Well football fans , just like Michael Vick and Brett Farve , I have joined a new team, again!
As of July , I am the Director of Site Support Services at Hardy Services a division of The Hardy Corporation.
Cool title huh! But what the heck do I do?
Hardy has been in the mechanical contracting business since 1943. OK that's air conditioning and plumbing stuff right? Hang on it gets better! In the 80s Hardy started up Hardy Services to do service work on the mechanical systems they sold. Still AC and flush toilets right? Now that you are thoroughly confused , let me wrap it all up for you. About 10 years ago , Hardy Services began to work with Liebert , a manufacturer of computer room air conditioning and uninterpretable power systems. Hardy Services is the factory authorized service center for Liebert cooling in Central Alabama. Liebert and other similar manufacturers like APC play in both power and cooling not to mention racks and power distribution. Hardy began to see more opportunity in some of the other things that support information technology like power systems , raised flooring and even fire suppression systems. Now this all begins to make sense! Since mechanical service companies play all day long with piping and wiring how much of a stretch would a UPS be , or an FM fire system , or even a card reader for access control?
So who goes out into the marketplace and spreads the gospel about all this great stuff that Hardy Services is doing? This person needs to understand the IT business and be knowledgeable about how data centers operate and be able to interface with IT Managers , CIOs as well as facilities management people.Enter yours truly!
Now you may ask, why has it taken me since July to post? I have been and still am , really busy getting our presentations and processes put together but everything is just about to come together and ready to make its debut.
Here's the other great thing, I LOVE MY JOB! Frankly, its been a while since I could say that and I am really enjoying the challenge.
Stay tuned.....I am about to be in full promotional mode so expect lots of stuff on the blog in the coming months.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Friday, May 1, 2009
The Questions You Need To Have The Answers To...
I was visiting with a friend of mine at his office the other day and the discussion naturally turned to telecommunications (imagine that!).
I asked him how many phone lines he had......he began to count the buttons on his phone.."Four?".
I asked about internet, what kind of service he had...he replied "pretty good!"
You can imagine what kind of answer I got when I asked , "Do you have PRI?"
I was recently working with a company that still had Centrex (ESSX) service. The lines where going into their twenty plus year old Nortel 824 phone system.......?? Upon examining their phone bill I was astounded by the cost. They were using tens of thousands of LD minutes and their rate was 20 cents per minute! The billing increment was in 1 minute intervals! They were averaging $12,000.00 a month!!!!
The morale of the story is.......you need , no you MUST know how you connect to your customers and the rest of the world not just from a cost perspective (my example of the Centrex customer) but just because YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS STUFF! Imagine that you asked someone , "How much is your house payment?" and they didn't know......????? You really must know some basic stuff about the most important communications tool that you have.
Here are the things you must know:
1. Who is our voice provider?
2. Who do we get internet from?
3. Where does our website live?
4. Is our email handled internally or is it hosted outside? If outside of our organization, where does it live?
5. What is the length of any contractual commitments we have to the above?
6. What kind of phone system do we have (if any) and how old is it?
7. What are we paying for these services? (remember to include everything in this list, not just the phone bill)
8. When is the last time we reviewed all of the above with someone who really knows how all this works?
If you don't know the answers to 1 through 7, you need to get them. Then you need to act on item 8.
I asked him how many phone lines he had......he began to count the buttons on his phone.."Four?".
I asked about internet, what kind of service he had...he replied "pretty good!"
You can imagine what kind of answer I got when I asked , "Do you have PRI?"
I was recently working with a company that still had Centrex (ESSX) service. The lines where going into their twenty plus year old Nortel 824 phone system.......?? Upon examining their phone bill I was astounded by the cost. They were using tens of thousands of LD minutes and their rate was 20 cents per minute! The billing increment was in 1 minute intervals! They were averaging $12,000.00 a month!!!!
The morale of the story is.......you need , no you MUST know how you connect to your customers and the rest of the world not just from a cost perspective (my example of the Centrex customer) but just because YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS STUFF! Imagine that you asked someone , "How much is your house payment?" and they didn't know......????? You really must know some basic stuff about the most important communications tool that you have.
