Posted April 13, 2010
Don’t ever use Chase Paymentech for CC processing through
GoDaddy A year ago I setup my business networking site
www.franklinclubboston.com through Godaddy.
We decided to accept credit cards online for an event we were
hosting. I set up everything online and
then I had a brief conversation with a sales rep at Chase Paymentech, which is
the CC processing company, which Godaddy is associated with. What was never mentioned by the sales rep was
the 3 year contact or the $250 early cancellation fee; even though I told her
we were only going to need CC processing for a short period of time. Don’t make the same mistake. Stay clear of Chase Paymentech…
Nine Technology Launches New Company Uniquely Focused on
Delivering Online Backup and Recovery Solutions for Managed Service Providers
Leveraging the company’s service provider DNA, its “Powered by
Nine” solutions enable MSPs to overcome online backup challenges to provide
simple and lucrative service offerings
Middleboro, Mass., – April 6, 2010 – Focused on helping managed service
providers (MSPs) meet their customers’ demand for online backup and recovery
services, Nine Technology is today announcing its official company launch. By
leveraging the company’s vast service provider experience, Nine Technology
designed and architected its “Powered by Nine” online backup and recovery
solutions to address the many challenges MSPs are having today when attempting
to roll out their services built on consumer-grade backup technology.
“Prior
to forming Nine Technology, many of our team members here ran a successful
online backup service provider business. That’s not to say that we didn’t have
our challenges with the backup vendor we chose, even after our doing our due
diligence on dozens of vendors,” said Tom Gelson, founder and CEO, Nine
Technology. “From what we learned, we took the initiative to design our own
online backup solution and go to market with it to address these challenges for
other MSPs wanting to offer cost-effective and reliable online services to
their customers.”
Nine
Technology’s “Powered by Nine” solutions encompass the simple and easy
functionality of consumer-class online backup solutions with a robust, reliable
and highly scalable enterprise-class storage backend at a very attractive price
point. Nine Technology offers solutions to back up and rapidly recover critical
data for laptops, desktops and servers.
"There is an opportunity for new
entrants into the online backup and recovery market--especially those that can
differentiate themselves," said Lauren Whitehouse, senior analyst with
Enterprise Strategy Group. "While price is often a major factor in
technology selection for MSP-driven online backup solutions, ultimately, ease
of use, high reliability and seamless scalability are equally important
ingredients for successful service offerings."
Nine
Technology meets all major MSP requirements and fulfills the online backup and
recovery promises that other technologies have not been able to achieve. The
“Powered by Nine” benefits include:
·
A comprehensive turnkey data protection service to
individual users and organizations of all sizes
·
Block level global data deduplication and compression reduce the footprint of data to optimize storage capacity
and network bandwidth
·
Seamless scalability to support the protection of unlimited
amounts of data
·
Simple administration and management console specifically
designed for the MSP
·
Scalable, reliable, fast, and secure access by customers at
all times
·
A built-in mechanism for data protection through replication
·
Low total cost of ownership without compromising on the
other requirements
·
Fully rebrandable for MSPs and their VARs/IT Consultants at
no additional cost
Products, Pricing, and Availability
Nine Technology
will release its “Powered by Nine” One solution for backup and restore of laptop
and desktop computers this month. By the beginning of May, the company will
release its “Powered by Nine” Pro online backup and recovery solution for
servers. For further information, please contact us directly by email at partner@ninetechnology.com or by
phone at 1-800-952-3215.
Management Team
Tom Gelson,
CEO; Alex Stoev, CTO; and Tom Trometer, CFO, come from Vault
USA, an
online data backup and recovery service provider business. Joining the team as senior
vice president is Gene Fay, who most recently was the vice president of sales
and business development with a successful virtualization management startup.
About Nine Technology
Nine
Technology delivers simple, powerful, and cost-effective turn-key online backup
and restore solutions for managed service providers (MSPs), value added
resellers and IT consultants. The “Powered by Nine” solutions enable service
providers to quickly offer reliable and scalable services to protect their
customers’ critical data stored on desktops, laptops and servers. It is our
goal to know our customers’ business and help them build revenue. For more
information, visit www.ninetechnology.com.
Script embedded in HTML
The internet never stops amazing me, especial when it comes to
scam artists. I have a one bedroom for
rent in North Andover, MA, and I have it posted on Craig’s list. Below is an e-mail string that I
received. Question is can you spot the
scam (Read below).
Date: Sat, 20 Mar 2010 14:45:02 +0100
Subject: Re: $795 / 1br - Great One Bedroom (North Andover, MA)
From:
To: gene_fay@hotmail.com
Hello,
With regards to the property I am inquiring about, I would like to get
some more details about it, I am currently in the UK and am relocating down to the
USA to see the best place to setup a new branch for my company (
Nippon Life Insurance London 20 Little Britain London EC1A 7DH, U.K. ), as we
are about to open a branch office in the states, so due to my non presence to inspect
the Property, I await your response soon.
