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Sales reps need to be more involved in the lives of their customers in order to deliver the level of expertise those customers demand, said Paul Greenberg of the 56 Group. They don't need to be "involved" in a personal sense, but they should have empathy, along with the ability to sense customer needs and to use sales intelligence to truly understand what each customer needs from that sales rep.

1. Paul Greenberg - Social CRM: The Conversation Defending his title is Paul Greenberg, who, unlike his beloved Yankees, had a stronger year in 2014 than 2013. Paul is a busy, busy man -- he's constantly traveling, highly in demand, exceptionally personable, and committed to ...

1. Paul Greenberg -- PGreenblog and Social CRM: the Conversation Paul has topped this list for many years, and he has an advantage: When people routinely refer to you as "the Godfather of CRM," you probably have both a foundation of internalized knowledge to draw from, plus yo...

Companies that I am watching for the year ahead include Xactly, InsideView, TreeHouse Interactive, Scout Analytics, Full Circle CRM, Lattice-Engines, HubSpot, Apttus and Zuora. My good friend Paul Greenberg will publish a list of a bazillion companies he likes in his watch list. This is not intended to be all-inclusive, just a smattering of companies I am well acquainted with...

Still, I always come back to Groucho Marx -- like Paul Greenberg, I'm a fan. Groucho once quipped, "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana." What would Watson do with that? I wonder if you can get Google Glass with one of those fake Groucho moustaches? Now that would be cool...

Messrs. Kolsky, Paul Greenberg, Brent Leary and myself might have begged to differ and in fact, the debate about the C in CRM was settled while Mark Zuckerberg was still in college. But let's cut this issue in half. Nelson has a point about customers, and given his company's ...

Now take a look at social. The signal event of the social revolution in the front office is the fourth edition of Paul Greenberg's magisterial study, CRM At The Speed Of Light, published in 2009, just five years after Facebook was founded in a dorm room at Harvard So, as we tu...

OK, I know what you are thinking: What is CRM Idol? It's the brainchild of Paul Greenberg, and its purpose is to find the hottest emerging company in the front-office market. So far this year, we've identified close to 60 companies from around the world and we've put them through their paces. ...

Another good example is that of the T-shirt company Threadless, often used by Paul Greenberg and others to illustrate how to build genuine intimacy and partnerships with customers. Threadless has itscustomers send in designs, and then customers vote on those designs to pick whatthe company sells. That makes these customers instantly invested in what thecompany's doing -- and makes them much more likely to buy their products. No onefeels manipulated or used -- they feel like part of the Threadless team...

About five years ago, CRM analyst and author Paul Greenberg set out to develop a definition for social CRM, or CRM 2.0, as some called it at the time. Through his impetus, some crowdsourcing, some crowd-editing and ultimately, I suspect, a degree of fatigue, he arrived at a definition.

Even CRM guru Paul Greenberg admitted he doesn't use a CRM application -- and thatshould tell you something. You may not be ready for CRM, or your business may notrequire it. If that's the case, investing in CRM will be a waste of money and effort, and itcan keep you from doi...

One of the reasons I am an Idol fan (and judge) is that I get an intensive dose of newness, and I can start trying to understand the drivers and processes early. Paul Greenberg deserves a lot of credit for herding all the CRM cats (he has experience as a serious cat lover). One idea that has struck a chord with me this year is that the newest and most advanced solutions (in my opinion) are focusing more on data and what to do with it. Here's why...

Even CRM guru Paul Greenberg admitted he doesn't use a CRM application -- and thatshould tell you something. You may not be ready for CRM, or your business may notrequire it. If that's the case, investing in CRM will be a waste of money and effort, and itcan keep you from doi...

Finally, sneaking in just under the wire, on April 30, Paul Greenberg announced the second season of CRM Idol, the competition that seeks to discover hot emerging companies with great technology ideas in our space. Full disclosure, I am Paul's friend, but that category includes about half the world. Last year, Idol's first, was a great learning experiment. As one of the founding primary judges (others in the U.S. are Brent Leary, Esteban Kolsky, Jesus Hoyos), I was present for all of it, and I can say we learned a lot. ...

There's "an incredibly large number of small companies out there who can't compete with large companies when it comes to market visibility, and there's a lot of small, really good CRM companies out there who have really bad PR people who assaulted the intellects of the analysts, as opposed to getting to know them, and consequently these companies get shafted," CRM guru Paul Greenberg, owner of The 56 Group and the man behind the event, told CRM Buyer...

To get a sense of all the wonderfulness surrounding Convergence, you need only glance at some of the many observations made by the likes of Paul Greenberg, Brent Leary, Dennis Howlett, Josh Greenbaum and many others. So kudos to Microsoft My observations will be somewhat diff...

The lineup includes SugarCRM CEO Larry Augustin; Guy Kawasaki, cofounder of Alltop.com and former Apple chief evangelist; Paul Greenberg, president of The 56 Group and author of CRM at the Speed of Light; Paul Gillin, technology journalist and thought leader in new media; and Michael Fauscette, lead, IDC Software Business Solutions Group...

I'm ensconced at the Swan and Dolphin Hotels at Walt Disney World in Orlando this week for IBM's concurrent Lotusphere/IBM Connect shows, and all the announcements here paint the picture of a company and a partner ecosystem that is going all-in on collaboration. (Paul Greenberg runs them down nicely -- and does so in a CRM-centric way -- here.)

Speaking of entertainment, Paul Greenberg got the industry organized around the Idol theme in the first annual CRM Idol competition, which I was part of. The concept is still rough around the edges -- one wonders how entertaining business ought to be -- but it brought the industry together across most of the world's landmasses, and fun was had by all. ...

I was sitting in the "blogpound" at Cloudforce New York, the seating area where Salesforce.com considerately places press, analysts and bloggers along with tables, power and WiFi, when it dawned on me: Despite all the articles, blogs and books (and Paul Greenberg's ceaseless public speaking) dedicated to the social media phenomenon in CRM, we may have been under-reporting its importance all this time...