Kent | salesquoteblog.com

A Cloud Tale

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.

You Too Can Have Successful New Sales Associates

Hiring, Kent, Knowledge Transfer, Sales No Responses »

Jul 092010

The common elements of the MSP/IT business experience are many, and surprisingly similar in nature, scope and duration for those of us lucky enough to make it a “long-term enterprise” status.

One of the most common experiences is trying to bring a new salesperson into the business, getting them up to speed and actually producing sales before we lose them. I’ve had countless conversations with business owners who are themselves the only “technical salesperson” within the organization. Over the years, I have experienced the challenge of hiring or creating new salespeople for IT/technical sales.

There are, of course, many factors to a salesperson’s success with a new business and/or product. Some of those factors are beyond the direct control of the business management — such as the economy and whether customers are spending money. But just as many factors — and points of success or failure with a new salesperson — ARE indeed under the control and influence of business ownership and management.

The most common points of failure that are within your control are:

Making a good hire (I see Kendra Lee at KLA doing a lot of great work in this area).
Having a good product with a happy, reference-able customer base.
The ability for the sales rep to properly configure and quote products and services on their own.
The ability to compete effectively with the materials presented to the customer.
The knowledge transfer infrastructure that enables the new salesperson.

If the salesperson can’t create their own quotes and proposals, they must continually rely either on other salespeople, management or the business owner. They must rely on “tribal knowledge” to pass the sacred information along on how to put a quote in front of a customer.

Other salespeople may be distinctly unmotivated to assist our intrepid new hire — I’ve seen many cases where the grizzled vets see that new salesperson as moving in on their turf. Sales management and the entrepreneur business owner can be incredible bottlenecks to that new salesperson — notorious for hoarding needed information and grudgingly doling it out. Or, they may simply be too busy to provide the necessary assistance.

It takes a concerted effort to put the right tools and processes in place to create an environment of success for a new salesperson, but the return on investment ranges from substantial to incalculable – since solving this problem is often the key to unstopping business growth. One part of this effort is most certainly the right platform for quote and proposal management.

The right quote and proposal platform is essential, providing both a vehicle for repeatable, standardized quote AND proposal processes, and the right tools for knowledge transfer to the sales team. Knowledge transfer is facilitated directly within a quoting tool like Quosal, with instructions, directions and even videos pertaining to the creation of the quote embedded within the quote template itself.

The right platform also facilitates the workflow to allow the new sales professional to submit quotes and proposals for approval when necessary — smoothly, easily and efficiently.

Finally, the right platform for creating quotes and proposals is going to put your new salesperson in an advantageous competitive position out of the gate, with documents and technology that impress the customer and leaves the competition in the dust.

With those advantages, a new salesperson can experience the early success that is so critical to longevity, without the blockades that are too often in the path. It is with these factors in mind that these elements of Quosal were designed.

Quoting the Way Your CUSTOMERS Like It

Kent, Proposals, Quotes No Responses »

Jun 302010

In the world of online shopping, we’ve all become very used to seeing product images while we add things to the shopping cart. In fact, we wouldn’t be very likely to spend a lot of time on a Web site that didn’t present attractive product images.

Yet, in the world of quotes and proposals, we’ve been conditioned by preparing quotes with spreadsheets, browser-based apps and old-school quoting tools to presenting quote and proposal documents that are text-heavy and don’t present images at all.

In 2008, Quosal introduced the capability to quickly and easily add product images to quotes and proposals, leveraging the availability of online content through such partners as Etilize.

Yet, many prospective users of Quosal express doubt about whether they need product images on their quotes, because they themselves don’t like them.

It’s not about what you like, I tell them. It’s about what your CUSTOMERS will like – and your customers like product images, nice product descriptions and, in some cases, as much information as you can give them.

They also like the fact that you spent the extra time and effort to put that beautiful quote together for them. We all know that a picture is worth 1000 words about a product you’re quoting, but it’s also worth 1000 words about the person that put the quote together, and those 1000 words say nothing but good things about you.