Here are the things you must know:
1. Who is our voice provider?
2. Who do we get internet from?
3. Where does our website live?
4. Is our email handled internally or is it hosted outside? If outside of our organization, where does it live?
5. What is the length of any contractual commitments we have to the above?
6. What kind of phone system do we have (if any) and how old is it?
7. What are we paying for these services? (remember to include everything in this list, not just the phone bill)
8. When is the last time we reviewed all of the above with someone who really knows how all this works?
If you don't know the answers to 1 through 7, you need to get them. Then you need to act on item 8.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
CCCCChanges!
I have been going through some changes lately. I went from working for a cable MSO to a small business partnership now to a CLEC. Why you ask? I guess I am trying to be all I can be. I felt limited at the cable company. I wanted to be more involved in other aspects of helping people use technology to broaden their horizons and better their lives, especially when it came to business. I undertook a bold step and went out semi-on my own only to discover that you can be unlimited in your thinking but limited by things like money and other peoples thinking. Now I am starting a new path at a very forward thinking Competitive Local Exchange Carrier(CLEC). I think the things they are doing and the directions they are going will be a good fit for me. Wish me luck!
Thursday, August 21, 2008
The Value of Value
OK the title sounds at the least repetitious and maybe even silly,but I have been thinking a lot lately about value. Gitomer and all my other guru's talk a lot about "building value for the customer". What is valuable to your customer?
In my world, I build value on three levels. One with the knowledge and expertise that they gain access to by doing business with me and my company. This knowledge base is not just what's in my head but the cumulative knowledge and experience of all the people that I work with and the ones that we interact with that don't necesarily belong to the inner circle of the company.
The second value builder is how we can leverage technology to help them accomplish the things that they need to do or want to do, effectively, reliably and efficiently.
The third is the way we do business. We apply the principles of trust based selling to every project. If you always have the best interests of the customer in mind,even if that doesn't always parallel what makes you the most money, you will prevail and prosper in the end.
In my world, I build value on three levels. One with the knowledge and expertise that they gain access to by doing business with me and my company. This knowledge base is not just what's in my head but the cumulative knowledge and experience of all the people that I work with and the ones that we interact with that don't necesarily belong to the inner circle of the company.
The second value builder is how we can leverage technology to help them accomplish the things that they need to do or want to do, effectively, reliably and efficiently.
The third is the way we do business. We apply the principles of trust based selling to every project. If you always have the best interests of the customer in mind,even if that doesn't always parallel what makes you the most money, you will prevail and prosper in the end.
Friday, July 18, 2008
The Three Books You Need
I want to reccommend three books to add to your library. The first is Jeffrey Gitomer's "Sales Bible" which I mentioned in an earlier post. This is probably the greatest sales tool ever developed. I say this not because Gitomer offers groundbreaking sales strategies that you haven't heard of before, just the opposite , it is "Sales 101" the basics. Sales is like sports, the further you get away from the fundamentals, the worse off you are.
The second book is Charles Green's "Trust-Based Selling". This one is ground breaking. The whole idea is that you always do what is best for your customer. That doesn't sound too earthshattering , right? Think about this conversation with your sales manager in Corporate America, " Well Boss , I met with that million dollar prospect that I have in my forecast this month and after talking further with them about what they really needed , I told them that our biggest competitor was really a better fit for them."
The third book is "The Art of Winning" by Dennis Connor. Connor is portrayed as America's most sucessful sailor and being the one that brought the America's Cup back to the U.S. in 1987 after years of being held in Australia certainly qualifies him for that. This book is essential for everyone seeking to prevail in any competitive situation.
At Advanced Teledata , these are the three books that are required reading in our Sales Development Course. Who is in our Sales Development Course? Everybody!
The second book is Charles Green's "Trust-Based Selling". This one is ground breaking. The whole idea is that you always do what is best for your customer. That doesn't sound too earthshattering , right? Think about this conversation with your sales manager in Corporate America, " Well Boss , I met with that million dollar prospect that I have in my forecast this month and after talking further with them about what they really needed , I told them that our biggest competitor was really a better fit for them."
