The chart below was just put out by StorageNewsletter. It shows how far hard drive capacity has come since 1956. Having sold storage for most of my 18 year career this trend is pretty interesting. When I first joined EMC, in 1998 I remember our CTO telling me that a 1 TB was going to happen. We were selling 25GB and 50GB drives. I thought he was crazy, but he was correct. Next up a 5TB drive.
In
the last couple months, I’ve had several conversations with other IT
industry executives about the direction that sales is moving for their
businesses. Some of them think enterprise sales is dying, and they
haven’t yet shifted their resources to the inside sales model. Others
think there will always be room for enterprise sales folks, and there’s
no point to the inside sales team.
Why can’t we have both?
Consider why inside sales is all the rage right now: as the economy slowed and businesses tried to cut costs to keep up, a lot of sales departments shifted from enterprise to inside. At the same time, Solarwinds and LogMeIn went public, having used innovative marketing and inside sales tactics to get that far. If you haven’t read about the story of Solarwinds, take a look at their S1 filing; definitely worth a read.
With
those success stories out there, many VCs and businesses decided inside
sales was the way to go. “Sales 2.0”, they were calling it.
I’ve got a background in both – I managed an enterprise sales team at EMC and I’ve managed inside sales teams at vKernel and Nine Technology. The biggest problem from my perspective is inflexibility in applying sales techniques. A startup isn’t going to sell a multimillion dollar solution to a top 50 company over the phone, and a major enterprise isn’t going to sell a $200 solution to a small business in person. Everything’s got to be taken flexibly. Yes, these examples are extreme, but consider the $75K solution and the sales team that’s doubled down on either enterprise or inside sales.
If inside sales is “sales 2.0”, then put me firmly in the camp for “sales 3.0” – hybrid sales. Companies should develop teams that are ratio-based: 30% of the team is enterprise sales and 70% is inside sales, for one example. This allows for the flexibility needed to accommodate any and all opportunities. One company I worked for disregarded any deal I met with the customer to close. They weren’t important enough, somehow.
Sales 3.0 really isn’t a revolutionary concept. It’s just common sense. You can’t close every sale over the phone, and it’s not in your best interest to close every sale in person. Have a little flexibility.
Last week, the Nine Technology team gathered to have our 2012 kickoff meeting. I took some time in advance of the meeting to write out what I perceived to be the threats and opportunities to Nine Technology in the coming year, and I noticed something: almost 100% of the threats are outside our control.
It’s sort of freeing to realize that. It means that all we can do is capitalize on what’s in front of us and what’s available to us. Whatever threats may present themselves, we’ll respond to, but we can’t waste our resources trying to account for things outside our control, so we need to focus on what we can do. And that, for the immediate future, is to ramp up our partner recruitment.
We’ve had enormously successful partnerships with several trade organizations. Each of these organizations has hundreds or thousands of members, some of which sell online backup, some of which don’t. It’s a much better goal for us to target these businesses, something we can control, than it is for us to tilt at windmills.
On a similar note, I urge you and your business to focus on what you have within your control, and que sera sera for what’s outside your sphere of influence. Make some contingency plans, but don’t spend all of your time on it. Focus instead in growing your business where you can.
We’re
a week into the New Year, most of us are back at the office, and we’ve
dug out from the backlogs of emails we put off right before Christmas.
So now it’s time to really think about what habits we’re going to change
now that it’s 2012.
Here’s a suggestion: examine your data protection policies and firm them up a bit. If you’re not backing up, start. If you’re backing up once a week, make it twice. If you’re only keeping a local copy, add some redundancy with cloud backup.
Make it a resolution to beef up your data security and storage strategies for 2012. It doesn’t take too much effort – change the backup schedule, or add a destination, or download the program in the first place. Set it up once and forget about it. But do it now so you’re not caught someday without the database you’ve been working on.
I find it hard to believe that anybody out there hasn’t experienced data loss of some sort, but there’s a huge group of people who still don’t protect themselves. Once it’s gone, it’s gone, folks, so spend ten minutes right now configuring a backup. Ten bucks a month (a fraction of your cable bill) will buy you a whole heap of storage space with most vendors, so pick one you like and set it up.
