Category Archives: Start-Ups

Like an eSilverBullet to the Heart of Online Affiliate CRM

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Anyone who has done affiliate marketing can agree that keeping track of online publishers, affiliate networks, and numerous advertisers–across multiple platforms can be a nightmare. Although it’s not especially common to hear online affiliates talk about how they keep track of the different customers and clients that they interface with in their daily crusades throughout cyber-space, one can only ask why we haven’t heard about it sooner?

I recently came across eSilverBullet, which I think has a great solution for online affiliate crm. You can track prospective advertisers and prospective publishers… It’s packed with different online affiliate crm features. The list below breaks down their different packages, although as you can see, it is extremely packed with features, each of which has more information about it on their website.
• Import/Export Simplicity: Quickly import contact information.
• Live Contact Data: Let your contacts update their information for you.
• Task Master: Let’s you stay focused on your to-do list.
• Powerful Prospecting: provides professional grade prospecting tools.
• Sales Management: Provides integrated tools to map the sales process and close the deal.
• Account Differentiation: Manage publishers, advertisers and networks as separate customer types.
• Fast Searches: allows you find what you’re looking for in seconds.
• Communication Logs: Keep a record of calls, meetings, emails, notes and tasks in one location.
• Network Affiliations: Know who is running on what networks.
• Market Verticals: Segregate your advertisers or publishers by market.
• Mobile Access: Access contact information on your phone.
Standard Package Includes:
• Institutional Knowledge Retention: Prevents your customer list and conversation history from walking away.
• Intra-office Coordination: Allows you to divide tasks among coworkers.
• Program Management: Keep a record of your advertiser’s campaigns.
• Digital Filing: Attach agreements, insertion orders, W-9s, etc. to contacts.
• Easy Email: Enjoy one-click emailing at the contact level
• Email Templates: Stop wasting time rewriting email messages.
Premium Package Includes:
• Email Blasts: Send effective email campaigns to multiple recipients.
• Effortless Follow-ups: Automate follow-up communications with your contacts and prospects.
• Custom Configuration: Create your own data fields and tabs.

Of course eSilverBullet is coming out with another great tool for online affiliate marketers: Tracking Statistics Aggregation. This tool will allow customers to pull tracking data from multiple networks and tracking systems into a single report… Cool cool.

They’ve got a free download on their website http://esilverbullet.com for a trial package. It takes less than a minute to get in and start test-driving things and see what you think.

Their may be no panacea to affiliate marketing… but is there a silver-bullet?

Products Change, but Good Service Rarely Does

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I recently reviewed the research work by Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry on the Conceptual Model of Service Quality. Their work suggests that regardless of the product or service in question, customers use relatively the same criteria to evaluate the exchange. Although their research was published in the Journal of Marketing in fall of 1985–it may as well have been written in 2010, internet, cell phones and all!

Of course for an organization to take good care of the customers, the employees and workers need to know what that feels like themselves. In other words, for the most part we can step beyond your customers and think about our employees, partners, co-workers etc.

Whether you’re rating on a five star scale, by thumbs up or thumbs down, 1-10, or whatever, the criteria is summarized in the following points:

  • Reliability: Are you delivering what you said you would? Are you doing it over and over? Consistently, accurately?
  • Responsiveness: Are you delivering on time? Are you demonstrating a willingness and readiness to provide the service? What’s the spirit of service you are conveying?
  • Competence: Do you have and can you demonstrate that you have the skills and knowledge to perform the service?
  • Communication: How well do you listen to your customers? How well do you keep them informed?
  • Credibility: Are you believable? Do you demonstrate it in your conversation? Appearance? Marketing?
  • Courtesy: Friendliness of personal. Is the golden rule of treating others the way you want to be treated
  • Access: Are you approachable and easy to contact regarding questions? (In today’s world of emailed customer service queries this can be the most frustrating).
  • Customer Knowledge: Do you speak the customer’s language? Do you really know their needs and objectives?
  • Security: Do your customers feel safe? Can they trust you with their financial information, account confidentiality etc?
  • Tangibles: What physical impressions do you leave with your customers? Appearance and condition/quality of facilities? Reports and inspections etc…

What strikes me about this list is two fold: First, the businesses I know that do this well, do business well.–It’s the open secret of customer service. And Second, well, very few businesses do this well :)

17 Mistakes That Entrepreneurs Make

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John Osher in inarguably one of the most successful entrepreneurs of age. What makes him so successful is his ability to replicate his success. In today’s world where we like things packaged and clearly organized, he has set forth a list of 17 top mistakes, which if avoided would certainly create the “perfect company.”

