Meet Brent Leary -- Social Customer Relationship Management Rock Star

Download Social CRM

It is Brent Leary's turn to appear on the Bella Buzz podcast with Desiree Scales and Joe Magennis.  Brent is the co-founder and Partner of CRM Essentials LLC, a CRM consulting/advisory firm focused on small and mid-size enterprises. CRM Essentials has trained thousands of business people on the benefits and best practices of implementing CRM strategies and technologies.

Brent and Desiree recently worked together on the Moving Business Forward panel this past July and will also be appearing together on September 25th at the New Media Atlanta Social Media Summit.

Brent is also the host of Technology for Business Sake and an accomplished author and writer. You can follow all his work via his blog. (He's hard to keep up with sometimes!)

Social CRM means developing a systematic approach to finding, catching and keeping good customers. The space has some very heavy hitting companies including Microsoft and Salesforce.com focused on the internal operations of CRM. Social CRM helps with the transition from the conversations that are taking place on social networks to the business functions within the sales channel.

As Brent discusses where he sees the future of Social CRM going, he points out that it was only just two years ago when there was any type of insight into the integration of social networks with CRM processes, so it is certainly changing at a rapid pace.  He specifically mentions that Twitter as part of the sales channel has become much more prevalent and integrated into the process. 

BatchBlue is a company that focuses on small business CRM services and has caught Brent's attention. (Company president Pam O'Hara recently appeared on an edition of The Bella Buzz.)

An interesting perspective that many small businesses need to consider concerns metrics.  There are a number of potential metrics to determine success of a social media strategy, however since we are all focusing on very specific niches, it is very challenging to determine what "success" actual means across each niche.  Brent points out that having the patience to acquire enough data so that a realistic analysis can be made is critical.

Brent also gives his insights into his passionate analysis of the Barack Obama presidential campaign leader's use of social media. His analysis first appeared as a webinar, later published in numerous blogs, magazines, and newspaper articles and has now been published in a book.  The web site can be found at Barack20.com.

It would be hard to keep up with all that Brent is doing these days beyond the New Media Atlanta event, he has an conference presentation in Orlando for American Express coming up, then he is off to Buenos Aires speaking at the International Direct Marketers conference.... but you can't overlook his playlists on Twitter during #fridaynightmix check it out!

Theme music for The Bella Buzz is Fallen by Digital Chemistry, available for download at the Podsafe Music Network.

You can subscribe to The Bella Buzz directly from ITunes by following this link, and we would be happy to receive listener feedback and ratings at The ITunes Store.