assist

From the beginning, our approach to Coevera development has been highly practical. We continually ask the question What helps the individual on a daily basis? The answers to this question have evolved into every feature and benefit we see in Coevera today, from its visual pipeline, timeline, dynamic target, account, contact, and KPI views, right down to its powerful reports.

At any time, a user can take a very rapid look into Coevera and totally grasp where they stand in relation to the target.

As an example of Coevera’s flexibility, a user can look over the opportunities in a pipeline and quickly exclude opportunities that may not come in, or are too much of the target to be counted on with confidence (the target will fall completely flat without them). Or, other opportunities could be included to see how closing them could boost the target. Of course, sales management could do this also.

Another very practical feature is “Recently opened”—which I like to call “Monday morning.” In this feature, they can see which accounts, contacts, opportunities or leads they’ve recently opened. That’s why I call it “Monday morning”—a user can come in on Monday and see what they did on Friday. Immediately they know what to do.

We also have a “star” feature to mark your favorites, just as you would in a browser.

In addition to all of its major, very practical functionality (of which there is much more to come), we’ve also paid attention to details that might seem unimportant. For example from just about anywhere in Coevera a user can write a reminding note, something like “Bring a bottle of wine to the meeting,” that wouldn’t necessarily need to be in CRM proper, but something rep would not want to forget.

Assumption of Love

Overall, the assumption is made with Coevera that the user will love it, its functionality and usefulness. The core understanding is that as much as the salesperson is liking, using, and actively involved in the product, the data becomes highly useful for the rep, the manager and anyone else that needs information from CRM.

And from what we hear from customer after customer—we’re totally succeeding in this mission.

What is that makes Coevera so incredibly practical and useful? Find out!  Get your free trial of Coevera now.