The Price Is Right–Maybe

Before joining ExchangeDefender and Shockey Monkey full time in September 2012, I was a business owner of two I.T. VAR/MSP businesses spanning over a decade. That said, I am fully empathetic of the decisions that have to be made by all who hold that position. Being one of two Partner Communication Managers working for OwnWebNow Corp. (Anastasia Wiggins being my colleague), I speak with our partners on a daily basis. Inevitably, one of the subjects that come up doing a partner conversation is how much they are charging for services rendered–whether we are discussing our services or labor costs in general. Ultimately the conversation starts by the partner asking me what the going rate is for other partners reselling our services. My answer is always the same: It depends…

The reason for such a vague answer is because the answer primarily involves taking into account two major considerations:

1. The location the service is being rendered, i.e. city/State, and/or region; and

2. The time/complexity it takes to render said service, e.g. setup time, monitoring time, complexity of the technology, etc.

Let’s delve further into these two considerations and come to a more defined answer for your particular business.

The Location of Render Services.

As Partner Communication Manager, one of my jobs responsibilities is to attend I.T. events that ExchangeDefender and Shockey Monkey sponsor. These events are held all over North America. The summer months have definitely tested my love of travel. However, by visiting these different cities and regions of the United States; I have come to understand that Midtown New York can charge $3.50 for a 20 ounce Coke Zero that costs me $1.50 in Schaumburg, IL. The same is true with virtually every product or service between the two aforementioned locations. Similar to the real estate market, the location (location, location) will greatly dictate your pricing. Densely, fast moving cities tend to price higher than more rural, spread out towns. The reasoning is maddening to understand because most times it simply boils down to the fact that people are willing to pay more for services rendered in cities that never sleep. Even stranger, this can be totally independent concerning the amount of competition available to the customer. By that, I mean even if there are numerous competitors in the area, people will still pay an inflated price in bigger cities. This is due to something called involuntary competitive pricing. This is where a price for a particular service was set by a business and the competition set their pricing +/- 10% to show an added value or discounted price while maintaining close proximity to similar business offering like services.

The Time/Complexity to Render Services.

The old adage still applies: Time is money. And when the complexity of the service rendered increases, ultimately the time it takes to implement and/or monitor said service increases as well. As a result, you could be looking at a nice pay day. However, the inverse is also true. If your service can be seen as less a specialty and more a commodity, you may have to supplement your income to make ends meet. How can your services be seen as commodities? Increased competition, for one. The lack of complexity is another. If end-users are willing to take on the additional pain of implementation and monitoring services to reduce their operating budget, there isn’t much you can do to win that business except provide additional value added services they may not get by taking on the responsibility themselves. Be careful of this, however. If you give away too much, you will end up working twice as hard for less money. Never, ever, ever work for free. Assuming you are a for profit business, never forget that one of the primary reasons you started a business was to make a profit!

The Sales Pitch (You can skip this part if we ever spoke on the phone about ExchangeDefender services.)

ExchangeDefender is a partner-driven company–meaning without our partners, we might as well close shop and sell empanadas. We price our services to you with the idea that you can make as little or as much as these two considerations allow. I have seen markets where partner can make as much as a 33% profit margin on our products and services. Other partners literally give our products away as value added services in order to balance out their labor costs. The latter is normally performed to illustrate good form in giving something to the customer at no charge to you. In other words, they simply pass on the cost of the product to the customer or carry the cost themselves in order to sign an annuity contract. Point being, if you need assistance in reselling any of our products, pick up the phone and give me a call. You have 99 problems as a business owner, but making money off our services shouldn’t be one of them.

Michael D. Alligood,

Partner Communications Manager

ExchangeDefender | Shockey Monkey

877-546-0316 x707

michael@ownwebnow.com

How do I get more referrals?

You’ve all seen the commercials; it starts something like, “refer a friend and get $50 off your next bill” or something of that nature. In traditional consumer-based businesses, this type of targeted marketing may have its place, but in SMB and B2B businesses it just comes off as desperate. Of course, this is not to say that it may not have worked for your IT business, but hoping to bribe a customer to give up a referral is not good practice.

Another common but bad business practice is asking for referrals upon closing a sale. Whether a salesman hands you a paper and asks you to write down some friends who might also be interested in their product, or one that simply asks for a referral at the signing, this practice is not only useless, but makes for a bad first impression. The problem is that the salesperson, and more so the company has not yet proven their service, so asking for a referral at this point in the game is bad practice.

There are a few ways of getting referrals without the used car approach:

1. Refer Business to Your Customers – Referrals are a two-way street, start by sending business to your customers. Set up meetings and soft introductions to introduce people to your loyal customers. Not only is this a good business practice, but also your customers will reciprocate.

2. Ask When Receiving Good Survey Results – Surveys are a great way to gauge how you are performing for your customers. When receiving good reviews simply ask customers if they know anyone that might also be interested in getting excellent service as well.

