Maximize the return on your training programs by automating administrative tasks, educating both internal and external audiences, and accelerating revenue and satisfaction.

Follow these 6 simple steps:

1.  Tailor your training delivery and educate without losing sight of your core competency.

2.  Ask yourself:  How am I going to manage all training efforts?  What are the MUSTS?

3.  Try to opt for a cloud-based training management system.  Software installations can be cumbersome and updates can bog down your computer at inconvenient times.

4.  Select a training platform that is highly configurable and AUTOMATED (such as workflow & email reminders/confirmations.) Manual administrations are complex and far too time consuming.

5.  Choose a training program that enables your company to post branded webinars and podcasts.

6.  Pick a training-management system that offers several different modules.  This way, your company can utilize the best-suited modules for your particular brand and needs.

Rainmaker’s ViewCentral LMS platform is a SaaS cloud-based, on-demand, training management system, available 24x7 with no software installation. This self-service platform is highly configurable, so you use just the modules you need, branded the way you choose.

Designed specifically to automate time-consuming manual administration and maximize training participation, the ViewCentral suite contains tools for before, during and after course delivery, and typical implementation time is between 3-5 weeks.

For more information, visit our website at wwww.viewcentral.com

Check out this great article by Ruth Stevens, outlining e-commerce success factors for B2B Marketers.

E-commerce opportunity is evolving fast, but only 25% of B2B marketers are taking advantage of it, according to a 2012 Oracle study. Time for another look. The typical B2B company selling online is the classic catalogers like Edmund Optics and Seton, which were fast to supplement their print catalogs with e-commerce. But with the new functionality now available, just about any business marketer can find ways to reduce selling expense and attract new customers by integrating e-commerce into their go-to-market strategies.

A worthy example is Dow Corning, which found itself under huge price pressure, as the silicone category grew commoditized. To meet the market demand for lower prices, Dow Corning launched in 2002 an entirely new brand, called Xiameter, where customers could buy trailer-loads of certain products at a 10-15% discount through a newly built e-commerce engine. Xiameter sales grew so successfully that in 2009, Dow Corning moved as much as 2500 of its 7000 products to the site. Today, Xiameter represents 40% of Dow Corning’s $6 billion in sales.

Another example is Symantec, which created an online store specifically to serve its small-to-medium business customers in North America. Today, 100% of Symantec’s $300 million SMB sales run through this channel, which is operated for them by the SaaS outsourcing supplier Rainmaker Systems. Symantec is enjoying not only lower selling expense, but also admirable revenue growth, with sales up 25%, and trial-to-conversion rates up 33% in the first year.

Why are these online ventures working so well? It’s thanks to new technology combined with changes in buyer behavior. The growth of consumer etailing has clearly been a contributing factor. Business buyers are people, too. So, their increasing comfort with e-commerce in their personal lives spills over to their jobs.

But business buyers also expect consumer-like functionality in e-commerce. And a seamless experience. This is where the new technologies come in. Platform suppliers like Rainmaker are building systems specifically designed to support B2B buying processes, with consumer-like features and ease of use.

So what are the e-commerce success factors for business marketers as they look to take advantage of these opportunities? Here are some tips:

• Review your customer segments and product lines for e-commerce potential. Small and medium business customers may be a perfect fit. Same for high-volume, repetitive-sales product categories, like replacement parts or warranty renewals.
• Examine your sales and marketing process for elements that can be automated with e-commerce technology. Look at quote management, contract pricing, channel partner support, purchase order processing, order approvals, cross sell and upsell, licensing, renewals, reactivation, winback—there are more than you may think.
• Select software that was built specifically for the complexity of business markets. Companies that buy consumer solutions and try adding B2B capabilities will quickly be frustrated.
• Select software that provides consumer-like e-commerce functionality. Ease of use is the competitive watchword today, according to Forrester’s recent study “Thrive by Adopting Proven B2C Principles.”
• Make sure you connect your e-commerce with your existing accounting, manufacturing and other systems. Xiameter customers, for example, get their order confirmation, shipping notices and invoices out of Dow Corning’s SAP, which also communicates with the manufacturing plants to get the order produced.
• Consider using cloud-based suppliers, where you can get up and running in less than a month, and leave the technology to someone else. Rainmaker Systems offers not only dedicated “sales assist” from its call center, they will even deal with their clients on a revenue-share basis.
• Remember that e-commerce is global by definition. So look for technology that offers multiple languages and currencies, and supports tax and customer compliance.

How are you integrating e-commerce into your sales and marketing strategy?

