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OUR TAKE -  Fire Me     Lasting Impressions: Household tasks are easier and quicker when they are done by somebody else. - James Thorpe You may remember a series of columns I wrote this summer about the process of selling my house. My initial column discussed the process of selecting a real estate agent and later I summarized what I learned .   Did the house sell? Unfortunately, not yet. I've come close a few times. Very close. But no cigar. And now we are on the other side of what many have termed the "meltdown." Most buyers have disappeared leaving only a few select people that absolutely have to buy something. For the most part, that is the out-of-town relocating buyer. So what have I done in response?   First, I took the advice of my realtor. She said, "Fire me!" After only 30 days, she suggested I re-list the house with a fixed fee broker who provides the benefits of a full listing without the cost of the listing agent. In dollars and cents, it is the difference between $399 and $20,000. Her advice was to use the $20K difference to offer a bonus to the buying agent and a more attractive price to the buyer   Has the strategy worked? Well, I haven't sold the house yet and that is the real measure. But showings have not declined. If anything, I'm getting more showings. Net: the house is visible to all potential buyers and I am getting qualified traffic. Do you know someone interested in relocating to Indianapolis? Let's make a deal.   That's my take. What's your take?   Gary Lemke, Publisher          Action Center         Free Subscription         Submit Content         Industry Events         Webcasts         Archive   Stock Ticker HP 33.59      4.25 Astea 2.75      0.34 eLoyalty 2.39      0.22 Rainmaker 0.87      0.06 ICT 3.51      0.22 APAC 1.49      0.09 Epicor 4.51      0.26 Selectica 1.08      0.06 Oracle 17.02      0.61 RightNow 6.95      0.24 NetSuite 9.74      0.3 Sykes 16.79      0.38 Amdocs 18.43      0.18 Intervoice 8.24      0.02 Teletech 8.44      0.02 NICE 19.74      0.03 Pegasystems 10.56      -0.03 ClickSoftware 2.17      -0.01 SupportSoft 2.06      -0.01 SAP 33.23      -0.49 Vignette 7.4      -0.11 SPSS 23.82      -0.53 Tekelc 11.69      -0.28 Convergys 4.92      -0.13 Chordiant 2.64      -0.09 Unica 4.81      -0.17 NCR 15.18      -0.84 CDC 0.83      -0.05 Salesforce 23.8      -1.79 Interactive 7.14      -0.61 ATG 1.54      -0.14 LivePerson 1.74      -0.16 Nortel 0.58      -0.08 As of 4:00 p.m. on 11/18/08         NEW IN CRM   News:    NCR Launches Next Generation Self-Service Management NCR Corporation is launching NCR APTRA(tm) Vision, a management and decision support system. NCR APTRA Vision provides financial institutions and other self-service deployers a single tool to assess the performance of their self-service and assisted-service channels for day-to-day management and strategic planning purposes. NCR APTRA Vision correlates data from multiple sources to provide greater visibility of the channel and provides a user interface that makes data accessible to all levels of users within a financial institution or self-service deployer organization.(NCR )   News:    RightNow Delivers Nov08 Version, New Contact Center Package RightNow released its latest on demand customer relationship management (CRM) solution, RightNow November '08, and a new Enterprise Contact Center Package. With RightNow November '08 contact center agents can have a single desktop, where relevant and contextual information unique to each customer interaction is pushed to the agent. RightNow November '08 includes agent scripting, a desktop add-in framework and guided assistance.(RightNow )   Article:    Who, What, Where, When, Y Age: 14 to 31 (born between 1977 and 1994). Biggest Economic Concern: Paying tuition. Biggest Political Concern: Economy and job market. Preferred Communication Channel: Text messaging via cell phone or smartphone. As different as the members of Generation Y are in our individual spending habits, there's one thing we have in common-we all want to be treated as unique individuals. Popularly characterized as the most technologically adept group in history, it's no secret that this generation has successfully differentiated itself from others simply because it has access to more information, not to mention the time to search for it. A February 2008 eMarketer study on United States Internet users reports that 91 percent of Gen Y is on the Web, comprising about 32 percent of the national total.(DestinationCRM )   News:    Promius Pharma Deploys Stayinfront Pharma Promius Pharma has deployed StayinFront's flagship product, StayinFront Pharma. The Pharma system delivers functionality to support U.S. pharmaceutical representatives including sample inventory management, electronic signature capture and state expense tracking. The StayinFront system also tracks sales trends for key targeted prescribers. Promius selected StayinFront based on their experience in delivering systems to support pharmaceutical companies in the U.S. and globally. (StayinFront )   Article:    Enrich Your Customer Data Diet to Raise Your Customer IQ CRM professionals constantly say poor customer data integration / management is one of the biggest barriers to getting value from their CRM initiatives. In a recent Forrester survey of over 1,000 North American and European decision-makers, 44% said that data management was a "critical" or "important" priority for 2008. A constant diet of poor quality data is a sure way starve your CRM applications and dim your customer intelligence. Initial efforts focused on the development of data warehouses that would deliver "real-time" access to customer data. However, data warehouses failed on the "real-time" access, and end users compensated by deploying myriad purpose-built data marts. (CustomerThink )   Didn't read the last edition of CRMAdvocate? Click here to see what you missed.