Even after you’ve quit on your other New Year’s resolutions, let this one hang in there.
In the two years I’ve been with Nine Technology, I’ve had the privilege to work with channel partners all over the world. But my relationship with these businesses isn’t exclusively in regards to the Powered By Nine® solutions – I often work with them to explain how social media can help them drive sales.
Facebook and Twitter were taboo for many businesses when I started here, and now, they’re must-have facets of any successful company. Now that the expectation is set that you have to be on these platforms, it’s time to really show what their capabilities are. 2012 can be the year for your business to break from the pack, and social media is one key way you can do that.
Social media is not only acceptable in 2012, it’s required. If you’ve been dragging your feet on this, you’ve got to start today. Don’t let your competitors outflank you on this; commit to a steady stream of content in 2012.
This morning we announced that the software that operates the Powered By Nine® solutions was awarded a U.S. patent for the way it combines global, block-level deduplication and military-grade encryption. That patent and some other Nine Technology assets were then acquired by Imation, a global leader in data storage and protection. We wanted to get in touch with all of our partners and make sure that there was no confusion over what happens to your services in the coming weeks and months.
Although Imation now owns the intellectual property behind Powered By Nine®, Nine Technology isn't going anywhere. We're sticking around to keep offering you the best online backup on the market. We'll be here to help you promote your service, support your service, and expand your service when, led by Imation's scalable storage team, Powered By Nine® adds new features and keeps getting better.
Our CEO Tom Gelson and CTO Alex Stoev are going to be joining the Imation team to keep working on Powered By Nine®, so as announced a few weeks ago I'll be running the day-to-day operations here at Nine. Our marketing, support and sales teams are staying here with me, so if you ever need anything from us to help you with your service, let us know.
If you have any questions about the acquisition or about how Nine Technology will support you in the future, don't hesitate to ask.
Social media can’t fix “suck”.
By this, we mean that all the high-energy Twitter posts and LinkedIn groups in the world can’t make up for a crappy product. So that’s step one for 2012. You’ve got to have your house in order before you can try and sell it to somebody. Businesses have to be sure their product or service is as good as it can possibly be, because social media cuts both ways. If your product or service doesn’t cut it, those same customers that found you online won’t hesitate to tear you apart there, too.
In a recent conversation with a new partner, the question of “should I target the consumer, the SMB, or the enterprise” came up. Now, I know that the issue can be a bit touchy, but I’ll readily answer the question: the SMB is where you want to go.
It’s been two years since I began working at Nine Technology, and we’ve been touting the SMB solution for the entire time Powered By Nine® has been available. The short reason why: SMBs know the value of their data, and they’ll pay to have it protected. There’s almost no need to convince a small business owner that their information is valuable; compare that to the consumer, who often thinks himself invincible, or the enterprise, who isn’t yet ready to jump into the cloud.
There’s not enough redundancy in a SMB’s architecture to protect against data loss absent a dedicated backup solution. Think of a small marketing or PR firm with several accounts and lots of creative work. One server goes down and *poof*, all that material is lost. And SMBs like our hypothetical marketing firm generally don’t have legacy tape-based systems, so there’s no replacement to make, just the configuration of a new system.
My suggestion is always to think of the SMB. There’s a real need for a solid online backup and recovery solution in that segment of the market, and your managed services business can fill that need.
Last week I had the privilege of sitting on a panel for a discussion of entrepreneurship at Northeastern, moderated by professor Tucker Marion. I was joined by three accomplished and distinguished entrepreneurs, Rik Tamm-Daniels of Attivio, Steve Davis of CXO Advisory Group, Puni Shah of Zazu. On a Husky note, though, all four of us have connections to the Northeastern business community.
During the panel, we discussed several topics that are dear to the hearts of entrepreneurs. We began with a conversation on the importance of networking. We made it clear to the students that network-building begins now, not when they graduate. Venture capitalists are only going to meet with people who have been recommended to them, and you can only garner these recommendations by talking to people. I’ve heard that the Venture Café in Cambridge is an excellent place to make these connections, with free beer and lots of folks around every Thursday.
