Salesboom Hits Salesforce.com Where it Hurts

The CRM wars are beginning again! Today, Salesboom.com a leading provider of software-as-a-service CRM launched an enticement program that rewards customers deserting Salesforce.com CRM for Salesboom CRM software solutions with a $5000 signup bonus and free data migration services.

Historically, Salesforce.com bullied its rival Salesboom.com on numerous occasions starting with a battle over the proprietary Salesboom brand name in 2003. Salesboom.com in turn has accused Salesforce.com employees of maliciously accessing the Salesboom proprietary technology, sales and marketing materials.

It is nice to know that there are other alternatives for Salesforce.com and in the case of Salesboom.com a better solution for considerably less money.

Salesboom also provided a marketing document titled Top 9 reasons Why You Should Switch from Salesforce to Salesboom which hits Salesforce.com customers right between their eyes! One interesting reason being Salesboom.com the first to offer real time support via online chat right from within the application instead of calling and waiting for untimely responses from Salesforce.com

You can find the release here, in which the President of Salesboom.com, Rami Hamodah had something very interesting and bold to say:

“The relationship between Salesboom.com and Salesforce.com is a one way street. Salesforce.com customers embark on their journey along this one way street and find themselves at our door. This one way street analogy sums up our relationship with Salesforce.com, we should be thankful to them, after all they are our largest source of new clients!”

Two weeks ago rumors had it that Salesforce.com has shopped itself to the big daddy of all business software , Oracle, and representatives from both companies refused to comment which leads me to believe this could actually happen. If Oracle acquires Salesforce.com, the Salesboom.com people will be happy-go-lucky and here is why:

Salesforce.com success is mainly based on smaller businesses; evident by their average licenses per customer which is setting at 21 currently. This means that most Salesforce.com customers have 20 sales staff or less and this is small business.

Oracle is used to selling it’s enterprise solutions to large enterprises with tens of thousands of licenses each and to even think that they will be happy to service Salesforce.com customers is frankly absurd! These customers if they have to deal with Oracle they will be in for shock for the pricing and above all the treatment.

There is already a trend of customers leaving Salesforce.com which has an attrition rate of less than 60% which means 40% of their 40,000 customers leave them every year and switch to other providers, such as Salesboom.com. That’s over 16,000 unhappy defunct Salesforce.com customers every year!

What is really funny about the Salesboom CRM Enticement Program is that it takes a page from the Salesforce.com marketing book by touting the No Salesforce.com Logo!

Let’s watch and see the outcome of this battle.

Salesforce.com Customer Data was Stolen Today

Today the State of New Hampshire received a notification from Salesforce.com David Schellhase explaining that some unencrypted external storage devices that have Salesforce.com customer personal information such as the names addresses and social security numbers were stolen from an employee’s vehicle in N.H!

Here is the proof that Salesforce.com customer data was stolen

The Question is, why would Salesforce.com not practice what it breaches to customers? Why aren’t they using Salesforce.com wireless edition instead of saving customer information on laptops? I wonder what Contact Management tool they used to save the data on the laptop? ACT! Maybe? That is so funny!

What a company?! While Marc Benioff is expecting to value his company at P/E of 1000 pretty soon, his company is screwing with customers!! Last November 2007 their employees were scammed and leaked sensitive customer data with credit card information by falling for an email fishing attack.  And Now This.

And yesterday they were suffering from an outage for over 6 hours. I think that Salesforce.com is in great trouble and the customers are noticing and starting to switch to other vendors such as Salesboom.com and RightNow.

Finally Salesforce.com is Up For Sale

I have speculated long ago that Oracle (NasdaqNM:ORCL) will end up gobbling Salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM) just like they did with JDEdwards, PeopleSoft, Sibel and many others because it is part’s of Oracles strategy: growth-by-acquisition.

Yesterday Tom Foremski from siliconvalleywatcher.com claimed that a reliable insider at salesforce.com revealed to him that the company has shopped itself to Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) for $75 a share for a total of almost 9 Billions, which represents an over 50% premium over the price of the stock before reacting to the news and gaining 8% yesterday. Oracle stock increased by 2% on the news.

I am not sure what to make of this news, but it is worth mentioning that Oracle refused to comment which makes the story likely. Even if this was just a rumor, Oracle’s Larry who is used to bashing Salesforce.com has not said a word this time which to me suggests he is actually interested in such a deal.

