[September 17, 2012]

New Applications Take the Pain out of CRM and Help Sales Professionals Uncover Valuable Connections

For the sales professional, the saying 'time is money' and 'connections are everything' go hand in hand. With that in mind, is it any wonder that many sales professionals find themselves frustrated with CRM systems when they need information fast Plantronics (News - Alert) (NYSE: PLT), in conjunction with ThreeWill® and Datahug, have addressed this problem by delivering tools that automatically serve up information such as real-time customer data and organization-wide relationships with your customers. Plantronics headsets also help these applications capture and track your call information, eliminating steps in the CRM process.

"Sales professionals need to move quickly to access customer information, leverage existing relationships and update CRM applications," said Jeffrey Siegel, vice president of Strategy and New Business Development at Plantronics. "Instead of spending time navigating through multiple screens, Popcorn and Datahug provide information when they need it most; as they are engaging with customers. This integration will also update records so the sales professional does not have to go back and manually enter information on who they called and when."

New Tools for Sales Professionals: Popcorn and Datahug

Imagine receiving a mobile call from a prospective customer, you answer it and a screen pops up on your PC that shows all the relevant information and history for this contact. You've just experienced Popcorn, a new app for Salesforce.com (News - Alert) from ThreeWill. Popcorn also 'pops' Chatter, the social enterprise tool from Salesforce.com that helps you collaborate with context. Popcorn gets information about mobile calls through the Plantronics APIs.

"We are inspired by what contextual intelligence has to offer us as application developers. In particular, knowing when incoming or outgoing calls are taking place. What gets us so excited about Popcorn and our relationship with Plantronics is that we are going to have a real impact on sales professional's daily conversations," said Danny Ryan, co-founder and vice president of Business Developmet at ThreeWill. "The killer feature of Popcorn is the ability to log a call to Salesforce directly from the Popcorn dashboard - sales professionals are going to like this and sales managers are going to love this."

Wouldn't it be great to know who in your company knows a prospective customer And even better to know how well they know the person and when they last talked or emailed Enter Datahug - a new application that tracks relationships across an entire company so you can quickly identify the best inroads to reach a prospect. Plantronics is delivering call activity into Datahug - which can now let you know how often a colleague talks to a prospective customer.

"Good information and insights are key to sales success. With Datahug sales people can see, at the click of a button, who in their organization can open a door for them into a target account. Priceless insights which helps them sell more and faster," said Connor Murphy, CEO of Datahug. "Our partnership with Plantronics strengthens our application by enabling us to add data about calls into the communication traffic we use to uncover connections - and calls are a powerful indication of strong relationships."

Plantronics' APIs and the Plantronics Developer Connection

This integration is enabled by Plantronics' software developers kit (SDK) which provides information such as mobile phone caller ID, mobile phone call state, proximity to a connected PC and headset wearing state. Plantronics launched a developer's community in May 2012 to provide software developers access to physical aspects of a person's work life. By incorporating information from the physical world, context aware software can dramatically improve business productivity. If you're a developer and you want more information and to download the software developer's connection (SDK), visit the Plantronics Developer's Connection at http://developer.plantronics.com

You can find out more about Plantronics Integration partners here: http://www.plantronics.com/us/partners/developers/

Interested in a demo of Popcorn or Datahug

Visit the Plantronics booth (Booth #1550) at Dreamforce in San Francisco September 18 - 21.

You can contact Plantronics to learn more about these applications: dreamforce@plantronics.com

About Plantronics - Simply Smarter Communications

Plantronics is a global leader in audio communications for businesses and consumers. We have pioneered new trends in audio technology for 50 years, creating innovative products that allow people to simply communicate. From unified communication solutions to Bluetooth® headsets, we deliver uncompromising quality, an ideal experience, and extraordinary service. Plantronics is used by every company in the Fortune 100, as well as 911 dispatch, air traffic control and the New York Stock Exchange. For more information, please visit www.plantronics.com or call (800) 544-4660.

Plantronics and Simply Smarter Communications are trademarks or registered trademark of Plantronics, Inc. The Bluetooth trademark is owned by Bluetooth SIG, Inc., and any use by Plantronics, Inc. is under license. All other trade names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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