July 26, 2007
So the Response Point team blog asked the following question…
What’s the best way for us to let small businesses know about Response Point?
Sure, RP was on display at Symposium 2.0, the day before WPC. Yes, the announcements sound like RP will be shown at the Connections events in the fall. There are a few webcasts available now about RP.
But here’s the real answer, which I’m going to frame in the form of a picture…
I can tell you this…
When starting my own small business, after hiring a lawyer (step 1) and an accountant (step 2), you know what was the very next thing I did?
I immediately started looking at the communications options for our business. It was the most agonizing bit of work during our initial setup phase, bar none. 10x worse than the dreaded health insurance quest.
I don’t care who you are, or what you are doing…
If you are in business, you must have customers contacting you. And 9 times out of 10, customers want to talk to someone about their business over the phone. And the fact of the matter is that wrestling with phone systems, and phone companies, is a royal pain in the backside.
For all the yapping about e-mail, IM, Web 2.0, presence networks, and so on and whatever…
When there’s buckaroos involved, people want to hear your voice. End of story.
And here’s what I tell my customers when I talk to them about solutions…
This is what we use…and it’s one of the main reasons we were able to <enter target goal or achievement here>
And the fact of the matter is…
Customers ask my opinion for 2 reasons:
- They know I know what I’m talking about
- They know that I will tell them the truth of what I think
I tell customers about the strengths of an option. I also tell them about any weaknesses. And I do my best to help them find the solution best suited to build their business. Because…that’s the one and only reason they have for even talking to me in the first place.
So you want to know how to let small businesses know about Response Point?
Get us SBSCs using RP. Have an aggressive offer that will get it in our hands. Make the offer SBSC-only. Whatever.
But get us using it, and fast. More than any other type of Partner you have, we SBSCs, almost to a person, religiously recommend what we use.
The last time I checked Solution Finder (about 5 minutes ago), there were 11140 SBSCs worldwide, with 4702 of those in the U to the S to the A alone.
As I mentioned in an earlier post…
Give us what we need to help our customers make the best decision for their business, and the rest will follow.
And I can make this promise to the RP team…
If a Response Point system should just so happen to enter the Funcave? We’ll put both the tech.hand and the robot horde on it, and will assemble an overview and an opinion so fast it will make your head spin.
|| posted by chris under business, community, hardware, it pro, opinion, tech hand || comments (5) ||
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July 25, 2007
Forget that we’ve got an in-person speaker.
Forget that he’s flying in from NC.
Forget the giveaways.
Forget the socializing.
If you are within striking distance of Birmingham…
No, I take that back.
If you’re within striking distance of Alabama…
You should be at this month’s meeting of Alabama SMB.
And just for one simple fact…
Virtualization = Here To Stay
More than that really. Virtualization represents a sea change in the way servers and datacenters could and should be managed. And that goes for orgs of absolutely any size.
In fact, you might as well consider virtualization a mainstream area of tech. Because in a very very short time (think: blink of an eye), it absolutely will be. And if you ignore virtualization now, the task of catching up to the tech will just continue to loom larger and larger…
So do yourself, and your future career plans, a favor. Come join us on the evening of July 31st, while Mark digs in and lays bare the guts of virtualization for all to see.
Hope to see you there!
|| posted by chris under business, community, hardware, it pro, virtualization || comments (0) ||
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July 25, 2007
About a month ago (June 27th to be exact), at 8:38 in the a to the m on a Wednesday morning, I received the following via e-mail…
Congratulations! You’ve won the “If I Were a Toughbook Which One Would I Be?” contest. We will be sending you a Panasonic 42″ plasma TV.
Sheila, The Awesome Panasonic Lady (name changed)
You can imagine my surprise. Even better, you can imagine the barbaric yawp that filled our house at the news. And that was just Running Antelope’s hollering!
The contest mentioned above was a promotion that Panasonic ran at the CMP Solution Provider show in San Diego, in March earlier this year. I briefly gave the very briefest of brief mentions about it in a post about the show way back then.
Then, I got this sinking feeling that maybe this was a horrible joke. That Amy “Mastermind” Luby or Dave “Mr. October” Sobel were behind some kind of nefarious prank.
Lucky for me, it turned out to be the real deal.
And so today, again on a Wednesday, I got this via e-mail…
The following items have been shipped:
|
Items Ordered |
Product Description |
Quantity |
TH-42PX75U |
42′ PLASMA TELEVISION |
1 |
This was the first time I learned the model number, so I had to roll out and check me some specs. Then create a graphic for Running Antelope to visualize the difference in screen size…
And find a suitable pic, of course…
This will be a nice step up from the 30” Olevia LT30HV LCD that’s the primary set now.
Truth be told, I never expected all that much from the Olevia, but it’s performed like a champ. Now if I can just convince Running Antelope to let me put the Olevia at the office…
|| posted by chris under freebie, hardware, media, more cowbell, tech hand, thumbs up || comments (2) ||
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July 25, 2007
Found yet another quiz…
Which sci-fi crew would you best fit in with? (pics)
| You scored as Serenity (Firefly). You like to live your own way and don’t enjoy when anyone but a friend tries to tell you should do different. Now if only the Reavers would quit trying to skin you. |
As if there were any doubt about what that outcome would be…
|| posted by chris under freebie, timekiller || comments (0) ||
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July 25, 2007
For some people, too much is, well…too much.
I’m one of those people.
Running Antelope constantly gives me grief over my inability to order in a timely fashion at a restaurant. Invariably, I’m the last to choose, usually because I just can’t decide. Once I hit a certain threshold of options, my brain kinda goes Tilt!
It’s funny, but on major decisions, I can cut through a flurry of options like I’m wielding a +25 Katana of Asskicking…
- 30 year mortgage vs. 15? *snikt*
- Surgery vs. therapy? *snikt*
- Lorne Greene vs. Eddie Olmos? *snikt*
But ask me to pick an entree, and I’m like a deer in headlights.
I find that most IT customers are kinda the same way.
To a certain point, an inability to choose really means…
I don’t have the information I need to make a good decision
MBA 101 will tell you that data is the key for any good business decision. But where a lot of people screw up is assuming that means any or all data.
You need the right data, including the right amount of data, to make effective decisions. You need that in your own business. And your customers need the same thing with their business.
Here’s a good example of option overload. Ever feel like you’ve entered the Fourth Circle of Hell when spec’ing anything from The Company Which Shall Not Be Named AKA Starts with D, Rhymes with Hell?
I have. And I even know what the different options that I am clicking actually mean. Part of it’s because I get this sneaking feeling that I’m being screwed over by them. Once I catch their patently obvious bait-n-switch tactics, or their unerring ability to sandbag certain costs, my brain goes Tilt! Or, more specifically, No Way!
So before you release some super-dee-duper, gee-whiz brochure/press release/mailer/catalog/lunch-n-learn/whatever, jam packed with information about all the different things you can do, and all the different things you know, and also how awesome you are and are quite frankly the greatest thing to happen to this industry since the On/Off switch…
Think about taking it back a notch, Chachi. Give people a single idea to get their heads around, and they will. Meanwhile, you at least won’t sound like someone running a 3 Card Monty game, and you might just realize that the single greatest value you can deliver to your customers lies in your skill at giving them the ability to choose for themselves.
Make decisions easy for your customers, and the rest will follow.
|| posted by chris under business || comments (2) ||
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