Thanks
Date: Sun, 21 Mar 2010 03:05:02 +0100
Subject: Re: $795 / 1br - Great One Bedroom (North Andover, MA)
From:
To: gene_fay@hotmail.com
Hello,
I would like to go ahead with the renting process, I would like you to go ahead
and reserve the property for me.
So I will be needing the following information's so that the check payment for
$1590 can be processed and posted to you soon.
Name:............
Address:.............
Phone number(cell and land):............
I want the 12 month lease to start on the 1st April 2010, I also want
to notify you that I have in the mean time arranged with an interior
decorator (Agent) who will be handling the purchase of furniture,
entertainment system and other appliances that will be needed in the
property, they will as well be in charge of moving my luggage
down to the states. So the check for $2850 will be sent over to you
which is a relocation grant by my employer. All you need to do is
deduct the deposit of $1590 and forward the difference to my
decorators so I can have the place prepared before my arrival. All
applications and lease will be signed as soon as I arrive.
Also for familiarization I am Name Removed, I am 55 yrs of age, a
British citizen, married to a lovely lady, with a daughter (Family
staying over in the UK), I work with ( Nippon Life Insurance London
20 Little Britain London EC1A 7DH, U.K. E), as a loss adjuster agent,
I am a Christian, reserved in Nature, Non smoker also I don't keep
pets.
I look forward to meeting you and hope to have a good relationship as
a tenant with you.
I await the details. You can reach my at this number Phone Number Removed
Below is my present landlords information for reference:
Name Removed
Address Removed
UNITED KINGDOM
EMAIL: Email Address Removed
Regards.
Date: Sun, 24 Mar 2010 05:05:02 +0100
Subject: Re: $795 / 1br - Great One Bedroom (North Andover, MA)
From:
To: gene_fay@hotmail.com
Hello
I will forward your details over to my employer and they will get in touch with
the company in the states to send you the check via overnight delivery to avoid
any delay, once I have an update from them that the check has been mailed, I
will email you with necessary info to keep watch over it to arrive
your location.
Thanks once again I will get back to you asap. I'll have my decorator
contact you soon so you can work out the details and lastly hope you
will act fast with my decorator money because I don't want the
property to be delayed in anyway. Looking forward to meeting you and
hope to have a good relationship with you
Cheers
The Scam
It is called the overpayment scam. Do a quick Google search and you can read
about it. The person sends you a check
and includes additional money, which they need you to urgently forward to a
third party. In this case, the person
was going to ask me to forward the money to his “decorator”.
Here is what would happen if I kept playing along. I would
receive a check Federal Express, and then I would be contacted to forward the
money to the third party ASAP. What they
are hoping is I deposit the check and forward the money, before my bank
contacts me to tell me the check is bogus.
My brother who is a cop in NJ said this is a very common scam.
For me, I used the rule, “too good to be true” and did some
checking on Google. Now that I know it
is a scam I am having fun with them via e-mail.
So please remember, the internet is full of scam artist. It continues to be the Wild West.
Have a great Day
Gene Fay
(978) 805-0818
Posted March 12, 2010
Teach your children to be entrepreneurial
My parents taught me many things and gave me plenty of love and support, but the one thing they didn't teach me was how to be entrepreneurial. In fact both of my parents spent much of their careers in unions and long-term jobs. When I graduated from college, they told me to find the biggest company that would hire me and find out about joining their union. Well 18 years of working for high technology start ups and I have yet to join a union or a long-term position.
My parent had a fear that trying
to start your own business always failed, so they didn't encourage us to do
this. With my 3 daughters, I have taken
a totally different approach when it comes to starting business and working. I am always asking them questions about what
business they would like to start and share with them my experiences at
work. It's great to get them thinking
about the things that they like to do instead of how to just fit in.
So far, the girls have started
three businesses. A cookies stand, which
they did a business plan first and then set it up. Then, they sold glows sticks at the Fourth of
July celebration in our home town, and made $200 in 2 hours. They could not
believe how much money they had and how quickly they made it. With this money, we opened savings accounts. Now, they are selling pillows to family and
friends. My oldest daughter got a sewing
machine and didn't know what to make. My
sister's husband owns a furniture store and had a bunch of discontinued fabric
samples that they gave to her. So one
snowy day, she started making pillows and the other two joined in. Pretty soon, we had pillows everywhere. Now family and friends have been buying them.
I even set up an eBay account for them to try to sell them online. Here are a
few pictures of the pillows.