From there, we jumped to the question of raising capital. There are three main ways that you can get by as a startup: bootstrap it, use your own cash, or raise money. And getting that money can come with strings attached – venture capitalists and angel investors may want to exert varying degrees of oversight on a project. Many startups will go through at least two cycles of fundraising before succeeding.
Finally, we discussed cloud computing and its effect on the startup market. It’s lowered the barriers to entry in several ways. That’s great, because it allows new companies to conserve money by using these tools, but it’s a double-edged sword, since anybody can start a company the same way.
My thanks to the students who attended the session, and if there’s anything I can do to help, don’t hesitate to ask.
One of the biggest pitfalls that a business can fall into is the idea that a simple USB stick suffices as a backup procedure. Don’t get me wrong – I think USB sticks are a great technology, and they absolutely serve a purpose in the information age. But relying on them to protect sensitive data is a major error.
I recently came across an article that revealed that in the past year alone, the number of USB sticks that were left at dry cleaners jumped 400%. Consider how dangerous that is. If the device isn’t discovered before the clothes are treated, the device will be destroyed. And even if it is discovered, the data may have been compromised. Healthcare providers and financial services managers are under strict regulations that might require them to divulge if they were ever not in possession of customer information. Can you imagine saying to your clients, “sorry about that, your data might have been compromised cause I forgot to check my pockets”?
Online backup can eliminate that risk by taking the human factor out of it. We’re all occasionally absent-minded; it’s just the way humanity works. But protecting against humanity is part of the appeal of an online backup solution. Send the data online where it is securely stored, and you won’t have to worry about whether you’ve left that missing stick in a briefcase, a hotel room, or a shirt at the dry cleaners.
USB sticks definitely serve a purpose, but they can’t be counted on as a primary means of data protection. But as long as you’re being cautious about it, check your pockets when you go to the dry cleaner.
I just wanted to put up a quick note thanking everybody who attended my panel discussion at MSPWorld. We had an excellent conversation on what managed service businesses can do to launch and sustain a social media strategy, and I hope that all of the attendees got some valuable tips from the session.
Some of our takeaways:
My thanks also go to Arjun Moorthy from Hubspot and Jamshaid Hashmi from WSI Digital Marketing, my copanelists at the session. Feel free to ping them on Twitter if you want some quick advice on what we talked about. I’m also available on Twitter if you have any questions.
I've been checking out a new social-monitoring tool lately: SproutSocial is a service (paid, but much more for the money than the other services I've seen) that keeps track of people talking about your brand and breaks the information down by demographic.
Here's a quick look at the way SproutSocial works , and they offer a free trial for you to kick the tires with. Pretty compelling stuff.
I’m jazzed about social media and inbound marketing in large part because of how successfully we’ve used it here at Nine Technology. But it wasn’t until I made the change in our marketing strategy from speeds and feeds (slang for outbound marketing ) to the social approach.
But I’ve learned that entertainment and education are way more important than sales. A prospect visiting a website is entirely different from a prospect calling a salesperson. And that’s all you need to know, really – if I want to be sold on something, I’ll call someone and have them sell me on something. When I’m visiting your website, I want to learn and I want to laugh, but I don’t want to be sold.
We’ve developed a marketing test for any new material that goes on our website. If it’s not interesting or educational in at least some way, it doesn’t go up. It’s as simple as that.
For example, when we started using Imation’s RDX drives, we decided it was easier to create a video about how impressive the solution is as a cloud-seeding device than it was to generate blog posts and sales literature about it. And what’s more, the videos are amusing and hold your attention longer than any data sheet.
So as you expand your use of social media to promote your business and services, be sure not to be selling people – that’s not what they want.
In our conversations with potential investors, I frequently get the question, “what is Nine Technology’s target market?” I have to distinguish – our end-users are the SMBs with no IT staff or only one person running the IT operations. But our customers are the MSPs that serve those businesses. That’s who we direct all of our marketing, sales, and design efforts toward. Of course, that prompts a follow-up question: “why not just sell directly to SMBs?”
