unfortunately, this is true as a vast majority of events offer no REAL value. It's simply a forum for folks to tell their story..not offer actionable advice.
I intent to host a different type of event - http://www.meetup.com/silicon, whereby attendees will learn real tactics on how to grow their business from folks that have done it.
From my view, sales is often a numbers game. In order to get x sales, y appointments must be set, z connections made. I am yet to find a good method for measuring this outside a CRM. Excel is good for about 50 contacts.. After that, it's a mess.
Apollo. CRM is great for organizing and tracking but if you find yourself going to a CRM to figure out deal flow...your sales guy isnt doing a good enough job. Just like code repositories are important but not the first place you would go to for checking code quality (you probably would look at exceptions alerts).
This process has been on the forefront of my mind quite a bit lately, as I am growing my company, Canyon Oak Partners (SEO/PPC/Design/Dev) and a supporting SEO Audit software offering (its in private beta).
At this point, the most important facet I wish to grow is the sales team. My partners and I are discussing the need and pros/cons of getting an office, as we all work remote right now. We also gather at my home (I have a spare bedroom as my office and we set up around the rest of the place) a couple days a week.
Our thoughts lean toward the social energy an office brings, but I love not spending the money on an office.
Do you have any advice on managing a remote sales team?
Is there a list of outages on other 'major' services of this magnitude?