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Protecting Your Company Website

June 25, 2009 By Kelly Harman Leave a Comment

I spoke with the owner of a small business yesterday who is yet another victim of an unscrupulous web development company.  She has spent thousands with this firm trying to get a simple shopping cart system attached to her website.  After six months of development, argument and tears she’s left with no budget, no shopping cart and a barely functional broken-housewebsite that she can’t do anything with herself.

Imagine if I came to you and said, “I’m going to build you a custom designed house.  It will be beautiful and I’m going to charge you thousands of dollars. However,  I’m going to keep title to the land I’m building the house upon.  I’m going to use building materials that only work on my property.  I’m going to let you live in the house, but if you need any repairs you will always have to call me because nobody else can get on the property.  But don’t worry, you’ll own the house.”

Wouldn’t you think I was crazy?  But this happens every day with websites.

You’re too busy to learn how to buy your own domain name so you let your website company do this for you.  That means they own the title to your house.

Then the website gets built using their proprietary inhouse technology.  You are assured that it is easy to use and you will be able to update your website any time you desire.  But this means you’ve used building material that will only work on their property.  And any future additions to your website (i.e., like a shopping cart, video testimonials, etc.) must be custom developed.  So now you can’t use any other repair men on your house, you can’t negotiate the best deal or find the best offer.  You’re stuck with the builder and what ever price they want to charge you.

Then they tell you that the website will get hosted on their server, which means they now own the land upon which your house was built.

Later on in the relationship, if you get tired of working with this web development company you’re basically hosed.  The website you spent thousands of dollars building can’t be moved to any other hosting company.  They own your domain name (www.yourname.com).  If they are really unscruplous they can hold this hostage or sell it back to you for thousands more than the $9.95 they paid originally. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Online Strategies, Technology

Is Twitter a House of Cards?

June 23, 2009 By Kelly Harman Leave a Comment

Last week I attended the “Twitter & Tonic” panel discussion moderated by Jen Abernethy of the Sales Lounge and hosted by Success In the City.  There were several excellent panelists, including Shashi Bellamkonda, Diana Kursfeld, Justin Hart, and Linda Messina.  Anyone not twittering when they walked into the event definitely walked out determined to start tweeting right away. What is amazing is the number of companies springing up overnight with products to support your twitter habit. People are gettinghouse-of-cards business from Twitter, making new friends, and keeping on top of current events.

The impact that Twitter is making on people the world cannot be understated. In fact, the night I attended this workshop, Twitter shut down at 5pm for one hour of maintenance p. The shutdown, originally planned for midnight hours had been rescheduled at the specific request of the US State Department because Twitter was the only source for news coming out of Iran during the election protests.

Twitter has yet to figure out a revenue model. There are hundreds of companies springing up all around the world offering tools to help manage your twitter streams, tweet more effectively, tweet on your mobile device, the list goes on. So you have people either putting in their own money or taking the investment from someone else to build a product that supports a product that makes no money.

There is an ironic similarity between Twitter and the US auto industry. Both have millions of customers and can’t figure out how to generate a profit. Hundreds (if not thousands) of satellite companies exist to support both organizations. Will there come a time when Twitter is so integral to the way we communicate in the US that they’ll qualify for bail out funds just to stay online?

It was not that long ago that we saw millions and millions of dollars go up in smoke when the first round of dot com companies blew up. Back then nobody seemed concerned about building a company founded on sound business principles and a strong revenue/profit model. Instead, we wasted money on huge marketing budgets, ridiculous advertising campaigns and luxurious office accomodations. We kept telling ourselves we’d “make it up in volume.” Well, clearly that didn’t work. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Pipelines & Pipedreams

June 11, 2009 By Kelly Harman Leave a Comment

istock_000007902281xsmallWhen developing marketing strategies for clients,  one of the first things we do is learn about the company’s sales process.  This includes going on sales calls, sitting in on sales meetings, viewing the pipeline reports, finding out how the sales cycle works — basically absorbing everything we can about the sales function within the organization.

One common complaint heard from CEOs time and again is centered around the pipeline (or lack thereof) and the shortfall that occurs every quarter.  The pipeline never seems to live up to its promises.  I’ve sat in enough sales meetings now to quickly figure out if a company has a real pipeline or a pipe-dream.  The four most common mistakes I see are listed below:

1.  Lack of a common sales methodology:

There are a lot of great sales methodologies out there and many are equally effective.  Whether you adopt Spin Selling, Sandler, or something else it is important that you make sure everyone is following the same one.  The strength of any process comes in everyone speaking the same language and following the same methodology.  That way every opportunity is being managed in a similar fashion and the entire sales team is moving in unison.

2.  Lack of common descriptions for stages of the sale:

As with adopting a common methodology, you want everyone on the sales team to use the same definitions and stages for the sales cycle.  It doesn’t have to be complicated.  Here is a five stage system we often set up for our clients:

Stage 1 – This is a “suspect.”  You have not begun the qualification process.  You got this contact from a networking event, participation in a webinar, an online inquiry, etc.  You “suspect” this company/person may need your services and want to start a dialog.

Stage 2 – The first level of a prospect.  You’ve had at least one conversation, you are starting to understand the prospect’s “pain” and how you might provide a solution.  The prospect is interested in learning more about what you have to offer. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Sales Tagged With: sales, sales metrics, sales strategy