When I joined Nine Technology almost two years ago, I recognized we were going to have to be very creative about how we spent our marketing budget if we wanted to compete in what is an increasingly crowded marketplace. We’re going up against the likes of Carbonite ($66 million plus a whole bunch of IPO cash) and Mozy (backed by EMC, that billion-dollar behemoth). It was pretty clear that going straight after the SMBs and home users was a losing proposition. But focusing on channel partners, and forging alliances with major channel trade organizations, like MSPAlliance, NASBA and ACRBO gave us an opportunity to make Powered By Nine® known, and that’s where we’ve put our energies.
MSPs are the trusted advisors for their SMB clients, and we put our trust in them as well. These are the companies that get to know you as a customer and understand what you need. The Mozys and Carbonites of the world don’t know customer 1 from customer 1,000,001, and that’s not the way it should be. If service is what distinguishes the best businesses from the also-rans, we’re proud to work exclusively with those service providers.
Through this channel, Powered By Nine® has quickly become a favorite backup utility for SMBs. But those MSPs are the backbone of our business, and we have a close relationship with all of our partners. They keep up apprised of what their customers want and need in an online backup solution, and we help them promote it.
Below is one of my corporate blogs from Nine Technology www.ninetechnology.com . Though this blog is specif to how Managed Service Providers can use social media, I am sharing it because it could be helpful to anyone who wants to use social media to promote their business.
…great writers steal. That’s the saying, anyway. But I maintain that it applies only to fiction, and it drives me nuts when I see it happen on business websites. I caught an article from Charles Weaver at MSPAlliance last week – he said he’d recently heard from some group members about their website content being swiped and repurposed by other (clearly disreputable) companies. One of them went so far as to snatch the MSPAlliance logo.
Creating a compelling website for your business is not an easy task. We’ve been fine-tuning and overhauling ours for over a year now, and we’ll never stop making changes and keeping the content fresh. So when somebody comes in and just grabs the text we’ve agonized over, it’s aggravating.
There are steps you can take to help separate your site from the pack without borrowing/stealing content. Step one is to stop thinking of your website as a static marketing tool; your website is the first impression many of your customers will have of your business, and that needs to be changing constantly. Tend a website as you would tend a garden.
From there, diversifying the content is key. Grab a Flip cam (now that they’re discontinued, they’re going to get cheaper), grab a customer, film a short interview about how your services have worked for them, and presto: instant solid content. Blogs can be long articles talking about industry trends or short blurbs about an interesting link or video you’ve seen. But be sure you’re human – not everything you talk about every day is computers, so throw in a post or two from time to time about the company picnic you had, or the volunteer work you do, or the cigar club you’ve joined. Keep it interesting.
Carceron , a major Atlanta-based MSP, does a great job with this. Their LinkedIn presence, too, is outstanding: they're among the most-quoted people in their area when it comes to IT advice. Not only is this excellent content, you can’t steal it – you’d look silly doing so. Strange enough, excellent websites are their own security devices.
I’ve been here at Nine Technology for going on two years now, and it’s been a fascinating ride so far. One of the differences between how Nine Technology operates and the ways that my previous companies have operated is in the use of social media as the primary marketing method. Unlike the VC-backed businesses I’ve worked with in the past, Nine Technology is angel-funded, so we’ve chosen to be judicious about how we use each dollar, particularly when it comes to marketing.
Instead of purchasing email lists, we created Twitter accounts . Instead of contracting with analyst firms to outsource white-paper creation, we blog heavily. Instead of blasting our slogan through traditional advertising, we designed our site to bring people in.
It’s a difference of tens of thousands of dollars in costs, and untold reputation points. By focusing on that inbound approach, Nine Technology’s partners and prospects know that we work tirelessly with and for them to ensure they have everything they need to promote their Powered By Nine® service.
The reseller channel, too, provided a challenge in making our message known. Powered By Nine® was built for resellers, but we had to tailor our marketing message to them as well. We recognized that many of these MSPs are working with major social media outlets to find potential customers, so we set out to connect with them there. After weeks of blogging, we began sharing our insight on LinkedIn.
