ExchangeDefender Web Security Webcast

As promised, I held the ExchangeDefender Web Security launch today. Documentation, features and downloads will be available on this blog this weekend. In the meantime, please download the webcast and watch at your leisure. Note: You should play it in full screen to get the smooth page transitions. If that doesn’t work, the PowerPoint is also included.

ExchangeDefender Web Security Webcast video (.wmv)

ExchangeDefender Web Security Webcast PowerPoint (.pptx)

My Notes On “The Prime Solution”

The past couple of weeks I have taken it upon myself to help expand my sales/business knowledge by reading “The Prime Solution” by Jeff Thull.  It’s a fairly easy read of about 200 or so pages sprinkled intermittently with stories of companies who have successfully implemented his techniques to not only win the sale, but increase revenues and in most cases even change the way they run their business.  I personally found the book to be fairly repetitive at times, but I also found some techniques and exampled that screamed “Managed Service Provider!” So basically what I’ve done is condensed the book to give you guys somewhat of a summary if you will of what I read.  Take a look at it (as you will spend far less time reading my summary then the actual book, and lets face it… Time is money) and next week I will do a follow up. I will basically be trimming the fat and pulling out the substance to where I believe we can actually apply The Prime Solution to our way of thinking in the MSP world to create more opportunities for sales, and a more mutually beneficial relationship with our clients.

Part One: SWALLOWED UP IN THE GAP

Ch. 1: The Elusive Prime Solution

This tells the story of IBM’s CEO Lou Gerstner’s influence on the company during his tenure. After a shocking loss in 1992, IBM was ready for the fresh new start. Gerstner’s background of IT systems made him privy to the fact that IBM’s target market had no concern of the actual commodities that was being sold, they wanted solutions. Gerstner in turn refocused the company with his implementation of “Global Services” which provided customer solutions to their problems and challenges by delivering on the value of promise. All in all, his vision accounted for 80% of the company’s growth during his term with IBM.

A solution failure occurs when the value promised to the customer is not achieved. This occurs several ways: 1.The product or service itself can’t deliver on the promise made. 2. The customer is unable to implement the technology properly. 3. The customers’ expectations have not yet been met. This hurts potential as well as future clients.

The Value Gap is often created by the frustration and animosity of trying to fill the gap between the promise of value and its ultimate fulfillment. The failure of this is impertinent to avoiding barriers that sellers will encounter.

Ch. 2: Three Eras of Value Dilution

The value gap is something that has been created overtime driven by the ever changing definition of the word value. Abrupt changes typically shoot up a red flag for us to make an adjustment, but slower changes over an extended period of time can leave us behind. Innovation and technology advances push sellers to add value to their offerings as a means to create advantage over their competitors. These advances, while impertinent, add to the complexity for all parties involved. Let’s look at this by exploring the changing definition of value over the years:

· Era 1: Obvious Value– (1950’s-1960’s) Businesses created a product and sales people went door to door trying to persuade people to buy it. Buyers easily understood the function of the product and easily saw the value it would present to their problems.

· Era 2: Augmented Value– (1970’s-1990’s) Products were sold with a range of possibilities stemming from generic, to fulfilling customers’ expectations, to exceeding customers expectations with added value. For the most part buyers still understood their own problems, but they need the sales person to ‘problem solve’ and show them that their expectations could be exceeded.

· Era 3: Complex Value– (1990’s-Present) Because of technology advances, buyers have a difficult time understanding their own needs, and problems. For the most part they know their goals but are unaware of how to achieve them. Sellers must help them diagnose, design, evaluate and implement the solution.

Ch.3: Five Barriers to Keeping Value Promises

Each barrier has a consequence and must be understood and addressed before closing the value gap.

· Relevancy Barrier: Sellers decide for themselves value in the service and apply this rule to all buyers, and are unable to actually produce meaningful value because of generalization

· Inflation Barrier: Sellers only sell the benefits and features and avoid their duty in walking the customer through the steps, and risks involved with achieving this value and completely undermine the business relationship.

· Comprehensive Barrier: Sellers assume that the customer fully understands their own problem and the complex solution being provided to them. This sets the customer up for failure with the solution. Comprehension only grows as the solution becomes more widespread.

· Dilution Barrier: Customer’s take control and approach the situation from a price based decision, and completely dilutes the value and benefits of the solution. Don’t let buyers strip the components out of your solution so that they can compare ‘apples to apples.’