The
key thing I am trying to show them is to go and try different business ideas
and don't be afraid to fail. So many
adults I know are terrified of the idea of starting their own business. Much of that fear comes from their background
and upbringing. So show your kids that
there is nothing to be afraid of when starting a business. Try different things and encourage them even
if they fail. They will be wiser for
trying. As the saying goes, “give a man
a fish, feed him for a day, teach him to fish and feed him for a
lifetime”. Teaching your child to be
entrepreneurial is truly teaching them to fish.
Gene Fay
(978) 805-0818
Trust and privacy are two reasons why social media will fail
in the next 18 months, if we, marketers, are not careful. As we get ready to launch Nine Technology,
Inc, online backup solutions targeted at managed service providers (MSPs), we
are using many social media techniques and tools to get the word out about what
makes us different. So far, it has been
working really well. Part of the reason
is that so few companies have really caught on to the new marketing techniques. But, I was thinking what will social media
look like two years from now and it scared me.
The whole basis of social media is built on the idea of
trust. I trust what other people think
of a product or service, I don’t trust what companies directly say. So we go to Google, blogs, Facebook, Twitter,
foursquare… to find out what other people think. But, what is going to happen when, the
consumer figures out that some of the people who are saying great things have
really been paid (either directly in cash or given something free). Imagine what is going to happen when most
everything great said in social media is questioned by the consumer. Consumers are very smart and will figure
these things out. As consumers are
figuring this out, the government is already getting involved and writing laws
to force bloggers to divulge compensation. Read this article from the NY Times, which
talks about the F.T.C. drafting new rules:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/13/technology/internet/13blog.html
The second area that will doom social media is privacy. All these great social media tools we use to
give us metrics, rely on one simple fact; the user downloads a cookie or clicks
on a link that we can track. But, most
consumers don’t know that we can track them, even if they have not given us
permission to do so. Tools such as Marketo,
Hubspot… have the ability to track everything a person does on a website, even
if the consumer doesn’t give permission.
In fact, the prospect could visit a site for years, in what they think
is an anonymous mode, but when they finally give their information (even just
an e-mail address), every visit they ever made can be reviewed. Do you think most consumers know this? Would they be so willing to visit our sites
if they did? Google is even a bigger
worry when it comes to user experience data collection, but I save that for
another post. If you want to know more about this, read “Googled” by Ken
Auletta and just know “Google could do harm” if they chose to (I was not paid
to plug this book, hahaha)
As marketers we need to think about ways to keep trust and
privacy top of mind. Consumers are going
to get smarter and if we “abuse” social media, it is going die as quickly as it
has been built up.
Posted Feb 8, 2010
Don't Forget the “Social” Part of
Social Media
Last week the Franklin Club
Boston, www.franklinclubboston.com had Brian Halligan, CEO of HubSpot, www.hubspot.com speak about social media.
During the course of his presentation, he talked about how the world of
marketing and sales has changed. No longer can you rely on traditional
marketing techniques like print or radio advertising or sales technique like
cold calling, because technology has allowed our potential customers to ignore
these forms a communication. Brian said it perfect, “Prospects are allergic to
sales people.” To reach potential
customers today, you need to create lots of really interesting content and then
put this content in as many places as possible.
Post it to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and your own Blog
site. Let your potential customers find
you through their own searches on the internet. It’s much more powerful when a
prospect finds you.
But, one area that Brian didn't
cover is traditional social networking as a cost effective way to reach
potential customers. Though I know Brian
spends a tremendous amount of time doing in person presentation as does his
cofounder Dharmesh Shah and the rest of the HubSpot team, they are always
looking for opportunities to educate people on the value social media
marketing.
The power of doing this can be
shown in the Franklin Club event this week.
If I put out an e-mail that said come to our meeting and hear a sales
pitch on HubSpot's products, few if any people would sign up. But, when I invited people to attend a
seminar on social media and its value to increase sales, 55 people showed
up. The key here is that the people who
came to this event wanted to learn something new that would help them increase
the value of their business and Brian didn't disappoint. Also, he didn't violate people's trust by
turning the presentation into a product pitch, even when some of the attendees
pushed for more information on HubSpot products.
So, as you start to expand your
marketing efforts into social media by blogging, using Twitter, Facebook….
don't forget to go out in the world and meet people in person. Look for speaking opportunities for your
company where you can educate people on major trends in your industry. This can be at your local Rotary Club, business
networking groups, and major industry conferences. Position yourself as an expert in the field
and then educate people on interesting new trends and don't turn your
presentation into a sales pitch on your products or services. As you become better know, you will be asked
to speak at more and more places. This
indirect marketing effort will have a huge positive impact on your revenue.