But text alone doesn’t cut it. In this age of Youtube, Hulu and Netflix, it’s become increasingly clear that video is king. So we started Nine Technology TV, and we’ve conducted interviews with industry experts, channel organization leaders, and successful partners. We’ve filmed our on-site appearances at trade shows and summits. Heck, our most recent videos have tried to inject some humor into the proceedings by poking some fun at all the ways things can go wrong if you don’t back up your files.
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn…we’re using every tool at our disposal to connect with our partners and prospects. We’ve established a rule-of-thumb: for every seven times you answer a question, you can post something of your own. With this in mind, we’ve built a good deal of goodwill by not just selling our own stuff. In turn, those folks whom we’ve helped by answering a question or two are more willing to listen to us when we explain why Powered By Nine® is the best out there. It’s a give-and-take system.
In the coming year, we expect to have a lot of major developments to the Powered By Nine® solutions and to Nine Technology, and we’re glad that we’ve taken the path we did since I began. We’re a trusted online backup vendor, and it’s our commitment to one-on-one conversations that have made us that way.
By now, most of you have heard about the group of Army reservists that launched a Youtube video that in turn forced several major airlines to change their baggage fee policies as they pertain to active servicemen. The video documented the nearly $3,000 in excess baggage fees racked up by a group of servicemen on their way to a base in Louisiana.
The video was shot Tuesday morning and the policies were changed by early Thursday. That’s how fast social media can effect change.
At this point, there’s really no question of “should I” when it comes to social media. It’s “how” and “where”.
MSPs and data center managers tell me from time to time their customers don’t use social media, or that they don’t know how to use it. But social media isn’t going anywhere, so MSPs and data center managers need to get creative with how they approach this method of connecting with customers and prospects. Blogs, videos, tweets…there’s a style for every type of business, so pleading “I don’t know how” isn’t valid anymore. It would be like not having a website.
We can help – over the past year, we’ve offered some tips and tricks to make it easier for channel partners to get their social media strategy in gear. But much of the responsibility lies with you. If you have questions, ask, but don’t say, “I don’t need to”, because you do.
This past weekend, I took part in the Memorial Day Marathon out in Lenox, Mass., near where the Boston Symphony Orchestra makes its summer home. It was my thirtieth marathon, and brings me to the sixty percent mark of my goal of 50 marathons.
I ran a 30th-place time of 4:06, but somewhere around the 20-mile mark, I began to wonder if 50 marathons was really doable. I wished I'd set a goal of only 30! But it got a little easier after that point, and I'm glad I've still got 20 marathons to go.
Gene and Tom rocking out their Nine Technology t-shirts in Providence before the Providence Marathon and Half-Marathon.
In the browser wars, Google is very quickly falling behind. Not in speed or features, but in ethics. I read in the Wall Street Journal today that Apple is adding a do-not-track option to the latest incarnation of their browser, Safari. That leaves Google’s Chrome as the last major browser not to offer a privacy setting for users.
What happened to “don’t be evil” and “do no harm”?
I love Google Chrome, I rely on it pretty heavily every day. But when did a company that’s so accustomed to leading become a follower? Sergey and Larry – if you joined the do-not-call list, you’ve got no reason not to install a similar feature on your browser. Is the marketing money from tracking your users worth the loss in credibility?
It’s a shame to see such a respected company blow it like this. Google really should let its users decide if tracking is okay, and right now, Google’s message is “we don’t trust you”.
I caught a Larry Walsh article recently that focused on the problems between big vendors and the SMB market. Walsh talked about how Cisco and HP are making new attempts to engage SMBs and develop channel programs. The article reminded me of my time at EMC, where I worked for nearly eight years over two separate stints.
After EMC, I can say with firsthand experience that big companies have a very hard time getting their sales teams to focus on SMB. When they started, they did what most vendors do: they expanded their solution set to include products that interest the SMB market, but they had their traditional sales team push them. They’ve got two calls they can make – a $10,000 deal or a $1 million deal. Both take about the same amount of time to complete. Which is going to get the focus? EMC, Cisco and HP have gotten better of late at working on the SMB market, but I suspect it’s the M in SMB that gets most of the attention.