You’re spending your time, expertise and energy to put together just what the customer wants and needs in the selection of products and services you are quoting. It’s important to take that extra step and also present it to them the way anyone would want it to be presented – professionally, graphically, richly. It makes a world of difference to the customer’s perception about you and your company.

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Getting product images on your quotes will soon follow.

It’s Time for a New User Interface for Windows Applications

Kent, Technology No Responses »

Jun 282010

Our quote-and-proposal application, Quosal, has a great user interface — attractive, functional and fresh. In fact, it’s so good that some prospective users assume that the user interface is Quosal’s best feature — but the application works even better than it looks. Some of our competitors even use our great-looking interface as a negative (e.g. “it only looks good,” etc).

Quosal is written with Microsoft’s Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), the next-generation user interface technology and the successor to the long-in-the-tooth Winforms user interface. WPF has been a part of the .NET framework and development environment for many years, and is integral to Microsoft’s Silverlight offering.

I can share two perspectives with you: One as a developer, and another as a user of the WPF interface.

As a developer, we’ve loved every minute of working with this platform. It is, in fact, one of the most solid and reliable that our team has used in a combined 40+ years of development on Microsoft environments. When we initially made the decision to go with WPF, we thought we might pay a price — but quite the opposite has occurred. We’ve been able to create a beautiful, functional, connected application, with all the strengths of .NET and all the UI capability of WPF. As developers, we couldn’t be happier.

As users of our own application and other tools we’ve created with WPF, the story is the same — the user experience is exactly what we hoped it would be. WPF brings a new dimension to engaging usability, visual enhancement of the tasks at hand, and a clearly different experience than other Windows applications.

WPF is more demanding of your PC than older-generation applications, and if you have a fleet of 5+ year old, single-processor PCs, a WPF app like Quosal won’t be quite as happy as apps created in the 20^th century. But then again, neither will modern operating systems and other current applications. Even so, WPF maintains solid backward compatibility.

We’ve all seen futuristic user interfaces on television and in movies — Minority Report, Star Trek, and other shows have teased us with adaptive graphical interfaces featuring hand and voice controls, holographic displays and more. We’re not going to get there overnight, and we’re not going to get there all at once. Developers and users must take the steps forward to embrace a new generation of UI technology.

User interfaces have in some ways taken a step backward with web applications. Nobody denies the appeal of a web app’s deployability, but can we all admit that the UI — slow, clunky, and considerably less attractive — is several notches below our PC and Mac applications?

The great news is that the next generation of development tools allows developers to fuse web technology with the UI and power of desktop applications, as we have with Quosal. Users get the best of both worlds, and that’s a win/win.

Small adjustments in our thinking can make a huge change in business profitability

IT, Kent No Responses »

Jun 242010

I had a great conversation with a business owner this week that reminded me how quickly a small shift in thinking can positively change your business.

Both this fine gentleman and his industry shall remain unnamed. He related that he’s been in his industry for over 30 years, and has seen many changes, in good times and bad. One thing that has always been a difficulty, he said, was the lack of good software to automate the business processes for product- and service-providers like himself — including quoting, which is how he found us.

“I realized something,” he said. “We’re not an information technology company, but for all practical purposes, we are. We provide the same kinds of products, the same kinds of installation and maintenance services, and have the same kind of service dispatch.

“I’ve been focused on trying to find software specific to my industry,” he said, “But I’ve just realized the software for the IT industry is a perfect fit for us.”

In coming to this realization, his outlook on a previously stressful topic — automating his business process — has completely turned around. What’s more, he’s eager and excited at the possibility that the paradigms of another industry are so like his own, that the systems created over the years for that industry will be a great fit, too. His enthusiasm was infectious.

There are many business problems large and small that can be resolved with that shift in thinking, that triangulation and a fresh approach. There’s no guarantee that there won’t be a “gotcha” in this gentleman’s plan and his business, but I hope it works out perfectly for him.

The Apple iPad -- 10 Weeks Later

Apple, Kent, Productivity, iPad No Responses »

Jun 212010

From the moment I held an Apple iPad and told the missus it was the sexiest thing I’d ever held (she nodded with a solemn understanding), I felt it was a game-changer. Two weeks later, I demonstrated the iPad with our Order Porter software on ConnectWise TV with Arnie Bellini.