The third book is "The Art of Winning" by Dennis Connor. Connor is portrayed as America's most sucessful sailor and being the one that brought the America's Cup back to the U.S. in 1987 after years of being held in Australia certainly qualifies him for that. This book is essential for everyone seeking to prevail in any competitive situation.
At Advanced Teledata , these are the three books that are required reading in our Sales Development Course. Who is in our Sales Development Course? Everybody!
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
The Sales Bible
I bought the latest version of Jeffrey Gitomer's "Sales Bible" the other day. If you are not familiar with Jeffrey Gitomer, Google him. I have been a Gitomer devotee for about 10+ years for one simple reason, you can read just about any of his writings - books, website or syndicated newspaper column- and get something that you can use THAT DAY!
The "Sales Bible" will cost you about $30.00 from Amazon. If you are hesitant to invest $30.00 in your career, consider a career change.
Nuff Said.....
The "Sales Bible" will cost you about $30.00 from Amazon. If you are hesitant to invest $30.00 in your career, consider a career change.
Nuff Said.....
Friday, May 2, 2008
IP Telephony for everybody….?????
The latest greatest buzz is something called VOIP or Voice over Internet Protocol. To really understand VOIP we have to differentiate it from its predecessors digital voice or TDM, better known as T-1 or PRI and analog or POTS (Plain Old Telephone System).
Let’s make this quick, easy and not too technical. Analog (POTS) requires one circuit for each call and that circuit remains open for the duration of the call. Not a bad way to handle one or two calls but as the traffic to a specific point increases….well you see the problem. TDM gave us the capability to route multiple calls through a four wire interface. Obviously for a business that has multiple incoming and outgoing voice calls, TDM is a far superior method to analog and is the predominant “business” technology today. VOIP or IP telephony turns voice into data packets so that information can travel over a data network along with other data traffic like email, word documents and music downloads.
What are the advantages of having voice and data on one network? First and foremost, you get to have one wire to each work station. This eliminates an entire wiring infrastructure for voice. Most IP phones have a switch built in so that you plug the phone into the network and your computer into the phone. Voila, one wire to the desktop! In an office with five workstations this is not really a big deal but in an environment where there are five hundred workstations it is sort of like my example about having POTS lines coming to your business – two or three are no big deal but as the numbers grow………
The second important advantage of IP telephony is something the telephone industry calls moves, add and changes. John and Bill trade offices or cubicles but need to keep the same extension numbers. In the traditional telephone world this usually requires a service call and a couple of hundred dollars to accomplish. With IP telephones, as Bill and John exit their respective offices with their laptops, staplers and personal items they also take their phones. They then plug their devices into the existing network interfaces and they are done without the aid of a serviceman and sans the cost. Once again as the number of phones grows, the cost savings is also exponential.
About now, you are saying “OK so VOIP is really just for BIG businesses with lots of employees” and to some extent you are correct, however there is a counter-revolutionary movement going on in the phone world that has changed that forever!
This movement was started by a guy named Linus Torvold, the father of Linux the open source, free in most cases, non-proprietary, pain in Microsoft’s keister operating system that continues to lurk in the shadows and scare the traditional software world to death. The big scary is really called ASTERISK! Developed by Mark Spencer using the Linux operating system that Linus Torvold sired. Imagine if you will a telephone system that has all the functionality and features of a really high end (spelled C-O-S-T-L-Y) IP telephone system, that will (in theory) run on an old PC that you were going to throw away, that uses a fifty dollar IP phone that you can buy on E-bay and the base operating code is (dare we say) FREE!
WOW! Impressed yet? As in most things…..if it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn’t and without throwing in the “some conditions may apply, see the fine print for details” disclaimer let me qualify the above paragraph. First of all, everything I said above is absolutely, unequivocally TRUE! I know because I have done exactly what I said, more than once. And in doing so , I learned a lot of things about open source IP telephony. Unless you are willing to spend the time, energy, money and brainpower that guys like me, who do this for a living and have wives that understand we are a little crazy, have done-----keep reading and I will tell you how it really is.
