Mike Muhney The Godfather Of CRM & 22 Others To Speak At Chicago TechWeek

Mike Muhney, VIPOrbit, ACT, Chicago TechWeek, Dallas StartupCustomer relationship management, or CRM has been big business since the late 1980’s. Sure these days everyone is very aware of Salesforce the cloud based CRM solution, but before there were clouds, the internet, mobile devices and salesforce there was ACT. ACT was the standard in CRM solutions starting in 1987. There are thousands of companies that still use ACT today.

While the backbone of any CRM software is a robust database, by name and by virtue CRM software is designed to help manage relationships. How do you know somebody, what do you know about somebody, how is one person related to another. These are all things that effective sales people, marketers, managers, and entrepreneurs count on to help reach the bottom line.

Mike Muhney is one of the cofounders of the original ACT software and over the past year he’s been taking over 25 years of experience in customer relationship management and pouring it into VIPOrbit, barnone the best mobile CRM solution out there.

We first met Muhney last year at Chicago TechWeek where he was introducing the world to VIP Orbit. We spent a lot of time with him during techweek and learned so much about not just VIP Orbit but about effectively managing relationships. Stuff that hundreds of books have been written on since the introduction of ACT.

I remember in earlier parts of my worklife reading about CRM and using ACT. ACT and by proxy now, VIPOrbit, allow you to manage the littlest details that can result in so much more when applying that information down the road.

For instance back in the 90’s during my radio career as a Music Director and Program Director I had the chance to use ACT at various stations. I would keep my ACT up to date with little information about record reps that would call on me, what we could get from them, who they could help us out with and even kids names and birthdays. They would keep a lot of the same information on the radio people they called on. It would insure great birthday cards but in one instance I vaguely remember one rep that was courting me on a record who knew I loved Jerry’s Subs and Pizza from Washington DC. I had moved on to a station in North Carolina but that rep brought me down a steak and cheese on a visit. I asked him how he remembered and he said he put it in his ACT.

The same holds true today for me and my VIPOrbit database. It’s easy for me to keep track of who knows who in the startup world and where I met them. I even have notes about various gate keepers. You can charm your way past a gate keeper if you know the right information.

While the application is phenomenal, what Muhney can teach people about relationships and how to apply it them in the entrepreneurial world will really help in the long run. The amount of data you can find on the internet and then apply to your CRM solution can give anyone the cutting edge.

VIPOrbit will be set up in booth 8-9121 near the Bar TechWeek area during the conference. There you’ll be able to find out all about VIPOrtbit and how it can really help you manage your relationships. You can test drive the iPad and iPhone apps. You can also pick up a copy of Muhney’s book, “Who’s In Your Orbit, Beyond Facebook, Creating Relationships That Matter”.

More importantly Muhney is one of 23 top shelf speakers who will be speaking during TechWeek. His talk  “The Business of Meaningful Relationships: Perils & Opportunities” will be presented at 10:30 am on Saturday June 29th. I highly suggest if you’re attending TechWeek you don’t miss it.

Some of the other great speakers include: Matthew Bellows ,founder & CEO of Yesware; Robin Chase, founder and CEO of Zipcar and now Buzzcar; Tony Conrad, founder of About.me; serial entrepreneur Adam Goldenberg; PJ Hyett founder of Github; Matt Jacobson VP at Battery Ventures, and many more.

You can still register for Chicago Techweek happening June 27-29th at the Merchandise Mart. Follow this link to registration.

Check out these stories from last year’s Chicago TechWeek!

Muhney will also be keynoting here:

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Dallas Startup: VIPOrbit Named Number 1 By i.Business Magazine, To Be Featured At CES

VIPorbit,Dallas startup,Mike Muhney,startup,startups,startup news, CES 2013We first reported on Dallas startup VIPorbit back in June as part of our Chicago Tech Week coverage.  VIPorbit is a robust relationship management system for iOS devices founded by ACT co-founder Mike Muhney. ACT is the original Customer Relationship Management software, that paved the way for companies like SalesForce.