The online backup market is particularly susceptible to this problem. HP, for example, launched an online backup program…and killed it only a few months later. They’re making a second try, but by partnering with a much smaller company. EMC has Mozy, Dell has DataSafe, etc. But almost nobody is focusing on that SMB market. It’s a bloodbath for the consumer business, but there are only a couple of providers tailoring their products for the SMB.
When Nine Technology launched, we found three reasons that let us go heavily after the SMB market:
Big vendors may see the gap where SMBs live, but changing the nature of a sales team is much easier said than done. Nine Technology has a history of working within the SMB market, and our laser focus on enabling these important businesses to succeed is our chief mission.
Posted January 24, 2010
Our next Franklin Club www.franklinclubboston.com meeting will be Tuesday, February 8th. We’ll meet on the second day of the week because of a prior commitment I have at Northeastern on Monday. Please also note that instead of our usual haunt, the Columbus Café, we’ll be meeting at Parish Café, 493 Massachusetts Ave. The change in venue is just for variety’s sake, the Columbus Café has been great to us, but a change of scenery will be good.
I’m also working on the agenda for the Franklin Club meeting for Monday, March 7th, which will be at the Bingham McCutchen law firm offices on Federal St. We’ll chat about how to connect with established recruiting firms in New England, with panelists from Daversa Partners, Matlin Partners, Heidrick and Struggles Partners, Polachi and Associates, and perhaps a few others. Those firms represent 90% of the executive management searches by VC-backed companies in New England.
Some topics for the evening:
· What do retained search firms do?
· What are the key characteristics they look for in a candidate?
· How should you prepare yourself to meet with a VC?
· What’s the process for being hired by an early-stage company?
· Do you need an MBA for a senior management position? Is it worth it?
Both sides of the operation should attend this informative panel discussion. That is to say, potential early-stage company employees and CEOs of those early-stage companies.
Over the next few weeks I will send out the logistics for this meeting.
Posted December 6, 2010
I spent a portion of last week interviewing Northeastern University interns for the spring semester. I’ve been excited about bringing on a couple of NU interns (called co-ops) – NU is where I went for both my undergraduate and graduate degrees. Throughout my career, companies I’ve worked at have used interns as a cost-effective way to build a team and free up staff to focus on big projects.
Traditionally, interns get the grunt work. But in a digital age, where a surprising percentage of Twitter’s servers are dedicated to Justin Bieber, interns can do more than data entry. These digital natives have the social media instincts that people twice their age don’t.
When I talk to managers of MSPs, one thing I hear frequently is that they like the idea of social media outreach to find new customers, but they don’t have the time. Creating blog posts and pushing them on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook…it all makes sense, but it also takes a lot of time. My answer? Interns.
College interns could work for an MSP for three to six months and churn out content, pushing it through the channels they know and use already. Brand awareness can get a huge boost through something like this. Take a look at the NU co-op program: they’ve got it down to a science with how the system works.
Have a great Thanksgiving! My family and I will be making the trek down to New York for the parade, see if you can spot us on TV.
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Gene Fay
Posted September 21, 2010
Husky Help
As a two-time graduate of Northeastern (Business School ’92, MBA ’05), I’m more than happy to give back to the Husky community when afforded the chance. And recently, I was given just such an opportunity. Next week, I’ll be speaking to more than 300 undergraduate and graduate students at the business school.
The professor gave me some simple guidelines for my hour-long chat, and I thought I’d ask for some tips on what to speak about. I’ve given some thought to talking about how social media levels the playing field for smaller companies, or about what I’ve learned since my formal education ended 18 years ago. Or, perhaps, I could chat about the differences in working for a small, early-stage company as opposed to working for a large multi-national corporation.
I’ve only got that one hour, though, so I definitely need to be focused. What would you have found helpful to hear if you were in those shoes? Send me an e-mail gene_fay@hotmail.com
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.
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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, 2009Gene 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
1. 
President at Phone Works
2. 
Business Consultant & Strategist
3. 
Inside Sales Expert, The Bridge Group, Inc.
4. 
Sales Effectiveness Consultant, Trainer and Coach-- tuning up your Sales & Marketing engine for greater productivity
5. 
President and Co-Founder of InsideSales.com
6. 
Business Development, West Educ. Group, Professional Development (formerly
