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    Are you frustrated with your technology Frankenstack?

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    Is this you or someone you know? Somewhere on your smartphone lurks at least one… two… maybe three little apps you haven’t used in six months. At least some of those apps… maybe dozens of them… are work tools you never log into.

    Meanwhile, your core technology, the CRM, has become a monster you feel you have to feed, fight, and wrestle on a daily basis.

    Plugins, add-ons, custom coding, updates, conflicts, workarounds… every new “advance” adds more hassle. You feel like your technology ecosystem has gone from “helpful” to “frightful.”

    If any of this is true for you… you may have a Frankenstack on your hands.

    What is a Frankenstack?

    The term refers to the tendency, over time, for organizations to stack technologies on top of technologies without a clear plan or overarching strategy. The Frankenstack is a mishmash of ill-fitting tools and parts. Together, the Frankenstack may do most of the things you need it to do, but it’s never going to look pretty or function smoothly, and it leads to a lot of “app switching.”

    The Frankenstack is a mishmash of ill-fitting tools and parts.

    In many organizations, this Frankenstack is built on top of Salesforce. Nobody wants to challenge whether Salesforce is the right technology for the job, so instead of chucking it and trying something better, they build more and more stuff on top of it.

    It reminds me of this scene from the spoof movie Young Frankenstein.

    Faced with the choice of using the “abby normal” brain he has or going out to find a better brain, Young Frankenstein just… uses the one he’s got.

    The result is very funny… and not at all pretty.

    Why I decided to fight the Frankenstack

    When we began developing Membrain, I had a lot of conversations with sales experts and entrepreneurs about the project. Over and over, people told me that instead of starting from scratch and building something new, I would do better to simply build on top of what everyone was already using: Salesforce.

    The idea did not sit well with me. I didn’t want to start with something flawed, and add more stuff to it.

    It felt like putting an abnormal brain in a patched-together body and pretending it was beautiful.

    Besides, that model is rarely a win for anyone. It’s giving in to the Hydra instead of fighting or sailing away from it.

    (Here’s what I mean by the Hydra.)

    Buyers lose because they have to purchase Salesforce PLUS your plugin plus a dozen other tools to get what they want. And they lose because the product is built on big promises and the risky assumption that it will all be “seamless.” The result will never be as beautiful, easy to use, and as smoothly functional as you envision it.

    I figured I would lose too, because the best case scenario was that Salesforce would one day buy my company, and that’s a crap shoot at best.

    Besides, I wasn’t in it just to make money. I wanted to create something that would actually change the industry. I wanted to challenge the way sales teams sell and inspire them to do it better.

    In the Frankenstack approach, the only real winner is the Hydra that swallows up the smaller companies and keeps growing new heads.

    I decided that b2b sales organizations deserved a new brain. An entirely new creation designed precisely to give them most everything they need, nothing more, nothing less. Something beautiful, simple, flexible, easy to use, and that truly improves complex b2b sales effectiveness.

    And I wanted it to be cheaper than building a Frankenstack on top of Salesforce.

    With the launch of our new account growth module, my dream is alive. I believe that Membrain is the most beautiful, functional, complete, and effective sales enablement platform available for complex b2b sales. It’s fast, it’s easy to use, easy to customize, flexible, and powerful.

    We didn’t just create another sales tool to staple onto an existing stack. We created a revolution.

    And best of all: Our revolution saves you money. Speaking with a leader in the sales industry recently, he pointed out that in order to get everything included in Membrain through Salesforce, you’d have to spend close to $1,000 per user, per month. Plus pay expensive technical consultants to patch it all together. And end up with users “app switching” all day long, cursing about their  frustrations with the patchwork.

    Our full package cost is a fraction of that and is built on a vision centered around the importance of how you sell and a mission to elevate the sales profession, which we  share with our partners.

    Less money on technology. More money on strategy, training, enablement, and execution.

    Let go of your Frankenstack. Choose Membrain.

    Contact us for a demonstration, or sign up for a trial. I do believe you’ll fall in love.

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    George Brontén
    Published December 2, 2020
    By George Brontén

    George is the founder & CEO of Membrain, the Sales Enablement CRM that makes it easy to execute your sales strategy. A life-long entrepreneur with 20 years of experience in the software space and a passion for sales and marketing. With the life motto "Don't settle for mainstream", he is always looking for new ways to achieve improved business results using innovative software, skills, and processes. George is also the author of the book Stop Killing Deals and the host of the Stop Killing Deals webinar and podcast series.

    Find out more about George Brontén on LinkedIn