Thanks for reading my first official post on Sales and Marketing Automation, or SAMA, as Gossamar calls it.
I’m the self-confessed technophile among us, the guy who likes life on the leading edge. I’ve automated many systems in my career, developed software products, and, like most of us, used many of our technology’s tools and devices.
But through all these years I’ve been haunted by a question: Why is so much of what we use everyday so poorly designed? All those software packages with user-hostile interfaces, the door handles you push instead of pull, the stove tops where you give up on the map and turn a dial to see what heats up…
And part of why it puzzles me so is that most people think it’s them and not the designer! Yup: “I’m so dumb, I can’t even stop the time flashing on my VCR!” You pull on a round bar-shaped door handle, instead of pushing it, and think you’re an idiot. Especially when you lean in to read the push written vertically on the handle.
To me, the whole thing is beyond question. The sun rises in the east and good design is fundamental to success. And that, obviously, is the answer to my question: Good design takes effort, and thus time and, gasp, money!
Big Money. Leading up to the Macintosh product launch in 1984, Apple spent $50 million designing its Graphic User Interface and its mouse. And when they pitched it against the competition’s DOS PCs, they called it The computer for the rest of us. Like I said, the sun rises each morning and good design provides some serious bang for the buck.
So what’s all this got to do with Sales and Marketing Automation? If your SAMA system isn’t designed for the rest of us, it will overwhelm you, deluge you with data, and have you pushing instead of pulling (oops – pardon the pun). For example, our Inbound Marketing Dashboard was designed to make it easy to see in a single glance, precisely what state your marketing effort is in. It avoids blinding you with too much information by giving you just the facts you need to do your job. And, of course, the ability to drill down into the details when you need to.
Bit-by-Bit #1
