May 17, 2012: Online Backup Software Pioneers Remote Backup Systems ranks among the world’s top 100 cloud service providers (CSPs), according to Nine Lives Media’s second-annual Talkin’ Cloud 100 report. The top 100 CSPs generated more than $2.3 billion in combined cloud services revenues for 2011, up nearly 46 percent from 2010, according to the Talkin’ Cloud 100 report, which is available now by visiting http://www.talkincloud.com/tc100.

This year’s Talkin’ Cloud 100 report (formerly the Talkin’ Cloud 50) has been expanded to include:

• Cloud service providers — companies that offer IaaS, PaaS and/or SaaS
• Cloud aggregators — companies that offer online marketplaces for sourcing cloud applications, platforms and/or infrastructure
• Cloud brokers — companies that recommend a range of cloud applications for customers
• Cloud integrators — companies that link multiple cloud services into a customer solution
• VARs (value-added resellers) with cloud services expertise
• MSPs (managed service providers) with cloud services expertise

“I am honored to have been selected as a member of this prestigious group,” said Rob Cosgrove, CEO, Remote Backup Systems. “We owe it to the support and success of our MSP Service Providers. Thank you, guys!”

The Talkin’ Cloud 100 report is based on data from Talkin’ Cloud’s online survey, conducted January through April 2012. The Talkin’ Cloud 100 report recognizes top cloud service providers based on such metrics as annual cloud services revenue growth (both in actual dollars and in percentage growth rates).

“Nine Lives Media and Talkin’ Cloud congratulate Remote Backup Systems,” said Amy Katz, president of Nine Lives Media, a division of Penton Media. “The Talkin’ Cloud 100 honor arrives amid a land grab in the cloud computing market. And the Talkin’ Cloud 100 companies are leading that land grab.”

Talkin’ Cloud, produced by Nine Lives Media, is the go-to resource for CSPs, VARs and MSPs profiting from cloud computing. Talkin’ Cloud features a daily blog, research, Channel Expert Hour Webcasts and FastChat videos. It is the first online media destination for channel partners working in the cloud.

About Remote Backup Systems

Remote Backup Systems has provided brandable, scalable software and solutions to MSPs and VARs enabling them to offer Online Backup Services since 1987.

About Nine Lives Media

Nine Lives Media, a division of Penton Media, defines emerging IT media markets and disrupts established IT media markets. The company’s IT channel-centric online communities include MSPmentor (www.MSPmentor.net), The VAR Guy (www.TheVARguy.com), Talkin’ Cloud (www.TalkinCloud.com), VARtweet (www.VARtweet.com) and MSPtweet (www.MSPtweet.com). For more information, visit www.NineLivesMediaInc.com.

Contacts:

Sales@remote-backup.com

http://www.remote-backup.com
Nine Lives Media:
Joe Panettieri, Editorial Director
212-204-4206 or joe@ninelivesmediainc.com

We just finished reading PR Newswire’s latest ebook called Unlocking Social Media for P.R. Their master blogger and social media expert, Sarah Skerik penned the ebook from a series of her compelling blog entries. The result is an excellent resource for any marketers looking to jump in (at last) to the social media pool.

• LISTEN first.  Don’t publish a single tweet, status update, or post until you have really listened to the conversation. Skerik recommends starting out by following your favorite brands and studying their social media technique for some time.
• Learn from the best. Skerik gives us three companies to watch on Facebook. Each has a presence that stimulates Wall conversation and offers shareworthy content in a way that is unique to their brand. Follow these companies to learn what works best and how to tweak your own approach.
• Be succinct. The tighter the message, the better the Tweet. Keep it short, sweet, and to the point and your Tweets will earn re-Tweeting. Scheduling Tweets is acceptable, says Skerik, but craft each with a different angle to ensure your coverage appeals across your entire audience.
• Don’t ignore LinkedIn. Skerik reminds us that LinkedIn is completely unique because it allows users to more specifically define their interests and align themselves with their professional peers. This is an invaluable resource for targeted PR.

Get your copy of PR Newsire’s free ebook Unlocking Social Media for P.R. today. It is full of excellent, real-world tips as well as links to supplemental blog posts if you want to dive in further to a particular topic. Best of all, it’s free.

If you have not yet started to build your mobile marketing strategy, what are you waiting for? The time is now. eMarketer reports by 2016 the growth of mobile social network users is expected to reach 1.7 billion users, a whopping 210% increase from 2011!

Vitrue recently took a more in-depth look at how mobile users are engaging with Facebook in their white paper, “Social Mobile User Engagement: Analysis and Strategies for Successful Mobile User Engagement on Social Media Networks.”

Yesterday’s Webinar on Best Practices for setup of the RBackup Client Software was a success. Eighty one people registered for it, and 52 showed up to participate. 

This Webinar is a wide-ranging discussion about Best Practices for setting up the Client software to properly back up end user data under various conditions and user requirements. It includes suggestions about file selections, retention settings, encryption keys, and much more. It is highly interactive, and includes many questions from attendees with answers by Rob and Pinku.

You can view the Webinar here in Windows Media Player.

Here are some links that were used during the Webinar. They contain further information and important Best Practices resources and articles:

Best Practices Article Series

Online Backup Estimator

Online Calculators

Best Practices Documents

KB Article: Creating Backup Sets

Here is a 20 ounce container of French’s Classic Yellow Mustard that I bought at a local market. I selected this bottle of mustard because of the huge yellow words, “40% More,” but I failed to read the fine print, just like many people who buy from the wrong Online Backup Software company fail to read the fine print.

The fine print on this mustard bottle, just under the gigantic yellow 40% More says, “than our 14 oz.” Well of course 20 ounces is 40% more than 14 ounces. But I didn’t read that part because I was distracted by the 40% More and I assumed this was a bargain, and that I would be saving some money by buying this bottle of mustard over the others on the shelf. So I bought it, without further comparison, trusting those big happy yellow words.

After I got home and read the entire label, I went online to compare prices, and guess what? This 20 ounce bottle of mustard actually costs 50% MORE than a 14 ounce bottle of mustard. So, instead of getting a bargain, I actually paid more for my mustard.

Why should you care about my mustard? Because it illustrates a problem my sales team faces all the time – competitors claiming to be less expensive, and not telling the entire story.

Yesterday a potential client from England emailed to say that he was comparing RBS to another company. He liked us better, but advised us that we were going to have to significantly lower our price because Brand X was far cheaper.

He had read the big yellow words and failed to read the fine print.

The fine print on Brand X says, “You have to pay this same price every year for the rest of your life, or we will shut off your software by remote. The money you pay us is just a prepayment into an account that we will draw down depending on which features of it you use.”

Further fine print says, “You are not in control of how fast you use up your account. Your end users are. So, you can’t predict your costs of doing business, so you can’t accurately set your end user prices. We have seen our customers’ accounts drained unexpectedly overnight and their entire business screech to a halt.”

The fine print also says, “Oh, and we’re going to track how you use our software and which features you use, and we are going to charge your prepaid account with an unpredictable amount of money every month. If your account runs dry your software will stop running. If it runs dry on a weekend or holiday, you’ll have to wait until the next business day to buy more.”

Of course we shop our competitors. We shopped Brand X only last week. Posing as an interested customer we had them quote us a package with as close to the same features as we have in our $2250 100-Credit Starter Package. They were only able to match about half our features, but they did the best they could.

What was their best deal? $10,000 per year. PER YEAR!! Right. Ours costs $2,250, a one-time charge.

If you are comparing RBS to other company, PLEASE do us both a favor. Give our sales department a call so we can show you the fine print that might otherwise cost you a lot of money, and make your customers extremely unhappy because someone else’s software doesn’t seem to work exactly as they describe it.

Join us on March 8 for a Free Webinar on selling Online Backup Services. Using reference selling will shorten your sales cycle.  Testimonials draw attention to your services. Join Dave Branch, Sales Manager at Remote Backup Systems for this one hour free Webinar on how to make your Online Backup Service more successful.

This Webinar is over. You can view the recording at this link with Windows Media Player. The PowerPoint slides can be downloaded here.

You can view previous Webinars here.