If this news story is legitimate then Salesforce.com customers are in big trouble! We all know that Oracle is not SME friendly at all, and Larry himself couple months ago said that no one have figured a way to make money in the SME market yet! Salesforce.com customers will end up dealing with Oracle which has a businesses plan that expects customers to pay an arm and a leg for their expensive products.

The bright side of the story is that these customers have choices and in some cases better choices for better pricing terms. Take for example Salesboom.com which offers a similar hosted CRM service for 40% less pricy on average and has been in business since 2001 and already serves over 6000 customers worldwide.

Other vendors including Salesboom.com also offer a free migration process that helps customers of Salesforce.com jump ship easily by exporting their entire data from SFDC quickly, especially when Salesforce.com does not actually offer easy-export tools to export all their data at once, hence Salesboom CRM Migration Magic Button.

We have to wait and see the outcome of this news, and we shall talk again!

We all remember when Salesforce.com CRM software was a victim to a phishing scam in November 2007, where one of their employees gave out his password, and many Salesforce.com customer information was jeopardized.

Salesforce.com did nothing about it and was short lipped. Today, a direct competitor of them, namely Salesboom.com has released a new security service that will stop any CRM phishing attack before it even happens.

Salesboom.com is now offering two-factor authentication by offering their customers USB tokens to be used when logging in to the Salesboom.com service. I personally think this is a brilliant idea and should be a money-making product for them. What is strange though is why it took so long for an on-demand CRM vendor to act on such an important issue?

Read here about CRM database security

First Artificial Life Created!

It is reported that artificial life form is being created within weeks. Craig Venter, an American Scientist have created a synthetic chromosome by using chemicals in his laboratory!!!!

What is a chromosome?

In genes and DNA in the nucleus of a cell, a chromosome is one of the threadlike stuff that makes them. This is the first time a genetics researcher was able to create such chromosomes in the lab.

Controversially, this means Craig Venter was the first person on earth to create life in the lab. Sort of a God if you ask me!!

Craig suggests that the artificial man-made chromosomes can be transplanted into a living bacterial cell, and then it will take control over that cell, just like that! Effectively what Craig is doing, is creating new life forms by taking over existing life forms and completely changing it to something we have never seen before!

Now, you will hear all kinds of religious people attempting to ban such research, for the love of God in them. I wonder if humans thought for a minute about all these diseases that can be cured including aids, would they accept what Craig Venter is up to?

Read More Here

The God of the software industry, Larry Ellison has just made a bizarre statement:

"So while we think it’s an interesting market — the small market — because it’s large, we just haven’t figured out a way to make a substantial profit in that market. We think it’s hard to make money. Our strategy: add more value, go upstream, sell industry-specific software to our existing customers, and we’ll watch and see how SAP does going after small companies. Especially with in Software as a Service which we think is very interesting, but so far no one has figured out how to make any money at it."

Now, Larry must know, right? Wrong! Larry in my opinion is just preparing the stage for a hostile takeover of Salesforce.com.

Larry owns Netsuite which is generating 100million per year and growing by almost 70% year over year. Many other vendors such as RightNow and Salesboom.com are winning customers and generating new revenues daily, and the funny part is they are making more money at it than Oracle!

Larry Ellison knows that software-as-a-service is the next money making model he must embrace, and putting it down maybe is his way of reducing the value of Salesforce.com?

Today, I searched for Salesboom.com on Yahoo, and I found so many results that I have never seen before on google. I messaged my business colleague, and I told him Yahoo today is better than Google!

Ironically, he mentioned that in fact they have just released what they consider the best update to the search index in 3 years, and I believe them.

Here is the result that google was unable to locate for me:

Employer Relationship Management

We all know how it works in this Internet era, If yahoo or whomever gives me better results, I will kiss Google goodbye. There is no such thing as loyalists when it comes to search engines. If you don't believe me, then how do you expect that the top 10 search engines in 1998, are not on that list anymore?

Fearless Yachts has been all the rage lately and for a good reason. These super-looking modern-style yachts are designed by Porsche Design Studios for ultimate speed and performance.

Yes, Porsche designed them in collaboration with Fearless Yachts in Miami Beach,Florida. The company has 5 different models based on the length of the boat. 28,44,68,125 and 150 feet! The only model available yet is the 28 foot yacht, and the others are promised to be coming soon sometime in 2008.

The design combines marine enthusiasm and automotive style, performance and disciplines in one expensive package, although pricing is speculative so far.

