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Posts tagged ‘Schulz Consulting’

Dec 6

Using Social Media to Generate Revenue (ITA Fall Collaborative 2011 Session)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/birgerking/4731898939/sizes/z/in/photostream/From the session description:

Learn from a small, diversified, group of some of the industry’s most creative minds who have teamed together to create an innovative approach to generating leads and customers through Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter.

This session was a panel of Apryl Hanson (BlytheCo) and Wayne Schulz (Schulz Consulting) led by B.J. O’Reilly (ISM). I’m not 100% certain how the description fits the panel but I know Wayne knows more about social media than most others in the channel and, because of BlytheCo’s sheer size if no other reason, Apryl certainly will have a good amount of experiences to share.

We started as Apryl talked about BlytheCo’s different social media products, their magainze and blog. Their second largest search term is their name (interesting – the Blytheco brand must be significant).

Their lead volume is about 5% of all traffic with monthly volume ranging from 20,000 to 60,000 visitors per month depending on the month (I would imagine year end gets heavier traffic). It wasn’t specified if this was uniques, pagecounts, total or exactly what it was.

She stated that lead quality is about 50% which means 1 out of 2 leads go from raw to qualified. This seems to be 50% of the 5% – not 50% of the total visitor count.

Wayne went on to discuss the importance of trying to determine *who* is making the inquiries because there is a big difference between someone just looking for a quick answer vs someone looking for long-term help. Further clarifying this point, Wayne underlined the importance of quickly and effectively filtering these folks to determine who will be serious customers that fit his particular model and ideal customer.

He also discussed the importance of getting people to sign up for newsletters as these people are usually quicker to make a decision and become a customer as opposed to the general, one-time inquiry which oftentimes is a price shopper that is already in discussion with other resellers.

As part of the filtering and qualification process, Wayne is a firm believer in providing starts as pricing to help people self-qualify and determine if they are a good fit from a financial perspective for Schulz Consulting. Wayne has created a fairly high volume of leads and has decidedly kept his firm smaller so it makes sense that he has established a solid methodology to move people along or out.

Wayne commented further about the importance of driving people to sign up for newsletters as this creates a stronger relationship with a higher value over time. Again, he stresses the importance of establishing this connection simply by using inexpensive, easy to use tools such as MailChimp.

He commented about being personal and connecting with people through images and stories. Apryl shared that one of their best hit posts was the one where she discussed shoes and conferences. To me, that makes sense since it’s a human thing – we can all relate so it creates a real connection with most of us.

There was consensus among the panel (and heads were nodding in the room) that the content that you put out there should be valuable, useful and informative. People will only stomach so many articles about how great your company is.

And if you do write those pieces, try your best to make it about your customers and their needs. (Here’s my attempt – it’s a work in process, let me know what you think.)

Wayne recommends borrowing ideas liberally from other industries because most businesses (he stated “resellers” but every industry develops tunnel vision) are comfortable repeating marketing tactics that worked in the 1980′s.

Apryl shared a slide of where BlytheCo’s volume comes from:

  • Organic Search 58%
  • Referrals 5%
  • Paid Search 8%
  • Direct Traffic 25%
  • E-mail Marketing 1%
  • Social Media 1%

What do these numbers tell us? Well … it’s great real-world confirmation that content is king since organic search is primarily driven by content, key words, information that you put out there.

Apryl discussed the importance of creating and tracking landing pages to determine what’s working and what’s not. From my perspective, this is so far beyond where I currently am that it’s hard to imagine this level of sophistication but it’s something that all the larger businesses seem to believe in strongly.

Again, landing pages should be defined around what customers are searching for as opposed to product features. Ex. How do I close my GL would be a common search term.

The discussion shifted to the concept that ideas make the social media team and it’s important to educate your team, your clients and even your prospect on connecting with you on the different social networks. This is easier said than done.

I’m not sure about you but most of my clients don’t see the value of social networking yet. Search engines … yes. Facebook … maybe. LinkedIn … somewhat. Twitter … not at all really.

I’m sure adoption will grow over time at an increasing rate. For now, it’s a tough sell.

