Greetings from ExactTarget at the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Launch Tour.  The US kickoff started today in Tampa, FL and Nashville, TN.  I am writing from the Tampa event where approximately 60 people showed up to hear the latest on CRM best practices and Microsoft’s greater play in the space.  ExactTarget was situated between Cisco and Smart Catalog.  The mix of attendees is pretty evenly broken out across sales personnel, marketing and IT.

Don Peppers, of Peppers and Rodgers fame – www.1to1.com, kicked off the event and drove home some points from their new book, “Rules to Break and Laws to Follow”.  The most important piece in a customer’s choice is trust in the vendor or seller.  Mr. Peppers went on to say that “earning trust often costs money in the short term.”  However, before you can earn your customers’ trust….you must first earn your employees’ trust.”  He showed examples of exemplary companies in this area like Ritz Carlton, Enterprise Rent-a-Car and others.  The ability to enable your employees to engage in their mission should be every company’s priority.  CRM is critical to enabling your employees to serve their customers/clients better and be engaged in their work.  The ExactTarget folks in the audience were fist pumping throughout (not really…..more on the inside).  Leveraging Don’s guidance, MSCRM and email through ExactTarget makes Don’s words very achievable.

Shawn Tabor, of Raymond James Financial, also spoke as a client study and gave a walk thru of how they chose and rolled out MSCRM across their enterprise.  The day wound up w/ Julie Herman from Microsoft walking thru several use cases and demo scenarios of using MSCRM 4.0 across Marketing, Sales and Support. 

All in all a lot of information in 4 hours!!  Now it’s off to Orlando, Jacksonville and Atlanta…..more to come!

Craig Herman
Director, Global Partner Development – Microsoft