Gene Fay
(978) 805-0818
Posted January 12, 2010
"What I Learned on my 41st Birthday about Social Media"
I talked with a friend of mine from Network Intelligence, Pat Ryan, and he reminded me that I had not posted anything on my blog in the last month. When I looked at my website, www.genefay.com, I realized it had actually been even longer than that…before Thanksgiving. Well with the holidays behind us and with me getting into a little rhythm at work, at least as much rhythm as you can in a start-up, I thought now would be a great chance to spend some time updating my blog.
Last Wednesday was my birthday (41) and the power of social networking amazed me on this day. 33 people reached out to me on my Facebook page and wrote happy birthday. Many of the people who wrote me are people I worked with in the past or are friends I went to school with (some as far back as grammar school) and it was nice to hear from them. Now, imagine this same effect happening to your business. Having people reach out to you to say congratulations, ask how you are doing or show interest in your products, services, or offers.
If a software company adds new features and engages customers and prospects for input, I am sure the software company’s Facebook and twitter pages would be very busy on the day they would release it. Customers and prospects would feel a part of the company and would be willing to tell others about this. Social media allows you to engage people, stay connected with them, and allows you to get feedback, all with minimal effort required by them. This is the essence of social media and networking.
Minimal effort is key to the process. Let’s compare the number of people who wished me happy birthday on Facebook and to the number of cards I received 2 or number of phone calls I got 4. The cards were from my daughters and wife and the phone calls came from my brothers, sister and parents. Buying a card or calling takes a lot more time so all my close family is willing to do this. But through social media, even more people knew about my birthday. Because it was easy to reach out to me, more people were willing to write a quick note on my Facebook wall.
To go back to the software analogy, the same type of results can be achieved, but even to a greater magnitude that can directly impact your bottomline. Your community may post something quick about the new release of the software, but your “biggest fans” may take the time to send the company an e-mail or call to congratulate the company on the latest release of software. The “fans” may take the extra step to “retweet” information about the release or forward the information to their own communities. You should pay special attention to these people as they are your “raving fans” and you should treat them like gold. They are the people who will help make your business successful by spreading your message for you. It does not get any more powerful than that.
More people knew about my birthday than ever before through social media. By making it easier for your community to know about key events for your company, the more likely they will help spread the word for you as well. By using social media, you will dramatically increase the number of people who are aware of your company.
Sincerely,
Gene
Ps. Brian Halligan, CEO of HubSpot www.hubspot.com will be presenting at the next Franklin Club Boston meeting (open to the public). He is an expert in the area of social media. The event will take place on Monday Feb 1st at 7:00 PM at Bingham Law Firm, One Federal St. Boston Ma. To sign up go to www.franklinclubboston.com .
Posted November 24, 2009
I want to wish you a happy Thanksgiving. Please travel safely and enjoy time with your family. Family is the most important part of our lives.
My wife and I are having our annual Christmas Party on Saturday, December 5th. I will be sending out an Evite early next week with more details.
Below is my latest blog. If you or one of your friends is out of work, please forward this to them and let them know they can call me if they need any assistance.
You need to be different to find a job
Learn how social media tools can help you find your next job
Have you heard this joke? What is the difference between a recession and depression? Recession is when your neighbor gets laid off and depression is when you get laid off. For the last two months I have been searching for my next opportunity and it has been a very exciting journey, so no, I have not been depressed. What has made it an exciting journey is the ability to project myself to so many more people, then ever before, through the use of business networking groups, Twitter, LinkedIn, and blogging on my website www.genefay.com.
To find a new job, people used to just go to job boards or contact recruiters and then wait to hear back from either. But today, you can project your expertise into the market by creating interesting content and then posting it on the web. By doing this, a potential company gets a chance to find out about you and you experience, which also helps you feel more in control. If you are out of work today, you should be writing as much as you can about things that are of interest to you or areas of expertise and as I mentioned post this information on the web.
Luckily for me I started a networking group with some friends in 2004, called Franklin
Club Boston, www.franklinclubboston.com and this has been a great platform to meet people and learn about what they are doing in business. The key thing I have done since the beginning is I've always looked for ways to help other members of the group and never tried to correlate how that would help me directly. So if you don't belong to a
business networking group, invite 5 friends for dinner and start one. It is really easy and fun. The key is to look for ways to help other people at these events and they will try to do the same thing for you in return. In these times, your network will be instrumental in getting you your next job.
Beyond your network, socialize yourself
Creating my own blog has been a great way to talk about different things that are of interest to me. Most of my postings have been about sales and the transition of early stage companies to use inside sales people, instead of enterprise sales people. A perspective employer is going to like to know that I have this experience and by reading my blog they get a much deeper understanding vs. just looking at a CV. For me, I post my experiences at www.genefay.com .You can do the same by picking one of the blogging platforms or just go to www.godaddy.com and set up your own website for $5 a month.