The panel discussed using the right tools – such as Hubspot, SalesFusion, HootSuite, TweetDeck, Google Reader, Google Alerts and others. The tools make it easier to create, manage and track your social media efforts.

Watching my word count, I see that I’m around 850 and I’m always conscious of over-staying my welcome. Hopefully the information above will prove to be useful in your marketing efforts.

For me, the session was another valuable presentation here at the ITA. Special thanks to Apryl Hanson and Wayne Schulz for so freely sharing information. For any resellers, I strongly recommend that you subscribe to Wayne’s blog at www.erplife.com where he shares this type of information routinely.

Thanks also to B.J. O’Reilly for keeping the panel moving so well. Out of the various panel sessions I’ve attended over the last few days, he’s done the best job at balancing the conversation and including the audience.

Overall – this was a great, informative session.

Dec 1

5 Comments

Are internet leads worth a damn?

With that deal, count me down for 10 hours!

If you follow along with the rest of the class at The ERP Lifestyle Consultant, you might get the impression that web leads are less than worthless. MAS guru, social media maven and fellow Summit Diary blogger, Wayne Schulz paints a pretty bleak picture of the whole situation at times.

Wayne convincingly makes the case that web leads are the sorts that do a lot of shopping around, look for some (or all) free advice and won’t be loyal in the long run.

Considering that he has been leading the way with Internet based marketing and social networking long before the term was invented, I would bet he knows what he’s talking about.

So, on the surface, this news can be cosidered rather depressing.

I am personally just starting to dip my toes in the blogging world so it gives me pause as I stop to consider if the required effort is worth the potential payout.

And, for me at least, it is a considerable amount of effort.

[Sidebar: I'm not sure how Wayne makes it look so easy. My theory is that he discovered the secret of cloning back in the 90's and there are actually two or three Waynes running around. Robert Wood suggests that he has a team of social networking agents much like Willy Wonka had his Oompa Loompas. I'm not sure if we will ever know the real truth on this matter.]

On the flip side, two of my largest Sage CRM accounts found me on the web via a Google search. Prior to reaching out to Azamba, both of these companies had been using their Accpac partner to (unsatisfactorily) help them get up and running with Sage CRM.

Yes – they ran me through the hoops to make sure that my team had the proper skills. Frankly I don’t blame them on that front. When you are going to the trouble of switching, you want to make sure it sticks – particularly if you feel you made a bad choice with your first partner.

My other experiences with web leads hasn’t been so bad either. We’ve had a few other, smaller accounts join the Azamba family and a handful of companies ask for quotes that didn’t lead anywhere.

So … what’s the difference? Why has Schulz Consulting had one set of experiences and Azamba a different set?

I’m not 100% sure. Here’s a few guesses though:

  • Higher volume. As previously stated, Wayne has been on the internet for a lot longer than most of us and has cast a wide and deep net. I’m guessing that he gets more web leads in a week than I see in a month (probably even a quarter).
  • Larger install base size. There are a lot more companies using MAS than Sage CRM in North America. This leads to a larger bell curve with more price sensitive shoppers on the far edge and they are all out there trying to find the best deal.
  • More mature product. Accounting systems like MAS (and Accpac) are more mature than CRM products and feature sets are fairly well known and established. Combine this with an industry of profesionals who routinely price by the hour and customers have a hard time differentiating so they tend to look for the “best deal”.

Where does that leave us? And more importantly … where does that leave *me*? :)

Well – despite the challenges of dealing with unqualified – and sometimes unwanted – leads, Wayne has created a system in which he has built a regular lead flow. Because he has made his presence known and provided valuable content demonstrating his expertise, people are seeking him out.

To compensate for this volume, you will see (if you follow his shared experiences at The ERP Lifestyle Consultant) that Wayne has created mechanisms – forms, protocols, procedures, etc. – to help him effectively and efficiently separate the best-fit prospects from the rest.

So, overall, I would say: don’t lose faith.

Social networking works – particularly when combined with a great qualification process. I plan to take what I’ve learned from Wayne and my own experiences and build a stronger future for my team.

I welcome your thoughts on the matter.

Jul 15

Spacey Seven
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Seven (I Mean Nine) Deadly Sins of Linkedin

For any who don’t know, Bill Kizer is the founder and creator of the Sage Employees, Alumni, and Partners Linkedin group.

