Front Office Box

and start scheduling your priorities!

Due credit for this phrase goes to Brian Bieler who I came across at Salesgravy

To start with the phrase just made me smile, like one of those oxymorons, but then two thoughts struck me.

Confession time - I’ve never been any good at that Time Management stuff.  It just never really struck a chord for me.  Priorities have always been what counted.  Now at least there’s some justification for what will have seemed to my bosses to be a lack of discipline on my part.

From time to time we get asked why we don’t have a calendar in Front Office Box.  There’s never really been a  simple respectful way of saying “because I don’t like the idea, and don’t like calendars”.

Brian’s post has helped me understand my own thinking.  It’s the priorities that count, and the schedule needs to be made to accommodate them.  No priorities today? We’ll go golfing then

There are two really interesting sites I came across in the last couple of days, both very tightly associated with selling. Salesconx brings together people who know of guys who want to buy with people who want to know guys who want to buy. It’s like a market place for sales leads and an awesome way for both lead sellers and lead buyers to make money while all the old fart, who aren’t watching Web 2.0 explode into the business field, go bust

Closely related is the best business content forum I’ve come across. The people posting at Salesgravy are real players with interesting things to say about just anything - well worth a visit (and the joining fee).

Below we’re publishing a blog post by Namxas where he mentions our software.

”

Both sides of the business software market struggle with the same issue - trying to build, or buy, standard package software offering economies of scale whilst perfectly fitting the business requirements. Anybody who stops to think will quickly see this is an issue that can never be resolved.

Sounds easy enough! All realtors work the same way don’t they, for example. No they don’t, actually. They all have their own competitive advantage built in to the way they operate. They all have their own relationships with clients and partners.

What happens when they use the same software as everybody else? They just operate like everybody else. Goodbye competitive advantage.

So how can anybody build software for realtors. They can’t. They can just build software for 80% of realtors’ needs and let the users figure out the rest for themselves.

They could build their own “business solution”.

How much more efficient would it be if realtors could get software which let them figure it all out for themselves. If the software provided only “business” best practice in generic processes and data management. Then they could use it in ways that make sense to them. And they could benefit from economies of scale, by sharing the development cost with all the other businesses who have clients, partners, processes and plans. They could minimize the cost and complexity of implementation, they could get much faster payback on their investment and they could evolve their business model in response to opportunities or competitive pressures.

We might call this “something for everybody” software.

Software like this would be difficult to build. The business process guys would have to really understand the generic, best way to stuff. The user experience guys would have to work even harder, making sure everything would be exactly where the user expected to find it.

It might be even harder to sell. Users have been taught, by the industry, to expect to choose between alternative packages, selecting the one most closely fitting the way they manage their business. This software would expect them to understand they can be free to make their own decisions, and change their minds as often as they need.

I recently came across such a software product. It’s being quietly “leaked” out as the company feels it’s way through a marketing model based most on social networking.

For the moment “free” accounts are still available for early adopters who want to contribute to the social networking model.

Anybody wanting to get a preview of the future of business software can get one at Front Office Box.”

You can read Namxas other posts at Namxas

We’ve just implemented our Front Office Box Forum, a resource reserved exclusively for entrepreneurs and people managing small businesses.

This continues our drive toward harnessing Web 2.0 for people like us.

You should join if you want:

• an opportunity to promote your business.
• to exchange ideas with people like you.
• extend your network.
• avoid all the social networking stuff that gets in your way.

Sign up for the Front Office Box Forum here

Ever meet an enterprise software salesperson you could trust? While such paragons of virtue exist, they seem the exception rather than the rule. Here are 7 common lies used by some way too many enterprise solution providers during the sales process. Read full post »

The world’s full of management and business strategy books. Sometimes they really change the way people think e.g. Re-engineering the Corporation. Others just look impressive on shelves in the office.

One of the best guides to the best books is the Harvard Business Review. When a book’s based on a paper published in the review, it’s usually worth attention.  Blue Ocean Strategy is further proof of that statement. Read full post »

In his book The Long Tail Chris Anderson explained to us all there is almost infinite demand in any market that isn’t satisfied by mass market vendors. There’s nowhere this is more true than the market for small business software. Read full post »

Getting a Web 2.0 business application off the ground is a hard thing to do.

We’re happy to record we just passed a couple of milestones we’d set for ourselves.

Yesterday we processed more than 1,000 transactions for the first time - guess the weather must have been bad in several places:-)

Friday, for the first time, we had a user come to us and ask about collaboration between Front Office Boxes.

So tonight we’ll have a minor celebration.

Cheers

The avalanche has started.

What avalanche?  Big brands starting to use the Internet to reach, influence and create loyalty in their small business customers!

Several phenomena are merging.
1) Big brands can no longer control demand and supply through their distribution channels.  They’re being commoditised by Internet enabled competition.
2) Their big customers are disaggregating.  Knowledge workers are exiting the corporate structures to set up their own businesses.
3) Social networking and Conversational Marketing are creating new models for communication.
4)Customer expectations are moving from simple supply to value add.

For big brands the old rules don’t work so well anymore, and they’re having to find new ones that do. Their answer - Internet enabled value added services. Blog’s, Wikis, forums, applications.  All targeted at winning over the small businesses. Read full post »

A new sales rep, Mickey joins the Ferrari dealership and gets put with the seasoned pro, Sue, for training.

Mickey asks Sue, “these cars are so expensive, I don’t understand why people buy them”?

Sue replies “well you need to understand what we’re selling. Its not five wheels, and engine and a gearbox. It’s not the top speed of 170 mph. or the 0 - 60 in 4 seconds. It’s not that prancing horse badge representing one of the most famous brands. It’s not even the fact it’s so expensive, if you need to ask the price you can’t afford it.” Read full post »