How about being nice for a change?

Recently I've had several conversations with prospects and customers who have had experiences with technology sales people who have been pushy and disrespectful. I don't understand this behavior and it makes customers leery of working with sales people. What makes me even more concerned is when I talk with someone who has been pushed into a decision and it is hurting their companies operation. No wonder the biggest factor in finding new clients for me is earning their trust. So many people have been pushed into the wrong decision or just plain aggravated by sales people that they don't trust any of them. In some cases I've met customers who will only trust the technical staff and refuse to talk with account managers. Who can blame them. The problem with only trusting technical staff is that they are not usually kept up to date with the latest pricing and special offers from manufacturers. The other problem is that technical staff get busy on priority technical problems and have a hard time being timely and responsive as a result. The good news is that there are a lot of great experienced and knowledgeable sales/account managers out there. These individuals are excited to help you out and keep your best interests in mind. A successful sales/account manager is confident in their solutions and they are OK with a "no". They know that helping you achieve your goals, even if they don't make a sale, will benefit you and them in the long run. They know that when they help customers find the right fit, the result will be warm referrals. I keep asking myself "what can I do differently to allow prospects to feel OK trusting me?". I think it comes down to relieving pressure. I always strive to eliminate this right away in my initial conversations with new prospects. I think this starts with telling them that we may or may not be a fit and that it is OK to say NO. Wow, what a revelation. I'm not a perfect fit for everyone. Right, but the great news is that I can help most people out because of the 20 years worth of connections that I have in the Minneapolis business community. Lets face it, I'd rather be out learning about someones business needs at a coffee shop than stuck in the office cold calling. Here is a list of what to consider when finding a technology vendor:

1. They have to be nice and respectful


2. Find someone who is solution, not product oriented


3. Find someone with at least 5 years of experience


4. Talk to more than one vendor before you decide who to go with


5. Find someone who asks lots of questions and can repeat back to you what your concerns and objectives are for your company


6. Find someone who is authentic and gives a good gut check

Thanks for reading my blog!

Product life cycle managment....does it matter?

I've been meeting with many of my customers on this topic recently. Life cycle planning is one of those best practices that large companies have been doing for years. They reap the benefits of a constantly refreshed infrastructure. Again, the small and medium businesses (SMB) has had a difficult time taking hold of this concept because of the perceived costs associated with it. I understand this challenge.

The general rule for a computer is that you can get 3-4 years of usage and then it will be time to replace it. We all know companies that make their equipment last a lot longer. I wonder if those companies save money? My guess is that some companies are successful operating this way. I think this is the case because they don't put a lot of stress on their networks. I've seen this with some manufacturing companies. They might have an old Unix based software product which runs their entire organization. They may have no real need for a computers other than word processing and email. In some of these cases a small company can hold out for a long time and run old hardware because their software does not need to be up to date. If that is the case for you great!


The rest of us have a challenge on our hands. How do we make a small IT budget stretch and still have enough to keep updated hardware. If you've read any of my earlier blogs you know that I think it all starts with having a plan. I think your IT provider should provide you with a plan. Part of the plan should cover applications will serve your companies needs. The plan should also talk about hardware hardware life cycle management, and provide what I call an IT road map. Lets just say that your software and systems have to serve your business process. The systems and software that serve your business are dynamic and constantly changing. Your IT road map and life cycle plan should take this into account.


Recently, I've been able to help companies free up cash to purchase new equipment to run their business by renegotiating contracts for services that have monthly recurring costs that are too high. These costs are often forgotten about when customers focus on the challenges of running the day to day business. This is where having a well rounded provider can be helpful. Over the long run companies can realize savings by, knowing what their IT assets are and managing them as they age. The savings can be realized by not having to pay $100-$150 per hour to a tech firm to fix an aging broken infrastructure. Employees are happier and get more work done when their computer is working well and when they have great tools to do their work.


There is no need to make things too complicated. There is affordable software (and free versions) which will automatically search out your network and provide a report of everything you have. A good provider should be able to recommend a standard hardware and software configuration that is affordable and functional. It's a good idea to stick with one manufacturer of Hardware for PC's and Servers to keep the support simplified. Make sure you get a 3 year warranty on all your business machines. If you do that your warranty will match the life of the machine. If you want to you can extend the warranty after the 3 years is up with some manufacturers. These are just a couple of basic Ideas to get started. Many businesses I meet with can get a handle on their infrastructure by just making these basic moves. Its really just makes sense if you think about it.


I hope you find something here that is interesting and helpful. I'd love to hear any comments.


Thanks for reading my blog.

How about the combo platter?

