The problem with articles on CRM (even written on Forbes)… Well, they suck!

Yes, it is quite brutal to say this, but somebody should. I see a general downward trend of the quality of articles on CRM software. These posts are purely written to ‘capture’ lost people, who are looking for information on CRM, and offer no added value whatsoever. These posts have been made to create content, attract visitors and make the relating website score higher in search ranks. The articles should be removed and deleted, or at least modified to offer some value to the reader.

How can you recognize these kind of articles?

That is easy:

• They offer no clear source.
• They mention as many “trending” words as possible.
• They try to mention as many CRM software systems as possible.
• They quote as much as possible.
• They offer no extra insights.

Lets take a look at a few examples of articles.

The 2015 CRM Market Leaders: Enterprise CRM Suite

This article is just full of it. It cites a Gartner report without ever mentioning which report or what source the author has based its research on. This is just bad, real bad. The first sentence of the article is as next:

According to a Gartner report, the CRM software market grew from $20.4 billion in 2013 to $23.2 billion in 2014 (representing 13.3 percent growth).

Are you serious? “A Gartner report”?! Good luck trying to find which report is being cited. But the author was not fully satisfied with is unclear source, so he tried to add some more fuzzy words:

According to analysts, NetSuite has the right steps in mind, evidenced by its high score in company direction (4.1).

Wow, so some analysts have created an analysis which is being used to endorse the credibility of the article. To bad we don’t know which analysis the author is talking about. Moreover, to make the readers feel better, there is an reference to “(4.1)”, as we have no clue what it means whatsoever. But wait, the author is giving us another hint on which material he is using to write his article:

Its software enables companies to reach customers “via multiple touch points and to do so with enterprise-wide intelligence, supported by Microsoft’s Business Analytics platform (PowerBI and Azure Data Services),” Ament said via email.

You did get the email from Ament, did you? We have absolutely no idea whether or not this email has been written as an added comment to “a” report or as a reply on a question from the author of the article or as some internal memo.

This article had almost all of it; vague references unclear citations, buzz words and mentioning of CRM software. I am not even going to mention the total lack of added insights.

11 Terrible CRM Systems For Your Company

The second article is even worse then the previous one. Why? Because it was written in Forbes! Forbes, I tell you! The pinnacle of well written, trusted, journalistic articles. But the piece itself is crap and is one big scam, trying to lure readers with a catchy title and a well written introduction in which the author gives a “full disclosure”.

Thinking of getting a Customer Relationship Management(CRM) application?  Below, I’ve described 11 terrible ones. Sure, they are all popular, affordable and mature.  In fact, my company (full disclosure) sells and services five of them (Salesforce, GoldMine,Microsoft Dynamics CRM, ZohoCRM and Nimble).  And given their features and functionality you’d think they’d be great tools for so many small and medium sized companies.  But they’re not.  They are all terrible.

So as a reader you are going “oh well, I am not quite sure which CRM to take, but if I know which ones are the worst, I can avoid those”. Next, you read the whole article, to discover that you have been fooled big time by the author. Lets skip to the end of the article;

Each and every one of these applications are excellent in their own way and I wish I had enough internal resources to offer them all to my clients.  But unfortunately they are all also terrible. Why?  It’s not why.  It’s when.

They are terrible when they are not implemented the right way.   They are terrible when companies don’t appreciate that all of these magical applications are nothing but databases and don’t put the right processes in place to ensure that all interactions are entered into this database so that the data can be properly used for further sales, marketing and service interactions. …

Wait, what? You first wrote all the good things about the CRM systems, even mentioning your company is selling them, but at the end of the road they are actually all fine and the only problem is everything except the software itself? Then why the hell did you wrote such a title?

This second article had less vague references then the first one, but is just one big scam. Trying to lure readers with a title which misrepresents the content.

Conclusion

Quite a simple conclusion; the authors of these kind of articles should be ashamed of their work. They are better of using their time writing a decent piece of work and adding some value to the world of CRM.