Kent

Quotes and Proposals: The Major Deliverable of Sales

Business Process, Entrepreneur, Kent, Proposals, Quotes, Sales No Responses »
Dec 132010

 

Throughout my career in sales, I’ve always felt a significant sense of accomplishment when completing and delivering a high-quality quote or proposal to a customer. This feeling continues through to this day, and is greatly augmented by our own product at Quosal.

The other side of this coin is the pressure I would feel as a salesperson when I had a backlog of proposals to complete. I know that many business people and their sales team labor under this pressure today. Indeed, I feel this even more intensely now, in those rare times when, despite our own tools, technology, business practices and policies, I don’t get my quotes and proposals turned around immediately. I feel this pressure more acutely because my own experience, research and expertise in the field of quote and proposal automation tell me that the sooner you get that accurate, attractive quote in your prospective customer’s hands, the more likely you are to win the business.

There’s a great reason for sales professionals and the entrepreneur salesman to feel a major sense of accomplishment when completing and delivering a quote: Quotes and proposals are indeed the major deliverable of the sales team. I can hear you out there saying, “No, CLOSED quotes are the major deliverable,” and of course that follows. However, you can’t close (win) a quote that has never been created, and you WON’T close an inaccurate, half-baked, ugly quote most of the time. Continue reading »

Posted by Kent at 9:33 am Tagged with: , , , , , ,

ConnectWise IT Nation: A Community Experience Unlike Any Other

Cloud, ConnectWise, Kent, Order Porter, Partners, Proposals, Quotes, Sales No Responses »
Nov 082010

 

Our team returned yesterday from a very full week at the ConnectWise IT Nation event in Orlando, Florida. This was our third trip to the event, and our best experience yet. Combined with our participation in and sponsorship of the HTG Q4 meetings at the beginning of the week, it was an incredibly, richly powerful experience.

Our levels of engagement with this event are unique in my experience. We are a ConnectWise user, AND a sponsor of the event and community, AND ConnectWise is also our customer and a user of Quosal. We’re not unique in this; the community has many such ties within the ecosystem that ConnectWise represents. It is one of the reasons, I believe, for the intense levels of energy-times-energy that I have not experienced in other communities – ever.

The event leaves one so overflowing with its vibrancy that the energy must have an outlet — therefore I blog, plan, strategize, sell, discuss, compare, analyze. The energy well has been replenished.

Among the standout experiences was the number of our Quosal clients that attended, and the rather amazing number of them that found me in the halls or in our booth, and related some version of, “Thank you for creating this product. You don’t know how much you’ve helped our business.” The sincerity and intensity of our customers was really somewhat moving, and surprisingly frank. This didn’t happen just a couple of times – dozens of our clients had this message for me. It was really a powerful experience.

Keith McFarland, author of “Bounce” and “The Breakthrough Company” was a real energizer. You know you’re listening to a good speaker when you want to launch out of your chair and enact the ideas that are cascading through your head, put fear aside and make bold moves into the future. This, combined with a general feeling of confidence among the ConnectWise partners, makes me feel great about the future.

I’m heading to Australia in Q1 2011 – and now it’s in writing. This is a big item on my bucket list, and a lifelong dream. It was an Australian-themed event, in any case – we dined with the Australian contingent of HTG (as well as their UK brethren) and had many great conversations and interactions with our good friends from Down Under (who universally feel that we are extreme lightweights in the partying department. I’m afraid.).

We had a great experience with Order Porter on the iPad in our booth at the vendor solutions pavilion. We processed more than 80 quotes, delivering them right then and there on the show floor. ConnectWise (who also uses Quosal and Order Porter) was doing the very same thing for add-on sales in its own booth. It was a great sales experience to do this, and we were delivering a great customer experience as well. It’s always a fun moment to see the startled look on a prospective customer’s face, when their cell phone vibrates as they receive their quote and Order Porter link. The revelation that they can do this themselves, for their own customers, is an “a-ha” moment for them.

A customer related to me the workflow he’d built into his sales process between Quosal and ConnectWise: “We’ve got it down to a science. I tell my salespeople, ‘Just mark the opportunity as Won in Quosal, and walk away!’”

I do not fear the Cloud, and I don’t believe information technology providers need to fear it either. On a high level, “The more things change the more they stay the same.” On an even higher level, imagine how many iterations we’ll continually go through over the years. From mainframes and timeshare to the disconnected PC to the Cloud and back again. I can hardly wait until my grandkids tell me about this awesome new technology called Local Area Networks. Arnie Bellini had a good message for the IT Nation on this very topic.