Bill was the presenter with Wayne Schulz and Peter Wolf contributing as the panel. Peter also had a separate presentation of his own. The topic was Seven Deadly Sins of Linkedin, but I think most of these really apply to any social media platform.

Mistake #1: Don’t fill out your profile.

If you don’t keep your profile updated, no one will know where you are or what’s going on with you. If you win an award, add it to your profile. If you join an organization add it to your profile. The more often you update your profile, the more often your profile shows up in your contacts Linkedin. Also updating your status regularly keeps your profile coming back up to the top.

Mistake #2: Don’t include Profile Photographs.

If you do have a profile picture, it needs to be as professional as it can be. You probably shouldn’t have a picture of your dog or kids or your favorite trip to Disney World as your profile picture. What you want to present on Linkedin is an image that is as close to what you would present in  job interview as you can. So no pictures of you passed out drunk…even on Facebook.

You also shouldn’t use your company logo as your profile picture. If you’re a sole proprietor or a team, people do business with people, not logos or brands.

I always use a picture of myself for my profile on various social media sites…well, almost always. The exception is Twitter. I can’t exactly explain why this is the exception and why I think it works for me. If you do click through to my Twitter profile, I do have a picture of myself on the custom wallpaper I created for my Twitter profile.

Mistake #3: Don’t contribute to discussions conversations.

If you don’t put your two cents in, I guarantee two things will happen: no one will find out if they find what you say useful and no one will know what ideas you have.

Mistake #4: Don’t become an expert in any industry.

I think another way is “Don’t share anything”. One of the conversations that Wayne, Peter and I had when organizing Summit Diary was about whether or not what we had to say had value to anyone else. If you keep everything to yourself, you will never find out if it has value to someone else or not.

Wayne recommends using Shareaholic to share links to stuff written by other people. Shareaholic is a plugin for various browsers that  works with multiple services, like Linkedin, Facebook, Yammer, Google Buzz, Delicious, Posterous, Tumblr, etc.

Mistake #5: Don’t Invite Others To Your Network

Or “Don’t reach out to others”. I’m going to share a bit about how I got into social media. I frequently make comments about being Wayne Schulz’s #1 cyber stalker (and interestingly, I’m not the only one. You know who you are @GLComputing.)  but the reality is I’ve been following Wayne online since I first discovered his website and newsletter in 2003, I think it was.

While it’s not OK to spam people, it is OK to reach out to others.

Mistake #6: Don’t give or ask for recommendations.

Honestly, this is one of those double edged things. I say feel free to give recommendations to anyone you think deserves it, but don’t require or expect a quid pro quo or it may (or may not) look like exactly that. I think recommending someone who recommends you looks bad even if you think they deserve it. It’s almost like an organized link exchange. If you do ask for a recommendation, don’t require or expect the other party to give you one. Recommendations are a personal choice.

Mistake #7: Don’t Include Any Contact Information.

This is a big one. If I want to contact you so I can hire you or provide you work and I can’t find your email or phone number, you might never hear from me. I use Google Apps for my email and it eliminates a lot of the spam and I use a Google Voice phone number for my public telephone number. The beauty of the Google Voice number is that it allows you to screen your calls. Even if you don’t screen your calls, if you let them go to voice mail, you’ll get an email with the contents (sort of) of the message any callers may leave. Yes, you can be contacted through Linkedin but why make someone work that hard to get to you?

Mistake #8 (Added by Wayne Schulz): Don’t include a personal email address.

Use a personal email address as your primary address. You can still include your business email address. If you only use your work email address, you might lose access to your account.

This has happened to a few people in recent years with people changing jobs as frequently as they have in recent years. It would be terrible to be in the situation of looking for a job and not being able to access your network.

Mistake #9 (I just added this one): Wait until you are looking for a job to create your Linkedin profile.

When is the best time to setup a Linkedin account? If you don’t have one already, now is the best time.

A few additional Linkedin tips:

You can send email newsletters to the members of your group.

Use the search and filters in Linkedin to find a job or find an employee.

You could also potentially use filters to find a prospect, but be careful how you do this. Primarily, I would say use this to find people to connect to and make friends.