My next boat will have to be a Fearless Yacht for sure!

You can see these models at the Fearless Yachts web site.

Yes! If tens of millions of marketing, sales and support employees at millions of small and medium size businesses world wide, where to use a software-as-a-service (SaaS) business solution such as Salesboom.com, instead of traditional install-base solutions global warming would be less of a problem.

Let me explain the theory. A typical company that needs to implement a CRM system for a team of 20 sales and marketing employees, will need to purchase a server(s), firewalls, routers, and other peripherals before the software arrives in a package that includes tens of CDs and hundreds of pages of printed manuals, order forms, etc via the mail. Do you think producing such stuff increases global warming?

One might argue that the software and manuals can be downloaded online, most vendors must do this to justify the tens of thousands of dollars paid by customers for the software. Also most companies prefer to have on-site copies of the software and manuals.

Once the system is in place, an IT staff must maintain and support the system, and when upgrades become available or bug fixes are released, such software is also usually shipped via the mail and also comes with tens of CDs and printed manuals.

On average the hardware investment becomes obsolete in 3-4 years which will force the company to purchase new servers, routers, etc. Many companies have multiple locations, and multiple purchases are indeed required. The hardware infrastructure hosting these business solutions requires electricity to maintain uptime!

Had these companies used software-as-a-service, only a fraction of the hardware infrastructure and the power to run it would be required, since it's a service and the software is centrally hosted at the vendor. Tens of millions of CDs, packaging materials, shipping boxes, software manuals, shipping/receiving paper slips, etc would be virtually eliminated.

Tens of millions of companies are doing this everyday, which increases global warming greatly and while I have no statistics to support this theory yet, I hope readers can help uncover how much of an impact can SaaS have on global warming.

Let's think outside-the-box for a minute and try to find new innovative ways to save our earth by reducing our footprint on the environment and global warming before it is too late.

1. Service Level Agreement

   While Salesforce.com is not backed by an SLA to guarantee service quality and uptime, Salesboom.com offers an SLA with a 99.8% uptime guarantee and a penalty clause that refunds customers 2.5X the downtime!

2. Customer Service & Support

   Salesboom.com exceptional service and support is one major reason why Salesforce.com customers are switching to Salesboom.com. Salesboom.com customers enjoy 24/7/365 live support that Salesforce.com considers to be premium support, for premium customers only and at premium prices as well.

3. One-system solution approach

   Salesboom.com, unlike Salesforce.com; is focused primarily on offering a one-system solution where a business organization uses Salesboom.com to run their entire business operations: Marketing, Sales, Support, Accounting, Inventory, HR, Manufacturing, etc.

   Its not just CRM anymore!

4. User Adoption

   The best CRM system in the world is bound for failure if your employees will not adopt it. While Salesforc.com user interface design is cumbersome, Salesboom.com user interface is so user-friendly and is full of Ajax-features that will reduce the clicks needed to accomplish any system task, such as adding a note to a contact record, with one click without page refreshes. The same task in Salesforce.com will require 5 clicks. Also Salesboom.com provides a monthly account review and when your staff are not using certain features they will be educated on the importance of doing so!

5. Outside-the-box deployment

   Salesforce.com is hard to change, especially with smaller clients. Salesboom.com will deploy solutions that are intriguing and require outside-the-box thinking and cooperation with customers, Salesforc.com does not do that.

6. Restrictions, Restrictions, Restriction!

   Salesforce.com traps Team edition customers and then forces them to pay folds more when they require a feature by making them upgrade to the professional or enterprise editions at folds more. Salesboom.com will allow your company to mix and match editions without the requirement to upgrade all users! If you attempt Integrating Salesforce.com with any other solution you will be forced to upgrade to their flagship enterprise edition, with Salesboom.com there are no similar restrictions. In Salesforce, Team Edition customers also can't add custom fields! The list goes on and on..

They also are adopting a new slogan : It's a Suite thing.™

From what I understand the new release comes with very handy customization tools such as the Ajax-rich layout editor, which will help a company customize their CRM and ERP Salesboom.com account in minutes.

What is interesting is that there are only three companies in the world as of today that offer a wall-to-wall business solution on-demand : Salesboom.com, Netsuite and SAP Business ByDesign.

While SAP had not released their hosted products yet, the other two players are wining the deals.