3. Face-to-Face QBR’s – A good time to ask for referrals are at face-to-face QBR’s, or quarterly business reviews. Make it a part of your QBR to ask for referrals at the end of every QBR. It may seem like much to do it every time, but getting a hot referral can be all about timing.

The majority of MSP’s would tell you they get the majority of their business from referrals. This makes practicing good referral gathering techniques an important aspect of your business. Be sure to only ask for referrals once you have established a relationship with a customer, and create a documented process for your salespeople to follow.

Compliance Promotion Is Ending Soon

It’s summer time and we are promoting two products for the month of July! Right now we are offering fifty percent off Corporate Encryption and Compliance Archiving. Not sure if these services are right for your customers? Here’s a brief overview of each.

Compliance Archiving

Two things to consider when wondering if this is something your clients need or should consider:

1) The name of the product speaks for itself, compliance. ExchangeDefender’s Compliance Archiving service is compliant in accordance with HIPAA, FINRA, SOX, and SEC as well as many other standards that are published by nearly every industry. Compliance works through the Exchange journaling technology; once the service is set up all messages sent and received will be delivered to the compliance service. In addition to meeting requirements of archiving all inbound and outbound mail, Compliance Archiving also covers interoffice email which can help your clients in HR disputes and lawsuits.

2) Don’t worry about storage costs. There are other products on the market similar to ExchangeDefender’s Compliance Archiving, but those products require contracts and additional storage fees forcing you to compromise on the length of storage or which data gets archived. ExchangeDefender provides unlimited storage and stores ten years worth of email beginning on the date the service is set up (p.s. We can also import your old mail as well). Compliance Archiving allows you to offer your clients a long term storage solution in addition to giving them access to years’ worth of emails at the click of a button without a compromise of excessive storage fees or selective archiving of only the “important stuff” because when people get in legal trouble everything becomes important and relevant.

Compliance Encryption

Corporate Encryption is especially important for those clients in the health care, financial and legal field or anyone who is in charge of sensitive information. ExchangeDefender’s Corporate Encryption is able to encrypt based on message patterns (lexicons, dictionaries) as well as preset patterns like social security, credit card and sender/recipient email addresses. If you need to block data leakage on a more sophisticated level, such as custom account numbers, we can help you there as well. Encryption is a product we take extremely seriously and it takes about a week to get all the paperwork, testing and implementation completed so please call us ahead of time to get it all set. 

Don’t let this slip by you, you have until July 31^st. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me directly at: Anastasia@ownwebonw.com, or 877-546-0316 x 739.

On the Road Again…

June has turned out to be a busy month for ExchangeDefender and Shockey Monkey! Thank you all who stopped by our booth during the Autotask Live conference this week. It is always a pleasure to talk to our partners face to face. With that said, ExchangeDefender and Shockey Monkey will be represented at the following events in the month of June:

12th International Cloud Expo

June 10th – June 13th

Javits Center, New York City

ASCII Baltimore

June 12th – June 13th

BWI Airport Marriott

Level Platforms MSP Community Summit

June 17th – June 19th

The Cosmopolitan, Las Vegas

If you are attending any of these events, drop by our booth and let’s talk about your business and how a partnership with ExchangeDefender can assist your company in increasing its service revenues.

If you are unable to attend any of these events, shoot me an email at michael@ownwebnow.com or phone call at 877-546-0316 x707. I’ll be more than happy to answer any questions you have about ExchangeDefender services and our Shockey Monkey platform.

Michael D. Alligood,

Partner Communications Manager

ExchangeDefender | Shockey Monkey

877-546-0316 x707

michael@ownwebnow.com

Is Changing your Logo a Good Idea?

Some businesses change their logo as often as they change their printer ink, while others have maintained the same logo for decades. Branding your company with a good logo can provide your community with familiarity, awareness of your business, and can help to create loyalty. Understanding how your logo impacts your business and why and when to change it can help you to create a lasting brand image.

A simple search on some of your favorite corporate brands will show you the importance of modifying or changing your logo. Companies like Apple, Pepsi, and just about all-major brands have gone through revisions of their company logo over the years. Though there is no standardized rule for how often to change your logo it is definitely a good idea to do this periodically.

Pepsi for instance appears to be on a roughly ten-year cycle for their logo. This has worked pretty well. When you look at the history of the logo image, you can see how it has changed with the times. The logo reflects the period and you can easily see how certain versions now look dated. This is what can happen to your logo as well. Looking at just about any other corporate logo history will have this same outcome of some previous logos looking dated.

A logo and brand refresh can be good for business and can breathe new life and excitement into a business. Though we would caution complete brand makeovers as these can sometimes muddy a brand and confuse customers, and should only be done when it is absolutely necessary. Instead, look at the top corporate companies and take a cue from them. Most of these logos have slight but impactful changes that give the brand a new and fresh approach.

Personally I like the ten year approach to a logo change, though in the IT and MSP world, a five year schedule may be more effective given the amount of change in the products and industry. Changing your logo more often than this may not compliment the goal of brand awareness, and actually can potentially hurt business.