Another way I have been expanding my reach is through LinkedIn and Twitter. If you are not on either of these and are out of work, sign up today. I belong to groups on LinkedIn like Avid Technology and EMC, where I used to work and to Inside Sales Expert and Lead Generation and Nurturing, which are areas of interest to me. All these groups have people who have similar backgrounds to mine. Safe to say, many of these people would know about potential job opportunities where I would be a fit.
Twitter is something I have just learned how to use and I have to say it is fascinating. This is a place for you to send out short messages about things that are of interest to you. For example, I am interested in cloud storage and sometimes I "tweet" about interesting articles in this area. One thing that happens is any companies in the cloud storage market that are keeping tabs on twitter will see my posts. To follow me on twitter sign up and look me up @genefay (You can read my Oct. 30th blog post at www.genefay.com to hear about how I connected with the founder of a company using twitter).
By joining or creating your own networking group, blogging, tweeting, and joining LinkedIn Groups, you can instantly create your own business community of people who could help you find a new job. Once you have created these things, you then need to create valuable content based on your expertise. The more valuable the content the more likely that it will be sent to potential employers, who may then end up seeking you out. Check out www.hubspot.com to see how they use valuable content to attract people to their website.
Why wait for the phone to ring. Get out there and start putting your knowledge in the market place.
Please contact me directly if you need any advice.
Sincerely,
Gene
Gene Fay
(978) 805-0818
This blog posting was written by Christian Simko. I found it so valuable I am posting it on my website.
Why are you not using video on your web site?
Concisely deliver information and improve SEO
When you think of corporate videos, it’s hard not to think about executives in suits, high production costs, and little actual impact on your target audience. This is what we’ve all been used to with corporate video. However, Google with Youtube and newer consumer video technology are dramatically changing the perception of video and enabling it to be one of the most valuable sales and marketing tools.
It was not long ago when a boring 5-10 minute professional corporate video would cost $20K+. What was even harder to swallow than spending all that money was that your messaging changes and the shelf life of that video was much shorter than you expected. It was tough justify the cost by using the video as a demand gen marketing piece.
The world of video production has changed dramitcally. Today, you can buy a Flip HD video camera ($200), a webcam ($25) if your laptop does not already have one, and a license of TechSmith Camtasia Studio ($350) for video editing. And, for about $600, you can now produce your own sales and marketing videos on demand. You can even use Youtube to host your videos for free. This is exactly what we did at my last company and it was very successful.
What’s more, video helps with your Google search engine ranking. How? While somebody may download a white paper, print it, and read it offline, video keeps visitors engaged on your web site. Google looks at the average time being spent on your site and the higher that time is the more relevant your web site is to Google. This can greatly improve your SEO resulting in more visitors to your web site. This is the number one reason why you should be using video.
Here are some ideas for your videos and what worked for us:
• Customer testimonials- You can talk about how great you are all day long and know one will care, but if your customers say you are great, it carries much more weight. Send your customer a webcam and give them 2 or 3 questions to talk about. Then let them keep the webcam as a thank you.
• Product “how to” videos -- get your technical people involved and create quick 2-5 minute videos that walk people through the install and set up process and more targeted how to do ‘this’ with your products. You’ll be surprised how these videos help shorten the sales cycle and reduce support calls.
• Partner training -- build a video library of training materials to help train your partners. Everybody is resource constrained and video is a great way to reduce the onsite training burden while still maintaining a personal touch.
• Corporate positioning -- find your corporate spokesperson and use video as a positioning tool for video podcast that can be sent to press, analysts, investors, etc...
• Funny videos- This is the hardest one to produce but can also pay big dividends, so don’t be afraid to try. Who knows one of your videos could go viral.
Give video a try and you will be amazed at what you can do and instant results you will see. Bottom line is video will greatly expand your reach on the web. If you’d like to learn more, feel free to contact me and I talk to you about how we did it and more tips and tricks.
Christian Simko
Senior Marketing Professional
http://twitter.com/casimko1Are Cold Calls a Thing of the Past?
In today’s new sales 2.0 culture, online demand generation marketing (e-marketing) can be a very cost-effective way to take cold calling out of your sales equation and make your sales team more productive. But, there are some important tip and tricks to be aware of.
At my last job, our inside sales team never made one cold call. When I explain this to peers, I’m often asked “how is it possible for sales to stay productive without making cold calls?” While the answer is quite simple...delivering company-aware leads...but the execution is a little more complex and involves all core areas of the company working together as one with one common goal of success.
