From The Ground Up

Nine years ago we made a decision to move to beautiful Lake Hartwell located on the Georgia and South Carolina line.  We had owned a small cabin on the lake for a few years prior and just loved it.  We sold the cabin and bought a lot at the end of a gravel road that had 5 other lots; different people had purchased each lot, but none had been built on.  We started building and 6 months later we moved in.  We love the lake and have really enjoyed the privacy.

Two years ago construction started on one of the lots.  So much for the privacy.  They have been slowly building this house for two years and are still several months away from completing it.  Two months ago the lot right next to us started building.  In only two months they have almost caught up with the first house.

Watching these two houses being built is the inspiration for this week’s blog.  Why does it take over two years to build house one and six months to build house two?  Which is the better-built house?  Are there advantages and disadvantages to both?

Of course this spurred me to start thinking about Salesnet.  Two years ago we decided to refresh the Salesnet product and infrastructure.   We had to make a decision, do we want to gradually upgrade the product or do we want to rebuild from the ground up?  While most of our competitors gradually upgrade their product and infrastructure we decided to rebuild from the ground up.

We started with the infrastructure.  We replaced every piece of hardware and operating system software.  To make this easier and more secure, we decide to install everything in a new and enhanced data center.  We took the same approach with our disaster recovery site.  This turned out to be a great decision.  When everything was ready and tested we just moved the Salesnet software over to the new infrastructure.

Then it was time to work on the Salesnet software.  We wanted to take advantage of any new leading-edge technology while maintaining what has made Salesnet successful in the past.  We were able to leapfrog all our competition with regards to the Salesnet user interface and the built in analytics, while keeping and improving the patented Salesnet sales process engine.  This sales process engine is what has always been the differentiator for Salesnet.  It is what makes sales people better, which makes for better sales.

To make a long story short, this whole effort has been a major success.  As of the beginning of 2010 our customers, partners, and potential customers have shown that they see the value in The New Salesnet by renewing contracts, adding users, and signing on as new Salesnet customers.  Our build from the ground up approach is validated everyday by our customers.

But we are not going to stop there.  We will continue to launch new exciting features and our decision to leverage the latest technology advances make this much easier to do than if we had decided on the upgrade as you go approach. 

Sorry for the long-winded blog, but when you are excited about what you have accomplished it is hard to keep it brief. 

Good Selling

Mobile

I was very happy that we were able to release the New Salesnet Mobile last week. I was even happier when we started getting feedback from our customers as to how much they liked it and how it saved them hours of work each day. It is tremendous to get this kind of feedback.

I was on the road this week and had my first chance to really use the new mobile application in a real live situation.  I had lots of meetings and didn’t really have the time to pull out my PC and update Salesnet.  During breaks I just logged in with my iPhone and did everything I needed to.  I never thought it would be so easy and fast.

That takes me back to a previous blog about our strategy for the new Salesnet mobile application.  We decided to go with a web based approach instead of having an application that resides on the smart phone.  This approach has many advantages and almost no disadvantages.  The biggest advantages are that you don’t have to sync up data with your phone.  You are logging into the system just as you would when using your PC, and this means everything is real time.  If someone else changes something you will see it.  If you make some changes or add some data it is instantly available to anyone who has access.

We have always had an offline product that allows you to sync your data to your PC, work offline and then sync it up when you get to a connection.  My issue with working with offline is that I usually forget to sync the data before I leave the office or just don’t have the time.  To use this product you also have to get the PC out and start it up.  This week for me was a perfect example of not having time to do this. I just pulled out my phone during a break and did what I needed to do.  It was wonderful.

The next advantage to our users has to do with the cost.  We are able to provide this at a much lower cost than an application that resides on the phone.  The security is also much better with our approach because none of the data is on the phone.

The only disadvantage that I can think of is that if you don’t have a wireless connection you can’t use it.  I will gladly take that disadvantage to get the above-mentioned advantages.  Maybe some day we will find a way to let you have your cake and eat it too.

Good Selling

Customer No-Support

For those of you who have been following my blog you know that my youngest daughter recently moved to New Orleans to take her first job.  The whole process of getting the job and getting her moved proved to be a great source of inspiration for several of my posts.  Well believe it or not this gift just keeps on giving. 

When we were moving her in she asked me to try and order her internet service.  As it turns out she only had two choices.  Both of the choices were about equal cost wise and both were big reliable companies.  One was a cable company and the other was a phone company.  I ordered the service from the phone company and placed the order via their web service. 