So 10 weeks later, it’s time for an iPad checkup. Has the game changed? I examine this question only in the limited context of our own company, not the wide world at large.

First, I’ve followed through on getting all of our employees an iPad here at Quosal (with the exception of the interns, who shoot me the evil eye each time they hear me say this). We’ll be doing enough with the iPad that everyone here needs to wrap themselves in the gestalt of the device and platform. So does everyone use it yet? No – but most everyone does. Our power user is Sam, who bring his iPad to every meeting and executes his action items on it as they are decided, running ConnectWise and other apps via RDP.

My own usage is more along the lines of a good blog by Chris Day (http://www.fullymanaged.com/blog/apple-ipad-thoughts-and-5-fantastic.html) – email, browser, RDP.

Another use we’ve all found for the iPad is GoToMeeting, a tool we use constantly. GTM has a great client for the iPad.

Of course, we all use the iPad with our own software. On April 20, I showed the first-cut examples, and our first customers are going into production/use with the iPad just this week. We’re really excited about the platform and are doing a lot around it.

So, is it indeed a game changer, so far, after 3 months? For us, internally, I’m going to be honest and say, “Not yet, but soon.” I’m very confident it has been a game-changer already for other companies with other uses — it definitely makes me wish I was in the medical systems field — and we can certainly vouch for the game-changing that we at Quosal will be doing for many MSPs and their sales professionals with the iPad!

A Warm and Fuzzy Hire

Hiring, Kent, Sales No Responses »

Jun 172010

I had a great hiring experience this week, deciding on a sales representative for the Eastern US region. Naturally, Christian is a well-qualified individual, whom I’m very confident will be very successful with us.

Finding a good candidate is always a positive experience, but what made this particularly gratifying was the interesting approach that Christian took to get our attention and convince us he was the right person for the job.

Our company is a software developer, and we develop quote and proposal applications. Our intrepid candidate’s unique approach to submitting his resume was to download the demonstration of our software and create a proposal for his services. Imagine my surprise when I opened that proposal, created in our own software application, with a section-by-section, line-by-line description of exactly what he would bring to the table for us, and what that would be worth.

It was very difficult to not be had at “hello.”

Differentiating yourself is so important when you’re one of many competing for something scarce, whether it is a job or a new customer. Standing out from the crowd is one of the key things that Quosal helps our customers do, so a salesperson with an innate understanding of that principle fits in perfectly.

By the way, Christian’s second interview was to demonstrate our software for us, with no help or assistance. He knocked it out of the park.

The Power of Users Sharing Content with Users

Content Exchange, Kent, Proposals, Quotes No Responses »

Jun 092010

One part of my personal and professional background is a passion for games of all kinds, from chess to video games. I’ve participated in games and game communities both as a participant and, from the development side, a game company executive and producer.

In gaming of all types, users create content and share it with other users – it’s very commonplace. This ranges from records of games already played to actual content used in live games, such as maps, images, 3d objects and much more. This sharing is often highly automated or even automatic.

The power of this idea for business software has huge potential and nearly incalculable value, and is beginning to be explored by many companies, such as our partners at ConnectWise, whose users can now share several types of user-defined content.

Quosal has incorporated our idea very strongly into our application with our Content Library and Exchange, which allows our users to easily share content they’ve created with each other. This system has many great features and a graphical user interface that’s very easy to use.

That’s the easy part. Now we must convince users that it’s a good thing — in fact, it’s a GREAT thing — to take the time to share their content, such as quote forms, web designs, scripts and more.

In business, we’re not conditioned to do this. What we create in our business — report formats, forms, processes and so on — are Pentagon secrets, to be hoarded, guarded and never to appear outside of our four walls. I once believed this myself.

Phooey.

Our users create for themselves, or work with us to create, some terrific content. If a small fraction of our users shared that content with other users, we’d soon find that new users of Quosal would be able to find exactly what they need in that library. That continuing process would ensure that all users would be able to do the same, regardless of their industry or the type of content they’re interested in.

