First of all, let me thank you all for such tremendous support of ExchangeDefender and all your help with the new release. As I mentioned, the product has been rewritten from the ground up with the 5.0 release to allow us to be more aggressive and introduce new features, faster. This of course is never a flawless or simple process, it caused several snags in the rollout that we’ve addressed quickly with our partners and the product is now on a very solid foundation that we look forward to protecting all our partners with.
You’re already seeing some results – we’re the first and only platform to provide billing sync with both Autotask and ConnectWise. We’re the only ones that offer all-you-can-eat features in the cloud, giving you web filtering, encryption, business continuity and some cool new stuff – free! Plus the big MSP news in March.
We had hoped that the promotional special price would be a great token of appreciation for our growing partner base and something that would help you add clients during the off season from Thanksgiving to March 1st, 2010. I’m proud to say we’ve done that and the numbers show it as well.
The big question is…
Can you extend the promotional pricing for … The answer is unfortunately no. The promotional pricing is over and we do not anticipate bringing it back again. This was the most massive development effort in the company history, since the first time I hacked sendmail to prescan mail for Exchange 5.5. 
So the promotional period is over on March 1st, as expected.
We will consider offering a few concessions for partners that are working on larger accounts that have not yet moved over. Here are the details and requirements:
1) You must have an active service provider account with us with at least 1 paying promo pricing client signed up since December 1st, 2009. If you don’t, we won’t have that pricing available for your account and when the code expires on March 1st we won’t be able to add it into your company profile.
2) We must have a list of domains that you intend to move over. This way we can activate the service in our billing system with 0 users.
3) You have to add them over the next 30-60 days. There will be no way to add domains that were not mentioned in point #2.
4) All requests must be approved by Shannon Brewer.
I hope the concessions above are enough. I know that some of you would want more than that, and I understand, but the billing systems just do not make that possible.
New pricing will be announced on Monday. I cannot thank all of our partners for helping us get to this point and I hope that you’re seeing all the new stuff we’re doing as an overwhelmingly positive thing to your business development.
On a personal note: I was recently presenting ExchangeDefender at a conference and stated point-blank that all of this stuff will soon be free. The same goes for the other products and services you provide. The opportunity to build everything in, offer everything and reimage your business as a service that doesn’t exist as a point or a solution but as a peace of mind is now. If all your products and services do is solve a problem that the client is able to identify, you will find that they quickly start to question why they are paying so much money for the problem they no longer deal with day in and day out. The time to go beyond solutions and point products is now, and we’ll help you deliver that.
Sincerely,
Vlad Mazek, MCSE
CEO, Own Web Now Corp
Read the whole post...
The past couple of weeks I have taken it upon myself to help expand my sales/business knowledge by reading “The Prime Solution” by Jeff Thull. It’s a fairly easy read of about 200 or so pages sprinkled intermittently with stories of companies who have successfully implemented his techniques to not only win the sale, but increase revenues and in most cases even change the way they run their business. I personally found the book to be fairly repetitive at times, but I also found some techniques and exampled that screamed “Managed Service Provider!” So basically what I’ve done is condensed the book to give you guys somewhat of a summary if you will of what I read. Take a look at it (as you will spend far less time reading my summary then the actual book, and lets face it… Time is money) and next week I will do a follow up. I will basically be trimming the fat and pulling out the substance to where I believe we can actually apply The Prime Solution to our way of thinking in the MSP world to create more opportunities for sales, and a more mutually beneficial relationship with our clients.
Part One: SWALLOWED UP IN THE GAP
Ch. 1: The Elusive Prime Solution
This tells the story of IBM’s CEO Lou Gerstner’s influence on the company during his tenure. After a shocking loss in 1992, IBM was ready for the fresh new start. Gerstner’s background of IT systems made him privy to the fact that IBM’s target market had no concern of the actual commodities that was being sold, they wanted solutions. Gerstner in turn refocused the company with his implementation of “Global Services” which provided customer solutions to their problems and challenges by delivering on the value of promise. All in all, his vision accounted for 80% of the company’s growth during his term with IBM.