This last week I have assisted several customers by combining their services and helping them save money. On the surface, combining services and saving money sounds great! What is under the surface? What am I missing? I am happy to report that we have all the bases covered. I spend most of my time working with customers on their internal IT and Telephony infrastructure. Lately, I have been working with vendors who have made their focus helping the Small and Medium Business (SMB) market. SMB companies are an interesting group. They have all of the needs of a larger business but are unable to afford to buy the large expensive solutions which mid-sized companies can afford to purchase. Since these companies often are working with a smaller budget, they sometimes end up choosing the cheaper solution. This makes sense when a business is just beginning. When I was starting my business, we used Yahoo calendaring to coordinate the activities of our engineers and staff. Compromising functionality for price made sense until we were more established. At some point, we had to purchase our own server and run Microsoft Exchange which increased our functionality and efficiency. As a business flourishes, there is a line you cross where cheap just does not make sense any more. Even so, small growing business are starved for cash so what is a person to do?


This is where combining solutions on to one platform can really make sense. Cbeyond is a national voice and data services provider. Cebyond came to Minneapolis in April of 2008 and delivers Voice/Data bandwidth, DNS hosting, Web hosting, Managed Antivirus, Hosted Exchange, and many other services. Also, there are products like Microsoft Small Business Server which allows companies to take most of these same services and put them on a server and on site at the office. Both of the solutions I've mentioned have sizing and pricing designed with the SMB budget in mind. These products help businesses simplify the technology platform while improving the performance of the combined products. Now this makes sense! The key to successfully implementing these types of solutions is finding an organization which will guide you to the right products for your business needs. I believe it is difficult to go directly to the service provider or manufacturer and expect them to be unbiased. I am a big fan of working with a channel partner (reseller who also reps other products). This is because I have been working as a channel partner for the past 15 years and I agree with this philosophy. Manufacturers and service providers must sell to the partner who then sells to the customers. Channel partners have the best interest of the customer in mind. They look for vendors who offer high reliability and excellent product support after the sale. They must carefully select the best vendors to suit their customers. If they choose poorly they could have unhappy customers.


So in the final analysis. I am confident there are excellent products and services available today which allow companies to combine functionality on one platform. This can be done while increasing overall value and functionality to the end user. I think the best way to find these solutions is through a value added reseller who has multiple products and services to pick from for the clients they serve. This gives the client the best opportunity to purchase the right solution for their company.


Thanks and have a great week!

Ask for what you want!

I'm finding an interesting phenomenon. When I want something, and I ask for it, I can usually get it. I've worked with a lot of clients this week on contract negotiations. Sometimes they are negotiating for better terms with my company. Sometimes I'm helping them get better terms with another vendor. I find that it's easy to make assumptions about what is possible and what is not. The result is that when we make an assumption about what can or cannot be done we fail to ask the question. We fail to ask for what we want. A good technology partner should be an advocate for you. They should find a vendor who is flexible in their terms. This week I had a customer who was in a lot of pain and wanted to switch vendors. I was helping them get a new contract and vendor in place. The catch was that they were going to be consolidating some of their locations within the next year. The best pricing was on a 3 year term. I asked the vendor for 3 year pricing and the ability to consolidate some locations together in the next year. This would mean that the customer would be reducing the amount of services they would be paying for once the move occured. Guess what? The vendor agreed to our terms! I believe this is because they know that this will give them a long term customer. They know that they will benefit over the long term. If we would not have asked for this we might have been stuck in a contract that did not serve the best interests of the client. I was truly surprised and encouraged that this large publicly traded company was willing to be so flexible and helpful in the contract negotiation. It just goes to show what can happen when you ask for what you want!

Whats up with VoIP?

Something has been bugging me lately. I can't understand why technology sales organizations continue to try and sell a product instead of a solution. In the past, it was all about why our "features and benefits" were better than the competition. Today, the market has changed and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is driving the market. This is a whole new breed of phone system vendor. With so many products available for customers, it's safe to say, 8 out of 10 products chosen will provide the appropriate features and benefits.


So what next? How about looking at the whole technology plan and where this piece fits in. Even with the whole industry heading down the path, the data vendors chose from the beginning of open standards and cross compatibility of software and hardware products. The phone system vendors still try and sell by putting out negative information about the competition. I don't think the negative information is helpful to anyone, especially the customer. It is a waste of time and energy. Recently, many of the major phone system vendors have been feasting on the demise of Nortel. They have been creating promotions to go after the suffering giant. I get it! I'm sure lots of systems will be sold and lots of people will get rich on this sort of promotion. I just won't embrace it or sell to my customers by focusing on the weaknesses of my competition. I would rather have someone purchase from me because they trust me and believe I understand their business needs and I have a solution which fits.