VIPorbit users organize their entire contact list into orbits, and can add as much or as little relationship management information to each contacts record. Track every conversation, email, activity and more across contacts and orbits. VIPorbit is by far the best mobile CRM solution we’ve tested and we’ve used it consistently since June.

The folks at i.Business magazine must agree as VIPorbit has beat out such widely known enterprise mobile apps as FileMaker Go, Quick Office Pro, DropBox and Evernote to claim the number one spot in the magazine’s “Top 50 Business Apps”.  The online version of the latest issue has already hit digital news stands and the hard copy version will come out shortly and be given away free to the hundreds of thousands of attendees of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in January.

“We are dedicated to providing the most robust relationship management experience available on the iPhone and iPad—not just another useful app but full-featured relationship management software that empowers users to build relationships and grow their businesses,” said Mike Muhney, VIPorbit CEO and co-founder. “VIPorbit gives users instant recall of all past, present, and future activities with those in their network, setting them apart from their competition.”

“We are excited to announce the Top 50 Business Apps Edition of i.Business Magazine, and to name VIPorbit as the number one app on the list. It gives professionals everything they need to stay on top business relationships, a mission-critical business activity. It manages contacts, schedules, tasks, Email, social feeds, and more—all in one easy-to-use app, available for both iPhone and iPad—two platforms widely used by businesspeople,” said Carmine De Santo, founder and publisher of i.Business Magazine

Muhney is a serious influencer in the CRM and mobile CRM business. He also penned this guest post for us here at nibletz.com.

Linkage:

Check out VIPorbit here

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Chicago TechWeek: ACT Co-Founder Mike Muhney Is Back, And This Time It’s Mobile: VIPorbit

Many people in today’s business world especially the cusp of Gen X and Gen Y take for granted the contribution that Mike Muhney made to the way we get things done. Muhney is the co-founder and co-creator of ACT.

ACT was one of the first complete CRM (Contact Relationship Management) software companies in the world. Although it was no joke, the first version of ACT debuted on April Fool’s Day 1987. Yes over 25 years ago.

At that time Muhney didn’t know that they would create an entire industry, books would be written about managing relationships and business as we know it would be changed forever. Relationship management makes your contacts have a more meaningful impact on everything including the bottom line.

Through different spots in my radio career and a short lived stint as a record rep (because the company was sold to Disney) I used ACT and would do things like make notes that a gatekeeper (receptionist) had three young sons who played T-Ball or that Mr. so and so hated golf and hated the Alabama Crimson Tide even more.

Adding this kind of information to your contacts, along with a map of which contacts know who and a record, or event log of every single contact ever made with that person, keep you not only up to date with what’s going on but gives you a competitive edge when it comes to making real contact with people and making people at ease in business dealings.

What Muhney has done, is come out of retirement to take ideas that were the foundation of CRM and apply them to a mobile setting. Muhney is a relationship zen and probably doesn’t ever mutter a bad word about anybody but as he points out there are hundreds of millions of iOS users out there and roughly 15 million using what’s available on the market from companies like Salesforce and even ACT (which is now owned by Symantec).  This provides a world of opportunity for the Dallas based VIPOrbit.

What’s more fascinating to me was the time spent with Muhney and the fact that Im going to spend even more time with him because ACT taught my life business lessons that have given me a competitive edge. People have asked how I did this, or how I scored this meeting. In fact I spent an hour with a good friend at a Memphis startup giving him ideas on how to get his emails read. It’s little tricks you teach yourself using ACT that make that so much easier.  We’ll get to a whole blog post about that, but 25 years later with Google, LinkedIn, Facebook and more, it’s so much easier to find and add key elements to someone’s VIPorbit record that could make that difference.

So check out the interview below and download VIPOrbit to your iPhone or iPad today. My only qualm at the moment is that device to device syncing is still about a month away, which really means I’m going to have to wait to harness all that power.

Here’s the video:

Linkage:

Check out more about VIPOrbit here at their website

Here’s their page in the iTunes App Store

Here’s more of our coverage from TechWeek 2012

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