A solution failure occurs when the value promised to the customer is not achieved. This occurs several ways: 1.The product or service itself can’t deliver on the promise made. 2. The customer is unable to implement the technology properly. 3. The customers’ expectations have not yet been met. This hurts potential as well as future clients.
The Value Gap is often created by the frustration and animosity of trying to fill the gap between the promise of value and its ultimate fulfillment. The failure of this is impertinent to avoiding barriers that sellers will encounter.
Ch. 2: Three Eras of Value Dilution
The value gap is something that has been created overtime driven by the ever changing definition of the word value. Abrupt changes typically shoot up a red flag for us to make an adjustment, but slower changes over an extended period of time can leave us behind. Innovation and technology advances push sellers to add value to their offerings as a means to create advantage over their competitors. These advances, while impertinent, add to the complexity for all parties involved. Let’s look at this by exploring the changing definition of value over the years:
· Era 1: Obvious Value- (1950’s-1960’s) Businesses created a product and sales people went door to door trying to persuade people to buy it. Buyers easily understood the function of the product and easily saw the value it would present to their problems.
· Era 2: Augmented Value- (1970’s-1990’s) Products were sold with a range of possibilities stemming from generic, to fulfilling customers’ expectations, to exceeding customers expectations with added value. For the most part buyers still understood their own problems, but they need the sales person to ‘problem solve’ and show them that their expectations could be exceeded.
· Era 3: Complex Value- (1990’s-Present) Because of technology advances, buyers have a difficult time understanding their own needs, and problems. For the most part they know their goals but are unaware of how to achieve them. Sellers must help them diagnose, design, evaluate and implement the solution.
Ch.3: Five Barriers to Keeping Value Promises
Each barrier has a consequence and must be understood and addressed before closing the value gap.
· Relevancy Barrier: Sellers decide for themselves value in the service and apply this rule to all buyers, and are unable to actually produce meaningful value because of generalization
· Inflation Barrier: Sellers only sell the benefits and features and avoid their duty in walking the customer through the steps, and risks involved with achieving this value and completely undermine the business relationship.
· Comprehensive Barrier: Sellers assume that the customer fully understands their own problem and the complex solution being provided to them. This sets the customer up for failure with the solution. Comprehension only grows as the solution becomes more widespread.
· Dilution Barrier: Customer’s take control and approach the situation from a price based decision, and completely dilutes the value and benefits of the solution. Don’t let buyers strip the components out of your solution so that they can compare ‘apples to apples.’
· Implementation Barrier: Sellers leave the buyers ill equipped with the implementation of the solution and don’t take accountability when for their customer’s lack of value achievement.
To bring down these barriers, there are 3 main considerations to keep in mind:
1. The cause of the barrier is not to assign blame, but to overcome these obstacles and establish a relationship. The dilution(cost) barrier is often used because the buyer is afraid of getting taken advantage of.
2. On barrier often supports and reinforces another one. Always be prepared to address all five barriers.
3. The point where the consequences of a barrier manifest is often not where the collision takes place. It can flow from R&D, Manufacturing, Marketing, Sales, to Support. Overcoming all 5 barriers and closing the value gap involves participation at all levels.
Part Two: PRIME SOLUTIONS AND THEIR PROTOCOLS
Ch. 4: Value Leverage for Business Performance
Value maximization is the cornerstone. Sellers must identify the factors that are significantly affecting the customers, and show the absence of value, and link their solution as a strategy to fulfill the buyer’s ultimate goal. Define, address, and connect with value on the customers’ terms. Sellers must be able to point out all the components of a high quality decision including priorities, change, investment, commitment and risk.
The value impact of a Prime Solution is raised as it is able to connect to multiple customer business drivers:
· Financial- Either Revenues or Expenses
· Quality- Customer Satisfaction, Employee Satisfaction, Regulatory Compliance
· Competitive- Uniqueness or Availability
Georgia Pacific Resins, Inc (GPRI) is a somewhat of a commodity based company since they sell resins necessary for paper quality optimization. After dealing with clients that were only concerned with the best price, GPRI took their organization to the process level and now tailor makes the resin for clients depending on the need to help optimize their production, leveraging the value of their solution.