Sun-Sational Summer Savings Promotion!!!

This summer we are going to be running an ExchangeDefender Sun-Sational Summer Savings Promotion! When you use the promotional code you will get Compliance Archiving and Corporate Encryption for 50% OFF! Compliance Archiving will be priced at $2.00/user/month and Corporate Encryption at $0.50/user/month. When the promotional code is used to set up new accounts they will be grandfathered in at this price for the life of the active account.

Compliance Archiving has recently gotten a facelift! With the new design there are many improvements! There is a completely new and improved UI that is easy to use and navigate through. Also, we have implemented paging into the product and fine tuned the search functionality. In addition, there are more customizable options to better fit your needs. This is a solution that you should really add to your solution set!

ExchangeDefender Corporate Encryption provides an easy and seamless way for organizations of all sizes to implement content protection and comprehensive control over information being sent through email. It includes pattern-matching encryption, comprehensive reporting, corporate encryption mechanisms, and lexicon dictionaries. Corporate Encryption is very easy to promote and it is also extremely easy to add to your solutions set and offer because there are so many benefits associated with using it. A great thing to point out about Corporate Encryption is the ability to have more control. You can better monitor your network and be aware of things that are going on. You can define keywords and patterns, so that when certain things that you are concerned about happen you will know about them and be alerted. There are also legal and HR benefits of protecting both company data and employees and prevent important data from being leaked or sent out. Both Compliance Archiving and Corporate Encryption are compliant with SOX, HIPAA, SEC and local government requirements to provide you with more protection and powerful auditing.

The promotion will be running all summer from June 1st through July 31st! Use the coupon code listed in the image when signing up a new account and enjoy your savings!

For more information refer to our ExchangeDefender Promotions page. 

Stephanie Hasenour
VP Marketing, ExchangeDefender
stephanie@ownwebnow.com

Limiting the Consumer’s Choices

Social psychologist and Columbia University Business School professor, Dr. Sheena Iyengar, is an expert in choice. By that, I mean she has dedicated her life to understanding the patterns of human decision-making and revealing its contradictions. After leading a 15-year study on the subject, she authored a book on the topic titled, “The Art of Choosing.” In her book, she talks about how psychological, biological, and cultural behaviors steer us in making decisions of choice. “We’re born with the desire, but we don’t really know how to choose,” wrote Dr. Iyengar. From her numerous studies, Dr. Iyengar concluded that when given too many option, we are ten times more likely to take action when choice is limited. Anyone who’s ever been to a convenient store for a candy bar will tell you that! I have left stores because the assortment of items was so large, I didn’t know which selection to make.

Have you every been out to a restaurant, looked at the menu, been so confused by all the offerings, and responded, “I’ll just have…?” To most people, that statement would indicate that you made a choice you were happy with. However, the word “just” in this case, subconsciously indicates that:

1. You are not 100% happy with your selection, and/or;

2. You don’t care about your selection.

Now let’s bring this subject into your business. Most of you claim to be Managed Service Providers; and as such, you probably have different levels of “packages” you provide to potential clients. After reviewing them all, do you find your clients stating, “I will just call you when we have problem…?” This could be due to a few things. One of reasons they chose not to enter into an agreement with you could simply be price. Another reason could be the potential Managed Service client is confused by choices you are offering—and not willing to make a mistake, decides not to purchase at all. In her book, Dr. Iyengar described the magic number—seven—at which more turns into less. This is based on a previous study that showed that our senses can easily distinguish five to nine objects of perception. Now, I am not recommending that your have five to seven different offering for potential clients to choose from. I am saying that if you are offering a lot of different services, combine them into packages that don’t exceed five to nine different offerings. I found that the magic number of Managed Services packages should be around two to four offers. This gives an adequate number to choose from—while not overloading the potential client.

This information should not only be considered for Managed Services offerings, but in everything you sell—from hardware and software. If you business still sell computers to it’s clientele, offer two to four different types. Then categorize them accordingly: Home use, business use, gamers, etc. It is easy to argue that limiting the choices of your clients will cause low sales numbers. However, overloading them with choices will cause the same effect. Finding a balance of offerings will still allow you to suggestion choices while keeping you clients corralled just enough so they don’t feel overburden in making a decision.

Michael D. Alligood
Partner Sales & Support, ExchangeDefender & Shockey Monkey
michael@ownwebnow.com
(877) 546-0316 x707

SRV and TXT Record Support Coming Soon…

As more and more services utilizing SRV Technology come online we have to adjust to the demand. Currently, we accommodate these via a support request, but as the technology spreads that is less convenient to you, your clients, and even us.

As such, we have been working on the backend of the code and it is pretty set. We anticipate having this live next week. Obviously no code is perfect, so if you find anything funky please let me know.

Carlos Lascano
VP Support Services, ExchangeDefender
carlos@ownwebnow.com
(877) 546-0316 x737