For those who would like to find a full copy, I recommend this website, for those of you who just want to know what the mistakes are and think you can figure out how to avoid them on your own, I’ve posted a condensed list below:

Mistake 1: Failing to spend enough time researching the business idea to see if it’s viable.
Mistake 2: Miscalculating market size, timing, ease of entry and potential market share.
Mistake 3: Underestimating financial requirements and timing.
Mistake 4: Overprojecting sales volume and timing. Mistake 5: Making cost projections that are too low.
Mistake 6: Hiring too many people and spending too much on offices and facilities.
Mistake 7: Lacking a contingency plan for a shortfall in expectations.
Mistake 8: Bringing in unnecessary partners.
Mistake 9: Hiring for convenience rather than skill requirements.
Mistake 10: Neglecting to manage the entire company as a whole.
Mistake 11: Accepting that it’s “not possible” too easily rather than finding a way.
Mistake 12: Focusing too much on sales volume and company size rather than profit.
Mistake 13: Seeking confirmation of your actions rather than seeking the truth.
Mistake 14: Lacking simplicity in your vision.
Mistake 15: Lacking clarity of your long-term aim and business purpose.
Mistake 16: Lacking focus and identity.
Mistake 17: Lacking an exit strategy.

Building Utah, 1 Utah Homes at a Time

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It’s always refreshing to hear when new businesses are starting in tumultuous markets. There are few industries that have been hammered worse that real estate. While the Utah real estate market hasn’t been hit near as hard as Arizona or California, there’s no question that it’s seen better days.

New Homes in Utah are being produced by a few very successful builders. A number of elements are contributing to the ability for new home buyers to afford great quality homes at a reasonable cost. Among these factors, reduced access to traditional credit has lowered the cost of sub contractors, building materials and land.

It goes without saying that current market conditions have created the perfect storm for buying a new Utah home. I’ve had the opportunity to see the 1 Utah Homes model from the inside, and the attention to detail, cost and customer service is among the very best of Utah Home Builders.

Premier Data Center Coming to Utah

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Every business that stores, organizes or shares large amounts of digital information, uses a data center in one form or another. Whether in house, (often found in a retrofitted closet or larger room) or outsourced, (just about anyone who has hosted a webpage somewhere has used a data-center space).

With the large amount of Utah Tech Companies growing regularly, it’s no surprise that there is more than one utah data center. However, most data centers in Utah are either extremely old themselves, or retrofitted within an older space. Three general rules for data-center technology is 1) More power 2) More power and 3) You guessed it… More power.

That’s what makes the announcement of Consort so exciting. As a modern data center facility in Utah that offers colocation (ping power pipe, Software as a Service (SAAS), Platform as a Service, (PAAS), this data center will will draw on state of the art architecture built into one of Utah’s premier mixed use developments, The Proscenium. A unique aspect of the location and layout of this data center is that it is situated between two of Utah’s largest and most reliable power grids–Thus ensuring many years of more than enough energy for the data center technology upgrades sure to come.

Named Consort, from the “Consort”ium of experienced businesses coming together to provide this service, this combined entity has experience in both data center and building facilities management. Contributing to safe, secure and carefully managed environment.

For more information, visit the Consort webpage.

Proscenium: A Monument to Utah Venture Philanthropy

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So it looks like Sandy City is on track for the new Proscenium complex to move forward.

Perhaps one of the most exciting aspects of the Proscenium project is the significant portion of Venture Philanthropy that it represents. Adding an arts-and-culture zone to Sandy’s down town business center provides not only a incredible opportunity to develop the culture and perspective of Sandy residents, but the center should prove to be an economic powerhouse for the city.

As I sat down with the founder and visionary (Scott McQuarrie) for this project last week–I was beaming with excitement. Scott described the various components of green technology, social improvement and non-profit integration that are going into this complex.

Although a project as colossal as the Proscenium may seem to cast shadow’s on some of Utah’s smaller social venture projects–I believe it’s affects will be quite the opposite. This development will stand as an ensign to other businesses seeking to incorporate socially responsible components as a glimpse of what is possible.

You’ve got to take a little to give

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A good friend once told me that happiness was as much in taking as it is in giving. This may appear to be a simple justification for looking forward to birthday or holiday gifts. But what I’m really interested in is sustainability. I’ve been exploring more about growing businesses and starting new ventures lately and it seems that “taking and giving” is a necessary cycle for successful entrepreneurship.

Giving and taking. Taking and giving. These are sustainable cycles. Taking and taking and giving and giving are guaranteed failures over time.

