Business & Technology Nexus

As Coupa grows we’re getting serious about prospect followup, etc. One aspect of this is evaluating the quality of leads. In CRM terms, suffice it to say “quality” can mean whatever you want – in this case let’s say it measures interest-level (vs. budget-approved, is-the-right-sized-firm, etc).

For small firms like Coupa, the SalesGenius service seems pretty interesting. At its core, it tracks what prospects do with email you send them. It’s very cool, but in a creepy, big-brotherish kind of way..

Say I email Joe Schmo at fictitious company MotoRo with a nice email explaining my product offering. If Joe chooses to read the email I’ll get a real-time pop-up on my desktop saying “Joe is reading your email!”. The pop-up will include Joe’s contact information if I’ve added it to the system. If I embed a link in the email, say back to my website, and Joe clicks the link – voila, the SalesGenius service will shoot a message to my desktop: “Joe is on your website!”.

The thinking behind the tracking, which is clever and inescapably logical, is that if Joe is reading the email or perusing the website it might be a very, very good time to call him. The question I have is whether this crosses some sort of privacy boundary. A good test of whether it does is whether you’d be comfortable calling Joe and saying “Hey, I noticed you were reading my email 2 minutes ago and had clicked to our website so I figured I’d call in case you had any questions.” Now I’m no sales guy, but my gut tells me that wouldn’t be the best ice breaker.

…But hey, if you’re a sales guy and you think your competitors might be effectively using tools like SalesGenius to increase their close % it may be time to keep-up-with-the-Jones’. And on the surface, it seems pretty neat

I’d be interested in your feedback on other lead followup tools you like! Add your thoughts as comments below.