6 Reasons why Ajax will transform software-as-a-service

In 2006, only few of the information technology buzz words actually represented technological break-throughs like Ajax. Ajax is nothing more than a new term coined to explain technical specifications of 10 year old browser technology that have gone unnoticed by the pros.

Asynchronous Java Script is the ability for the browser to connect to a server and update information in a web page without resorting to the usual clumsy page refreshes. While Java Applets were capable of doing just that in 1994, DHML and Java scripts were often used to achieve the same result.

For some weired reason, what Ajax did then and does today remained to be a design ambiguity without a prober name to define it. It is hard to say why a technology is ignored for 10 years then when re-discovered explodes ridiculously!

Maybe it was the bandwidth, low-performance desktops, the ignorance of web developers, user adoption or all of those reasons behind such a late debut.

Many online applications such as Google, Salesboom.com, and others have introduced Ajax-rich Internet solutions (Mail, CRM, Accounting, etc) in what has been classified as Web 2.0.

Whatever Ajax is, it is good for the software-as-a-service industry because it will bridge the gab between the desktop user interface and it's Internet cousin. That alone is bound to greatly reduce the time it takes to accomplish CRM and ERP tasks and will increase user satisfaction and adoption thus raising the expected return on investment- ROI of such CRM systems.

Here are my Six Reasons why Ajax and Comet will transform the software-as-a-service industry for good:

1. It will reduce the amount of click-throughs needed to accomplish everyday tasks in a hosted CRM/ERP system.

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2. It will reduce the dependency on users to update and synchronize data on the screen, which is more real-time than traditional web based applications.

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3. It will help companies obtain real-time information from their hosted CRM and ERP solutions.

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4. It will increase the time available for sales reps to sell.

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5. It will make for an overall better user experience with an intuitive user interface.

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6. Increased user adoption of an Enterprise system makes for a much better ROI.

In the same period the software-as-a-services industry has taken off, the American dollar has lost more than 40% of it's value against world currencies such as the Euro.

When business software such as CRM (Customer Relationship Management) was first offered as a service by numerous companies like Salesforce.com, Netsuite, Salesboom.com, RightNow, etc, the American dollar equaled to 82 Euro cents, Now it is something like 1.32!

Here is the three reasons why I think a weak Dollar is good for the SaaS industry:

1. While SaaS products already offer more than 50% savings over installed-base systems, the price of SaaS products is now 40% cheaper for International customers thanks to the weak dollar. Since most online marketing companies are USA-based, marketing to international customers will not cost anymore.

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2. A Weak Dollar will deter SaaS vendors from hiring offshore customer service call centers and developers, which is bound to increase customer satisfaction and/or keep jobs at home.

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3. A Weak Dollar will deter North American businesses from purchasing International SaaS solutions; since they became 40% more expensive since 2003! This means more business for the software-as-a-service industry in North America.

The Legend Elton John has just came out and proposed that the Internet should be shut down for 5 years!

Not only will his proposal shut down the Internet, but with it every business from the hundreds of thousands that depend on it, in the sake of Good Music.

I am a fan of all music, and in particular Elton's, but he must've been on some illegal substance when he said that.

How could students and researcher do without Google, Yahoo or MSN? How could companies do without a CRM systems such as Salesforce.com and Salesboom.com or Netsuite? How could the USA military and governemnt live without the blackberry?

Here is parts of what he said to the British tabloid “The Sun” :

“I do think it would be an incredible experiment to shut down the whole Internet for five years and see what sort of art is produced over that span.”

Here is the original article here

What everybody Doesn't Know about Software-as-a-Service!

The Software-as-a-Service industry must be looked at seriously by the rest of the world, and for many reasons beyond speculation.

First, it's the same industry affected most by the Internet bubble era, and therefore has been the black sheep of the IT industry when it comes to VC money. We all remember when the term ASP (as in Application Service Provider) comes along, it usually strikes in our minds, more often than not; a picture of a failing business with a worthless business model, doesn't? This sector has been neglected.

Here is the Full Article

While attempting to locate URLS on Google that link back to various software-as-a-service vendors, Google used the following search term when I clicked on the link to sites that link back to that site.

link:OTfHa3sBxDOsJ:www.salesboom.com/

I did a search for “ OtfHa3sBxDOsJ” but no matches. This must be used by the Google servers as a secret token of some sort?

Here is how to replicate this:

Login to your Google Account, click Webmaster Tools, then click “Manage www.your-domain.com” then click the link “info:www.your-domain.com” then click “Find web pages that link to www.your-domain.com” and your result page will have a search form with this text string pasted already :

link:OTfHa3sBxDOsJ:www.your-domain.com/

Anybody has any idea what this means? What is “ OtfHa3sBxDOsJ”?

Weired. Here is a screen shot in case this disappears some day:

O.K, but this might sound bizarre. The software-as-a-Service movement could help reduce the USA trade deficit with China and here is how:

Well, if every business in America used software-as-a-service instead of the installed solutions, tremendous expenditures on hardware equipment would be eliminated. Most if not all of that hardware is imported from China for billions of dollars yearly.

If we could picture that the computer resides on the network, and our PC's at home or at work are low-cost no-processing machines with a low footprint on the environment, then Bingo! Not only will the trade deficit with China be significantly lowered since hardware will cost less and much of it will be eliminated; we will also help save our planet earth from all the eliminated emissions instead released into the atmosphere.

Besides; by innovating the software space we almost guarantee American companies first position in the SaaS market with hundreds of billions to be maid yearly.

The American Dollar is at an All-Time low compared to most world currencies, and while some jerk-type economist might persuade Americans it is bad to have a weak dollar, all American producers selling products and services internationally will generate more sales because their products and services out-of-the sudden (O.K-over 2 years) became 40% cheaper to Europeans and the rest of the world.

The USA largest Export sectors are by far technology and weapons which means plenty of opportunities for the Software-as-a-service model to generate substantial revenues and growth overseas with a weak dollar.

Just Imagine that most businesses of all sizes in the world use a hosted CRM software solution like NetSuite or Salesboom.com; millions of servers will no longer be bought from china, instead a portion of the cost would be paid to North American companies to host the service!

Not only will Software-as-a-Service help reduce the deficit with China, but it will also help curb the Chinese competition and threats to our economy.

Each person or company in North America has a carbon dioxide footprint that can be estimated in which it indicates how much damage each person or company is doing to our environment.

The SaaS Movement lead by CRM software vendors such as Salesforce.com and Salesboom.com are eliminating tens if not hundreds of thousands of servers and hardware equipment required by traditional CRM solutions by offering CRM as a service in a multi-tenant shared environment.

Also the fact that these applications are online, cuts on printing of user manuals greatly. From my experience CRM demonstrations, presentations and training sessions in the SaaS industry are also performed online saving on emissions released by traveling.

Ideally, a CRM vendor that offers it's solutions as a hosted service, should choose a solar powered hosting provider and become 100% friendly to our beloved environment. But until that happens, choosing a hosted CRM solution over a traditional installed one is a great contribution to save our earth.

1. Believe in the Integrated One-System idea

   Often more than not, different departments at a company use different unconnected systems to manage operations in what is known to be called data-silos. Integrated CRM solutions however connect these data silos by utilizing wall-to-wall one-system solutions, sometimes out-of-the-box.

   You must educate your employees in Marketing, Sales and Customer support on the benefits an integrated system brings to them to get their buy-in

2. Get your employees to buy-in CRM

   The best integrated CRM solution for your business will be quickly rendered obsolete if your employees will not use it.

3. Marketing First, not Last

   Since for a CRM vendor, marketing licenses represent less than 10% of an average deployment, some solutions lake major marketing automation features. Make sure your marketing department's opinion about a CRM software solution represents more than 10% of the final decision.

4. Integration, Integration, Integration

   Your marketing department might resist giving up their usual marketing tools for an integrated system. If this is the case, the make sure that the CRM system you are implementing can be integrated to traditional and in-house systems, and possible have a web services API if it is an on-demand solution,

In many cases, management-support for CRM solutions is critical in a successful CRM deployment. Make sure managers understand the sophistication of data security , user, and profile management and how it can help them hide any data they wish hidden from the normal user or employee; this will give your marketing managers the peace of mind they need to accept and adopt CRM and wall-to-wall software solutions.

Finally when selecting such a solution from traditional vendors such as Oracle or SAP, or from software-as-a-service vendors such as Netsuite or Salesboom.com, make sure that you engage professional services to quickly customize, configure, deploy and adopt the solutions.

CRM, or Customer Relationship Management means many things to many people, and therefore it is hard to explain it in one fashion to everybody.

Throughout my many years of experience working with different companies implementing different CRM strategies and CRM software solutions, I have come up with few ideas that should be the basis for any company considering CRM.

