First off, the name “Enterprise Software” sounds like crap.

Not even JJ Abrams could make Enterprise sound sexy. Say, “Enterprise software” to someone in a huge company and watch even their eyes glaze over. Now try it on your co-worker. Are they excited to hear more?

No.

It’s slang for suck my soul. 

Enterprise software is complicated, slavish, unimaginative stuff built for top-down “automate and track” management.  Calling it sexy is like trying to make tax codes sexy. Or plastic slip covers. Oh, now management wants us to use soul-sucking software delivered though the cloud with a touch interface that let’s you share stuff? Can’t wait.

With Enterprise Software, nothing’s real. Everything’s far away. Everything’s a copy of a copy of a copy.–bastardized quote from Fight Club’s @chuckpalahniuk.

I’m not talking about the invisible, behind the scenes, “make it run faster/cheaper” Enterprise stuff because that’s sexy to engineers and bean counters. I’m talking about the software for us worker bees.

Every time something *is* cool, the Enterprise version sucks. 

Ever notice that? Here’s why: The intended value moves from you to your company’s management. Imagine what it would be like for the White House go to suddenly be in charge of choosing our apps for us then forced us to use them. The value would be for them not us. That’s the way it’s been for Enterprise software.

Want to disrupt the Enterprise? Go small. 

The big mistake startups make is to try to build a better CRM, ERP, PLM, CMS, or other big, already entrenched Enterprise system. Those things already exist and people despise them. The idea has been done.

Still, look at how many different folks are trying to build a prettier solution of the same idea. Instead, stop thinking about what exists and start thinking about solving a big, hairy part of the people’s everyday jobs. Reframe the solution completely by going as small and meaningful as possible. Then wins hearts and minds.

Reboot tasks that impact revenue.  

If you focus on a task that directly impacts the bottom line, the opportunity for success is far greater. Don’t update it, reinvent. Companies that pick a single key task, reframe it, and deliver a ton of value in a simpler way will find success with today’s professionals.

• Box made sharing a file quick and painless.
• Yammer reimagined clunky collaboration software.
• SuccessFactors is a better way to think of talent management.
• Same with Taleo and human resources.

It’s no surprise that most of these companies have been acquired by the big guys.

Let worker bees be the boss.

If you’re going after the front line, you must go bottoms up. Enterprises have moved from “no software” to “no shelfware.” That means they want to make sure their people love it before they invest. Earn your way up, then make sure you have a clear value proposition for management that doesn’t pull the rug from under the worker bees.

The 99% Web is an inclusion economy that invites the rest of us.

As much as we like to think of this era as unique, the recent “sharing economy” meme is just a part of a long history of making privileged resources available to the rest of us. In the same way movable type made books available to common folks, the internet has opened  to the masses what was once controlled by the few. Our personal lives have changed hugely with the accessibility and control of information, commerce, media and resources. The web has obviously affected how we work, too. It’s never been easier to get a business started, connect, reach markets, work remotely, or share ideas.

Even the choices for our productivity at work are no longer made by the few. Today, I’ll decide what’s on my “work playlist,” thank you very much. In fact, it’s probably what I use in my personal life, too. Whether I’m at home or work, I’m using my  iPhone, Google Docs, Evernote, or Dropbox.

New solutions for “sometimes” roles.

The truth is that sometimes your HR person spends time recruiting. Linkedin lets anyone be a recruiter, not just full-time recruiters. Today, it’s hard to find recruiters
using old school applicant tracking software. It’s also true that entrepreneurs sometimes spend their time accounting. Quickbooks lets anyone do accounting, not just accountants. Both full time and “sometimes accountants” use the same solution. Full time Marketers use Facebook and so do “sometimes marketers” like your Orthodontist. I’m writing an article right now using WordPress and so are the full-time journalists. No need to point out how disrupted journalism has become thanks to  blogging and tweeting.

The truth behind these “sometimes” roles is that people were already doing these tasks as part of their jobs anyway. Sometimes we all transact, account, sell, market, and recruit. It used to be that these tasks each had their own exclusive (and complex) applications. Today, we have much simpler, cheaper, more widely available solutions that are incredibly useful for those parts of our job. You’ll use Square when you pay someone to fix your water heater and again when you go into Starbucks.

Selling sometimes is a part of all of our jobs.

The old saying that “we’re all in sales” couldn’t be more true today. As Daniel Pink says in his new book, “To Sell is Human,” there’s a “rebirth of a salesman” happening right now.

In a world where anybody can find anything with just a few keystrokes, intermediaries like salespeople are superfluous. They merely muck up the gears of commerce and make transactions slower and more expensive…We now go online to sell ourselves–on Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, and Match.com profiles. None of these entities existed ten years ago. One day, the world began to change. More of us started working for ourselves–and because we were entrepreneurs, suddenly we became salespeople, too. At the same time, large operations discovered that segmenting job functions didn’t work very well during volatile business conditions–and because of that, they began demanding elastic skills that stretched across boundaries and included a sales component. –Daniel Pink

Today the sales software industry is just as exclusive, complex and frustrating as the Recruiting, Accounting and Payment Processing industries used to be. Sales software is made for full-time sales people and it doesn’t help them sell. We’ve gone from personal contact management in the 1980s, to on-premise enterprise contact databases of the 1990s, to the same solution delivered way more cheaply through the cloud in the 2000s. No matter how much lipstick you put on it, that’s thirty (30!) years of the same old thing.