The first issue I ran into was that her address was not listed as a valid address.  The only way I could get it to go through was to pick the apartment next to her and put in the special notes that it was for apartment 101 and not 102.  The web site automatically sent her an email back saying that she would have internet on July 8th and someone would call her to schedule a time for installation.  It was a Friday night when we placed this order and she received a call back on Tuesday. 

This is where it starts getting interesting.  The phone company told her that it would be two weeks before they could schedule someone to come out.  Much to her disappointment, she scheduled the time to take off work to meet them.  Two weeks later, the installation man met her but told her because the order was for apartment 102 instead of 101 it would take another two weeks.  The only reason he knocked on her door was that he noticed the special instructions note that said it was apartment 101. 

The good news (if you are really search hard for a silver lining) is that she would not have to meet anyone at her apartment to get it turned on because he was able to do all the onsite work that day.  The two weeks came and went and she still didn’t have internet access.  She called several times and spent what she says is hours on hold just to find out that it would be two more weeks.  She told them to forget it and called the cable company. 

The cable company said that they could come out the next week to get it installed and that she would not have to be at her apartment.  While they didn’t get it turned on when they said they would it was only a few days late. When she called them they always answered the phone and never put her on hold for more than a few minutes.   

Last night she sent us an email saying that she finally had internet.  Can you believe this all started on July 2^nd and ended on Aug 9^th?  How do companies stay in business with this kind of customer service?  Is there not enough competition?  Do they just not care or do they just not care about small accounts? 

In the CRM market that Salesnet competes in, there are almost too many competitors to count.  Even with all this competition, I still hear stories of bad support as a reason for companies switching from other CRM products to Salesnet.  Sometimes this bad support is due to the company’s lack of resources in customer support, they may just be overloaded with quality issues, or it might be that they really don’t care about the smaller companies because they have so many large customers. 

While Salesnet support isn’t perfect, we do everything we can to make the customer experience positive.  Almost all our support questions are really training questions and yet we answer each one.  Salesnet has a large installed base of customers from all sizes of companies and (as long as I have anything to do with it) we will support our customers no matter the size of the company.  While our product superiority is important to getting new customers, our customer support is the key to keeping them as Salesnet customers.

Good Selling

Hot Reunion

I recently went to my wife’s family reunion.  I’m sure that like me, most of you really look forward to going to your spouse’s family reunion.  However, this reunion had some very special features that made it more dreadful than normal.  It was in Cordele, Georgia in July. For those of you who aren’t from the South, Cordele is located in South Georgia.  When asked how hot it gets in that part of the country a coach at Valdosta State College told a new football recruit “While you can’t see hell from here, you can feel the flames”.  Cordele is also known for the quantity and size of its gnats in the summer.  While I love this part of the country 9 months of the year, I make it a point to not visit during June, July, or August. 

So why did someone schedule this reunion in July?  Maybe the local relatives just wanted to get back at the lucky relatives who live north of the gnat line.  The reunion was held in a beautiful state park located on Lake Blackshear.  I should have taken my boat, because I’m sure the fishing would have been great.  The actual reunion was held at noon under a large pavilion in the middle of a field.  This was another stroke of genius in planning.  The good news is that no one had a heat stroke, even though the heat index was over 110 degrees Fahrenheit.

The actual meeting was excellent.  Good people, good food, and lots of laughs and reminiscing.  The best part was that they had presentations on the history of the family lines that went back to the 1600’s.  The presentations were very interesting and we all learned a lot.  It was great seeing and learning about all the family, but my favorite event was a side trip to one of the best farmers markets in the country.  It doesn’t take a lot to please me, and I naturally spent way too much money on fresh fruits and vegetables.

So what is the moral of this story?  Many times as sales people we are required to attend sales meetings or sales training that we dread going to.  We dislike the travel, the staying in a hotel, the time lost to selling, and especially the boring slide shows we will be forced to watch.  While we loathe all these things, more times than not a lot of good comes out of these meetings.  It may be that we learn something new about how to sell or maybe we are just reminded of things we already know but have gotten too lazy to do.  We may learn new features of our product or that new products are coming.  We may find out more about the competition.  So don’t dread going to sales meetings.  Embrace the opportunity to learn more about selling.  Use the opportunity to rekindle relationships with people in your company and remember at least these meeting won’t be outside in 100+ degree weather.

Good Selling,