View Rainmaker’s Webinar “Cracking the Code to Maximize Your Mid-Market Revenue: Building your Mid-Market Sales Strategy” at: http://info.rainmakersystems.com/WebinarCrackingtheCode.html

As the SMB software market is $163 billion (a quarter of the worldwide ecommerce market estimated at $559 billion, Symantec wanted to grow their online SMB business of digital and subscription based products. But, they quickly discovered that their consumer model did not translate well to business users as:

1. They did not have a flexible online store engine that could provide specific features such as quote delivery, volume discounting, banded pricing, co-termination, and cross-sell/upsell of new products and services.
2. Symantec’s previous model did not allow them to augment their sales capabilities to handle the complex business buying process with the help of sales assist agents, via phone, email or chat.
3. Symantec’s huge network of channels made it difficult to track sales and identify those customers who were in need of service contracts and renewals. As a result their retention rate was much lower than others with a better mid-market business ecommerce strategy.

In order to attract and retain more middle market business buyers, Symantec had to take the following two steps.

Action 1: Create a Turn-Key Website Solution to Go After the SMB Market Without the Costs of Creating One Internally.

We at Rainmaker hosted e-commerce site store.symantec.com and implemented it as a custom branded storefront where SMB customers can:

• Shop for all of Symantec’s products or services

• Purchase the products directly

• Engage a Global Commerce Services agent (who was well versed in all aspects of Symantec’s product offerings and act as an extension, rather than an outside vendor) to place orders via partner, web, or phone.

The Agents were able to utilize Grow Commerce to:

• Produce sales transactions from inbound calls and chats from the store.symantec.com store

• To track, monitor and engage with customers in real time

• View, edit, or change the SMB customer’s shopping cart to provide a full-service e-store solution

By integrating their diverse software and services offerings into a single, easy to access website focused on the needs of SMB buyers, Symantec’s sales in the SMB market grew by 25% within 1 year. The Symantec Storefront has exceeded sales projections and generates millions of dollars of SMB revenue annually. 100% of Symantec’s North American SMB Sales are now delivered through Rainmaker and average order size has increased by 35% with Sales Assist.

Action 2: Implement a New System to Effectively Identify Mid-Market Business Customers Who Need to Renew Their Subscriptions

As mentioned earlier, Symantec’s huge network of channels made it difficult to track sales and identify those customers who were in need of service contracts and renewals. They knew they were leaving extensive revenue opportunities untapped but had no system in place to effectively pursue these customers.

Symantec needed an external partner that could provide several critical services to meet their revenue goals, and work with their largest channel partners such as CDW and Insight to help them manage contract sales and renewals opportunities. They wished to implement an integrated marketing campaign designed to notify customers of their warranty status and offer enticing options to extend or purchase new contracts. Finally, Symantec wanted the solution to be based on a Revenue Share model between the manufacturer, distributor and the resellers, to improve sales revenue without increasing expenses.

Working closely with Symantec’s internal marketing team, we designed a personalized direct mail and email notification campaign which was strategically timed for maximum impact. Customers are now notified of expiring contracts on a 60/30/15 day multi-touch cadence, and are supported by a dedicated team of trained sales assist agents covering 70 countries, 34 languages, and 14 currencies. The end customer has the ability to evaluate cross-sell or up-sell offers and promotions, and to renew online through the Rainmaker hosted e-commerce store at renewals.symantec.com, or over the phone, via Rainmaker’s Global Commerce Service agents.

Since the initial engagement, Symantec has seen a 35% increase in revenue per existing customer year over year and 35% of all SMB Renewal sales occur through the ecommerce store. They have 100% participation among Symantec resellers, a 95% Customer retention rate and an 87% Channel Renewal Rate.

If you want to gain market share on the $163 billion dollar mid-market business environment just like Symantec – register for our webinar at: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/131997106

Below are the positions open in Silicon Valley, CA:

Software Engineer - Rainmaker Learning Management platform - Contractor

Job Description:

This is a technical position responsible for new product feature development and maintenance to the Rainmaker Learning Management platform. The software engineer will be responsible for reviewing product requirements or defect reports, proposing and documenting the solutions and implementing the code according to the solution specifications.

Read More    

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Software Engineer

Job Description:

As a member of the engineering team, you will work with product management and other team members to design and implement new features. In addition, you will have direct ownership over the design and architecture of new components aimed at improving the platform’s flexibility, configurability and scalability.

Read More 

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Senior Software Engineer

Job Description:

As a member of the engineering team, you will work with product management and other team members to design and implement new features. In addition, you will have direct ownership over the design and architecture of new components aimed at improving the platform’s flexibility, configurability and scalability.

Read More

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QA Engineer - Contractor

Job Description:

This is a technical position requiring the development of automated and manual testing scripts, code level analysis, data validation and application security testing. In addition, the position will require the review of functional and technical requirements along with developing application and security test conditions and scenarios.

