by Marshall Lager | Apr 7, 2021 | Blog, Guest Post, Sponsored |
This post is a guest piece from Richard Rosen, CEO and founder of Fastcall, a Salesforce CTI vendor and one of my clients. I was talking with Rich about customer focus for focused businesses in a crowded market, and our talk drifted into how limits aren’t a bad thing.Our chat was fun. It was deep. Quotes from the Tao Te Ching and/or a Star Wars prequel may have been thrown around, and I didn’t want to keep it private. To that end, I asked Rich to turn it into something applicable to other business readers. Fastcall is my client and it’s my job to show its strengths, so of course it’s the example in play here. But Rich presents a much-needed perspective whether you’re a user or developer of business applications. I turn things over to him now.Representing your brand as an owner requires a tricky balancing act in an industry where integrity and thought leadership are highly valued. You want to attract new customers and shout the qualities of the product, of course. But that’s making a sales pitch, and nobody wants to read a sales pitch. Then again, integrity and thought leadership mean revenue in the future, when your company (especially a smaller one) needs revenue now.I’ve been holding back from writing about what Fastcall is capable of—that’s what the website and the AppExchange listing are for—but this is an incredible company and there’s plenty for me to brag about. So here’s my plan: I will talk about what we at Fastcall do best, but with as little reference to our products as possible. It’s about why...
by twieberneit | Feb 2, 2021 | Blog, Guest Post |
For a few months now I have the pleasure of frequently interacting with Richard Rosen of Fastcall, a company that exclusively focuses on extending Salesforce with CTI software. Rich is a firm advocate of focusing on one ecosystem and to not serving multiple ones. As such he is a friend of Salesforce. Still, he makes some astute critical and important observations about the market place and the customer experience that it offers. He also has some suggestions. Here is what he has to say. It’s been a few months since I walked into Nordstrom but I do remember the experience. The store is nicely curated with classic brands I recognize and a few emerging brands. Nordstrom keeps their stores fresh and well designed. While our experience has moved more and more online the idea of merchandising has not changed. Amazon on the other hand does a very bad job merchandising fashion. E.g. tThe search “shirts for men” results in “more than 30,000” results. When shopping I may be looking for one or two new shirts. Nordstrom does a great job suggesting a few ideas. I do not want to see or look at “more than 30,000” shirts. Amazon offers a few options to narrow down my search. There is a definite benefit in curation. How does consumer software deal with curation? There are approximately 2.87 million apps in the Play Store (Android) and 1.96 million in the Apple App Store. The strategy in the consumer app marketplace is “more is more.” They give top lists in many categories. These consumer apps’ Top n lists are not well curated; the...