Ch. 5: Multiple Decisions, Mutual Understandings & Ch.6: Effective Execution, Measurable Results
Business managers are usually not well equipped to make high-quality decisions. Sellers combat this situation with either a reactive, proactive, or interactive relationship level. The most effective of the three relationships is interactive. This is where the seller helps expand the customers understanding of their own problem, and makes them fully aware of their alternatives. Seller must show them the incentive to change and give them the confidence to invest. You must make them recognize the negative cost associated with not implementing the solution, or they will have no incentive to change.
High-quality decisions involve decisions about priorities, change, investment, commitment and risk. Provide them with the tools they need to measure their results and justify the risk. Act as Partners during implementation and help with tactics, leveraging the value of your solution.
Part Three: IN PERSUIT OF PRIME SOLUTIONS
Ch. 7: Creating The Prime Solution
A Prime Solution should enable your company to:
· Discover and research the companies that are most likely at a disadvantage without your solution.
· Diagnose the problem, close the performance gap by involving your solution, and give them the confidence and knowledge to make the change.
· Design solutions that minimize the risk of change, maximize their return on investment, and provide them with the confidence to invest.
· Deliver measured results and establish the promise of value made to your customers.
Ch. 8 Marketing The Prime Solution
This marketing strategy will prevent the no sale scenario:
The problem with solution based differentiation is when dealing with complex products the customer just wants the best solution.
Diagnostic marketing will allow you to solve your customers most complex problems. This is the most effective method for complex solutions in the market.
When advancing the progression of change you must remember that people are more resistant to change unless the pain experienced by staying is greater than the pain of changing.
There are four tenses of marketing:
· Positive present is describing the customer’s situation in positive terms.
· Positive future is the customers’ need for a better future.
· Negative future is the dangers the customer might face one day.
· Negative present is the current problems or bad situations.
Complex solutions need extensive change there for negative-present tense are the most effective.
Ch.9 Selling The Prime Solution
When selling the prime solution:
It should always be a “win” for the seller. From the customers point of view it is another expense and a preserved loss if the value is not achieved.
A high quality decision is the goal of the sale. It’s based on an honest, thorough and rational evaluation between the seller solution and the customer’s problem.
Ch.10 Delivering on The Prime Solution
Having the ability to accept and deal with change is the main competency implementing The Prime Solution. Accepting change not only from your perspective but also from the customers as well. Yes you are dealing with the ever morphing definition of value, and technology advancements, bur customer is dealing with a lot more changes that you are accountable for making as smooth as possible.
To ensure a successful change management process is implemented it must meet at least two of the following criteria:
· Adaptability- This should be based somewhat on the customers input, and design customized strategies for change.
· Technology- The technology should have no bugs, when implementing the solution for the customer it should in no way disrupt their existing technology.
· Process-The implementation should be a smooth process, one which has been thoroughly mapped out addressing any problems that may occur downstream.
· People- it must address the physical skill and the behavior of the people that the solution is meant for.
Kind Regards,
Shannon Brewer
Read the whole post...
As many of you are aware, we have been working on some very advanced PSA integrations with Autotask and Shockey Monkey over the past quarter. We have integrated our baseline statistics into both products. We have also extended our support portal to both so that tickets opened in your portal can be quickly assigned to our teams for resolution. We even help with the agreements and user counts, synchronizing the mailbox counts, GB’s, etc to your own portal so you can keep all your business intelligence no matter which PSA you use. Limited subset of these features is also available with ConnectWise (will be expanded to the same full functionality set when their API matures/stabilizes).
Right now, we need some volunteers that are willing to discuss the business value and technical implementations of our integration efforts.
If you use Autotask and like both Autotask and Own Web Now, I would like to invite you to a quick podcast so we can discuss what the joint efforts are doing for your business and your PSA experience with Autotask. The advantage is that you’ll get the integration done first, it will be handled by one of our senior engineers and you’ll get all the benefits of our business training going forward.
Interested? Contact Travis Sheldon at travis@ownwebnow.com.
