We are always looking for ways to improve our customer support. It will help us help you if you would fill out this short survey.   [SURVEYS 4]   .    

Before you start your weekend, here’s one more way to put Stash to work for you. If you use MozyHome to backup more than one computer, Stash might be able to help you free up some of your MozyHome storage capacity. Here’s how. Let’s say that you have 5 gigabytes of digital photos, and you [...]

Beginning in February, David Branch will offer a series of free webinars designed to help you sell more online backup services. Dave has decades of experience in software and services sales, and has been through advanced industry sales training. His insight and experience will prove invaluable.

At fist glance, it would seem that most online backup services are pretty-much the same. They provide software you load on your computer to identify files for backup. They establish an Internet connection to a cloud-based storage server. Finally, they transmit an encrypted version of your data to offsite storage for safe-keeping.

I haven’t mentioned the RBS Referral Network lately, mainly because it’s all automatic and just sends out referrals without making too much fuss.

We made some big changes in Tech Support, including promoting Stephanie Wallace to Support Coordination Manager and adding more Tech Support engineers to our staff. We replaced our phone system with a new unified communications system that better links our two offices with voice, data, and audio/video conferencing, and added more bandwidth at both offices. This will result in quicker, more efficient Tech Support. It also provides “work from anywhere” capabilities for critical employees as part of our continuity plan.

David Branch has been appointed Sales Manager (World) for Remote Backup Systems, a leader in the development of Online Backup software. Based in the Memphis headquarters, David will provide experience and vital resources to RBS' entire network of Service Providers.

Bare Metal Backup (sometimes called Imaging, sometimes called P2V) is a feature that backs up an entire hard drive - programs, data and all, and then can restore it to a different drive (or a virtual machine) complete, ready to run, bootable, an exact copy of the original drive. There’s no file selection because it backs up everything.

As part of a plan to strengthen its technical support capabilities, Remote Backup Systems, the leading developer of online backup software, is pleased to announce the promotion of Stephanie Wallace to the position of Support Coordination Manager, providing vital resources to the company's entire network of service providers.

We’ve come to depend on MarketingSherpa to provide the case studies and research to help us further refine how we market and shape our best practices. This year’s 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report is no exception to the Sherpa collection.

Over 1,700 B2B marketers were surveyed for this report that includes 157 charts and analytical commentary on how to “attract and convert the modern B2B buyer.”

Within its 188 pages, MarketingSherpa reveals the two biggest B2B marketing challenges we face: lead generation (74%) and lead qualification (49%). These results, along with Sherpa’s report that the average B2B deal size declined in 2011, show us that marketing to a lengthening sales cycle has led to more promotional pricing than ever to get the deals closed.

The impact is widespread. Across all industries and sizes (and regardless of process maturity) marketers continue to struggle to achieve the proper balance of lead quality and quantity. MarketingSherpa’s research shows that smaller the organization, the more challenging this becomes.

Other top B2B marketing challenges:

· Generating a perceived value in “cutting edge” products (41%)
· Competing in lead generation across multiple media (40%)
· Generating PR “buzz” (38%)

Further, marketers indicated that an overall lack of resources (time, staff and budget) is the greatest barrier to achieving their marketing goals. This would explain why marketers are struggling to gain maturity in lead conversion processes. There simply isn’t the time, money or manpower to focus on an initiative of this magnitude.

So, how is marketing leadership planning to address these challenges? MarketingSherpa’s data on CMO’s strategic priorities for 2012 includes:

· Gaining greater insight of customers and target audience (56%)
· Optimizing lead progression through the marketing-sales funnel (55%)
· Achieving or increasing measurable ROI from lead generation programs (54%)

What provides the best insight in this most recent report is how MarketingSherpa dissects the data: by industry, by maturity, and by size. These cross-sections illuminate the why’s and how’s of B2B marketing to help us evolve our own best practices.

Download your own copy of the 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report today. With a wealth of industry-specific data, marketers everywhere must have this report to better inform their marketing strategy, improve best practices, and achieve more sales conversions.