Demand gen marketing functions exactly as its name describes. You create demand for your products and/or services through a variety of opt-in marketing programs. These are leads that self-select themselves into your community. The concept is the simple part.
The difficult part is to make this happen and drive the volume of leads needed to be successful you need your product, marketing, and sales teams perfectly aligned from product conception to go-to-market strategies to closing business.
Let’s take a look at how each team contributes to making this happen and things for you to consider:
Product:
• Need a compelling product that can solve issues or answer questions that are critical or pertinent to the end-user
• Develop a product that is easy for the end-user to acquire, try, and buy. At my last company, our software could be downloaded in less than 30 minutes
• Design a product to be easy to use and understand. We offered 15-day free trials that allowed end-users to see value in their own environments without tying up sales and technical resources
• Work with sales and marketing to implement process within the product set to help with their efforts. By implementing an automated license activation process, we were able to determine who was sales-ready and actually in an active trial and who needed more marketing efforts to either get the end-user to trial or to continue the nurturing process based on those who did not activate the trial
Marketing
• Don’t be afraid to spend money on building your sales and marketing database. Third-party vendors like TechTarget and other push marketing programs can yield great leads at an affordable cost per lead. After your people, your database is your greatest corporate asset.
• Create value-added content for your web site and marketing campaigns. White papers, case studies, and other educational collateral gets people interested in what your company does and positions it as an expert in its space
• Take alternative approaches with your content. Write shorter easier to digest white papers and use quick 2-minute videos. We use Camtasia Studio to create these videos right from our employees laptops. They give your end-user and prospects a very fast way to learn about you and answer their questions
Sales
• Implement a sales follow up process for the quantity of leads you should expect. Don’t let leads go cold... or you will be cold calling again
• Put systems in place together with marketing for lead nurturing that will keep leads warm while attempting to qualify them. We used Marketo integrated with Salesforce.com
• Leverage marketing to create follow up emails. You didn’t hire your sales people to be creative writers. Let them focus on their strengths of cultivating and closing business
• Get your technical people involve. Early contact with one of your techies can build instant trust and credibility with those trialing your products
If you build a sales 2.0 culture throughout your organization, you will be able to build a demand gen machine where your sales people will not be making cold calls. They will only be following up on people who have self selected themselves into your community. These prospects are also more likely to buy because they will not feel like they have been sold but feel like they decided to purchase on their own. The bottomline is top line revenue will grow much faster when the entire organization is committed to sales 2.0.
Posted November 10, 2009Are analysts worth the expense?
I had an interesting discussion with a CEO, who was just about to sign an analyst contract. She asked me if I thought it was going to be worth the money. From working with some analyst firms in the past, I told her yes, working with an analyst firm is definitely worth the expense. The reason I think this is because there are some very good things that can be accomplished by establishing relationships with these firms.
Here are the three reasons why analyst can be very beneficial. There are many other benefits that you will get by working with an analyst, but these are the three I have found most important.
1) Product feedback and positioning- A good analyst can assist a company in the product design, product modification, and go-to-market stages. These experts understand what customers are looking for, because much of their time is spent speaking with them. Also, they understand what the competitors are doing and can help position the product in the best possible way. A good example would be in the area of pricing of a new product. An analyst can help to determine price by understanding the value of the product vs. the competition.
2) Establish credibility with customers- Whether we like it or not prospects rely on analyst and the industry reports they produce to make decisions. This is especially true in down selecting what products to evaluate. I have been told in the past that because the company I was with was not in the Gartner Magic Quadrant report, we were not being considered.
3) Content creation- Here is an area I think many of us underutilize our analysts. In the sales 2.0 world our websites need to be filled with valuable content that keeps the prospects engaged and keeps them coming back. Many people hire analyst firms, but don't build a plan for the analyst to help to create content like white papers and videos. This is critically important in a sales 2.0 world where we can never take our eyes of demand-gen and brand-building marketing efforts.
So, my conclusion is I do think analysts are worth the cost. From working at VKernel, we had great experiences working with Gartner and Enterprise Strategy Group. They both helped us with the things I mentioned above. Through their help as an early stage company, we were able to project ourselves as a much bigger company. If budgets allow, I would recommend working with both a medium sized firm like Enterprise Strategy Group and one of the large analyst firms like Gartner. Getting their combined expertise will help you fully leverage all the benefits you will get from working with analysts.
Gene Fay
(978) 805-0818
A few weeks ago, I watched www.Hubspot.tv (Friday's at 4:00 PM) and during this their VP of Marketing, Mike Volpe, made a funny comment about sales people complaining, “the leads are bad”. Now, I know he was only making a joke, but many companies struggle with getting marketing and sales to work together and not to point fingers at each other. It is too easy for sales to complain the leads are bad or marketing to complain the leads are great, but sales can't close them. The role of marketing and sales are colliding in the new world, the Sales 2.0 world. It is essential to get both of these groups to work together everyday.