The interesting part is the numbers are starting to show the customers agree. The "other" category of phone system vendors, which is largely made up of open standards based systems, is slowly eroding the market share of the big boys like Avaya and NEC. The reason for this, is manufacturers like Fonality and Switchvox are building open standards based systems, which allow you to have a migration path which is flexible. You can choose to have a phone system that is hosted and owned by a third party provider today and tomorrow you can take the same phones and use them on a phone system which runs on an HP or Dell server. This phone system on the server will use the same switching equipment and routers that the hosted solutions use.

Who would ever think it is okay to make a full PC replacement mandatory with a server replacement today? Who would find it acceptable to force customers with an HP server to use only HP laptops and PC's? The answer is, no one. It does not make sense. If you talk with a traditional phone system sales representative today, they are going to try to sell you a phone system with phones which "work best" only on their system. They are going to say their system is "open" but in reality it only works best with their phones.


The great news is, customers' dollars are what rule the ultimate outcome. Customer's prefer having flexible upgrade options and mulitple migration paths when choosing their phone systems. I'm not saying some products are not better than others. I'm not even saying buying a proprietary system is not right for some companies, without a doubt it is. The only way to make sense of it is when you take time to evaluate the risk verses reward of purchasing an open system versus a proprietary system. What direction is the vendor going with their product? What examples and cost comparisons can they provide to show what it costs to open up their system? What are the risks of purchasing a more open system in terms of support and future product releases? Depending on how you end up feeling about the answers to these questions you may or may not be on the right track.


Thanks for reading my blog.

The value of having a plan

Lately, I have had the good fortune to be working with a number of clients on their Technology Road maps. I guess in my experiences, over the past few years I've run into all sorts of prospects. Some who wanted to pay for a plan. Some who wanted to get a plan from a whole bunch of different vendors for free and then pick the best plan. I think the plan you pay for is generally the best, but to each their own. I am just here to applaud the idea of taking the time to think out the future of your organization and creating a technology plan. In these uncertain financial times a plan is even more crucial. A lot of companies are wanting to stretch their dollars further and run their technology longer. I understand this. I know what it is like to have limited dollars as an SMB(Small and Medium Business) owner and make this decision. Do I buy a new server or pay for my health care this month? No brainer, let's see if we can milk another month out of that server? It's kind of like the tortoise and the hare. If you consistently, slowly work your technology plan you can win in the end by having spent your dollars strategically in the best places determined by you and your technology partner. If the server does crash, you can know who your vendor is, what product you need to buy, how much the hardware, software and installation will cost. When your business is down, you don't want the added pressure of having to shop....likely you won't have time and you will pay too much. So my advice for these uncertain times is to take time to plan. Hope for the best work and work your plan.


Thanks and have a great week!

What's your price?

How does a company find the best value when shopping for technology solutions? Over the last few years I've been fortunate enough to be involved in some large scale initiatives for some of my customers where we've been able greatly improve redundancy and reduce their risk. I've also been witness to some organizations that have chosen to take more risk than they should and sadly they have had to pay a major price to recover. Whenever I'm working with someone, my biggest challenge is to get an accurate understanding what their risk tolerance is and how we can match it to their budget. My observation is that the solution that works best is the one that fits the customer's business requirements and takes short and long term business requirements into account. It's good to look out a ways and try and figure how long you will have this technology. That seems to be the hardest thing for SMB (Small and Medium Business) decision makers to hone in on. It's hard to look out beyond 3-5 years. Sometimes the cost to eliminate the appropriate amount of risk is simply too high. In that case there are reasonable compromises to make. In all cases it' my job to help my customers understand the impact of making a compromise. It seems when there is good honest communication up front, there is a foundation for a high quality buyer seller relationship. So if you are hunting for a technology solution for your business here are a couple of things to keep in mind :

1. Shop for a provider you can trust to give unbiased evaluation of different technologies.

2. Find someone who will present you with options and flexible pricing.

3. Take the time to look down the road and think honestly where your business will be in the 3-5 years.

4. Evaluate how you will balance the risk you are taking with technology with the other risks you must take in your business.

5. Make a road map for action and regular evaluation.

It's hard to take the time to make sound decisions that you feel good about when you are running a business. There are so many decisions to make that have an element of risk associated with them. Developing an IT road map and carefully choosing a technology partner is just one of many challenges facing SMB decision makers today. I hope the ideas I've offered on how to get that done are helpful.

Thanks for taking time to read my blog.