Title: Online Backup Sales – Using References and Testimonials to Drive Business

Date: Thursday, March 8 2012

Time: 3:00PM to 4:00PM CST

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server

Macintosh®-based attendees

Required: Mac OS® X 10.5 or newer

Join us for a Webinar on March 6. This one hour technical session concentrates on best practices for setup of the RBackup Client software to minimize backup time, make sure you back up the correct files, and meet your customers’ recovery objectives.

This Webinar will be recorded and posted on our website. You can view previous webinars here:

http://www.remote-backup.com/multimedia.htm#webinars

This Webinar includes the following topics:

* Selecting Files / Excluding Files
* Selecting Backup Types
* Using Multiple Backup Sets
* Categorizing Data
* Autoselect (with options)
* Using the Online Backup Estimator
* Activating a Client Account (manually, and with the Registration Wizard)

… and if we have time

* Recovery Objectives (RTO, RPO)
* Data Value
* Downtime Cost
* Disaster Rercovery Plan

This webinar will be presented by Rob Cosgrove and Pinku Bharathi. Questions are welcome and encouraged throughout the Webinar. The webinar is based on Rob’s 5-part series on Online Backup Best Practices:

http://blog.remote-backup.com/online-backup-best-practices-first-in-a-series-of-five/

We will not be able to handle specific technical support problems during this session.

Title: Online Backup Best Practices for Client Setup

Date: Tuesday, March 6 2012

Time: 3:00PM – 4:00PM CST

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server

Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.5 or newer

Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/760936050

The average charge for a personal online backup account charged by our Service Providers is $9/month. Overhead expenses for providing tech support services can range from $50 per hour to well over $200 per hour depending on salaries and other costs of doing business. This article seeks to uncover some of the support costs inherent in Personal accounts which do not exist in Business accounts. 

Rob Cosgrove, CEO Remote Backup Systems

A quick tech support call for a Personal account lasts 15 minutes and requires either 1 phone call or 3 emails. An average Personal Account tech support call lasts 25 minutes. This is an insignificant expense for Business backup services who charge far more per month, but it can add up to an unreasonable expense for Personal accounts.

A single tech support call for a Service Provider whose overhead cost is $60/hour might be $25, or put another way, nearly 3 months of income.

Personal users ask very different questions than Business users, and they have more problems.

You can significantly reduce the cost of delivering technical support services to Personal Accounts by clearly specifying your support policy in your Service Agreement, and by using an inexpensive automated support system like the one from Kayako.

The following are real tech support questions submitted by end users of our Service Providers who use our Mercury software to deliver personal backup services.

I want to stress that the following questions are from end users of Personal backup services, not Business backup services. Business users are more savvy, and their questions are far more reasonable.

I would like a phone call immediately, not an email. My laptop has crashed and I need a backup file for a class in 1 hour.

This case took an hour. The SP had to drop what he was doing, phone the customer, do a server-side restore, zip up the file and email it to a friend of the customer’s on campus.

I have lost my encryption key. Can you recover my files?

One of the most common requests, this can take from 45 minutes to hours.

What is this $9/month charge on my credit card statement? I didn’t order anything from you!

This common complaint usually requires a phone call and 15 minutes re-explaining what Online Backup services are, and re-selling the end user on the service. Customers with this question are often already indignant and difficult to talk down. About half result in a demand for a refund and cancellation.

I can’t log into my account. It says my username or password are incorrect.

By far the most common complaint, users simply forget their login. This requires looking up and emailing a new password (or the old password) to the email address on record. It often also requires explaining to the user that for security reasons you can’t simply give the password out in a phone call. This can take from 5 minutes to 15 minutes, and can result in a dissatisfied customer no matter what you do.

I bought a new computer and now I want to move my backup software to the new computer. Can you help?

You could just point the end user to an article on your website, and that will work in about 50% of these cases. The other 50% might require you log into your end user’s computer by remote and actually do a reinstallation and recovery for him. This case can take from 2 minutes (to send an email pointing to an article) to literally hours if you have to log in by remote.

Which files are being backed up? How can I be sure you have the right ones?

You can point to an article on your website in 2 minutes, or if the user insists, you might have to spend 20 minutes explaining why you only back up certain files instead of everything on the hard drive. If you aren’t backing up the files the user wants you to, this can result in a dissatisfied customer.

I bought your software a year ago and haven’t touched it since then. I want a refund!

This common complaint is usually triggered at the end of a yearly renewal period after the software has been doing its job for a year and the end user simply doesn’t know it was working. It can require a 10 minute phone call or a couple of emails to settle. About half result in a cancelled account because the user simply doesn’t understand the value of backups, and after all, he hasn’t had a need to restore.

Your software is conflicting with my antivirus software. Fix it or refund my money.

This is in my least favorite category of complaints I call “Not my fault.” The online backup software is not conflicting with the antivirus software, but the user is convinced that it is, and he demands that YOU fix it. This can take from 10 minutes to hours, if you decide to fix it.

My backups stopped working after I installed Microsoft Firewall (or a Windows update.) Please fix it.

See above. You can decide to spend 20 minutes adjusting the Microsoft Firewall, or you can lose a customer. No, it isn’t fair. But this happens a lot with personal accounts.

I am not receiving a daily notice of successful backups.

This is most often caused by the end user changing his email address. Personal users do this often, and forget that they did it. They decide they like another mail service better and switch without considering consequences. This can take 10 minutes and 2 emails to solve.

I asked you to stop sending me all these emails. Now I will report you as SPAM!

If you send your personal users emails about their backups, some of them will accuse you of SPAM. Point them to an article on your website or send them an email or make a phone call. This customer is already unhappy, and there’s really nothing you can do about it except lose a customer or spend time explaining yourself to him.

I have tried to install your software on all my computers, and it fails to back up or restore.

The software is designed to run on only one computer at a time. Each computer needs its own account. This customer is already unhappy and misinformed. You can spend 15 minutes to an hour explaining or fixing the problem, or trying to sell the user multiple accounts.

Please send me a list of all the files I have backed up with your system.

If you remind your user that for security reasons you don’t have that information, he might question why he’s paying you. You have to explain how he can get the file list himself. You can do this by pointing him to an article on your website, or you can spend 15 minutes and a couple of emails.

My computer has been stolen. Please send me all my files back on CDs.

This one can take many hours to do a server-side restore, or to send the user a stack of CDs or a portable hard drive. I recommend charging your customer a fee for this kind of service. You should account for this in your Service Agreement.

I used to have an account with you a couple of years ago, but I cancelled it. Now I would like to restore all my old files.

Yes, this really happens. You are already making no money from this customer and now he wants you to spend money explaining to him how you deleted his files 30 days after he cancelled his account, just like his Service Agreement stated. This might result in a complaining former user and a phone call or emails from you, maybe 20 minutes.

I installed your software on my computer and then a few months later I got a virus. I used Malwarebytes and Spybot and they say I don’t have a virus, but every time I turn on my computer the virus returns. Please call me and tell me what to do.

This one is in the “Not my fault” category. Point him to an article or spend 5 minutes in an email explaining that they should contact the vendor of the other software.

Thank you for offering to help me. I am available tomorrow afternoon after 5PM as well as 12:30-1:30pm (first choice) or 2:15-3:45 next Wednesday. Please phone me during one of those times.

This VERY annoying request asks you to act on your customer’s very strict schedule, even if it means working after the close of business.

Does my computer have to be turned on to do a backup?

Yes, they really ask this question. 5 minutes ($5, more than half one months’ income)

Does my computer have to be connected to the Web to do a backup?

This one, too. 5 minutes.

My backups are not working properly. Please call me immediately.

This kind of support request comes with almost no information. You have no idea where to start looking for the answer, so you have to contact the customer for more info. If by phone, this call can take from 15 minutes to over an hour. If by email, it will require several emails back and forth as you try to pull information out of the customer like pulling teeth.

Rob Cosgrove is the President of Remote Backup Systems, founder of the Online Backup Industry, and a vocal advocate for maintaining the highest standards in Online Backup software. His latest book, the Online Backup Guide for Service Providers: How to Start and Operate an Online Backup Service, is available online now, on Amazon.com, and at bookstores.

Remote Backup Systems provides brandable, scalable software and solutions to MSPs and VARs enabling them to offer Online Backup Services.

We recently downloaded a copy of the complimentary guide from Lyris called Email+Twitter+Facebook: 22 Tips to Cross Channel Success. What caught our attention right away were some mind-boggling statistics.

In a single day on Facebook, the site is viewed 700 million minutes, during which:

· 72 million links are shared

· 144 million friendship requests are accepted

· 216 million messages are sent

· 30 billion pieces of content are shared

And Twitter, while not as popular as Facebook, is adding nearly 500,000 new accounts per day. Experts agree that Twitter is a valuable resource for:

· Gathering competitive intelligence

· Creating a more human, personal touch to your corporate brand

· Providing more responsive customer service

But it is email that remains the most successful tactic amongst the three. According to digital marketing researcher group Smart Insights in their 2011 Customer Engagement Report, 72 percent of marketers surveyed cite email newsletters as most likely to result in a tangible improvement to customer engagement.

This is backed up by how marketers are spending their money. According to Marketing Sherpa’s 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report, social media falls behind direct mail in marketing budget allocations, while email remains in the top three year after year.

Although marketers agree that email marketing is still more effective than social media, leveraging the strengths of both ensures that your marketing plan is built for maximum impact. And it isn’t too complicated to do.

Marketing Sherpa’s 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report states that 61% of marketers indicated they were able to effectively grow their email list through a Facebook registration page, while 54% indicated adding social sharing buttons to their emails was also effective. Both of these are straightforward to implement.

As you integrate social media into your 2012 marketing plan, keep in mind some of our favorite tips from the Lyris guide:

1. Use your social media presence to drive email opt-ins. Social media is a smaller commitment for your audience, so savvy marketers should provide an opportunity to increase the level of engagement through an opt-in to your enewsletter.

2. Use social media to find out more about your customers and what motivates them to share content. What will drive more word-of-mouth for your organization? This information takes some time to acquire, but it will shape more effective marketing programs in the long run.

3. Determine how you will measure success of your integrated marketing effort. What are your key indicators? With a cross-channel marketing program, it is will be key to monitor list size, brand awareness, and revenue.

If you haven’t expanded into social media yet, now is the time. In fact, email marketers are primed for success with social media. Lyris sums it up well, “Marketers who are good at email head into social with a competitive advantage – they already understand the principles of audience acquisition, respect, empathy and relevance.”

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 [...]

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.

David has a substantial career in software sales and support, having represented Ansys, PDA and AutoTrol. David has been involved with reseller networks and channel partners, and understands the distribution side of sales. We expect our customers to benefit from his experience and technical aptitude.

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.

If your company hasn’t yet established its presence on Facebook, take a look at these statistics from Deluxe Rev:

• Users average 15.5 hours on Facebook each month.
• On average, users visit Facebook 40 times per month.
• 50% of users log on to Facebook on any given day.

With Facebook popularity on the rise, it is time to get started! If you aren’t quite sure what to do first, you’ll find plenty of advice out there for the taking. We just found an excellent resource we recommend you download first, Deluxe Rev’s new ebook, “REV Up Your Facebook Marketing: A Guide for Small Businesses.”

Filled with statistics and how-to advice, this is THE Facebook marketing guide to get you going quickly. It includes practical tips like:

• Don’t worry about your Facebook page being perfect — it is more important to get started. Remember Facebook changes often and so will your page.

• If you have more than one administrator for your company’s Facebook page, create a list of guidelines for posting to ensure that your brand standards are being followed.

• Use “mentions” to help build your fan base. Post some recognition to other companies (think: congratulations and thank-you’s) that also share your target market. When you tag them correctly, these mentions will display in their fans’ news feeds, which will point new users to your company’s page.

Besides real-world tips, Deluxe Rev also has fascinating statistics to share (these are from a 2011 Buddy Media Study):

• The best length for a post is 80 characters or less.
• The best times to post are early in the morning or late at night.
• Thursday and Friday seem to be the best days of the week to post, although there are specific days that are better for specific industries (those are included in the ebook).
• Simple call-to-actions in your posts are most effective at encouraging participation (Like this…, Post this…, Comment here, and Tell Us).

However the biggest revelation is the importance of Facebook’s feature the News Feed. Social Media Strategist Ekaterina Walter of Intel says, “News Feed Optimization (NFO) is the new Search Engine Optimization (SEO).”

Those are powerful words, and they could not be truer. Facebook’s algorithm for determining what posts end up on News Feeds takes into account page popularity. Simply stated: If you have more fans interacting with you (Likes and Comments on posts) the higher your chances are to be included on your fans’ News Feeds. This is all the more powerful when coupled with this statistic: 70% of fans will not see Status Updates due to this algorithm. Yes, landing on the News Feed should be the number one goal of your Facebook strategy.

But to get on the News Feed, you first need a Facebook page. And to get started, we recommend Deluxe Rev’s “REV Up Your Facebook Marketing: A Guide for Small Businesses.” This ebook will give you the tips and techniques necessary to optimize your Facebook presence (and get on that News Feed), plus it includes some great case studies, too.

Cloud “communications and computing” solution provider 8×8 has announced the addition of Windows Cloud Server services to its portfolio. The goal is to enable enterprises of all sizes to extend their Windows network infrastructure to the cloud with virtual private servers.

Rather than invest critical time and money in new hardware, 8×8 says in its press release, it’s far more efficient to go with Windows Cloud Server and instantly gain access to more storage, memory and bandwidth that’s all manageable from a single web-based dashboard.

“While other providers are head down building solutions for software developers, 8×8 is focused on bringing user-friendly cloud server technologies such as snapshots, cloning, availability zones and hourly billing to conventional IT groups,” said General Manager of Hosting Solutions at 8×8 Andy Schwabecher in a prepared statement.

Of course, 8×8 is promoting the usual cloud benefits as unique selling points of its Windows Cloud Server solution, too: it’s paid by the hour (starting at $0.12/hour) or the month (starting at $49/month), requires no contracts, is scalable and each virtual server is upgradable, it’s fast and secure, and even uses IPv6.

While 8×8 never says so in as many words, it seems likely that this technology came out of its acquisition of Zerigo earlier in 2011. Zerigo specialized in — wait for it — virtual private cloud servers. And at that point, 8×8 was heavily hyping how Zerigo expanded its cloud play in the SMB space.

Now, Zerigo also added DNS and maintenance technology for cloud servers to 8×8′s portfolio, among other things. We’ll be watching closely for more clues as to how this all comes together.

On a final note: That offhand remark from 8×8′s Schwabecher about “other providers” leads me to believe that his company has no interest in getting into the platform-as-a-service (PaaS) marketplace. I’m glad to know I’m not the only one who thinks it may be getting overcrowded.

Read More About This Topic

• Cloud M&A: 8×8 Acquires Zerigo for Cloud Management

I am happy to announce that RBS is now offering no-fees, no-interest in house financing on online backup software purchases.

We have had a number of requests for this service, and while we have offered it to a few customers, we have never formalized the process and made it available to everyone, until now.

This program is available for all software purchases from $1,000 to more than $10,000. Payment plans are determined by the purchase amount, with most monthly payments at about $800.

Here’s an example. The monthly payments for a 200-Credit Starter Pack ($3,350) are $837.50 for four monthly payments.

Financed purchases must be at the full retail price, with no special offers, upgrades, or coupons.

For more information and to apply, click this link.

We recently took another look at Marketo’s Definitive Guide to Sales Lead Qualification and Sales Development. In this guide, Marketo is advocating the creation of a Sales Development Group: a collection of reps whose singular focus is on lead qualification and data capture.

This is an interesting idea.

We agree that lead qualification is the true intersection of sales and marketing. But in these challenging economic times, how likely is it that organizations will be willing to invest the necessary resources to create a separate Sales Development Team? Not likely. But we think there is no better time.

Don’t take our word for it. Here are the key takeaways from Marketo’s guide:

• A 5 minute response time is optimum on follow-up of leads received through a company website. Yes, you read that correctly. Depending on how much traffic your website receives, to provide a 5-minute lead response, you may need dedicated resources such as a Sales Development team. Still not convinced? The odds of qualifying a lead in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes drop 21 times. And from 5 minutes to 10 minutes the dial to qualify odds decrease 4 times. (Source: Lead Response Management Study)
• Marketo recommends you focus your experienced (and best-paid) salespeople exclusively on closing. Don’t pay them their high-end salaries to waste time with leads that are early in the buying cycle. This is where your Sales Development reps should focus their time and energy.
• Don’t ask salespeople to enter and/or track their own data. They don’t want to do it and they make mistakes. This is something the Sales Development reps should do to ensure data accuracy and better information for optimization.
• Remove the guesswork from determining when marketing passes a lead to the Sales Development team. Implement a lead scoring system. Not only does this ensure a high quality of leads are passed along, it builds credibility that the process is working.

If creating a separate group dedicated to lead qualification isn’t in your company’s immediate future (or budget), there are a few steps you can take right now to help point your resources in that direction.

• Make marketing responsible for lead qualification. Determine the transition point from marketing to sales and make it a meaningful one that both teams agree upon. The goal is to only hand over qualified leads and not throw everything over the fence. Check out Go-To-Market Strategies’ Promotions/Lead Generation Pack of templates for some helpful tools to get you started.
• Capture your sales and marketing data and report on metrics. Create a Sales & Marketing Scorecard to track performance of sales and marketing activities at each stage of the sales process to show monthly and annual results. Not only will a combined reporting tool help hold both groups accountable to each other, it will raise awareness about actual results. Our Marketing Audit Template Pack can help.
• Train your lead qualification resources like you train your salespeople. Personal attention and effective conversation is the key for turning prospects into customers, make sure your lead qualification reps are comfortably well-versed in your offering, customer pain points you solve, and common objections and responses. Our Sales Training Pack and Sales Management Pack of templates will guide you through this process.

In today’s economy, every lead counts. We need to orient our sales and marketing teams towards effective and efficient lead qualification. Make sure to download Marketo’s Definitive Guide to Sales Lead Qualification and Sales Development for more terrific insights.

We recently took another look at Marketo’s Definitive Guide to Sales Lead Qualification and Sales Development. In this guide, Marketo is advocating the creation of a Sales Development Group: a collection of reps whose singular focus is on lead qualification and data capture.

This is an interesting idea.

We agree that lead qualification is the true intersection of sales and marketing. But in these challenging economic times, how likely is it that organizations will be willing to invest the necessary resources to create a separate Sales Development Team? Not likely. But we think there is no better time.

Don’t take our word for it. Here are the key takeaways from Marketo’s guide:

• A 5 minute response time is optimum on follow-up of leads received through a company website. Yes, you read that correctly. Depending on how much traffic your website receives, to provide a 5-minute lead response, you may need dedicated resources such as a Sales Development team. Still not convinced? The odds of qualifying a lead in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes drop 21 times. And from 5 minutes to 10 minutes the dial to qualify odds decrease 4 times. (Source: Lead Response Management Study)

• Marketo recommends you focus your experienced (and best-paid) salespeople exclusively on closing. Don’t pay them their high-end salaries to waste time with leads that are early in the buying cycle. This is where your Sales Development reps should focus their time and energy.

• Don’t ask salespeople to enter and/or track their own data. They don’t want to do it and they make mistakes. This is something the Sales Development reps should do to ensure data accuracy and better information for optimization.

• Remove the guesswork from determining when marketing passes a lead to the Sales Development team. Implement a lead scoring system. Not only does this ensure a high quality of leads are passed along, it builds credibility that the process is working.

If creating a separate group dedicated to lead qualification isn’t in your company’s immediate future (or budget), there are a few steps you can take right now to help point your resources in that direction.

• Make marketing responsible for lead qualification. Determine the transition point from marketing to sales and make it a meaningful one that both teams agree upon. The goal is to only hand over qualified leads and not throw everything over the fence. Check out Go-To-Market Strategies’ Promotions/Lead Generation Pack of templates for some helpful tools to get you started.

• Capture your sales and marketing data and report on metrics. Create a Sales & Marketing Scorecard to track performance of sales and marketing activities at each stage of the sales process to show monthly and annual results. Not only will a combined reporting tool help hold both groups accountable to each other, it will raise awareness about actual results. Our Marketing Audit Template Pack can help.

• Train your lead qualification resources like you train your salespeople. Personal attention and effective conversation is the key for turning prospects into customers, make sure your lead qualification reps are comfortably well-versed in your offering, customer pain points you solve, and common objections and responses. Our Sales Training Pack and Sales Management Pack of templates will guide you through this process.

In today’s economy, every lead counts. We need to orient our sales and marketing teams towards effective and efficient lead qualification. Make sure to download Marketo’s Definitive Guide to Sales Lead Qualification and Sales Development for more terrific insights.

Jack Wallen answers some TechRepublic members’ questions about how to destroy data on a drive without destroying the drive.

Read the article here.

We took a closer look at two recent reports highlighting how sales and marketing priorities and budgets are allocated in 2011. The good news is, according to CSO’s 2011 Lead Management Study, marketing budgets are on the rise. CMO Council’s The 2011 State of Marketing Report also confirms this, with 57% percent of respondents indicating that they are adding to their 2011 marketing spend. (Note that this represents a budget between 2 and 4 percent of revenue.)

So how are we spending all this money?

In CSO’s Lead Management Study, respondents reported their top three strategic marketing objectives this year as:

• Increasing new customer acquisition – 82.6%
• Optimizing cross-selling and up-selling – 41.7%
• Increasing brand awareness – 41.5%

However the real story is in the bottom three:

• Increasing customer renewals – 17.6%
• Enhancing customer experience – 16.3%
• Becoming customer-centric – 14.5%

CMO Council’s data also weighs in on our apparent lack of focus on our existing customers. Their State of 2011 Marketing report indicates that only 4% of marketers are concerned with customer churn when allocating their budget. CMO says “… marketers continue their focus on more costly customer acquisition strategies in place of customer retention initiatives.”

It’s been said before: it is far cheaper to keep a customer than to acquire a new one. So why is customer retention falling behind?

If we take a closer look at the data, we find that marketers are facing some big challenges this year:

• A lengthening sales cycle. Marketers now own more of the customer as sales cycles slow down and prospects spend more time on the web, learning and comparing on their own, before engaging with sales.
• Overwhelming amounts of customer data. Many more of us jumped on the social media bandwagon this year, afraid of being left behind and without having an integrated solution in place. Now, we have lots of customer data all over the place, and we aren’t sure what to do with it (or how to get at it.)
• Lack of talent. CMO Council reports that 37% of marketers plan to bring on new digital and interactive marketing talent this year. We’re not surprised. In 2011, marketers found themselves with Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, even going mobile, and did not have a well-thought out strategy for any of it.

What is being lost as we fight our way through these challenges? The opportunities to build loyalty, increase revenues, and promote brand equity through our most precious resource: our customers.

Determining what priority customer retention should take in your marketing strategy starts by understanding the lifetime value of your customers. If you’re not sure where to start, check out our Customer Value Pack. It is designed to calculate the core value of your best customers and help you more effectively define, acquire, and retain the ideal customer set within a reasonable budget.

Knowing the numbers allows marketers to prioritize customer acquisition and retention strategies with more precision and authority. Because of this, we believe that all marketers must understand how much they can truly afford to spend to acquire a new customer.

Do you?

Successful selling requires an understanding of the buyer’s mind, and most MSPs fail to develop a clear understanding of their customer’s true needs. Specifically, many MSPs don’t understand why buyers do — or don’t — buy from them. Great businesses take the time to understand their buyer’s psyche. Let’s delve a little deeper.

First, there’s the psychology of buying. People buy based on emotion rather than logic — even large corporations. Why do we all yearn for BMW 7 Series when a Honda Civic gets us from point A to point B just as well and for a lot less? Spending $90,000 on a car defies all logic and reason when you think about it. Here’s why we do it.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:

Remember Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs from psych 101? Well, it applies to sales, too. We want the BMW because it tickles the desires at the top of Maslow’s pyramid. Driving a nice car makes us feel important, like we have achieved greatness. It earns the respect of our clients and friends. These needs trump the basic transportation needs at the bottom of the pyramid.

The BMW Hierarchy of Needs:

• Physiological Needs: We need transportation.
• Safety Needs: A car allows us to work and earn income to support our family.
• Belonging Needs: Having a nice car like the people we aspire to be means we belong.
• Esteem Needs: A luxury car earns respect and adoration.
• Self-Actualization Needs: A luxury car gives us the edge we need to be successful.

The MSP Hierarchy of Needs:

• Physiological Needs: My business needs a computer network to function.
• Safety Needs: My business needs a safe and secure IT infrastructure.
• Belonging Needs: Good businesses use technology effectively and have competent IT departments. So should mine.
• Esteem Needs: Being a successful technology leader in business will make our company the envy of employees, customers, and competitors.
• Self-Actualization Needs: Effectively leveraging technology will allow me to build a more profitable and successful company.

The Seller’s Mistake:

Here is where most people falter. They sell from the bottom of the pyramid up, rather than from the top down. We tend drill in on the technological (“physiological” and “safety”) needs rather than higher level business concepts. We’re going to keep your equipment running, backup your data, patch your servers, and so on. Blah, that’s boring. These are important aspects of what we do, but they don’t inspire CEOs to pay top dollar for managed services.

The Right Way to Sell:

Selling from the top of the pyramid down excites people. No CEO gets hot and bothered by patch management. Instead, focus on high level concepts. Show them how they can better use technology to increase sales, keep their employees productive, and reach their ultimate business goals. Demonstrate how their competitors are using technology more effectively than they are. Making more money and achieving success excites CEOs. Work from the top down. Show them how you can enable their business to be great.

Paul Barnett is VP and COO at Network Depot, the MSP that launched Virtual Administrator. Monthly guest blogs such as this one are part of MSPmentor’s annual platinum sponsorship.

Selling isn’t easy. However, if you adopt a systematic approach, support new technologies, and offer best-of-the-class services, you can really accelerate your sales. The following five points provide insights into such things and help you win new customers.

Among my top recommendations:

1. Take sides with a winning idea
2. Sell the idea, they’ll come
3. Show the difference in dollars
4. Share your customer stories and learning from the field
5. Use social media to reach out

1. Take sides with a winning idea
Your website is a basic sales requirement that gives details such as “who you are” and “what you do.” It helps prospects understand your portfolio of services. First create a website, it’s so easy. WordPress helps you create your own website. Next, choose a winning idea or product. It could be about cloud computing, virtualization, a good RMM or helpdesk. If you choose virtualization, contact all the vendors and try to provide the best offers that the market has to give.

2. Sell the idea, they will come
Follow the domain closely and try to establish yourself as a strong cloud/virtualization information company. Add flavor by writing informative blogs on the domain and educate your followers how it can help them. As the time goes by, people will recognize you and start asking advice. Gain the advantage of offering advice and selling to them.

When you have built your expertise in the domain, conduct webinars. Invite a keynote speaker to give some valuable information that helps customers improve their IT performance. Educate your customers on how technology helps them save their time and money. Focus on how you can help them with the technology.

3. Show the difference in dollars
Sell them an idea of parallel evaluation or a test run for a few departments. For example, if you are providing help desk service, offer RMM services free for 30 days. At the end of the month, provide a mock bill for the RMM services. Calculate the cost of inhouse IT staff vs. your mock bill (provided you can deliver services that cost less than inhouse IT). Educate the customer on the dollars that he can save by off-shoring IT and the pros and cons of in-house vs. managed services model.

Here’s a sample calculation: The cost of setting up an operations support team in Florida vs. outsourcing…

Some details about the chart and the calculations…

• Total number of devices to be managed is 500 and the number of operations support personnel required is 5. At an average salary of $55,000 per operations person per year, you would be shelling out $275,000 on salaries for five operations members.
• Workout the price for the managing the 500 devices. If you are charging $30 dollar per device on an average for 500 devices per year, it costs $180,000. A win-win for sides. Moreover, if you have multi-year contracts the difference becomes high when you include salary increments every year.

Also, get a user satisfaction survey. If the user experience improves, it’s great. It’s good even if people say there is no change. You can take the credit of having implemented an efficient system that costs less, without impacting the user experience. Reduced bill and improved services are a win-win for both you and your customer.

4. Share your customer stories and learning from the field
Share your customer stories that help other customers to improve their IT performance. However, be cautious that you never disclose the name of a customer to other customer.

Keep in touch with your customers via newsletters or monthly mailers that help them. Avoid using discounts and buy now links in the newsletter and mailers. Include at least 4 or 5 knowledgeable materials such as whitepapers, videos, analyst’s reports, etc. that benefit the customers. Target them month on month and the buy in will happen eventually. To send bulk mailers you can make use of effective email tools. These tools are available for as low as $15 per month.

5. Use social media to reach out
It’s hard to find someone who doesn’t use twitter or Facebook. Setup fan pages and use Twitter to send out relevant messages to your followers. Follow the analysts’ tweets and feeds, and retweet them. Keep the message stream focused to useful info – absolutely no place for “my cat did this” or “checked in at odd places”. Create a profile in the Facebook for you company, and make it interactive and informative. Post whitepapers and videos, and share useful articles that benefit the customers.

Conclusion
Include the above activities in your day to day process. Make sure you are in constant touch with your prospects and keep providing valuable information and tips to improve IT performance and reduce operational expenses. You will start reaping success in a very short period.

Bharani Kumar is the marketing analyst of MSP Solutions at ManageEngine. Read ManageEngine’s well received book “How to Set Up a Managed Services Business.” Monthly guest blogs such as this one are part of MSPmentor’s annual platinum sponsorship.

Read More About This Topic

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• Building Sales Collateral that Builds Business: 4 Requirements
• Do You Need Account Managers — Or Salespeople?

We reviewed Marketo’s Definitive Guide to Marketing Metrics and Analytics and found it lived up to its title with 70 pages of detailed advice on how to most effectively gather and measure key marketing metrics.

Within the Guide, a new profile emerged: the Revenue Marketer™. Marketo describes them as marketers who, “begin to operate and sound more like sales.” Trademarked by The Pedowitz Group, The Revenue Marketer™ “…knows how their key metrics stack up against their targets, and what they plan to do to improve their results.”

If you don’t classify yourself as a one of these new breed marketers, you’re not alone. 44% of marketers have no idea what profits a 10% increase in their marketing budget would generate (Lenskold Group’s 2010 B2B Lead Generation Marketing ROI Study)

However, we should.

As the Definitive Guide tells us (and as most of us suspected already), to gain more credibility and respect (translation: budget and resources) within our organizations, marketing needs to measure the things that will guide decisions that improve profitability. We need to start speaking the CEO and CFO’s language.

To do so, we first need to understand and develop goals around:

• How many sales we anticipate our marketing program(s) will generate
• How much revenue each sale produces
• What the gross margin percentage is
  

Next we need to design our programs so that we can effectively measure results. With clearly understood goals and well-defined ROI estimates at the outset, we can then track and connect measurements to our pipelines, revenue, and profits. We also can make adjustments to programs with actionable data to improve results, and therefore improve credibility.

To get started, we recommend you download our Marketing Audit Pack. This group of templates includes our Marketing Plan Audit Template, Marketing ROI Template, Sales & Marketing Scorecard and S.W.O.T. Analysis Template, and will help you:

Make well-informed adjustments to your marketing strategy

Understand the true performance of your marketing plan vs. the estimate

Report your status on a weekly basis to raise awareness about your sales and marketing results

Calculate the ROI on your marketing plan

Think about it. Prospects are taking more time to gather information from the wealth of content online, content that marketers produce. This means we are presiding over a much larger share of the revenue cycle than ever before. If you aren’t yet measuring your ROI, it’s time to start. The Revenue Marketer™ is here to stay.

When you’re dealing with a system that won’t boot, you need to fall back on some diagnostic skills and recovery strategies. Jack Wallen shares his field-tested approach.

Scratching your head about which Samba security mode to choose? Jack Wallen’s description of each option might help make a decision.

Energy drink maker uses mobile campaign to drive awareness of “build-a-thon” contest

From flugtags to x-fighters, Red Bull pumps out wacky marketing events around the world like it’s downed way too much of its homebrew.

From July 7-10, it raised the bar with “Red Bull Creation,” a creativity contest held in a Brooklyn park that pitted 16 teams of the country’s most way-out “hackers, tinkerers and fabricators” in a three-day “build-a-thon.”

The teams were given a theme—“energy in motion”—the night before the competition kicked off, and then had 72 hours to build whatever they’d dreamed up—the weirder, the better.

The event’s mindset is perfectly illustrated by the winning entry from a Minneapolis team called 1.21 Jigawatts. Red Bull described it as a “massive hamster wheel, wired into a mobile network, given its own phone number that received up to 60,000 one-word text messages at a time.” Upon receiving a text message, the wheel would begin rolling and print out a perfect copy of the word on the ground.

Practical, schmactical. 1.21 Jigawatts beat out other entries, including a wheelie-popping shopping cart and a mechanical inchworm named Chillerpillar, on the basis of being “unequivocally awesome.”

Red Bull’s promotional campaign was pretty creative itself. Before the event, it posted ads with QR (quick response) codes on bus shelters all around New York City. Passersby who scanned the code with a mobile device were redirected to a video promoting the event. The campaign seemed to work; on the final day of the event the teams finished their projects onstage before a packed house

Red Bull is no stranger to unique mobile promotions. Last year, it targeted Formula 1 fans with a new racing game built for iPhones and iPod Touchs. This year, it participated in a campaign at 1,400 Canadian convenience stores that delivered instant coupons to shoppers carrying Bluetooth-enabled devices.

— Bob Pickard

In response to a TechRepublic member question, Jack Wallen reveals a couple of troubleshooting steps he takes when Outlook is muddying the waters of the powerful .pst and .ost files.

When MSPs think about the benefits they provide their SMB clientele, they probably focus on internal efficiencies that can benefit the bottom line. But MSPs need to take a broader look at how their services can aid all aspects of an SMB’s operations. For example, managed contact center services can aid your SMBs clientele in providing high quality customer service, and even in charging a premium for them.

A case in point: A new survey commissioned by Fonality and conducted by Webtorials shows that on average, customers of SMBs would pay a 20% maximum premium for exceptional service. In contrast, larger companies could only charge a maximum premium of 15%. In addition, 58% of the respondents prefer to do business with an SMB, compared to only 16% who prefer to do business with larger enterprises.

Fonality is a business communications provider, so naturally this survey has a marketing angle, but one that holds promise for MSPs. Unified Communications (UC) and voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) solutions were cited by SMB respondents as important tools to help SMBs achieve greater levels of customer service that would allow them to charge a premium rate. Eighty percent of SMB respondents indicated they were already leveraging VoIP to improve contact center capabilities while reducing operating costs or had plans to integrate the solution within the next 12 months.

Meanwhile, UC, which combines voice, email and chat communications, was either being used, or soon will be, by 64% of those surveyed.

UC, VoIP Can Help SMB Productivity

The survey also shows that SMB users of VoIP and UC-based contact centers surveyed achieved significant productivity gains and cost reduction, with 52% saving 20% or more and almost as many (46%) reporting productivity gains in excess of 10%. Webtorials concluded that smaller budgets and limited skill sets associated with SMBs made them primary candidates to benefit from the greater ROI of cloud-based VoIP and UC services, as opposed to installing and maintaining expensive, complex IT solutions.

MSPs should not focus on the exact figures quoted in the Fonality study, but undoubtedly VoIP and UC services can be of great assistance to SMBs looking to improve customer service and increase profitability. Not many SMBs are equipped to host this type of leading edge technology in-house, making MSPs ideal candidates to enable superior customer service.

Sign up for MSPmentor’s Weekly Enewsletter, Webcasts and Resource Center. Follow us via RSS, Facebook and Twitter. Check out more MSP voices at www.MSPtweet.com. Read our editorial disclosure here.

Read More About This Topic

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• Emerging Managed Services Opportunity: TelePresence Sales Doubling Annually

Bill Detwiler shows you how to avoid five blatant security mistakes when deploying a new wireless access point.

Call it a blessing in disguise. Most recent economic reports say SMBs have been slow to make hires. But most IT research indicates that SMBs continue to expand their IT spending. In theory, that means SMBs will increasingly turn to managed services providers (MSPs) and other external folks for IT assistance to fill tactical and strategic gaps.

Indeed, the US SMB tech support market will be worth more than $15 billion in three years, according to a Parks Associates study which says the combined SMB/household tech support market will reach $30 billion, with households accounting for well over 40% of the spend. That still leaves more than half of a very lucrative pie in the hands of SMBs, which by default leaves much of it in the hands of MSPs who serve SMBs lacking in-house tech support capabilities.

Market Underutilized

It should be no great surprise to MSPs with SMB experience that Parks Associates terms this slice of the tech support market “underutilized.” Study data indicates 44% of SMBs experience computer problems, but only 28% of those SMBs use professional support services.

A combination of many MSPs ignoring the potential offered by smaller clients and basic ignorance on the availability of managed services on the part of many SMBs leads to this market not living up to its potential. Of course, this is great news for MSPs who serve the SMB vertical and aren’t shy about trumpeting the advantages their services provide.

Stay Up to Date with Platforms, Channels

The study also finds that long-term growth in the SMB tech support market depends on the ability to add support for new platforms and scale services to provide for multiple channels of support. Parks Associates advises that expanding to include on-site, remote, and depot repair, with proactive maintenance services for multiple devices, is key to growing the market.

In plain terms, don’t expect to achieve long-term growth by finding some new customers for your existing services. That will gain you some initial new clients, but they won’t stick around long if you can’t grow along with their needs.

Game-changers any MSP seeking long-term growth in the SMB tech support market needs to stay abreast of include tablets, smartphones, cloud infrastructure, and integrated cross-channel platforms. Even your small clients are moving away from a siloed IT architecture toward a more holistic model, your support services need to follow suit.

Previously, I wrote an entry on how big box retailers like Office Depot are trying to capitalize on the SMB tech support market. Parks Associates specifically cites how big box retailers, as well as telecommunications companies and the OEMs themselves, are “important” in the space. But when it comes to personal SMB relationships, can anybody really compete with effective MSPs?

Sign up for MSPmentor’s Weekly Enewsletter, Webcasts and Resource Center. Follow us via RSS, Facebook and Twitter. Check out more MSP voices at www.MSPtweet.com. Read our editorial disclosure here.

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• SMB Technology Spending Continues to Rebound
• The Economy vs. MSPs: Is There A Disconnect?
• SMBs Continue to Accelerate Cloud, Virtualization Spending

Generally speaking, I think most MSPmentor readers have been building their managed services businesses for five to 10 years. But what if you were building that business from scratch right now? Here are 10 steps to consider for startup MSPs — though the steps certainly apply to established MSPs that are looking to rethink their strategies for the second half of 2011.

1. Rethink Services: Take a look at ConnectWise CEO Arnie Bellini’s Modern Office blueprint. It’s not sexy. Instead it covers all the basics of IT services — everything from printer management to VoIP. Pieces of the strategy have floated around here and there for about five to seven years. But Bellini crystallized the discussion: Even as big cloud companies move into the SMB market there are dozens of IT services that VARs and MSPs can offer. Bellini made the point last year that VARs and MSPs should focus on help desk and vendor management:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I concede: At first I thought the advice was somewhat basic. Fast forward to the present and I’m starting to see the light. Seems like the best MSPs think of their help desk as an Apple Genius Bar — deliver superior customer experience and your customers will never leave you. Also, as a small business co-owner, I can see the value of vendor management. Our own Web integrator handles a range of vendor relationships for us — which allows us to focus on our core business: online media.

2. Rethink Pricing and Branding: At the recent Schnizzfest conference, TruMethods CEO Gary Pica told MSPs to offer…

• One Comprehensive Solution: Stop promoting individual ingredients (patch management, remote monitoring, etc.) and instead sell chocolate cake (the total customer experience).
• One Comprehensive Monthly Price: Stop offering line-item pricing for each ingredient, and instead offer a complete per-user, per-month price that covers everything. Of course you need to figure out your costs before setting a price, but the best MSPs charge more than $100 per user per month for all-in services.
• A Firm Monthly Minimum: The best MSPs don’t accept business from super-small customers, and insist on monthly engagements that start at about $2,000 per business (roughly).

3. Rethink Cloud: At Schnizzfest, Pica told MSPs that they were over-complicating cloud discussions. He organized and prioritized cloud services into four simple categories for MSPs to pursue. And he reinforced his all-in pricing. Instead of charging a storage fee, a security fee, etc. — just charge a single flat fee (per user) for everything each month.

4. Rethink Devices and Bet the Business on Mobile: During meetings in Silicon Valley this week I’ve heard a consistent theme from Oracle and other major software companies: The big opportunity going forward is for channel partners to deliver a consistent user experience across all devices — desktops, notebooks, netbooks, tablets and smart phones. MSPs that master the mobility challenge are well positioned to profit for years to come.

Bonus: Start spending time at a local college campus. See and learn how students are using mobile devices and related applications.

5. Rethink Target Customers: Sure, focus on SMB. But at the same time pick three verticals to evaluate — perhaps health care, retail and financial services. Assign a specific person in your organization to own/research that vertical for three months. That dedicated person should:

• Join an association focused on that vertical, and attend relevant meetings.
• Meet with one target customer per week to learn more about pain points, legacy infrastructure and other information about the vertical.
• Create a shortlist of horizontal solutions (PCs, networking, VoIP) that can be easily sold into the vertical.
• Research a shortlist of vertical solutions that the target customers may need.

After the three months of research you should have enough info to evaluate which vertical is a potential long-term target for your business.

6. Rethink Ownership: Avoid the temptation to form a business with a partner who has skill sets that are largely similar to yours. Instead, go into business with peers who operate in different sandboxes — one person focusing on sales, the other on technology, another on financial management, etc. If your ownership team has entirely redundant skill sets you’re raising your monthly overhead without addressing weak spots in your business.

7. Rethink Debt and Lines of Credit: Develop lines of credit before you need them. Partner with vendors’ financing organizations before you need to. Check out the Channel Finance 25 for some potential financial partners.

8. Rethink Your Devices: Don’t spend outrageously on IT, but do carry the latest disruptive devices — tablets, Chromebooks, etc. Tell customers why or why you don’t like your latest device during meetings… Establish yourself as a thought leader on disruptive technologies that can either help or hurt your customers, then figure out how to monetize those learnings.

9. Rethink Talent: While you’re spending time time on local college campuses (see tip 4 bonus, above), be sure to partner up with colleges’ Career Development Centers to find potential interns and entry-level employees. Also, Always Be Interviewing — schedule one meeting per week with a person you’d like to potentially recruit to your company. Even if you don’t have positions open right now all that networking will pay dividends when you’re ready to hire.

10. Rethink Your Exit: Manage your company from Day 1 as if it was publicly held.

• Track all of your key financial indicators closely — revenues, operating margins, profit margins, EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization), etc. Consider using an open book policy so that employees can get a feel why they need to help manage expenses while driving revenues.
• Join a peer group organization to see how other MSPs manage their finances.
• Standardize on PSA (professional services automation), RMM (remote monitoring and management), sales quoting and IT acquisition software to automate as much of your business as possible.

And most of all: Build your own assets. Instead of “reselling” or “brokering” the sale of third-party cloud services, figure out how to build your own branded services to generate monthly recurring revenue (MRR). Keep growing your MRR and profits and you’ll increase your company’s valuation. As your own brand and profits grow, potential suitors will likely seek you out.

In short: Your exit strategy should involve (1) building a highly valuable business rather than (2) focusing on a potential company sale before you’ve even booked your first customer.

What Did I Miss?

Which of the items above directly relate to your business? Which ones miss the mark? And what strategies did I completely overlook? I’m open to constructive criticism. Also, despite the headline I’ve got no plans to ever launch a managed services business because, frankly, I don’t have your skills. I offer the guidance above based on what I hear from a range of MSPs. I look forward to hearing how your business continues to evolve in 2011 and beyond.

Sign up for MSPmentor’s Weekly Enewsletter, Webcasts and Resource Center. Follow us via RSS, Facebook and Twitter. Check out more MSP voices at www.MSPtweet.com. Read our editorial disclosure here.

Read More About This Topic

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When it comes to profitably scaling a service provider business, there are two key requirements: First, delivering effective customer service that leads to more and more happy customers. Second, establishing the operational processes that enable this level of service, while boosting the efficiency and productivity of staff.

The service desk, more than just about any other platform or service, has a direct and fundamental role to play in both of these areas. A strong service desk can bring value to internal operations, and it can deliver differentiation in the market place. Therefore, it’s not overstating matters to say the service desk plays a very pivotal role in the MSP’s business performance and prospects.

Today, there are several approaches that you can take that will help your service desk support the growth of your business. Here, I’ll focus on one: providing customers with self-service access to the service desk.

Providing customers with direct access to information and processes in the service desk is one of the most beneficial things a service provider can do. This effort can both cut costs and improve customer service levels and satisfaction. That’s why instituting these capabilities should be job number one for any MSP that doesn’t already deliver them.

However, to date, a significant percentage of MSPs have not extended self-service to customers, even though a lot of service desk solutions deployed today support it. Why? Following are a few reasons:

• Mindset. In many service provider businesses, the service desk has been viewed solely as an internal tool, a mechanism that helps internal IT staff to do their jobs. This mindset has shaped tool purchase decisions and limited the effort service providers have put into the service desk—and as a result, their current capabilities are going to work against them.
• Limited knowledgebase. One of the key requirements of an effective self-service service desk is the knowledgebase. If service providers don’t have a robust, current knowledge base to leverage, the work involved in delivering self-service gets tougher.
• Tool limitations. Even though many tools may ostensibly offer self-service capabilities, the reality is that many are too cumbersome or limited to use effectively. In many cases, tools weren’t initially designed with self-service in mind, so these capabilities are limited or difficult to use. For example, many service desk platforms don’t offer a robust Web client interface.

Getting Started

For those organizations looking to deliver self-service capabilities, following are two examples of services that can be offered, and how delivering these services can help:

1. Self help. Service desks can be the tool customers use to solve issues themselves. For example, if a user encounters a problem with a printer, they can go to a self-service portal, get quick access to relevant guidance in the knowledgebase, and take steps needed to solve the problem. This type of service has two significant benefits. First, customers will be delighted. In many cases, they can resolve an issue far faster than if they had to submit a ticket and wait for resolution. Thus, they are happier and more productive. Second, this service can directly and significantly reduce a service provider’s costs, which can feed directly into profits or more competitive pricing.
2. Ticket submission. Service providers can equip users with a self-service portal through which they can log in and submit tickets themselves. By doing so, organizations can save a lot of money by reducing the number of calls coming into service desk personnel. For example, many estimates indicate organizations spend $12.00 to $20.00 per tier one service desk call. If a service provider has 1,000 calls coming into the service desk call center each month, and can realize even a 10% reduction, that reduction can yield savings of approximately $2,000 a month. In addition, when MSPs enable customers to check status online, users can see on a real-time basis what the status is, and what steps have been taken—whenever they want. Consequently, service organizations provide greater transparency, so users enjoy better visibility and grow more comfortable and satisfied with their service provider.

In both of the scenarios above, service providers enjoy reduced call volume, lower costs, and increased margins. What other tasks on your plate will provide more worthwhile outcomes?

Interested in discovering some other approaches that can help you turn your service desk into a profit multiplier? Be sure to sign up for the upcoming MSPmentor webcast, entitled “Five Managed Services Pricing Tips From Two Top MSPs

As we audit marketing plans for our SMB clients, we are excited to see interactive marketing taking a more prominent position in the marketing mix. For companies that are on a limited budget, there are many effective ways of putting email, social and search to use that bring value far beyond their traditional counterparts.

This spring, American Express OPEN published the results of its “Small Business Search Marketing Survey,” reporting on how small businesses are currently utilizing some type of online marketing, and revealed the following:

• Three quarters of small businesses plan to add some form of online marketing in 2011. Roughly three-in-ten will add a company website (36%) or social media (29%). About one-in-five plan to add search engine optimization (23%), mass email (22%) or search advertising (16%).

• The most common online marketing techniques currently being utilized by small businesses are a company website (86%) followed by social media (44%). One-in-five (21%) small businesses report that they are utilizing search advertising.

• Among small businesses who conduct some form of online marketing, two-thirds (66%) say that new customers find them through search engines/Internet, compared to 82% who say word of mouth is still the main source where new customers find them.

The American Express survey echoes what Forrester reported in August 2010. Their report “Interactive Marketing Priorities for SMBs” gives insight into how SMBs are allocating their budgets and perhaps more importantly, why.

The biggest takeaway for us is that SMBs are finally using interactive marketing to provide a key focus on customer care—both in acquisition and retention. Forrester stats to support this include:

• SMBs weigh lead quality, partnerships, and understanding buyer behavior more heavily than do enterprise firms, in part because smaller companies have fewer key clients to lose.

• For SMBs, the most important business objective when determining how to invest in interactive marketing is NEW CUSTOMER SALES, followed by overall sales, brand awareness, and leads.

And because of their size and flexibility, SMBs can respond with the timeliness required to maintain an effective interactive campaign. Becoming more responsive to their customer’s voice in real-time, SMBs can make an impact that is more powerful, more quickly, than in traditional marketing.

Although marketers should heed this warning: going interactive requires manpower (even recruiting key players from the rest of the organization to implement effectively). To do this is challenging, so much so, that even at the enterprise level marketers complain they do not have enough staff dedicated to interactive marketing, Forrester reports.

Last week’s quick survey of network admins shows an unsurprising number who are finding less time for training, squeezing all they can out of less-than-cutting edge technology, and spending most of their precious time doing routine user support.

Pew Internet reports, “The number using social networking sites has nearly doubled since 2008 and the population of SNS users has gotten older.”

The breakdown looks like this:

• The average age of SNS users has shifted from 33 in 2008 to 38 in 2010.
• Over half of all SNS users are over the age of 35.
• 56% of SNS users are female.

The report is filled with interesting nuggets, such as:

• Facebook users are more likely to trust in others and are more politically engaged,
• MySpace users are more open to opposing viewpoints, and
• LinkedIn users have more diverse social networks than users of other sites.

While fascinating to read and identify with the above findings, marketers should truly pay attention to these stats:

• Nearly twice as many men (63%) as women (37%) use LinkedIn.
• The average adult MySpace user is younger (32 y.o.), and the average adult LinkedIn user older (40 y.o.), than the average Facebook user (38 y.o.), and Twitter user (33 y.o.).
• MySpace and Twitter users are the most racially diverse mainstream social network platforms. However, a large proportion of users of “other” social network services are racial minorities.
• MySpace users tend to have fewer years of formal education than users of other social network services, whereas most LinkedIn users have at least one university degree.

These demographics may surprise you, or they may validate your own assumptions about which social media sites are best to engage in a dialogue with your customers. In either case, the differences between the social media options are becoming clearer as the popularity of social media increases.

Make sure to gut-check your social media strategy with the tidbits in this new report. You can download your copy at Pew Internet.

If you’re like me, you were a great technician who decided to start your own business. As your company grew, you learned to be a good leader by being the best engineer your company. But sales? In order to be a good sales leader, you have to embrace sales and drive the adherence to a sales process. Not easy when you’re a techie at heart.

The reality is that most IT solution providers suck at sales, so we have boiled down the essential ingredients for sales success to make it easy for you to catch up and even get to the front of the IT sales wolf pack. In our experience consulting with our partners, we’ve seen some partners who are doing some of these steps, and some who are doing none. A rare few are executing all five.

1. Set Sales Quotas: You can’t measure achievement when you have no goals. Sales people need goals to measure success and to enable you to evaluate and reward their results.

2. Enforce Opportunity Recording: Make sure your team records all of their sales opportunities in your system so they are easily track-able and actionable. Don’t let them keep it all in their head or in disorganized disparate systems.

3. Hold Weekly Sales Meetings: Conduct weekly sales meetings at the beginning of each week to focus your sales team on their action plan for that week. Regular public accountability is a powerful motivator. Small team or large, this is vital.

4. Make Sales Capture Easy: Opportunity is everywhere; sales data needs to be easily captured so anyone in your company who finds a potential sale can quickly relay that information to a centralized location. This includes client referrals and even the landing pages on your website.

5. Follow the Sales Process: Choreograph the sales effort of your team and use a repeatable process that includes the 4 other Sales Success ingredients. Follow the best practices and sales process that is built into your professional services automation tool.

Adding those five ingredients will help you increase your sales and profits while adding accountability for your sales staff. Salespeople can easily juggle 20 times more opportunities than they had before, just by following the process and seeing it all in one place.

To hear more about the secrets to winning sales agreements and key strategies for increasing profit margins, you’re invited to join ConnectWise for a free webinar June 22nd with MSP legend Gary Pica, as a part of our Success Wise webinar series.

David Bellini is president of ConnectWise. Monthly guest blogs such as this one are part of MSPmentor’s annual platinum sponsor program. Read all of Bellini’s guest blogs here.

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Within the SMB managed services market a multi-year debate has been raging: Should managed services providers develop price-per-user or price-per-device business models for MRR (monthly recurring revenues)? I heard a surprising answer to that debate during the recent TruMethods Schnizzfest event in Philadelphia, Pa. Here’s the answer and the background.

The surprise answer: Increasingly, some of the best MSPs user neither business model. Instead, top MSPs are pursuing a so-called “price per engagement” or “price per experience” model. Privately, top MSPs continue to figure out their per-user and per-device support costs, and then build in the appropriate margin. But publicly, those MSPs refrain from discussing per-user or per-device pricing.

Instead, the top MSPs offer a total services price — covering everything from help desk and NOC services to monitoring and management of IT infrastructure. Building on that theme, TruMethods CEO Gary Pica called on MSPs to stop selling ingredients (patch management, remote monitoring, anti-spam, etc.) and start selling chocolate cake (that is, the total user experience).

Hidden Numbers

During multiple sessions at TruMethods Schnizzfest, top MSPs described how they continue to generate roughly $100 to $130 per user per month in recurring revenues — without breaking out the individual per-service fees to customers. Moreover, several MSPs said that they no longer accept SMB engagements that fall below a minimum MRR (monthly recurring revenue) fee, typically $2000 or so.

Two MSPs who went on record:

• White Glove Technologies CEO Tommy Wald, who said he’s using the price-per-engagement model to blanket small office customers. Instead of nickel and diming customers when they add a piecemeal service or a new managed PC, White Gloves’ contracts include a clause that allows the MSP to raise annual rates — roughly 3 to 4 percent or so.
• masterIT CEO Michael Drake, who said he’s using the per-experience model. Although it sounds like masterIT still sells on a per-user level, masterIT no longer breaks out the price of each individual service. Instead, Drake pitches masterIT as a trusted advisor and/or virtual CIO to his SMB clientele. And for that virtual CIO service, customers are going to pay for the complete masterIT experience — rather than one-off services.

No Magic Bullets

Are all MSPs taking the approaches outlined above? Certainly not. During the TruMethods conference, plenty of established MSPs mentioned rising competition from aspiring MSPs that charge as little as $10 per seat for basic managed services.

But when low-ball or lower-price rivals emerge, leading MSPs like IT Solutions CEO Ted Swanson re-frame the customer conversation — pointing out that it’s impossible for aspiring MSPs to deliver high-quality service at low-ball pricing. When customers say a proposed price is too expensive, the best MSPs re-frame and re-set the conversation by stating: “Compared to what?” notes TruMethods’ Pica, himself a former MSP.

Once the MSP has pinpointed the customers’ frame of reference, it’s easier to re-set the pricing conversation and drive back to the original value and service delivery conversation.

Sign up for MSPmentor’s Weekly Enewsletter, Webcasts and Resource Center. Follow us via RSS, Facebook, Identi.ca and Twitter. Check out more MSP voices at www.MSPtweet.com. Read our editorial disclosure here.

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What can entrepreneurs do to keep them focused and driven towards success

The June Microsoft Patch Tuesday is supposed to be huge and nasty, count on Justin James’s in-depth analysis on patch day to get you through it safely.