At some companies, the role of marketing in the sales cycle is to keep the brand image polished and top of mind with prospects. This is not meant to diminish the role of marketing because the role is much broader. But from strictly a sales cycle perspective, marketing is focused on the first part of the sales process, brand awareness.
In these companies, sales people are more focused on driving the sales process from the initial call, the needs assessment, establishing the value proposition based on the needs, proof of concepts, pricing, and lastly closing the sale. Much of this is done in face to face meetings. So for these companies, the sales cycle is divided with marketing doing around 20% of the work and sales doing 80%.
With many early stage high tech companies, where a trial of the software can be initiated on the web, the percentages are reversed. Everything from brand awareness, to downloading the software, and doing a POC can be done by a prospect with no direct contact with a sales person. To do this, marketing must make sure the website is able to handle the early parts of the sales cycle. It needs to be geared toward educating the prospects and must be as easy as possible for them to download and trial the product. Then, sales needs to focus on quickly following up and closing the prospect.
But for this to truly work, sales and marketing need to combined their efforts toward the same goal of winning over customers. The analogy is like the offense and defense of a football team. The team cannot win unless both sides do their job. Walter Scott, the former CEO of Acronis said this, “if my VP of Marketing and VP of Sales are not meeting two or three times a day I have a problem”, during a conference call I was on. So, it is really about 100% marketing and sales and getting both sides to work together to continuously refine and optimize the sales process. In the Sales 2.0 world, success or failure is based on both groups working together as one team.
So, the question is how often are sales and marketing meeting in your company? Is it 2 to 3 times a day or more likely 1 time a week or 1 time a month?
Posted Oct 30th 2009
Connecting with executives can be done through traditional networking or through social networking. For me, I ended up using both methods and saw incredibly fast results.
While doing my job search, I found a company that I was interested in. To start my search, I did what I've always done before…I looked at their website to see who had invested in the company. As I looked at there, I saw that I knew one of the investors. So, I wrote an e-mail, attached my CV, and asked the VC to please forward it to the CEO. 20 minutes later the VC connected me with the CEO and we are exchanging e-mails to setup a time to meet.
After I sent my initial e-mail to the VC, I continued to look at this company's website and saw that one of the founders and CTO was on twitter. I started “following” him. Also, I found something interesting that he had written and I tweeted (I hate this term) it. Two minutes after I sent out my tweet the CTO started "following" me and we exchanged some tweets one on one. The CTO knew nothing of my discussions with the CEO, but we were still communicating.
Because of the Franklin Club Boston (www.franklinclubboston.com) , friends, and business contacts, I have been introduced to many Boston based VC's and have built up a very strong network as a result. Now, social networking has opened up a whole new way to gain access to influential people within the high tech community. I do encourage everyone, if you have not already done so, to sign up for Twitter (www.twitter.com) and then download Tweetdeck (www.tweetdeck.com) to help you manage it.
Have a great day.
Sincerely,
Gene
Ps. Add twitter to your e-mail signature.
Gene Fay
Posted Oct 27th 2009
Though I am looking for a VP of Sales position, I've had some interesting discussions with a few CEO's about hiring a VP of Business Development. Some CEO's I have spoken with struggle to justify the expense of a hiring a full-time BD person. For them it usually comes down to opportunity cost. If they hire another sales person, they can measure success by increased sales or they could hire another engineer and see tangible results. But business development doesn't have the same short-term ROI. Investing in business development is a bet that partnership started today will create big leverage in the future. But the CEO must be willing to make the investment.
Jack Sweeney, CEO of Apparent Networks and someone who has had many of his companies acquired, always told me that part of his formula is to bring in a business development as early as possible. His rationale is that setting up an alliance and or OEM partnership smoothes the way to acquisition. This happens because both management teams get a chance to know each other through the process and also potential synergies are proven out during this stage. My favorite quote from Jack is, “I've never sold a company, but I have had them acquired.
There are a few ways to fill this position, besides hiring a full-time person but more on that next time...
The next Franklin Club meeting is on Monday, November 2nd at 7:00 PM at the Columbus Cafe, 535 Columbus Ave, Boston, MA.
Have a great day
Sincerely,
Gene
Ps. This past Sunday I ran the Marine Corps Marathon in 3:39 minutes, which is 12 minutes faster than my previous best time.
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Is B2B Sales 2.0 Exclusively Inside Sales?