· Implementation Barrier: Sellers leave the buyers ill equipped with the implementation of the solution and don’t take accountability when for their customer’s lack of value achievement.

To bring down these barriers, there are 3 main considerations to keep in mind:

1. The cause of the barrier is not to assign blame, but to overcome these obstacles and establish a relationship. The dilution(cost) barrier is often used because the buyer is afraid of getting taken advantage of.

2. On barrier often supports and reinforces another one. Always be prepared to address all five barriers.

3. The point where the consequences of a barrier manifest is often not where the collision takes place. It can flow from R&D, Manufacturing, Marketing, Sales, to Support. Overcoming all 5 barriers and closing the value gap involves participation at all levels.

Part Two: PRIME SOLUTIONS AND THEIR PROTOCOLS

Ch. 4: Value Leverage for Business Performance

Value maximization is the cornerstone. Sellers must identify the factors that are significantly affecting the customers, and show the absence of value, and link their solution as a strategy to fulfill the buyer’s ultimate goal. Define, address, and connect with value on the customers’ terms. Sellers must be able to point out all the components of a high quality decision including priorities, change, investment, commitment and risk.

The value impact of a Prime Solution is raised as it is able to connect to multiple customer business drivers:

· Financial– Either Revenues or Expenses

· Quality– Customer Satisfaction, Employee Satisfaction, Regulatory Compliance

· Competitive– Uniqueness or Availability

Georgia Pacific Resins, Inc (GPRI) is a somewhat of a commodity based company since they sell resins necessary for paper quality optimization. After dealing with clients that were only concerned with the best price, GPRI took their organization to the process level and now tailor makes the resin for clients depending on the need to help optimize their production, leveraging the value of their solution.

Ch. 5: Multiple Decisions, Mutual Understandings & Ch.6: Effective Execution, Measurable Results

Business managers are usually not well equipped to make high-quality decisions. Sellers combat this situation with either a reactive, proactive, or interactive relationship level. The most effective of the three relationships is interactive. This is where the seller helps expand the customers understanding of their own problem, and makes them fully aware of their alternatives. Seller must show them the incentive to change and give them the confidence to invest. You must make them recognize the negative cost associated with not implementing the solution, or they will have no incentive to change.

High-quality decisions involve decisions about priorities, change, investment, commitment and risk. Provide them with the tools they need to measure their results and justify the risk. Act as Partners during implementation and help with tactics, leveraging the value of your solution.

Part Three: IN PERSUIT OF PRIME SOLUTIONS

Ch. 7: Creating The Prime Solution

A Prime Solution should enable your company to:

· Discover and research the companies that are most likely at a disadvantage without your solution.

· Diagnose the problem, close the performance gap by involving your solution, and give them the confidence and knowledge to make the change.

· Design solutions that minimize the risk of change, maximize their return on investment, and provide them with the confidence to invest.

· Deliver measured results and establish the promise of value made to your customers.

Ch. 8 Marketing The Prime Solution

This marketing strategy will prevent the no sale scenario:

The problem with solution based differentiation is when dealing with complex products the customer just wants the best solution.

Diagnostic marketing will allow you to solve your customers most complex problems. This is the most effective method for complex solutions in the market.

When advancing the progression of change you must remember that people are more resistant to change unless the pain experienced by staying is greater than the pain of changing.

There are four tenses of marketing:

· Positive present is describing the customer’s situation in positive terms.

· Positive future is the customers’ need for a better future.

· Negative future is the dangers the customer might face one day.

· Negative present is the current problems or bad situations.

Complex solutions need extensive change there for negative-present tense are the most effective.

Ch.9 Selling The Prime Solution

When selling the prime solution:

It should always be a “win” for the seller. From the customers point of view it is another expense and a preserved loss if the value is not achieved.

A high quality decision is the goal of the sale. It’s based on an honest, thorough and rational evaluation between the seller solution and the customer’s problem.

Ch.10 Delivering on The Prime Solution

Having the ability to accept and deal with change is the main competency implementing The Prime Solution. Accepting change not only from your perspective but also from the customers as well. Yes you are dealing with the ever morphing definition of value, and technology advancements, bur customer is dealing with a lot more changes that you are accountable for making as smooth as possible.

To ensure a successful change management process is implemented it must meet at least two of the following criteria:

· Adaptability– This should be based somewhat on the customers input, and design customized strategies for change.

· Technology– The technology should have no bugs, when implementing the solution for the customer it should in no way disrupt their existing technology.

· Process-The implementation should be a smooth process, one which has been thoroughly mapped out addressing any problems that may occur downstream.

· People– it must address the physical skill and the behavior of the people that the solution is meant for.

Kind Regards,

Shannon Brewer

January 1st, 2010

Welcome to the new year, new decade. Today is the day to start doing something great. Even if you don’t buy into the 1st of the year and resolutions, it is the first day of the new fiscal year and time for us to kick off our 2010 agenda.

Our resolution is that 2010 is the year of our partners: We have never been more involved in the building of our partners businesses and the way our marketing and support teams will push our partners in 2010 will surprise you.

First things first, let’s find out where you are at this moment: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FTZF3BT

The survey above will give us an idea of how/if you work with us and what we can do to immediately improve in January. For us, 2009 was a year to retool, rebuild and revise all that we’ve build through the years. Our core products have been immensely popular through the years and we experienced some growing pains – but now we’re ready, with bandwidth and experience to take you to the next level.

Start by filling out the survey, whether you work with us or not: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FTZF3BT

Thank you and Happy New Year!

Sincerely,
Vlad Mazek, MCSE
CEO, Own Web Now Corp

P.S. Remember, in 2010 I am here for you. You can reach me directly on my cell (407) 536-VLAD

Thank You, we’re OK

I would like to personally thank many of you that were concerned about me and my staff in beautiful Downtown Orlando. We are OK, thank you for the emails, texts and calls.

There was an office shooting a few blocks from our office in Downtown Orlando, apparent disgruntaled worker seriously harmed at least 7 people and is still at large with Orlando Police & SWAT looking for him. All banks and buildings are now closed.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the injured and their families. Please assist the authorities with any information you may have.

Sincerely,

Vlad Mazek, MCSE
CEO, Own Web Now Corp

Support SLA Interruption

On Monday, October 12th, 2009, we will be suspending our normal and lower SLA response times.

While we do not expect to have any interruptions in the support availability, during certain times staff will only be tasked with responding to high and urgent priority requests during business hours in the EST time zone. We are using a quiet holiday on Monday to roll out our new SLA framework, new call handling and handoff procedures and completely test the systems.

We expect to announce the changes to our support systems later this week and thank you for your patience during this launch. We will certainly do all we can to help during this time, we just wanted to apologize for any inconveniences that may be caused ahead of time.

Tough Times

The downturn in the economy has affected many of our partners, between downturn in business, longer collection periods, tighter credit market and more have made the reoccuring billing business a lot more difficult.

As the CEO of Own Web Now, I am here to tell you that we stand by our partners and we are willing to work with anyone that may be going through a tough time collecting money from clients. We’re in on this together.

However, in the interest of fairness, if we cannot contact you we cannot assume the collections expense that goes with avoiding calls and emails – we are simply not in that business. With the launch of new ExchangeDefender, new Shockey Monkey, new systems for our entire hosting platform we simply must turn our focus to the software and professional services our partners demand.

Today, we have had to say goodbye to a number of our partners that have had a poor payment track record (6+ months declines/delinquencies of 10+ days or more). In plain terms that means that we’ve had partners who have missed a payment every other month and that raises the fees for everyone which is simply not fair. Our partners and clients expect us to spend every dollar on R&D and enhancements, not collections.

I wanted to offer you our billing collections process so that you’re aware of our attempts:

 

1st of the month: If the transaction has been declined, retry transaction and document.

2nd of the month: Open support request in our portal (https://support.ownwebnow.com) about the past due invoice, retry transaction.

5th of the month: Retry transaction. If it still fails a phone call is made to the billing contact on record, if they were not contacted directly (secretary, voicemail) support request is updated.

8th of the month: Retry transaction. If it still fails a phone call is made with the 2nd notice, support request is updated.

10th of the month: Final retry and suspension notice is given in the portal. Partner is given 24 hours to provide valid billing information.

11th of the month: If the new billing information is not provided, all services are suspended.

We are not heartless, we are more than willing to work with companies that are affected by the economic downturn. Unfortunately, if we cannot contact you on the phone, if the support portal is ignored and over a week passes with repeated notices, we have no choice but to move on.

Today we have permanently suspended companies that have abused our kindness and had a consistently poor payment track record. It is within our right to suspend services within 3 days, charge reconnection fees, etc: We usually do not. However, when our company is clearly abused we have no choice but to reconsider whether it’s fair to other partners to let a small group of companies abuse the billing concessions we have made.