You know you’re getting old when you’re standing in the lounge thinking, “Who let all these kids in here?”

There were some terrific speakers and presentations at both the ITN and HTG events. The former, I witnessed; the latter, I heard about, as I’m not actually an HTG member. I definitely get presenter envy, as my own skill set in this area stopped progressing in the last century. I’m amazed at how much information can be presented in an hour with the preparation and technology brought to bear by talented people.

It goes on and on, the buttery goodness of such a well-executed event with the energy of true community. It’s great to witness and to be a part of it. I think a lot of people feel the same way. Congratulations to all involved, to the hosts and attendees alike. Can’t wait until next year.

Kent McNall

Kent McNall
President and CEO
Quosal LLC

Posted by Kent at 5:54 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,

Do MSPs and Information Technology Providers Need Traditional E-Commerce?

E-commerce, IT, Kent, Managed Service Providers, Order Porter No Responses »
Oct 202010

 

At Quosal, our team’s e-commerce experience goes back a long time, into the depths of the pre- “dot-bomb” years when e-tail was growing at a remarkable rate, and state-of-the-art online technology was brought to bear on e-commerce solutions of the type that we implemented for many well-known retailers. The burgeoning online technologies were becoming available at just the right time to provide excellent online solutions for our brick-and-mortar retail customers, and companies like Amazon.com were lighting the way for purely online play.

Fast forward some 10+ years, and lately we’ve seen some noise around e-commerce (again) for the IT market, as if it were something new that the market has just now discovered.

In our quote-and-proposal-automation line of work, we have occasion to talk with many information technology providers who have e-commerce offerings through one of many current providers, such as ChannelOnline, VARStreet or any number of equivalent systems. Our conversation is often in the context of looking for alternatives to those systems for their core need of product quoting, but the inevitable question is, “Do you provide an electronic storefront?” In this context, I always query, “How many orders have you taken from your storefront in the past few months?” The inevitable answer: “Few to none.”

So, is traditional e-commerce something today’s IT provider and/or MSP really needs? In a word, the answer is “No.” In two words, the answer is “Hell no.”

But do those same companies need to offer the convenience of online shopping, option selection and order execution? The equally strident answer is “Absolutely yes!”

E-commerce is the opposite of what today’s IT provider is about, which is expertise, understanding of needs, and total care based on specific knowledge of the customer. Sending a customer to an online store throws a lot of that out the window. The message to the customer is, “You don’t need me, just go find it yourself!” Once you’ve given that message to your customer, they’re half a step away from a much larger, more powerful online provider.

To be at all personalized, an e-commerce site must be maintained and cultivated by someone who knows what they are doing. Many are the companies I’ve talked with who know they’ve spent more money in labor to maintain their site, catalog and customer-specific features than they’ve brought in via the site.

There are several essential disconnects between a traditional electronic storefront and today’s MSP.

Messaging. Today’s IT provider wants to be the customer’s trusted advisor, someone who is giving sound advice based on their expertise and knowledge of the customer’s specific needs and resources. The messaging of an e-commerce site is the opposite: “You don’t need me, just go shop online.” Or, “Just buy what you’ve bought before, because our e-commerce site shows you your history. No thought required, nothing ever changes.”

These are not the messages of a trusted advisor.

Another important message to your customer is your own image. This is often enhanced when you first set up an e-store and put a lot of thought and resources into the organization, selection and other aspects of the e-store. But inevitably, this effort falls off – because it is often too time-consuming for the return on time. The site degrades, and is no longer a positive reflection of your company. This is a highly common occurrence.

We’ll take care of everything. Except new equipment? Many MSPs are moving into managed contracts, HaaS, and other arrangements that basically give the customer the warm fuzzy blanket of “it’s all included, we’ll take care of everything.” Sending the customer to shop for themselves on your e-store is anything but.

The wrong battlefield. It’s virtually impossible for a small company to compete with the Dell/CDW/Newegg/Apples of the world. Read your Sun Tzu — you’re simply taking the battle to the enemy’s favorable ground. Once you’ve given your customer the blessing to shop online, they’re half a step away from better selection, pricing, marketing and site maintenance.

Today’s Relevant Solution

A much more relevant solution is offered by Quosal and our ground-breaking, market-leading online quote delivery and order execution solution, Order Porter. This is the middle ground, preserving the MSPs position as the trusted advisor, yet providing the convenience of online shopping, option presentation and selection, and order execution and payment.