Read More

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Senior Product Manager for eCommerce

Job Description:

As a Senior Product Manager for eCommerce, you will take ownership of key components and use cases at the heart of our flagship GrowCommerce product. You’ll be responsible for defining product requirements, executing roadmap to deliver key product features and defining product strategies that differentiate Rainmaker. 

Read More

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Sales Executive

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Enterprise software sales experience in a SaaS environment selling to SMB market or to larger companies focused on SMB market
• Ability to align Rainmaker solutions to prospects needs

Will be required to develop opportunities, demonstrate, advise on, promote and sell Rainmaker solutions.

Read More

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Pre-Sales Consultant

Position Summary:

The Pre-Sales Consultant (PSC) supports sales productivity and deal flow by securing the “technical sales process” in complex sales situations. The PSE collaborates with Sales Directors, Engineering & On-Boarding resources to ensure proposed deals include technical solutions that accurately address customer needs, are appropriately supported by key customer technical decision makers and accurately reflect Rainmaker’s product offerings and capabilities.

Read More

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Sales Operations Manager

Reporting to the Executive Vice President of Sales & Marketing, this position will support the sales and marketing teams to enhance overall productivity and ensure the sales team has the tools it needs to run efficiently.  This position acts as the liaison for sales & marketing with the other areas of the company and with the appropriate outside vendors / partners.

Read More

More and more companies are offering free trial downloads to showcase their products and services but some find it difficult to take advantage of the true power of trial downloads. You want your free downloaded trials to work for you; not against you.

While everyone is looking for rapid acceleration and revenue growth from the SMB market for cloud based products, ask yourself these key questions: 

Do you have trouble converting your free trial customers into actual revenue?

Do trial conversions take longer than you would like or longer than you expect?

Is your trial-to-purchase conversion rate at the level you need to stay ahead of your competition?

If you’ve answered “yes” to the first two questions and your last answer is, “no”, you need help converting your free trial customers into paying customers. Rainmaker will help you overcome the challenges of online store sales and capitalize on cross-sell/up-sell opportunities.

Rainmaker’s GrowCommerce B2B SaaS cloud solution can help your trial conversions by:

Providing a global sales team to follow-up with free trial customers allowing more conversions into paying customers faster than you have experienced previously

Providing  an online e-commerce storefront making it easy for trial customers to convert to paying customers

Providing a detailed view of customer data

Trial conversions are only part of the story.  Rainmaker’s integrated approach marries cloud-based online sales and renewals enhanced by global commerce services, to provide a full service e-commerce solution backed by e-commerce experts who know how to manage and grow the most complex global online businesses.

Some of Rainmaker’s customers include Symantec, Microsoft, HP, Cox Communications, Penguin Computing and Zipit Wireless … just to name a few.

Let Rainmaker show you why we are a leading Commerce-as-a-Service (CaaS) provider to enterprises looking to drive greater market share and increased brand awareness within the SMB market.  We are here to help. Please contact a cloud solution expert at sales@rmkr.com

DO consider security and scalability when setting up an e-Commerce site.

DO be certain your new site has the same look and feel and user experience as your main website.  Maintaining consistent branding is important.

DO be certain your company has the skills and resources to manage the design, marketing and operation of your e-Commerce site.

DON’T forget payment, taxes, and export compliance options.

DON’T forget reporting and on-going product catalog maintenance.

DON’T forget about performance analytics and promotions.

Rainmaker’s GrowCommerce has you covered!

GrowCommerce is provided as a SaaS-based solution, has an open API for easy integration and report capabilities, and delivers core B2B e-commerce functionality without additional fees or enhancements to the base solution. The solution specializes in complex B2B direct and multi-channel friendly selling and relationship management for initial and renewal sales. The highly scalable GrowCommerce infrastructure can process tens of thousands of transactions every day and millions of transactions a month, and can handle whatever processing scale your company needs.

Unprecedented Control at No Additional Cost

The Rainmaker GrowCommerce platform enables e-commerce store managers or other administrators to control all content, set up coupons and other promotions, or launch new geographic specific stores at the control of a button. No other SaaS-based e-commerce solution offers this type of control out of the box without any additional costs associated with product customization. Clients can increase revenue by launching new products or marketing campaigns on an as needed basis without vendor help.

Design Management Tools

Get all the design, marketing, reporting and testing tools you need to drive revenue. Store designs can be easily updated and customized for specific customer segments, locales and promotions. You have complete control over the look, feel and flow of the commerce experience to attract more buyers, increase conversion rates, and maximize potential revenue.

End-to-End Optimization

Built-in platform features enable true A/B testing so you can continually test content, pricing, promotions, site flow and more. These features will increase sales, boost average order size, greatly enhance marketing efforts, reduce costs and keep you one step ahead of ever-changing markets and competitors.

