Successforce Site Down?
In an attempt to maintain work/life balance over the weekend, I think the Successforce web site is down. Anyone else able to access it?
Update: It’s back up now. Maybe all work- and business-related sites should be inaccessible over the weekend so us Internet addicts get a break. 
Org Charts in Salesforce.com
I came across a blog post for a nifty little free AppExchange add-on from CogMap, a visual wiki that lets people map out orgcharts of any organization, for all to see. It’s nicely called the Salesforce.com CogMap Application and is in alpha, so please try it to give your feedback. It’s supposed to look at your Accounts and Contacts and be able to fashion a visual hierarchy based on what you’ve input. The folks at DreamFactory have something similar in their OrgView product (also free). Any input about either? Let me know. (It’s on my very long list of apps to try.)
Lead Scoring
The Salesforce Marketing Blog continues its Best Practices in Lead Management series with a discussion on automating various parts of your process. Specific how-tos on getting that set up are in the Salesforce.com For Dummies book. I wanted to specifically call out the discussion on Lead Scoring, which is yet another way to make sure Marketing and Sales are in agreement as to how Leads are prioritized:
Pre-score your leads so only the most qualified are getting passed over to sales. You can create some basic lead scoring formulas using custom formula fields.
Managing Your Leads in Salesforce: Process First
Leads in Salesforce have two cool characteristics that make them very powerful for a Marketing team as well as a Non-Profit Organization (NPO):
1) Web-to-Lead, which allows you to easily embed a form into your website, so submissions are automatically routed into Salesforce. No more of this “Contact Us at info@mycompany.com” business, which results in more Inbox management.
2) Lead Conversion, which allows for a demarcation between your Leads and more viable Opportunities or Donations (that come with Accounts and Contacts). As lead information collects in your database, you will definitely want to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff.