Limiting the Consumer’s Choices

Social psychologist and Columbia University Business School professor, Dr. Sheena Iyengar, is an expert in choice. By that, I mean she has dedicated her life to understanding the patterns of human decision-making and revealing its contradictions. After leading a 15-year study on the subject, she authored a book on the topic titled, “The Art of Choosing.” In her book, she talks about how psychological, biological, and cultural behaviors steer us in making decisions of choice. “We’re born with the desire, but we don’t really know how to choose,” wrote Dr. Iyengar. From her numerous studies, Dr. Iyengar concluded that when given too many option, we are ten times more likely to take action when choice is limited. Anyone who’s ever been to a convenient store for a candy bar will tell you that! I have left stores because the assortment of items was so large, I didn’t know which selection to make.

Have you every been out to a restaurant, looked at the menu, been so confused by all the offerings, and responded, “I’ll just have…?” To most people, that statement would indicate that you made a choice you were happy with. However, the word “just” in this case, subconsciously indicates that:

1. You are not 100% happy with your selection, and/or;

2. You don’t care about your selection.

Now let’s bring this subject into your business. Most of you claim to be Managed Service Providers; and as such, you probably have different levels of “packages” you provide to potential clients. After reviewing them all, do you find your clients stating, “I will just call you when we have problem…?” This could be due to a few things. One of reasons they chose not to enter into an agreement with you could simply be price. Another reason could be the potential Managed Service client is confused by choices you are offering—and not willing to make a mistake, decides not to purchase at all. In her book, Dr. Iyengar described the magic number—seven—at which more turns into less. This is based on a previous study that showed that our senses can easily distinguish five to nine objects of perception. Now, I am not recommending that your have five to seven different offering for potential clients to choose from. I am saying that if you are offering a lot of different services, combine them into packages that don’t exceed five to nine different offerings. I found that the magic number of Managed Services packages should be around two to four offers. This gives an adequate number to choose from—while not overloading the potential client.

This information should not only be considered for Managed Services offerings, but in everything you sell—from hardware and software. If you business still sell computers to it’s clientele, offer two to four different types. Then categorize them accordingly: Home use, business use, gamers, etc. It is easy to argue that limiting the choices of your clients will cause low sales numbers. However, overloading them with choices will cause the same effect. Finding a balance of offerings will still allow you to suggestion choices while keeping you clients corralled just enough so they don’t feel overburden in making a decision.

Michael D. Alligood
Partner Sales & Support, ExchangeDefender & Shockey Monkey
michael@ownwebnow.com
(877) 546-0316 x707

SRV and TXT Record Support Coming Soon…

As more and more services utilizing SRV Technology come online we have to adjust to the demand. Currently, we accommodate these via a support request, but as the technology spreads that is less convenient to you, your clients, and even us.

As such, we have been working on the backend of the code and it is pretty set. We anticipate having this live next week. Obviously no code is perfect, so if you find anything funky please let me know.

Carlos Lascano
VP Support Services, ExchangeDefender
carlos@ownwebnow.com
(877) 546-0316 x737

Hosted Exchange 2013

We now offer the most recent version of Hosted Exchange available with Outlook 2013!

Our network engineers have spent the last few months designing, testing and implementing the network infrastructure for this new version of Hosted Exchange. This new version comes with all the latest and greatest feature sets, along with a new look and feel.

We have also fully integration this new version (Exchange 2013) into our automatic provisioning process. So you can now order this product directly through our website and have the account(s) provisioned and online within minutes!

How do I sign up for Hosted Exchange 2013?

First if you are not already a partner with us, visit:
http://www.exchangedefender.com/partner_application.php

If you are an existing partner, visit:
(Once signed in, click on Service Manager-> Hosted Exchange)
https://support.ownwebnow.com

Hank Newman
VP, Development
hank@ownwebnow.com

Are You Really The Boss?

IT business owners have many reasons for starting their own companies. Some were formerly employed in the field, others bought franchises, and some just love technology. Whatever the reason, most had a yearning to be their own boss. This, in theory, has afforded them to make their own hours, manage staff, and be the overall decision maker for their business.

All of this sounds great but, as much as we would like to believe that the business owner is the boss, the reality is that they just might not be. Now I know what you are thinking; the “wife” is the boss! Though this may also be partially true, the real boss is the customer.

Here are the reasons why:

Hiring and Firing – The customer hires you, and just like you can fire a customer or employee, the customer can fire you.

Paycheck – You and your employee’s paycheck’s come from the customer.

Products – Customers generally dictate the types of products you carry whether you are vertical specific or horizontal.

Managing Staff – Often times the customer is your eyes and ears in the field. Based on complaints or praise from them, helps to determine your employee’s status in the company.

Hours – I don’t think any IT professional would argue that the customer dictates your hours. For those of you who have been up at 2:30 in the morning working on a server down issue or some kind of issue or outage can attest to that.

So maybe the customers are at least the co-bosses. Without them you have no business! Treat them like a boss in your business. Seek input just like you would a business partner and watch your customer relationships build. By treating your customers like a boss you will earn respect and definitely earn loyalty.

Frank Gurnee
VP, Channel Services, ExchangeDefender
(877) 546-0316 x4777
frank@ownwebnow.com

Are You Partnering With the Right Companies?

A few days ago, while on the phone with a potential partner, I was asked the following questions, “What makes ExchangeDefender different from other vendors that offer the same services? And why should I do business with your company?” After replying to the caller’s questions, I could tell that he was totally unprepared with my answer. So how did I answer? I’ll tell you what; we’ll get back to that one in a minute. First, I want to ask all the business owners and sales representatives that are reading this post a question: Why are you doing business with your current clientele?

In a previous post, I talked about the Pareto Principle—also known as the “80/20 rule”. I mentioned in that post that when I operated my VAR/MSP business, I implemented this principle and dropped roughly 80% of my clients to concentrate on the top 20% remaining. After all, these remaining clients made up +80% of my revenue that year. However, that aside, these particular clients were… different.

After really investigating my remaining clients, I discovered that the vast majority of them were referrals. They were all like-minded and appreciated how technology enhanced their businesses. Furthermore, they viewed me as an employee of their company—not just a contractor for hire. I would sit in on monthly, quarterly, and annual meetings with most of my clients to discuss technology concerns, allocated funds and budgets, and the overall state of their network and devices. I went from being only viewed as the “computer guy” to being appreciated as their technology manager.

So when I was asked the following questions, “What makes ExchangeDefender different from other vendors that offer the same services? And why should I do business with your company,” how do you think I answered? “We are different because we only want to partner with like-minded businesses that are interested in forming a long synergetic relationship between our two companies. We recently shut down our partner program to concentrate on our current partner base. So it’s not whether you should do business with us; the question I have is should we enter into a partnership with your company. Now, with that said, tell me more about your company and what your do so I can determine if our two businesses have anything to offer each other…”. 

Michael D. Alligood
Partner Sales & Support, ExchangeDefender & Shockey Monkey
michael@ownwebnow.com
(877) 546-0316 x707

Best Practices for Pricing Cloud Services

One of the best things about being an ExchangeDefender partner is the fact that you get to name your own price for services. Unlike many competitive products on the market, that predetermines and set the margins you will make with their solutions, ExchangeDefender lets you get exactly what you deserve for your service. But how do you determine what to charge?

There are a few best practices for determining your price:

1. Research competing and online pricing for similar services that are marketed to consumers- It is not about being cheaper than other solutions, it is just about knowing the competition, and pricing with a premium for your service and expertise

2. Determine if the solution is something the customer can easily source on their own, or if it requires setup and regular maintenance- This will help you determine how much of a premium you can charge for your service.

3. A 35-50% margin is a good place to start with cloud service pricing- If you are finding push back on your pricing it is ok to adjust as necessary. Just remember it is always harder to raise prices than it is to lower prices.

Be sure to take advantage of promotions and quantity discounts. ExchangeDefender provides promotions regularly on popular services. Keep an eye out for these popular promotions as they can really boost your margins.

There is no perfect pricing for any solution. The market changes often and technology prices fluctuate. The best thing to do is to monitor the market and adapt as needed. Stick with what works for as long as possible but don’t get left behind when changes do occur. By paying attention and staying two steps ahead you will always end up on top.

Frank Gurnee
VP, Channel Services, ExchangeDefender
(877) 546-0316 x4777
frank@ownwebnow.com

Compare the Choices!

A lot of our partners love our Exchange offerings, but now that we have multiple options for email solutions, they are also asking more questions. What is the difference? What do I get? How does it compare? What are the compromises? How much does it cost?

The objective of our Exchange offerings has always been to provide an easy to use, simple and reliable communications platform; and that is something that has not been compromised in any of our solutions. Currently, we are one of the few Exchange providers that deliver service on local systems, public folders, free archiving, and redundant failover all with the product under your brand. Now, we still do all of that just with different pricing options and models.

Exchange 2010 + SharePoint 2010

You can truly leverage this Exchange 2010 Suite and apply it to your business to increase not only your operational efficiency and increase revenues, but to also lower your costs through the deployment of a completely brandable email hosting solution with a great deal of business appeal. It is offered fully equipped with ExchangeDefender and all of the additional features, SharePoint, Outlook, Outlook Add-In, etc. One major differentiator and value-added feature with this model is LiveArchive. It is important to remember that there is no such thing as 100% uptime, and that is exactly where our LiveArchive cluster comes into play. With LiveArchive you are always connected and can continue working if an outage were ever to take place. Exchange 2010 + SharePoint 2010 is really a turnkey solution that will be reliable for you and your clients as a complete email communication system.

 

Exchange 2010 Essentials

Exchange 2010 Essentials, at its core, is the same as our Exchange 2010 + SharePoint 2010 offering with a unique advantage – price! Businesses of all shapes and sizes can now have the additional option to rely on Exchange 2010 Essentials just without the additional services such as LiveArchive, SharePoint, Outlook, and so on – Just the best email communication platform at the best possible price! This product also allows you to compete with some bigger players in the industry. Exchange 2010 Essentials is backed by ExchangeDefender Essentials – You will still have the same great spam fighting abilities but you will not receive all of the great features that come with the full ExchangeDefender Suite like: LiveArchive, Encryption, Web File Sharing, Web Filtering, and Compliance Archiving. However, if these features are not needed by your clients and you need to compete on price, then Exchange 2010 Essentials is your answer! Also, Essentials can be very profitable because it could lead to you making more money than selling a higher priced solution.

 

BRAND NEW!!! Exchange 2013 

Exchange 2013 brings a new set of features to Exchange in addition to all the great features that are already in the previous editions of the product. There is a whole new look and feel to the interface making it very user friendly. There is now an additional focus on collaboration within the communication platform where users will enjoy easy to manage public folders, improved searching and indexing that is built into the product, enhanced shared mailboxes, rich integration with SharePoint 2013 and Lync 2013, and much more!

Adding all these options to your solution set will be something that you could make a lot of money on, and also really differentiate yourself from others in the channel and be more versatile.

We are confident that your clients will get hooked on our Exchange offerings because they will truly receive unparalleled support in addition to a phenomenal product that will fit all of their needs. So no matter which offering is chosen, you can be sure that you are providing your clients with a product and service that you can both trust and rely on.

With all three Exchange offerings you have complete control of the client, the branding, and the billing. Your brand, your name, your image, your price, your billing, your solution!

We are currently running a “Cinco de Mayo” promotion for the month of May for Exchange 2013 mailboxes, don’t miss it!

Questions? Contact us!