We at Quosal have simple evidence that this is today’s topical, relevant online solution: We have hundreds of successful MSP and IT providers in the SMB space successfully using Order Porter to capture business every day – yet I have encountered barely a handful successfully employing e-storefront solutions. The simple, immediate and compelling level of success achieved by our customers, as illustrated in this case study, shines far brighter than any success story an IT provider has shared with me about its e-storefront.

Think twice before embarking on the long-term commitment that such a storefront truly represents. A much easier, less expensive, lower maintenance option that is consistent with your client messaging is readily at hand!

Kent McNall

Kent McNall
President and CEO
Quosal LLC

Posted by Kent at 10:24 pm Tagged with: , , , , , ,

Why Do Business with the Innovator?

Apple, Innovation, Kent, Technology No Responses »
Oct 082010

 

I make no bones about the fact that I’m a fan of Apple. They’ve recently become the technology market leader in key financial aspects, but in my mind they’ve been the market leader in almost every important way for a long time, especially in vision and innovation.

For example, while I know that there are dozens, or hundreds, of iPhone knock-offs that are much less expensive than the original created by the innovators at Apple, I’ll keep buying the iPhone. Why do I do business with the innovators rather than the “me too” followers?

First, I like to support innovation, and I can most directly do that by voting with my dollars. While the product may cost more, to me that’s the price of originality and the risk of putting something new on the market and in the world – and it’s worth supporting.

Second, I know that the innovator of an idea or product brought that new thing forward by plan and purpose after baking it just right – not as a reaction to what someone else did. There’s a longer-term vision and roadmap, while the “copycats” that come after have to wait and see what the innovator does next.

Third, there’s almost always a quality drop-off in the imitator’s products. This is a function of the rapid product development cycle in an effort to respond to the new idea; the fact that the new innovation may be very outside the inherent design of existing products; and the simple fact that the innovation may not be fully understood and may be difficult to “shoehorn” into an existing product family, architecture or design.

Finally, I’m not one to be years behind – and in many areas, you can’t afford to be years behind in a competitive market. This is truer today than ever, because some innovations change things so rapidly.

We’ve all seen dozens of iPhone-alikes come and go, making barely a blip in the overall scheme of things – an inherent risk in purchasing the cheaper clone. Yet the iPhone marches on. This discussion is not just about cell phones — it applies to all innovative products and the ensuing innovation-imitation-iteration cycle that drives creative competition. We at Quosal strive to innovate and will continue to do so. Those who come after are doing just that — coming after.

Go Apple!

Kent McNall

Kent McNall
President and CEO
Quosal LLC

Posted by Kent at 11:12 am Tagged with: , , ,

Effective Adoption of New Processes Drives Profits and Morale

Business Process, Kent No Responses »
Aug 232010

 

One aspect of our business here at Quosal that has been very gratifying is the high adoption rate of our solution. In this case “adoption rate” refers to the percentage of customers who implement, use, and receive the benefit of Quosal soon after they purchase it.

Having been in the enterprise software solution business for some time, I’ve certainly seen the opposite — companies that make a significant investment in software (and other infrastructure) that don’t actually implement the solution or are “turned back from the gates” of implementation. In some cases, writing the check for the software/services was the first, last and only action item taken toward implementation! In other cases, a sincere effort is made, but the company loses steam and the initiative falters.

The desire for change of business process is almost always sincere and founded in real need. How can a business “punch through the target” to ensure that ROI is received from such an investment?

Change is an act of management will. In a small business, management and ownership are generally synonymous. The mandate for change must always start at the top, just as the authorization for the investment usually does. Without this mandate and the driving desire for business process change, it often does not happen – especially if multiple departments are affected by the change.
Beyond this, there are practical “drivers” that will help ensure that change will occur in a beneficial, building manner.

Big Wins: The carrot of a significant win in the process can help pull change-averse staff and organizations through an implementation. Such wins come in many forms. I’ve seen what looks like surprisingly small “wins” from the outside drive huge changes.

Ease Their Pain: A corollary of the Big Win — reducing a pain point can help drive change.

Desire to Be the Best: Many organizations are motivated by the simple desire for improvement – taking another step toward excellence.

We Don’t Fail: The corollary to the above, a successful implementation is the obvious alternative to a failed implementation, which is an undesired black eye for many.

Many executives and owners feel that the simple mandate of “it’s your job” will win the day, but looking a little further into the heart of successful change management can smooth the road, and speed the path to ROI.

