SaleGenius--no genius but useful service

With a name that's impossible to live up to, Genius Inc. launched what company CEO David Thompson called the industry's "first on-demand customer intelligence solution that turns sales professionals into sales

geniuses." What does it mean to become a sales genius? According to Thompson, it's tracking customer activity and through his company's proxy server delivering the data to sales people so they can more easily qualify leads and close the deal. Not exactly an stoke of genius, but useful.

His company's first product, SalesGenius (starting at $49 per user per month, with a free 30-day trial), employs an instant messenging-like "Genius Tracker" (at left) that alerts sales people when prospects (who opt-in for the service) take an action, such as visiting the web site and opening an email. The clickstream data allows sales and marketing people to prioritize tasks and to customize messaging and offers to prospects/customers. 

According to Genius, disclosing Web site visit tracking and emails with trackable links is up to the discretion of the sender--SalesGenius customers. Those customers should disclose the non-anonymized tracking up front, rather than burying it in a privacy policy page that few read. For example, a salesperson can qualify leads better by knowing what products a prospect is interested in from the clickstream or if an email was read.
SaleGenius works with CRM solutions, such as Salesforce.com, and can replay Web site visits, tracking the time spent, pages visted, emails opened or unopened. Integration with Salesforce.com's AppExchange is planned for this summer, Thompson said. A team edition of SaleGenius and support for mobile devices is slated for later this year, according to Thompson.

If customers are willing to be tracked, just as they are on Amazon, they can reduce the amount of noise and unwanted solicitations in the buying process. If SaleGenius has any genius, it's in providing relatively painless (no coding) and cheap on demand service (similar to the value in other SaaS applications) for sales people to reduce friction and increase productivity.