In the B2B Sales 2.0 world does all selling have to happen over the phone. For the last year and a half I worked for a VC backed start up in the virtualization market. We worked with marketing to drive product downloads and then the inside sales would close the prospects. Sales 2.0 worked really well. But now that I have time to think about it, I wonder if we should have used a hybrid model (of both inside and outside sales people or inside sales people that travel some).
The reason I wonder about a hybrid model is because on the rare occasion when we did visit prospects we had an 80% close rate. If we met with more highly qualified propsects could we have closed more of them? Look forward to everyone's feedback.
Gene Fay
Gene_fay@hotmail.com
(978) 805-0818
Comments (6)
1. 
Sally Duby
President at Phone Works
Gene,
Great question. No Sales 2.0 isn't exclusively Inside Sales. There are many companies that have products and markets that can't be sold over the phone. Sales 2.0 is a foundation and underlying principles on how to sell to be more effective, efficient and productive. A lot of those principles do encompass the benefits Inside Sales brings, but it's not exclusive and field sales can certainly adopt many of the principles of Sales 2.0 to become more effective and productive as well. Check out www.sales20book.com. The founder of Phone Works wrote a book on Sales 2.0 and you will find more blogs etc on Sales 2.0.
2. 
Johnny Ward
Business Consultant & Strategist
Hi Gene,
To me, Sales 2.0 is about building a "following"...a "community" where prospects can get to know your company from an arms length, so when they are ready to engage in a "true sales process", you have built a relationship of credibility with them already. As for customers, 2.0 allows you to nurture your relationship not with the old techniques, i.e. Untimely phone calls, incessant emails and voicemails asking about "how are things going". Now our sales/marketing teams can provide valuable information through blogs, RSS feeds,....and sometimes fun and off-topic videos that put a "real person" touch on our connection with our market. With all of this said, Sales 2.0 can build that connection that helps obtain the in-person meeting with decision makers. I have done a lot of inside sales work, though my experience in closing some six figure deals, the in-person, "human-touch" moved the ball much faster. So, imo, whatever helps move the sales process along quickest is a necessity.
2.0 or no 2.0, we (sales professional) need to listen intently and ask "what do we need to do to win the business." If the perceived answer is "getting together", then that is what you do to win the deal.
3. 
Trish Bertuzzi
Inside Sales Expert, The Bridge Group, Inc.
Gene, Sales 2.0 means different things to different people and there is absolutely not a one size fits all model. If there was we would all implement it and ride the gravy train to success! I have seen so many companies try to mirror another's success and then fail because it just wasn't right for their solution or their buyers.
Sally mentions Anneke's book and it is a must read. One of the things that Anneke talks about in her book is the need to "pilot" different strategies. Each company has to find the sales and marketing formula that works for them and then execute it flawlessly.
We wrote this post on SaaS and the Evolution of Inside Saleshttp://tinyurl.com/yeznccw . The comments are great because they illustrate how companies are still struggling with the model.
Hybrid models are absolutely becoming more popular. Not every product can be sold over the phone to every prospect...no matter how much we wish it were so. Buyers still get to dictate how they want to buy and it is up to us as sellers to provide them with that choice. Hope this helps!
4. 
Christian Maurer
Sales Effectiveness Consultant, Trainer and Coach-- tuning up your Sales & Marketing engine for greater productivity
Gene,
Sale
If you look at Sales 2.0 from a technology point of view, Webex type applications are an intermediate solution between telephone and in person visit.
http://tinyurl.com/bn2gm8
One think that is sure is that you will have to find your own secret sauce by listening to your customer how they want to buy and by experimentation.
You can read more about mu thoughts on the subject here:
5. 
Ken Krogue
President and Co-Founder of InsideSales.com
Gene,
We have found that Inside Sales or Remote Sales is growing dramatically. In fact, a recent study we did with MIT and infoUSA shows that Inside Sales is growing at 7.5% a year while Outside Sales is growing at .5% a year.
The other interesting thing we are finding is that Outside Sales is converging with Inside Sales in the area of time spent selling remotely. 41% of the Outside Sales persons time was spent selling remotely right now.
That only makes sense with the economy and web-based conferencing tools cutting the need for travel. We are seeing more and more hybrid models coming about for the same reasons you have listed.
We have found that the average face-to-face sales call has a 2.5 times higher close rate that remotely, but remote sales reps can make 5-6 times more contacts and qualifications of leads into the sales process. We recommend using the hybrid model on larger sales deals.
I have also included my recent blog on What is Sales 2.0 if you are interested, I would love to hear your thoughts: http://bit.ly/1ishhI .
Also, let me know and I will send you a copy of the infoUSA study.
6. 
Katherine (Kate) Pollara
Business Development, West Educ. Group, Professional Development (formerly