Posted by Kent at 9:26 am Tagged with: , , , ,

No More Web Site Envy – For Now

Kent, Technology, Web No Responses »
Aug 062010

 

I’m sure I’m not the only business owner in the world that suffers from “Web site envy.”

Like other forms of covetousness, such as cell phone envy and tech-generation envy (you have the iPhone 4, while I’m still stick on the 3GS), it always seems that the next guy’s Web site has a little better graphics, content and technology.

We’ve just released our third iteration of the Quosal Web site, and at least for today I’m suspending all Web site envy. Our team has worked hard on it, and our summer interns have made terrific contributions across the board.

When one considers all of the factors that make up today’s Web presence for a business, and all of the traditional business elements affected by that presence, it is easy to understand why your Web site needs constant attention. Marketing, sales, operations, support service and public relations are all impacted. The technology, content and attractiveness/gestalt of your site all create an impression on potential customers and existing customers.

Our own product, Quosal, has become an even more important part of our own Web site with this new revision, as we are using Order Porter’s capability to actually process sales transactions for our new product, Quosal for ACT! Our customers can build their own quote (shopping cart) online, and complete the purchase and digital distribution automatically. More and more, all of the software products we use, and our Cloud-based applications and data, must be able to interact with our Web presence.

It’s nice to give “Web site envy” a break at least for a day. I’m sure I’ll be back to the envy salt mines next week.

Posted by Kent at 11:21 am Tagged with: , ,

Putting Your Data in the Cloud Has Many Advantages

Cloud, Kent, Productivity, Proposals, Quotes 1 Response »
Jul 282010

 

Our Quosal quote and proposal automation application delivers many advantages to our users. One of them is extremely flexible deployment, including the ability to host your data “in the cloud,” securely and reliably, for as many users as you need. This capability has been in the application since its release in 2008 – initially with our own servers, and later with the added option of hosting through Microsoft’s SQL-Azure cloud infrastructure.

Quosal is a Windows application and is always installed on a PC or virtual PC environment (Citrix, Terminal Server, etc.), so the ability to seamlessly host the data for the application in the Cloud is unusual – but it offers many advantages and benefits. We have always hosted our own use of Quosal in the cloud, at first as a way of “eating our own dog food,” but I wouldn’t change how we use our own product in this respect – it really offers significant benefits.

First, it’s great to be able to access my central quote and proposal database no matter where I am, without reliance on a corporate VPN or other infrastructure. Several times, I’ve simply downloaded the client application on a new PC, activated with our internal key, and been up and running with my central database in a matter of minutes, without the need to install VPN and other infrastructure that would be needed even for an RDP session. It’s great to not be “tethered.” Whether at home, at the cabin or on the road, I’m always able to access my cloud-based data.

Second, my remote employees around the country have instant and excellent access to the shared quoting database with excellent performance – which is unfortunately not true when they’re on the corporate VPN. With the way our PSA works, a remote employee has full-speed, full-function access to our two most important applications just with an Internet connection.

Third, the “zero administration” of our cloud database is a great benefit even for our own product. While Quosal’s administrative requirements are low even for an internal database, you can’t get away from the fact that any database server has an administrative load that almost disappears when your data is in the Cloud.

For our customers, a Cloud-based deployment provides an excellent and elegant solution in many situations:

  • Multiple offices that all need access to shared central data for quotes and proposals.
  • Many remote users and road warriors that require the same, especially from high-latency connections.
  • Companies that are virtualizing and don’t want to set up a physical database server.
  • Companies without a dba or internal database resources that want the hassle-free setup and management of a shared database.

We’ve found that the deployment model that a customer wishes to choose should be separate from the billing model (Licensed or SaaS) that a customer might wish to choose – so we have many customers that have licensed the product, but still run their data in the Cloud as a deployment option. Far from being just a “pay as you go” alternative, Cloud-based data deployment is a highly advantageous way to go for customers large and small.

Both as a Cloud developer and as a user of an advanced desktop application that can store its data in the Cloud, I’m a big fan.

Posted by Kent at 5:46 pm Tagged with: , , ,

Revisiting Your Decisions Can Bring Affirmation and Evolution

Kent, Technology No Responses »
Jul 232010

 

When we set out almost five years ago to create the best quote and proposal software on the market, we did so with a few fundamental, philosophical choices and directions — one of which was to revisit those choices and not be dogmatic in our approach. Changing times and technologies call for flexibility in approach, and any business must adapt to customer and market needs.