So to recap: Collections are expensive and we’re a software company; that meant that we’ve had to remove a number of partners that abused our billing grace periods. We know it’s tough out there, reach out to us and we will bend backwards to help you.

Thank you!

Sincerely,

Vlad Mazek

CEO, Own Web Now Corp.

Autotask Integration Live!

After many months of development, feedback and suggestions we are happy to announce the Autotask integration with Own Web Now. We are the first vendor to offer full support request syncronization, allowing Own Web Now to handle full support of all it’s products through the Autotask API – free of charge! No more double ticket entry, no more searching two portals, no more running around – everything is in Autotask.

Additionally, we have eliminated one of the most consuming administrative tasks regarding ExchangeDefender: Mailbox counts. With Autotask, this process is automated. Own Web Now will submit mailbox counts to Autotask and keep them in sync so they can be billed automatically, making sure you are paid for all the services you are paying for – automatically!

Finally, while the integration whitepaper and process is free, many partners indicated that they would rather have us handle the integration and support for them. We are offering this service for $199 one-time fee during the launch to make sure you hit the ground running. In addition to saving you some time and making sure everything is perfect, this package also gives you actual support for the integration should things change or you ever experience any issues.

We are proud to also start a new training series featuring whitepapers, webcasts and podcasts covering the way some of the best in business use the Autotask integration with Own Web Now to be more efficient and profitable. This is included at no additional charge with the Support Package mentioned above.

To get started, check out http://www.ownwebnow.com/autotask

Have a great day!

Looking for integration demo partners

As many of you are aware, we have been working on some very advanced PSA integrations with Autotask and Shockey Monkey over the past quarter. We have integrated our baseline statistics into both products. We have also extended our support portal to both so that tickets opened in your portal can be quickly assigned to our teams for resolution. We even help with the agreements and user counts, synchronizing the mailbox counts, GB’s, etc to your own portal so you can keep all your business intelligence no matter which PSA you use. Limited subset of these features is also available with ConnectWise (will be expanded to the same full functionality set when their API matures/stabilizes).

Right now, we need some volunteers that are willing to discuss the business value and technical implementations of our integration efforts.

If you use Autotask and like both Autotask and Own Web Now, I would like to invite you to a quick podcast so we can discuss what the joint efforts are doing for your business and your PSA experience with Autotask. The advantage is that you’ll get the integration done first, it will be handled by one of our senior engineers and you’ll get all the benefits of our business training going forward.

Interested? Contact Travis Sheldon at travis@ownwebnow.com.

P.S. Documentation on the above is not available at this time, it will be available in August. Support for any of the above is not available from Own Web Now Corp, Autotask Corporation, ConnectWise or any other third party. Purpose of this blog post is to get individuals interested in promoting their business and technology implementation know-how and benefit both companies.

ExchangeDefender SMBUP Session

Greetings from the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans. Thanks to all our partners for visiting our booth, we are officially out of really good swag!

Earlier today Travis and I held the first SMBUP session for ExchangeDefender. The acronym stands for Smack My B* Up, and gives our partners the ability to dish out all the angst, anger, frustration and impatience they have with our products and processes: both with us and with our other partners. For many years I have done my best to create systems and encourage partners to provide feedback so we can improve the most painful parts of doing business with us.

This may sound unconventional and definitely takes some thick skin, but we wanted to do something new. Traditionally, software is designed on the input of focus groups. Fixes are then applied throughout the production process and tweaked in functionality and features based on feedback.

This is different. I wanted to know what our partners really disliked about our business and our products so that new ones are built to avoid those problems.

Letting the partners vent directly at me and directly with each other could create a potential gang warfare mentality. However, we have worked on cultivating our partnerships long enough to know that our partners have our best interest in mind because we are doing this to take care of them and their clients.

What happened? My partners at WPC came with complaints that were not critical or combative – instead, we got the problem and the proposed solution pathway, mitigation and recommendations based on the other partners who have not (yet) experienced an issue.

Tune in over the next 60 days as we document, disect and provide a solution to the problems we were made aware of today.

In case you’ve ever wondered just what we mean by partnerships this is it. Technology companies  working towards pleasing the common client base.

Sincerely,

Vlad Mazek, MCSE
CEO, Own Web Now Corp