First of all, just as you would never dream of building your own car from parts (ala Johnny Cash) or using Do-It-Yourself Brain Surgery, don’t try to build your own phone system-buy one from someone who has already done the time. Companies like Digium have lists of partners all over the country that can help you. Digium and Fonality have started marketing pre-configured Asterisk based systems, appliances if you will, which already have the software and hardware configured to specifications.
Why would you want one of these PBX systems as opposed to a more traditional system? Firstly the cost will be approximately the same as a traditional system for an open source based system. Compare this to a “name brand” IP telephone system like Cisco or Avaya or even Nortel. The feature to feature comparison will be pretty much the same between the “Big Three” and an open source system. As for the cost of upgrades and maintenance costs , there is no comparison , the “name brand” will be higher by a factor of at least three. Finally the all important start up costs come into play. The price of admission for a Cisco Call Manager system of some moderate size can easily be north of a quarter million dollars with Avaya and Nortel running close behind while an open source system with a comparable (or in some cases better) feature set will run less than half the initial cost of the others. Does the idea of having a phone system that will do everything a high end system will do for the same money as a “Plain Old” telephone system sound good to you?
Let’s talk about telephone over the Internet. I phrase it this way because I want to distinguish telephone over the Internet from Voice over Internet Protocol. When your telephone traffic runs over your internal network it uses Internet Protocol or Ethernet. That traffic does not necessarily travel through the World Wide Web. Do I use internet telephone? Absolutely everyday no problem. Can I recommend to a business whose life line to their customer base is through the telephone system that they switch their voice traffic to the internet? Not in good concisions and certainly not with out doing an in depth study of their incoming and outgoing phone traffic. Do I think routing some voice over the internet is a good idea, absolutely! For example, a company that makes a good many international calls or just a lot of long distance can route some of those calls through an internet based provider and save a significant amount of money. Internet routing is also a good way to expand capacity either inbound or outbound very cost effectively. Here’s one scenario that is interesting. Let’s say company A has started picking up some business in another city, its not quite time to open an office there yet but it would be nice to have a local phone in that town for marketing purposes and for the customers they already have. In the traditional telephone world this is a costly and arduous process. In the IP telephony world, if you want a number in Uganda I can get it for you in about ten minutes and it will cost less than twenty bucks a month.
Another benefit of this type of telephony for the small to medium business is mobility. There have been numerous studies on how a work from home worker or teleworker is usually more motivated, sometimes of a higher quality that a stationery worker and costs far less to employ. Using IP telephony you can put a little bit of technology at someone’s home and give them the same functionality that they would have if they worked in your office. If you have a sales force, they can be more accessible out in the field and be more productive. Lastly IP telephony can untie the small business owner from the business while still allowing them to manage and direct it.
The benefits of this type of technology can be even greater for small to medium businesses than they are for big business and open source technology puts it within affordable reach of those businesses.
Let’s make this quick, easy and not too technical. Analog (POTS) requires one circuit for each call and that circuit remains open for the duration of the call. Not a bad way to handle one or two calls but as the traffic to a specific point increases….well you see the problem. TDM gave us the capability to route multiple calls through a four wire interface. Obviously for a business that has multiple incoming and outgoing voice calls, TDM is a far superior method to analog and is the predominant “business” technology today. VOIP or IP telephony turns voice into data packets so that information can travel over a data network along with other data traffic like email, word documents and music downloads.
What are the advantages of having voice and data on one network? First and foremost, you get to have one wire to each work station. This eliminates an entire wiring infrastructure for voice. Most IP phones have a switch built in so that you plug the phone into the network and your computer into the phone. Voila, one wire to the desktop! In an office with five workstations this is not really a big deal but in an environment where there are five hundred workstations it is sort of like my example about having POTS lines coming to your business – two or three are no big deal but as the numbers grow………
The second important advantage of IP telephony is something the telephone industry calls moves, add and changes. John and Bill trade offices or cubicles but need to keep the same extension numbers. In the traditional telephone world this usually requires a service call and a couple of hundred dollars to accomplish. With IP telephones, as Bill and John exit their respective offices with their laptops, staplers and personal items they also take their phones. They then plug their devices into the existing network interfaces and they are done without the aid of a serviceman and sans the cost. Once again as the number of phones grows, the cost savings is also exponential.