Robust Reporting

Intuitive web-based tools offer easy tracking of products, promotions, customer behaviors, site health and more. New capabilities are added every few weeks and are free of licensing fees, major version upgrades and system updates, or business interruptions to your site.

State-of- the-Art Security

Rainmaker enforces the highest levels of physical, electronic and managerial safeguards to ensure data remains secure during collection, transmission and storage. Systems are consistently updated with latest patches and known software updates and our security experts and system administrators are on call 24/7.

• Traffic encryption through state-of-the art encryption layers
•  Multiple segregated networks; highly restrictive configured firewalls and routers
• Passwords are stored using hash algorithms
•  Intrusion Detection System monitors network and system-related parameters
•  Regular audits by external security firms
•  Activity log reviews prevent unauthorized behavior
• Staff professionals experienced in designing and operating secure IT systems

Implement in as little as 30 days.

To immediately learn more about Rainmaker, please call us at 1.408.340.2800 or email us at sales@rmkr.com and speak with one of our knowledgeable sales representatives to see how we can help you cut costs, increase revenue, expand your product lines and grow your digital revenue.

by Terry Lydon - Vice President ViewCentral LMS

I frequently hear about the lack of post-class surveys completed by students. This, of course, is not a new problem.

Here are a few reasons students state for not completing a survey:

• I’ve finished the course; don’t care about the survey
• There are too many questions
• I get too many surveys
• What do I get?

Be respectful of people’s time. You may want to collect several pieces of information, but try to keep your survey to five minutes or less.

Solve two problems with a single effort:

To create an incentive for a person to complete a survey, you may want to give them something in exchange. It does not need to be in a monetary form. Often students want a copy of the slides or some notes, or a related whitepaper.  Sending copies of slides to everyone that requests them can be a time-consuming and tedious task. Instead, set the process up from the beginning. One way I have seen this done is to leverage your Learning Management System’s communications in the following ways:

• Attach a link to the give-away content to the related course.
• Set up a communication to go out at the end of the course asking them to take a few moments to complete a survey and state what they will receive upon completion.
• Set up another communication that is automatically sent out upon survey completion, thanking them for taking the survey, and include a link to the give-away content.

This should be set up once and automated after that.

Once this is in place, I think you’ll find that you will increase the number of surveys completed as well as save time related to fulfilling requests for slides or other content.

How much more revenue could you make from your existing customer base? Increasing your service and subscription revenue is not difficult if you have the right tools, processes, and expertise in place.  Many times companies don’t know how much they are losing in service renewal revenue due to the lack of visibility into their customer base.  They rely on data from disparate systems which can provide little insight into their customer’s renewal opportunities, keeping the process complex and difficult to manage.

Rainmaker’s GrowCommerce for Renewals is an e-commerce/agent-assisted platform which enables you and your channel partners to see all opportunities through an easy-to-use online portal. It delivers personalized, integrated marketing notifications for expiring contracts, and allows customers to click through and renew online or contact a sales agent to complete the process. GrowCommerce for Renewals provides complex pricing, contract consolidation, quote & order management targeted to SMBs, and is easily integrated into Salesforce.com. Your Salesforce opportunity pipeline is automatically kept current when sales are completed.

View a 5 Minute Demo today  http://info.rainmakersystems.com/SEMTransactDemoRequestLP.html   to learn how GrowCommerce for Renewals can help simplify your renewal process, and help capture revenue that would otherwise be lost.

On Friday October 19, 2012 Rainmakers at the Campbell office showed support for Breast Cancer Awareness Month, or otherwise called “Pinktober” and everyone wore pink!

Rainmaker has also made a contribution to the Susan G Komen For the Cure foundation. To learn more about the foundation, visit http://ww5.komen.org/.

Thanks to everyone in Campbell for participating!

For the second year in a row, Rainmaker has been recognized as one of the top 500 global software and services companies by Software Magazine.  Rainmaker’s global B2B e-commerce platform is a simple, integrated, global solution that marries B2B focused technology with business process and sales expertise. The platform can be enhanced with global telesales agents to maximize revenue and customer satisfaction throughout the entire customer lifecycle.
 
“We are extremely pleased to secure a spot in the Software 500 as one of the world’s top software and services companies,” said Michael Silton, chairman and chief executive officer. “Our latest e-commerce release and recent major customer wins confirm our strategy of providing e-commerce clients with the only true global e-commerce lifecycle solution for the B2B market.”
The Software 500 is a revenue-based ranking of the world’s largest software and services suppliers, targeting medium to large enterprises, their IT professionals, software developers, and business managers involved in software and services purchasing.