P.S. Documentation on the above is not available at this time, it will be available in August. Support for any of the above is not available from Own Web Now Corp, Autotask Corporation, ConnectWise or any other third party. Purpose of this blog post is to get individuals interested in promoting their business and technology implementation know-how and benefit both companies.
Read the whole post...
Greetings from the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans. Thanks to all our partners for visiting our booth, we are officially out of really good swag!
Earlier today Travis and I held the first SMBUP session for ExchangeDefender. The acronym stands for Smack My B* Up, and gives our partners the ability to dish out all the angst, anger, frustration and impatience they have with our products and processes: both with us and with our other partners. For many years I have done my best to create systems and encourage partners to provide feedback so we can improve the most painful parts of doing business with us.
This may sound unconventional and definitely takes some thick skin, but we wanted to do something new. Traditionally, software is designed on the input of focus groups. Fixes are then applied throughout the production process and tweaked in functionality and features based on feedback.
This is different. I wanted to know what our partners really disliked about our business and our products so that new ones are built to avoid those problems.
Letting the partners vent directly at me and directly with each other could create a potential gang warfare mentality. However, we have worked on cultivating our partnerships long enough to know that our partners have our best interest in mind because we are doing this to take care of them and their clients.
What happened? My partners at WPC came with complaints that were not critical or combative – instead, we got the problem and the proposed solution pathway, mitigation and recommendations based on the other partners who have not (yet) experienced an issue.
Tune in over the next 60 days as we document, disect and provide a solution to the problems we were made aware of today.
In case you’ve ever wondered just what we mean by partnerships this is it. Technology companies working towards pleasing the common client base.
Sincerely,
Vlad Mazek, MCSE
CEO, Own Web Now Corp
Read the whole post...
Have you ever asked a support question that you regretted a moment later? It happens to all of us, when complexity meets lack of time and a skipped lunch, we tend to ask some of the most obvious questions. Even more frustrating activity is trying to get basic answers that were probably covered somewhere in the wealth of documentation and knowledge base articles.
How about a frustrating system outage on your dedicated server that you needed addressed immediately but didn’t want to pay for escalated support? Even though we fulfill 99% of our support requests within the Urgent SLA window free of charge it still doesn’t seem friendly to get the nastygram about fees required for urgent support – especially when something out of your control is down.
Today, we fixed both of those problems with a small, even elegant, option that you may not even notice most of the time when opening a ticket. But trust me, you will like to know it’s there working for you. Take a look at the new “Service” dropdown option that is available when creating a new ticket:
This dropdown allows you to select the service that you are requesting support for. This helps us route the request to the most qualified individual on the support team that can address your request quickly.
Note that when you select an item you will be presented with a checkbox to tell us if this is a service outage. If the outage affects the entire organization, and you check this box, we will escalate the request for free and bump you to the front of the queue.
Please be mindful that we are monitoring for fraudulent use of this function. So in case your “system down” scenario consists of a single Exchange 2007 mailbox whose password expired, you might find this setting disappears if it is abused. Please be courteous to the other clients and use this feature when it’s absolutely needed, it’s here to save you money and I’m sure that in your time of need you wouldn’t want our support giving priority to something other than a true outage.
But wait, there’s more!
When you select the given category you will immediately be presented with the “Popular Answers” section right on the new support page. These articles are written by the staff that provides ongoing product support and contain a lot of information that you may want to look through and save time waiting for a response.
Hope you enjoy the ongoing improvements and keep on sending us your suggestions so we can serve you better.
This feature will be making an appearance in SM 3.0 for our MSP partners this May.
Read the whole post...
We have the pleasure of sponsoring the MSP University Bootcamp this week and supporting our friends Erick and Garry who have given this event to attendees free of charge in this tough economy. Over 100, very professional looking folks, in attendance going through all aspects of developing and managing an MSP practice.
If you are out in the beautiful Orange County, stop by and say hi! We have shirts, pens, iPods and all sorts of swag to get you through the weekend. We’re also here to make you money and get you a jumpstart on the hosting services that are selling like hotcakes 
Important: We’re doing the biggest event promotion we’ve ever done, considering the current economy, so make sure to stop by and talk to us about it as it expires this weekend.
Read the whole post...