It’s time for sometimes selling. We need something for the rest of us. Something built to help us do the job, not for our bosses. That’s why Crushpath exists. Today, we’ve announced the next chapter of the company and we have a year of big moves ahead of us that will challenge the status quo. It’s a fight worth fighting for and we hope you join us.

Learn how customers are using Crushpath.

While we were out in NYC (in a big blizzard), some of our customers met us to talk about Crushpath.

This is what they had to say.

Introducing the actionable, play-by-play of a deal as it happens.

Beginning today, B2B Salespeople no longer need to live in a database. Up until now, instead of working deals, they’ve wasted their time recording them. CRM sales software tracks companies’ pipeline but what sales people want is to get out there and sell.

We’re launching first for companies who either use Salesforce (Pro or above) as a CRM database or who want to use Crushpath as a standalone solution. Be sure to to sign up for a free trial of Crushpath at www.crushpath.com

So what is Crushpath?

Crushpath is a new way for Salespeople to control a deal from lead to close. It changes the Sales software game by delivering the play-by-play of a deal as it happens.

Crushpath gives salespeople one place where they can see and do everything they need to get the deal done. We filter out all of the noise and provide context for everything that is happening around a deal, pulling relevant information from your email, LinkedIn, News, Files, Notes, CRM or Marketing Automation Software, and giving it to you in a seamless, actionable, chronological format you can use when it matters most. What you see is a story unfolding in front of you. What you get is control.

The Crushpath

The heart of the product is a Crushpath, which keeps you focused on the deal action as it’s happening in front of you. Today the moving pieces around a deal have no context and are scattered across many places and systems–not just the CRM database. Crushpath brings those pieces together and organizes them into an easy, chronological way so you can work on them with your teams and with your customer. On one side of the Crushpath is the collaboration between you and your deal team. On the other side, is all the explicit and implicit interactions between you and your customer.

This single view allows Salespeople, their teams, and management to have an easy, progressive format and to immediately act on all the action, all without having to jump across internal systems and the web. Companies now have one place for the qualitative evolution of their business, from lead to close. A way to easily keep the eye on the ball while automatically keeping the CRM pipeline system up to date.

Like Ben Horowitz recently posted, race car drivers are taught to ‘focus on the road, not the wall.’ In our case, we focus salespeople on the deal road, not the retrospective ‘wall’ of contact records.

Private Customer Sites

Let’s face it: It’s hard to get a shot with prospects. For the last 20 years, Sales reps have had the same two tools to try to get a shot: email and the phone. That changes today. Now, from right within the Crushpath of a deal, Salespeople can put a completely new type of foot forward.

Private Customer Sites are a “third place” in between the seller and the buyer that streamline everything–images, videos, files, ROI numbers, news, company blurbs, links, logos– into one, private, personalized site that allows prospects to quickly get the value and have the chance to quickly interact with the seller.

Anytime a buyer takes action on the Private Customer Site– opens it, clicks on a link, request something or begins to communicate to you– it shows up in the Crushpath of a deal. Salespeople know if the site has been opened and which of the content is most valuable. That helps Sales and Marketing know where to pay attention, and what’s working and what’s not. Once a customer is engaged, Customer Sites evolve to be the single destination for the buying and selling team to collaborate together through the life of the deal.

Deal Coach

Management wastes as much time trying to have their team follow their process as Salespeople waste trying to follow it. With Crushpath Coach, Sales Management and Sales Operations can automatically deliver the latest required actions and the assets that go along with them– just-in-time. Those parts of the process only show up when it makes sense based on where the deal is in its progress. Management can also provide their own deal-specific coaching suggestions for actions that might advance the deal along as well as communicate things like SPIFF promotions and other incentives.

Today we also announce two important Partnerships

Our single people criteria at Crushpath is that we work with GNAKs (good-natured ass-kickers). The same goes for our partners. We’re proud to have a group of partners and investors that couldn’t be more iconic of those attributes.

Crushpath is integrated with Box so that Salespeople always have current marketing materials at their fingertips (read their post about our partnership here). Any activity that occurs on files also shows up in Salespeople’s Crushpath. Box is reinventing how the world uses business content.  Box was founded on a simple, powerful idea: people should be able to access and share their content from anywhere. Since 2005, Box has helped more than 10 million individuals, small businesses and Fortune 500 companies do just that. Box wants to reinvent what businesses can do with their content through Box’s content sharing platform, made for a new kind of worker, a new kind of workplace and a new kind of IT.

Crushpath also integrates with Evernote. Now when Salespeople take a note on a deal, it is saved in Crushpath as well as in Evernote, so that Salespeople always have access to important text notes, pictures and audio– no matter where they are or how they want to access it. The goal at Evernote is to help the world remember everything, communicate effectively and get things done. From saving thoughts and ideas to preserving experiences to working efficiently with others, Evernote’s collection of apps make it easy to stay organized and productive.

Phil Libin, CEO Evernote, also joins Crushpath’s Advisory Board.

Ask yourself: Shouldn’t your Sales Software ABC?