The biggest benefit of getting the paid Linkedin account is access to more information and the ability to more advanced searching features.

Ultimately, I think Ed Kless’s social media policy says it best, “Be professional”. I would add, “Be human”. So “Be professional and be human” would be the ultimate Linkedin rule.

Jul 14

Sage Summit Diary

Sage Summit 2011 Daily Audio Wrapups

Each morning the writers for Summit Diary met at 6am for a 1 hour walk to the top of the highway overpass and back. As we met other conference participants we invited them to join us for our morning walk.

Sadly since most normal people are still sleeping at 6am in the morning – we only had one person who tagged along during our walks.

Rather than have our collective wisdom, bicker and arguing go to waste – this year we used an iPhone and the Cinchcast app to record our discussions. What follows are 4 days of summaries where we have a group discussion (pardon the background noise as we’re often walking near the highway) about the important topics of the Sage Summit conference from the prior days.

Most of these recordings are under 15 minutes in length – and some are as short as 5 minutes. Here’s our summary and insight into what we found interesting at Sage Summit 2011.

Read more

Jul 12

walking
2 Comments

Sage Summit Day One – Audio Wrapup

The first full day of keynotes and sessions has come to a close. Lots of interesting first day announcements – including an almost total rebranding of Sage’s North America product portfolio, interesting news about Sage Exchange (connected services for Sage Payments) and some interesting information on the costs for the MAS 90 Online product which Sage has announced will become available in Q4 2011 (hopefully October 2011).

This morning Robert, Peter and I walked for an hour. We recorded the first 13 minutes of our thoughts for those who many not have made it to Sage Summit — or for anyone looking for some additional views on the announcements.

First a disclaimer – the opinions expressed on these summaries are our own personal opinions and do not reflect the opinions of anyone else (that’s why they call them personal opinions silly). In some cases we may have partially complete information so use our discussions combined with your own thoughts to form an independent conclusion.

Listen to Day One Sage Summit Audio Recap

Jul 11

Walking with Wayne and Robert

This morning I chose to participate in a unique experience.

I got up before 6:00 am – voluntarily. (Please understand that I’m usually don’t open my eyes before 8:00 and typically if I’m getting up at that ungodly hour, it’s because my 5 year old is tapping me on the shoulder asking if he can get up and play.)

So, why did I venture into this brave new, unknown world?

I had the opportunity to go for an early morning walk with industry legend Wayne Schulz. Most folks in the Sage family know Wayne – he’s been out there blogging, tweeting, social networking, you name it for years. He continues to push his own boundaries and set the bar higher for himself and for the rest of the Sage channel. He offers a unique perspective on our industry sprinkled in with a heavy helping of technology and tools.

Joined by our fellow co-blogger and all-around awesome gentleman, Robert Wood from DDF Consulting Group, and SageCRM project manager specialist, Dan Cousins from DCAA, we had a decent walk and discussed topics including reseller best practices, Sage policy changes, cloud computing, integrated Sage CRM (my personal favorite topic) among many other things that impact us as partners in the Sage channel.

A big part of the conference is getting a chance to talk about what’s working, what’s not, what others are doing, etc. Sure – we can do it over the phone or in our LinkedIn groups but sometimes (oftentimes?) face-to-face is the best way to collaborate.

Plus, as an added bonus, you get to burn off some calories from all the calorie-rich foods available at the conference.

If anyone would care to join us, we will be outside the Gaylord tomorrow at 6:00 am. It might be worth your time. I certainly feel it was.

PS. Wear light clothing. It was ugly humid out there – even at 6:00 am.

Jul 8

hillbillies

Sage Summit – Here We Come (Ready Or Not)

Hello Washington DC. Ready or not here we come. In just one short day we’ll be heading out to the Sage Summit 2011 conference. On Tuesday July 12, 2011 from 6pm to 7pm please stop by the first annual Sage Summit Tweet UP and mingle with over thirty conference participants who will be live tweeting during the event. This is a perfect time to meet and get to know people in an informal setting.

There’s no cost for the meeting — and drinks and food are your responsibility. Stop by and say hello to Peter, Robert or Wayne and make some new friends.

Sage Summit Tweet Up – July 12, 2011

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