While industry analysts and professionals are often saying the correct thing about CRM, they still make it harder for the average person to grasp.

So, to answer the question of what CRM is? Lets look at business realities, and conditions:

1) Every business must have customers to generate revenues.

2) Each customer costs the company an average amount of money to acquire and sustain.

3) Customers need to get their money's worth before they buy again.

4) Customers can move to other competitors if the offering is right or if they are not happy.

5) a Repeat customer costs less, since you don't have to spend the marketing money again.

From the above, we learn that the customer is the most important part of any business, competition can steel your customers if you are not proactive, and the cost of keeping current customers happy is less than the cost of acquiring new ones.

If you also consider that customers, are people and they like to be treated like ones, then you can understand the Relationship in CRM (Customer Relationship Management).

So we know the Customer, and the Relationship. The Management is your company's attitude, rules and solutions that manage the process of selling to and making customers happy.

Before you start investigating CRM software solutions, you must first understand your customers, and plan the strategies that you think will make them happy and make them repeat business. Once your strategies are in place, then you must rally your troops so your employees understand your customer centric goals. After all if your employees don't embrace the strategy, they will not embrace the system.

Once this is done, you should look for a CRM software solution that can be customized to fit with your business processes, not the other way around.

CRM 2.0 is a term that describes all the advances in CRM Software that are a complete overhaul and a different CRM than the one we are used to!

1. On-demand CRM is CRM 2.0

   Since the old way of implementing CRM was in-house, a hosted CRM solution is partially CRM 2.0.

2. Enterprise Mashups

   Any hosted CRM solution that offers customization options such as custom objects, TABS, fields, reports, views, dashboards, workflows, formula fields and offers a web services API is a CRM 2.0 ready

3. AJAX user interface

   A CRM solution that offers an AJAX user interface is also CRM 2.0 ready

4. Collaboration

   A CRM system that offers a self-service web portal to employees, customers and partners and data is synchronized in real time to a web public knowledge base is CRM 2.0 ready.

   Also, some companies such as Salesboom.com uses a Comet Ajax server-push model for real time messaging without depending on users to refresh for newer messages is definitely a CRM 2.0 ready system.

1. Microsoft is too late to the game

   While Salesforce.com and other rivals such as Netsuite, Salesboom.com, RightNow, etc have been developing their solutions for 8 years, Microsoft has just recently started.

2. Microsoft does not have an actual full product yet

   Microsoft's move is hype. They have not actually released the product yet. They WILL release the BETA sometime in 2007!

3. Microsoft promises to release the so called Live CRM in 2008!

   The Full CRM Live product will only be available in July 2008 according to Microsoft.

4. Microsoft's strategy with partners is unclear.

   While they say the service will be sold through partners only, Steve Balmer got caught saying that it will also be offered directly to customers in the future which puts partners at risk.

5. Microsoft is not the only Giant Software company to join the on-demand revolution

   This latest move is seen as another big giant screaming loudly “Me Too!”. All the top enterprise solution providers such as Oracle and SAP have announced similar products.

6. Microsoft is the smallest Enterprise Solution provider

   The amount of business Microsoft's enterprise solutions departments generate is very little and thus Microsoft is not a major player in that sector anyways.

7. Companies don't want to host their data with Microsoft.

   I might be wrong on this one, but the last thing I want to do as a CEO of an IT company is trust my data to Microsoft.

8. Microsoft's Move validates the on-demand concept even more.

   Not that the SaaS- Software-as-a-Service model needs validating, but when Microsoft says it is a valid model, then all the better. This will mean a better stock price for SFDC and for any other rival wishing to go public or receive funding from Vcs.

9. Pricing is not the only deciding factor when choosing CRM

   While Microsoft's pricing is lower than Salesforce.com, as a good CRM consultant or professional services team member would tell you, pricing should be the last thing you base your CRM choice on.

10. The Market is doubling yearly

    The market grew by almost 104% in 2006, and expected to do the same in 2007, so there is a lot of business for everybody!

What Salesforce.com should be worried about is the threat smaller rivals poses. Many much smaller crm rivals have won major deals against Salesforce.com in the past months and years due to better customer service, pricing, vertical and industrial knowledge and solutions. Salesforce.com has been sharing the SaaS market by companies such as Netsuite, Salesboom.com, RightNow, Salesnet (acquired by RightNow), Entellium, and others.

One of those companies will create their own niche market within CRM and then will take the lead over Salesforce.com!