Stephanie Hasenour
VP Marketing, ExchangeDefender
stephanie@ownwebnow.com

Postini Migration Assistance

As we all know one of the major players in the Anti-SPAM space was being merged into another platform which started earlier this year. We have been getting quite a bit of that business and we’ve had enquiries at the shows about migration assistance. We absolutely will help you migrate to our services as long as you are willing and able to provide us with the admin credentials to pull all of the settings we can take care of the rest for you. Once you’ve joined our partner program and created your Service Provider account for ExchangeDefender, just open a support request letting us know you need migration assistance and we’ll let you know how the process will go. We will keep your involvement to the minimum as well as share some of more robust migration paths that would limit your support overhead.

If you have questions before that please feel free to reach out to me directly.

Carlos Lascano
VP Support Services, ExchangeDefender
carlos@ownwebnow.com
(877) 546-0316 x737

Shockey Monkey – Reporting

This week we have returned our development focus to Shockey Monkey Reporting. You may remember from earlier last month we released our first revised report:

Employee – Billable Ticket Summary

This is a report that will generated the billable time across service tickets for an employee based on time entry against those tickets.

Since then we have added several new reports to this engine and are very pleased with the results. We have also made sure that every single report is printable; we know this has always been a huge feature request.

 

Employee – Billable Time

This report gives you a calculated total of billable ticket hours for a given employee.

 

Clients – Active Summary

This report gives you an overview of your clients and the last time a touch or invoice was created for them.

 

Clients – Billable Time

This report gives you an overview of your clients and billable time entered against their tickets.

 

Internal – Inventory

This report gives you an overview of the inventory currently listed within your portal.

Since this re-write of our report engine began several months back, we talked about a dynamic report engine. This engine would allow you to customize and build a report of the current information inside of your portal. We have finished the first section: Tickets and have added it into the reporting engine.

*BETA* – Report Templates

This section allows you to manage your report templates. You can add/edit a template or select the desired template and generated a new report, which will be saved for viewing at a later time. Clicking on the Last Generated date, will open the currently generated report.

 

*BETA* – New Report

This section is where you will create a new report template or edit and existing one. You will notice at the top of the page, you can enter information about the report template. Then below that section you assign filters and decide which columns should be visible in the generated report.

 

*BETA* – Generated Report

Upon viewing a generated report you will see something like this, depending on the columns you marked as visible and the report filters that were configured. As mentioned before, this report is printable along with every other report in this new system. Upon clicking the print button, it will open a new window with the printable information.

Hank Newman
VP, Development
hank@ownwebnow.com

Five Ways to Build Your Brand While Giving Back

Businesses have always embraced community outreach and charity through volunteering, donations, and general support. Beyond the satisfaction of helping, and the tax advantage; getting involved in the community can help to build your brand and provide a positive image for a company.

There are a number of ways to get involved while building your brand:

Volunteer – Volunteering is a great way to get involved in the community. Encourage your employees to get involved and make t-shirts for the team to support the cause while also featuring your business.

Sponsoring – Sponsoring events such as charity walks/runs, youth sports teams, golf tournaments, and local events can provide well branded logo displays, and much needed support within the community.

Host a Charity Event – Hosting a charity event can bring great press and recognition to your business. Whether this is a silent auction, mock casino night, reception and gala, or a host of other types of charity events; be sure to invite your best customers, prominent figures in the community, as well as local leaders, and media personnel.

Join an Organization or Club – There are a number of local clubs and organizations for business owners and employees to join. These are great networking opportunities and usually provide local outreach and charity within the community.

Become a Donation Center – There are a number of electronics based recycling programs looking for donation centers. These may include PC and monitors, cell phones, gadgets, batteries, and many other recycling programs. By becoming a donation center you may increase traffic, awareness, and build your brand through a local “green” movement.

Getting involved is a gratifying endeavor and one you will not regret. It can not only help to build your brand, but can also help to foster your business culture while at the same time strengthening your team.

Frank Gurnee
VP, Channel Services, ExchangeDefender
(877) 546-0316 x4777
frank@ownwebnow.com