One decision we had made was to do a new release every quarter – meaning, on average, four new releases per year, one per calendar quarter — to be released when ready as opposed to a fixed date. We’ve recently revisited this decision and practice, both to evaluate how it has worked and see if changes are merited.

Overall, we’ve been very happy with this practice in many ways:

• It has allowed us to move forward at an aggressive, but not maniacal, rate on our roadmap.
• It has allowed us to be responsive to changes in partner integrations.
• It has allowed us to respond to customer requests and provided needed fixes on a reasonable schedule

It has not created an onerous “release cycle overhead,” which can be a killer for software developers. If you spend half of your time just in preparing for product release, you have a big problem! This has certainly been helped by our automated development and updating systems.

Another thing we’ve been very happy about is the acceptance of our customers. We’ve never received a complaint either way about the frequency of our product releases. We had an early concern that throwing changes at customers every three months could be challenging for our customers, but the automated update process, combined with the fact that we’ve made the majority of our changes optional and transparent, have minimized this issue.

Overall, we (and our customers) are happy with our quarterly release cycle and we’ll be sticking with it – until the next time we revisit the decision.

Posted by Kent at 5:51 am Tagged with: , ,

Watching the Computer Generation Work

Hiring, Kent No Responses »
Jul 202010

 

Our summer interns have been working with us here at Quosal over the past few weeks, in various capacities ranging from graphics art to entry-level development and design. They are all great to work with, a very gratifying experience as an employer.

I have long anticipated the generational shift that I now see happening before my eyes as the educated workforce that has never known a time without computers in every aspects of their lives comes to the fore. It’s amazing to watch the differences in how systems are approached.

For them, “learning” new aspects of the PC is so smooth and natural that it’s almost transparent. They don’t get hung up — period. If they need information, searching the Internet is a fast and effective way to keep moving forward. Their base level of understanding, their innate sense of how things work in a PC, is already an asset to their vocation.

What this means on a practical level for an employer is that these young people are amazingly productive immediately, making wonderful contributions, certainly beyond expectations. This bodes well for our future productivity in the information age — provided that we find the way to harness this almost unexpected capability!

Having worked with interns for many years, it’s a normal business practice (at least for me) to naturally utilize them in entry-level roles and functions. This innate capability of our next generation calls for a different approach — certainly not to turn the reins over to your summer help, but also to not limit their contributions and miss out on something great.

Working with our next generation fills me with hope and optimism for our future, in every way.

Posted by Kent at 9:22 am Tagged with: ,

A Cloud Tale

Cloud, Kent No Responses »
Jul 122010

 

We’ve all been hearing about “the cloud” for quite some time now. I’m guessing that a lot of people are like me – I’ve had “some” idea of what the cloud is about, and the details have been filling in gradually. I feel I have a reasonable handle on it, but I learn more every time I read an article or talk to a knowledgeable person on the subject.

At one point a few years ago, when such a knowledgeable one gave me his take on the cloud, I thought to myself, “Oh, back to timeshare!” Yes, I’ve been around long enough to remember timesharing – paying exorbitant rates for mainframe access and resource time. No, cloud computing is of course far more.

One of the things that has brought the essence and potential of cloud computing home to us here at Quosal was our Microsoft Azure integration. Since Quosal is a database-centric and driven application, virtually every implementation requires the creation and setup of a central database. This is not a significant obstacle for most of our customers, and in any case we are available to assist. This is definitely a task on our project plan, however – not a no-brainer, and it is important. As our team has always been involved with enterprise-class, database-centric applications (SQL Server, MYSQL, Informix, Oracle, etc.), this is a fact of life we’ve always dealt with.

Along comes Azure, and Microsoft has done such an incredible job with this platform that in less than a day we had made the changes necessary to our application to be completely compatible with a cloud-based database server. In LESS time than it takes to configure an on-premise database server, our customers are hosting their data in the cloud, with seamless integration to our application. Really seamless. Now, it’s true that this was only possible because of the modern architecture and development environment of our application – but still, this was amazing.

Suddenly, our clients could host their data in the cloud – securely, reliably, and with high speed access with no servers, no DBA, no specialized knowledge whatsoever – and about ½ hour of total setup time. A real database. Their own database. Accessible from anywhere, as long as they have an Internet connection.

This was most definitely an “a-ha” event, and really brought home the impact of just one aspect of cloud computing. A few short months later, we have hundreds of users with their Quosal data hosted in the Azure cloud, on Azure servers all over the world – very happy users that are enjoying the benefits of this deployment option.

Timeshare?  Not exactly.

Posted by Kent at 9:24 am Tagged with: ,
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