Although this principle is immediately visible in social entrepreneurship, it is as vital of a component in general entrepreneurship, where fiscal profit alone may be the objective. To start any venture for a beginning entrepreneur requires borrowed human capital. Networks, expertise, advice, trust… It often feels like I’m in deeper debt of human capital than I could possibly give back in a life time. While I try to give back where I can, and as much as I show gratitude it’s probably not enough–still I’ve got a lot more to take if I want to have a lot more to give.

To help start your website… Get G.I.M.P.

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Either for fun, or if starting a website for your own home-based business, here’s a few helpful tips to start your own business website and hopefully avoid some problems.

When a person first wants to start their own website. There are few costs they need to take into consideration, (these are not all in the order they might appear in your individual quest).

Domain Registration
Hosting

Graphic’s Editor

Page Editor (unless you program from code, which can get a little long after a while)

Pictures (Unless you plan on taking all of your own)

Merchant Account

Today I just want to briefly mention Graphics editor. I once purchased a full photoshop suite from an O.E.M. reseller. About 8 months later, my hard-drive crashed and I when I contacted them to get another key to unlock the software, they were no where to be found. I came to find out later that the company I purchased from got caught in a big scam and is now editing his graphics in prison.

Honestly, if you have the money and want to invest it in some good software, I would suggest you get Photoshop (at least) the other programs that come in the suite are nice as well.

If you have don’t have the money or otherwise don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on software you may not use, I would suggest you get The GIMP. This program takes a little bit to download and install but is really a helpful little tool.

It’s a little less than super-user-friendly, but i’d imagine that you could install it less than 15 minutes… Visit Gimp.org and check it out… For people who have windows and want to skip right to installing it… Here’s the quick links.

http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html once you get here, Install the appropriate add on, (I prefer to run XP but select the add on appropriate for you), then download and install the “GIMP FOR WINDOWS” button.

Install it, then enjoy! You’re that much closer to making the website of your dreams!

Utah Inventions… High on Ideas–Low on Capital

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I recently had a business idea that I was sure would revolutionize the home remodeling industry. I talked with my brother (Patent Attorney) about it and he helped me understand that to take an idea to market takes a lot of steps.

  • First, I needed to run a patent search. This typically costs about 1,200 to 2,000 dollars.
  • Next, I needed to write up a provisionary patent. This would cost only a few hundred dollars.
  • Getting a lawyer that knows what they’re doing to help write up and file the real patent starts at 5,000 (this is a favor) and can easily reach 10,000 dollars.

Well, what if I didn’t have that kind of money yet. What options do I have?

After speaking with a relatively successful idea entrepreneurs he talked about how he sometimes starts with the poor-man patent. That is, he makes a working prototype of his idea, takes a picture of it, writes up a brief description of how it works, seals it in an envelope and sends it in the mail to himself. Definitely an option.

Okay, so once you’ve got the patent, then comes the marketing and further development for mass distribution.

This is the step where most people really get stuck. (Or bankrupt at least… (especially in Utah:))

There are of course a few organizations out there that do have more capital and plenty of experience in helping inventors bring their ideas to lucrative market. I did a little research and came up with a few different names that might interest readers to further research. (I’m sure similar organizations exist in your home state if you’re not from Utah).

I’ve known some incubator groups, and of course there are a number of Utah Venture Capital Firms, but really I think the resources are somewhat limited for people who have an idea but no other business experience.

There is no substitute for hard work. When you put your idea on the table, if you don’t move on it, others may.

I have heard however, that if you have an idea and want to turn it into a marketing reality, you may want to speak with a gentlemen by the name of Stuart Reeves as a great guy to point the way on this subject. You should be able to contact him (or his secretary) at his company,Technology Solutions Group.

I’d also be interested in any more useful leads for this subject. Let me know!

Out of This World Small Business Opportunity

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I recently had the opportunity of meeting with Lynn Taylor, Owner and Operator of the Utah County M.A.R.S. (Miracle Appearance Reconditioning Specialist) — mobile detailing company. I was impressed by his genuine character and also his reasons for being involved in the franchise.

I spoke with him about why he chose to be involved with MARS when there are hundreds of different opportunities–many of which have reportedly higher margins. He said the company and people involved were trustworthy and it provided him with the flexibility he preferred to grow and coast. The price of the franchise plus materials were close to 100K. Not a small amount, but certainly not the end of the world if things go sour.

I wish Lynn the best of luck in his venture and any other entrepreneur looking to get things on track.

I would be very interested in looking at the success rates of first time franchisees across a spectrum of different opportunities… If anyone knows where to get info on that, please let me know.