Sage Software - Insights 2007 - Orlando

What a great show for us at Sage Insights this year! Thanks to everyone for stopping by our booth!

It was a great week for us. Swiftpage took home 3 awards. The “2007 Preferred Vendor 4-Star Club Member”, “2007 Preferred Vendor Top Rookie” (both from Sage), and the “2007 Killer App Award” (from the CRM alliance).

We the debuted our new product; Snapshot; our sales force automation tool integrated directly into ACT!.

We received tremendous feedback about the NEW Snapshot sales tool and the incorporation of the Swiftpage Call List into ACT!. Thank you to all of the Sage Partners and Resellers who have made Swiftpage what it is today.

And Congratulations to Janice Holt from Covenant Information Services for winning the Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC) we gave away!

The new ACT! plug-in with Snapshot will be available soon!

What’s Your Phone Style?

Have you ever noticed how a phone conversation can change simply by your posture or environment? I caught myself walking around the office while I was on the phone yesterday and thought about why and more striking, when I do this.

Three examples:

When I’m on business development calls, brainstorming or pitching ideas, I’m standing or walking around. It opens my mind for creativity, helps me listen and react on the fly.

When presenting, speaking, or hosting a demonstration over the phone I find myself sitting forward with my elbows on my knees. It makes me focus and stay on task.

When I’m taking personal calls my feet are on the desk, I’m leaned back in my chair and often watching the jets take off from the municipal airport I can see outside my window.

How do you think this type of positioning changes my tone? Is my tone over the phone more creative and welcoming of ideas when I stand, more commanding and serious when I sit and lean forward or more relaxed and comfortable when I lean back? You know this makes an impact on the other end of the line and can lead the conversation in one way or another.

What are some of your “on the phone” characteristics? Say a big client just rings in and catches you off guard, what does your body do to prepare you for what they might say?

Remarkable

Is your product/service remarkable?  Is it worth my breath as a user to remark upon it?  Don’t know?  Seth Godin tells us just that - How to be Remarkable.

Transparency and Work Flow

I first want to apologize for the light posting as of late.  I went on vacation last week and officially unplugged from the digital world, besides an email teaser here and there, and it was quite liberating.

We in the Swiftpage marketing department have been using a wiki and forum, both provided by wikidot, to establish an open platform for out of the box ideas across all of our channels as well as company departments.  It has helped us tremendously with creativity as I am often sparked with a seemingly brilliant idea in the wee hours of the morning and can simply post on the forum rather than send an email to everyone and possibly leave someone out.  The forum model works well for us as it provides a transparent view into each person’s thoughts and how they were augmented by thoughts prior.  And the wiki is a good bulletin board of sorts for industry trends and link sharing.

I have used Basecamp in the past and it worked well for file sharing and project collaboration.  But for strictly brainstorming in an open environment, the forum has been great for our team.  What types of work flow platforms do you use?

Customer Service

You surely have a customer service line or email address, but do you know what is being said? Everyone that wants to be at Swiftpage has the support/customer service emails forwarded to them, executives included. The most important piece of market research comes directly from your customer’s/potential customer’s mouth.

We have made changes to our systems simply by one of our customer’s speaking up, and us listening. By making ourselves available to any feedback, we are shaping our services based on what people actually want, not what we think they actually want.

Step back and listen - you will learn more than you ever thought you might.

Competition Monitoring

Have you entered a market that is more competitive than you expected or are some new major players entering the marketplace? Not to worry, there is a lot you can learn from your competition. But how can you do it without being sneaky and calling them on the phone pretending to be interested…

Sign up for their newsletter(s) - What better to understand your competition than to see what they are talking about with their customers.

Sic Google on ‘em - Put a Google Alert on the company name and their service/product offering. Every time they are mentioned on any sites that Google deems newsworthy, you will receive a notice via email.

Talk to your partnerships - If you ask enough times, you will certainly find someone that is working with your competition. Take them out to lunch and try to understand their likes and dislikes of working with that particular company.

Let the bloggers tell you - These will certainly be candid opinions and may be your best resource. Go to Technorati and do a search on the company name, product/service offerings, or the management team.

The Interview Process

I was advising a young friend of mine on the interview process and figured I might as well share my thoughts.

Get a professional looking email address for all work related inquiries – something like joe.schmoe@gmail.com or jschmoe@hotmail.com. Something that revolves around your actual name. It will be easier for future employers to remember and it makes a better impression than hot4U@hotmail.com.

Post your resume on craigslist – Truly, it is the first place local employers look when searching for employees.

Now, do your research. Pick out a few (10-15) companies that look interesting to you. Submit your resume directly to their head of Human Resources. Most companies websites will have a “Careers” or “jobs” section that posts all available job openings. It impresses and flatters companies that you would submit your resume directly to them.

Write a killer cover letter – This is what gets you calls. Resume’s are a bunch of BS, but if you can write a cover letter that makes a possible employer say “this guy has something”, you will get calls.

Once you get a call for an interview – DO YOUR RESEARCH. Don’t just glance through their site, really dig deep. Work is a place where you will be spending 10-12 hours a day. You better like what you do. Here are a few research points you should consider –

Read their press releases – what types of things are they announcing?
Go to technorati.com and search for the company name – What are the blogs saying about them.
Go to news.google.com and search for the company name – what is the main stream media saying about them?
If they are a publicly traded company, go to finance.google.com, enter their ticker symbol and view their finances. Look at their earnings report.
Do Google searches on the Executive team – Just type their names into google and see what shows up.
Ask family and friends if they know anything or anyone about the company – If yes, ask for a referral and ask to have someone’s phone number who may work for the company. Take them out to coffee and grill them on company culture, product/service offering, market penetration, etc.

In the interview, take a note pad with you and take notes – this is perfectly acceptable. Write down everyone’s name that you meet and their title, ask for business cards.

Have five to 10 questions ready to ask them (questions that help you make an accepting decision) – employers love this. Questions you might ask include –

How long have you been working here?
What is your favorite part about your job?
Can you tell me who your major competitors are? – Research these post-interview.

Post-Interview always write a handwritten note to everyone that interviewed you thanking you for their time. Highlight a few points from the interview in your note that you enjoyed learning about. Do the same in an email.

If you have not heard back from them in the time frame they told you, contact them. Start with email, then call them if you still haven’t heard. A company you want to work for will call you back when they say they will – whether it is good news or bad.

Be picky - You’re allowed to be.

Project Management

Processes inefficient?  Wish you had access to that document?  Here are two online project management services that will help you collaborate on projects, become more efficient and innovate faster.

Project Spaces by Forum One Communications
Basecamp by 37signals

Their light versions are both free.  Try using one for a small project and see how it affects your communication and efficiency.  What are your project management systems?

Case Studies

With most Universities currently in their fall session, I couldn’t help but think of some of the better case studies I reviewed, which ironically happened to revolve around breweries, but I digress.

Well, Nisan Gabbay of Sierra Ventures has been working to compile a list (and a fine list it is) of modern day internet case studies.  Great stuff.  Well worth the read.

The Core

It seems as though roughly 500 people do a mojority of the posting, moderating, and editing of wikipedia - The worlds largest encylopedia with over 6 billion articles written since it’s conception 4 years ago.
Who is your core?  Who are the 5-15% of your customers that contribute the most to your product development?  How much more pasisonate are these customers than the majority?  Do you listen to them?  What if you made a suggestion to a company who makes a product that you use and they actually made the change!  How much more evangelistic would you be?