For those that got up later than me, there was actually blue sky this morning in Roanoke. Early on the day had much promise.
I've been working hard lately to implement some solutions in our sales team to improve customer follow-up. I have found some very good solutions but most are designed for large businesses. As a small business you learn to craft solutions that make sense for what you're doing.
I've often wondered why small businesses buy into technology that just doesn't make sense for them. Some solutions designed for the enterprise are just far too expensive to maintain in a small business environment. Many large companies and agencies live and die by the services provided by Microsoft's Exchange server.
Yet if you're running a small company, it's hard to justify paying for a support person to keep Microsoft's solution running in house. Microsoft has new versions of hosted solutions, but if you're going to trust one of your mission critical services, like email, to another business, shouldn't you pick someone who is an expert in servicing companies like yours. The company I've recently joined, Webmail.us, focuses on email for small businesses.
There are others now creating services that make lots of sense for small businesses which we all know are driving much of the growth in our economy.
I'm a pretty sophisticated customer, and I demand that the people I buy products and services from do a great job whether they make washing machines, cars, or email. I actually joined the company I'm with now partially because I needed email for my consulting services.
In an organization of one person, you are your own IT department. I could have put up a mail server along with all the other technology that I have in my basement, but I knew from experience that I would have to maintain it, and I didn't want to do that. I could have gone with my free Gmail account, but I wanted a mail service that provide the same or better quality of service and professionalism that I was used to having in the corporate world. When you're a long distance from potential customers, your email being down or slow is not an option.
While looking for email solutions, I happened to run across Webmail.us. I visited their site, bought a domain, salesteamhelp.com, and got five email accounts for what was almost a trivial sum given what I would have paid to host my own email services. Eventually I put up a very simple website around the theme of salesteamhelp.com to go along with my new email address. The website took days of work, the email took minutes.
In just a few hours after a very simple setup process of just minutes, my new email was up and running. The next day I was sending email to potential customers who probably could figure out what I was doing by looking at my email address. It was a very painless process, and one that even a former manager could do.
I've never been a person that could sell products that I didn't believe in or use personally. I raised and sold Canadian Black Angus and Red Angus cattle, Vermeer Round Balers, Apple computers, system integration capabilities of G3 Systems, Inc, the high speed networking services of the National Lambda Rail, and now email services of Webmail.us.
It's a lot easier to sell something that delivers value to those that buy it. You sleep better at night knowing that you've got happy customers out there saying good things about you and the products and services you've sold them.
There's an interesting article in the NY Times today. It talks about making email better by charging for delivering it.
The service may be a great idea, However, I just think that if you're already paying for email services, they should already be very good. It's not impossible. It just takes focus and attention to detail. I think people settle for much less than they need to on lots of things, email and politicians come to mind.
If your email system of choice is free, it's hard to complain about the price, but if your Internet Service Provider is charging you for email, it should be good, very good. If not, find someone find someone with better service. If you're a company, buying email services, it should be something you can count on to be there every morning when you need it.
The article in the Times is called "You've Got Goodmail." It has this to say.
Goodmail's customers have to prove that recipients want their mail, and Goodmail checks the sender's mailing behavior and manages the quality of the mail through a system that makes it easy for recipients to complain about unwanted messages. Too many complaints and the senders lose their accounts.
This all sounds perfectly sensible to me, but Goodmail has been met with a barrage of criticism and calls for a de facto boycott from several nonprofit and public interest groups. These organizations seem to think that all Internet mail must always be free, just because it was free before. Yet they pay for computers and Internet access and office supplies, just like everyone else.
Goodmail, in my eyes, does not raise moral issues. It simply wants to make the Internet a better place — and yes, make a little money along the way.
I'm all for making email better, that's what our company is all about even on days when the sky turns gray.
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