We feel this is an idea that is going to catch on very strongly, if not quickly. The value lies not just in the first and obvious application in our application space — the sharing of quote forms — but also in those new areas of business that our customers may not yet be participating in as yet. An example is a traditional VAR I spoke with, who is just now getting into managed services, that wanted to know how to put a good proposal process together. How great it will be when I can point him to the Content Exchange and say, “A lot of companies have been here before you — take a look at the plans in the Library.”

Contribute that great content you’ve created!

Redundant Data Entry is a Sign You Can Use Better Quote and Proposal Processes

Kent, Productivity, Proposals, Quotes No Responses »

Jun 072010

As I’m talking to new customers or demonstrating our product for prospective customers, the subject of redundant data entry — entering the same information multiple times into multiple systems — almost always comes up.

It’s very common to find companies entering the same data they put on their quotes at least two or three times into different systems. I joke with them that three or four re-entries is common, but that the world record is six re-entries into different systems. But this is not joke — in fact, I’ve encountered at least three companies that are tied for this dubious distinction.

Here’s a typical but not specific breakdown of these re-entries:

1) On the quote itself (spreadsheet or quoting system)

2) Into their opportunity management/sales tracking/CRM system

Then after the “win” is posted:

3) Into their Sales Order System

4) Into their Purchase Order System

5) Into their vendor’s on-line purchase order system

6) Into a separate commission tracking system

True, six different times into six different systems is extreme, but customers often get silent for a moment as I enumerate the above list, because they realize just how many times they really are re-entering the same data into different systems, and what a black hole of productivity and accuracy this really is.

If you’re double or triple-entering your quote and proposal data, improvements to your process can have a very positive impact on your profitability and your processes. If you’re re-entering that data four or more times, then you have a serious leak that needs attention.

A new approach to quote and proposal automation can certainly be a big part of the solution. Another important part of solving the problem can be the expertise of a business process consultant, a service that we provide at Quosal in the areas related to your quote and proposal processes, and the quote-to-order processes.

Eliminate the redundancy, and you’ll be very pleasantly surprised at the bottom line results.

Sales as a Service

Managed Service Providers, Proposals, Quotes, Sales No Responses »

Jun 032010

I’ve had somewhat of an epiphany over the last few months as I’ve thought about working with MSPs and IT providers on their sales processes.

Sales processes can be a bit of a black box to such companies, and truly improving the process with a platform like Quosal is an area that seems somehow less comfortable than improving, say, improving a ticketing process.

I think it’s easier for many of our partners if they think of sales as a service — which it really is.

Sales is, in fact, the first service that you provide a new customer — in some ways, the most important service as it relates to your relationship. As a service, your sales effort and those delivering it should endeavor to provide excellent service to the customer in the same way you would judge any other service you provide.

So, what do your customers look for from any other service that they should also get from sales?

Timeliness — The sales team should deliver on time and as committed, whether that deliverable is an appointment, a quote or a proposal. This is especially true with a new customer that’s looking at the performance of your sales team as a harbinger of the performance of your company.
Quality — We all look for quality work when we receive services — thoroughness, professionalism, accuracy. Sales has many deliverables — particularly the quote and proposal — on which the quality of your services will shine through.
Follow Through — We all feel great when a service provider follows up and follows through on the services they have provided to us. That is certainly true of sales as well.

If you make a mental shift to thinking of sales as a service, then certain processes that you apply to your service delivery efforts become easy to apply to your sales efforts as well.

SLA for Sales? Do you have an SLA for responding to new customer inquiries? What about existing customer needs for a quote — what’s your SLA for them? When customers refer to an organization as “hard to do business with,” they are often referring to the difficulty of getting a quote or proposal for new business.

Surveys for Sales? Many of our customers follow up service tickets with a survey. Have you ever thought of doing that for your sales efforts as well? Wouldn’t you like to know how you’re doing on this all-important effort?

Sales as a Service because sales IS a service. It is, in fact, one of the most important services you can offer your customers. Great sales service leads to great sales, which is a big win/win.

Stay tuned, we have much to share on this topic.

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