About now, you are saying “OK so VOIP is really just for BIG businesses with lots of employees” and to some extent you are correct, however there is a counter-revolutionary movement going on in the phone world that has changed that forever!
This movement was started by a guy named Linus Torvold, the father of Linux the open source, free in most cases, non-proprietary, pain in Microsoft’s keister operating system that continues to lurk in the shadows and scare the traditional software world to death. The big scary is really called ASTERISK! Developed by Mark Spencer using the Linux operating system that Linus Torvold sired. Imagine if you will a telephone system that has all the functionality and features of a really high end (spelled C-O-S-T-L-Y) IP telephone system, that will (in theory) run on an old PC that you were going to throw away, that uses a fifty dollar IP phone that you can buy on E-bay and the base operating code is (dare we say) FREE!
WOW! Impressed yet? As in most things…..if it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn’t and without throwing in the “some conditions may apply, see the fine print for details” disclaimer let me qualify the above paragraph. First of all, everything I said above is absolutely, unequivocally TRUE! I know because I have done exactly what I said, more than once. And in doing so , I learned a lot of things about open source IP telephony. Unless you are willing to spend the time, energy, money and brainpower that guys like me, who do this for a living and have wives that understand we are a little crazy, have done-----keep reading and I will tell you how it really is.
First of all, just as you would never dream of building your own car from parts (ala Johnny Cash) or using Do-It-Yourself Brain Surgery, don’t try to build your own phone system-buy one from someone who has already done the time. Companies like Digium have lists of partners all over the country that can help you. Digium and Fonality have started marketing pre-configured Asterisk based systems, appliances if you will, which already have the software and hardware configured to specifications.
Why would you want one of these PBX systems as opposed to a more traditional system? Firstly the cost will be approximately the same as a traditional system for an open source based system. Compare this to a “name brand” IP telephone system like Cisco or Avaya or even Nortel. The feature to feature comparison will be pretty much the same between the “Big Three” and an open source system. As for the cost of upgrades and maintenance costs , there is no comparison , the “name brand” will be higher by a factor of at least three. Finally the all important start up costs come into play. The price of admission for a Cisco Call Manager system of some moderate size can easily be north of a quarter million dollars with Avaya and Nortel running close behind while an open source system with a comparable (or in some cases better) feature set will run less than half the initial cost of the others. Does the idea of having a phone system that will do everything a high end system will do for the same money as a “Plain Old” telephone system sound good to you?
Let’s talk about telephone over the Internet. I phrase it this way because I want to distinguish telephone over the Internet from Voice over Internet Protocol. When your telephone traffic runs over your internal network it uses Internet Protocol or Ethernet. That traffic does not necessarily travel through the World Wide Web. Do I use internet telephone? Absolutely everyday no problem. Can I recommend to a business whose life line to their customer base is through the telephone system that they switch their voice traffic to the internet? Not in good concisions and certainly not with out doing an in depth study of their incoming and outgoing phone traffic. Do I think routing some voice over the internet is a good idea, absolutely! For example, a company that makes a good many international calls or just a lot of long distance can route some of those calls through an internet based provider and save a significant amount of money. Internet routing is also a good way to expand capacity either inbound or outbound very cost effectively. Here’s one scenario that is interesting. Let’s say company A has started picking up some business in another city, its not quite time to open an office there yet but it would be nice to have a local phone in that town for marketing purposes and for the customers they already have. In the traditional telephone world this is a costly and arduous process. In the IP telephony world, if you want a number in Uganda I can get it for you in about ten minutes and it will cost less than twenty bucks a month.
Another benefit of this type of telephony for the small to medium business is mobility. There have been numerous studies on how a work from home worker or teleworker is usually more motivated, sometimes of a higher quality that a stationery worker and costs far less to employ. Using IP telephony you can put a little bit of technology at someone’s home and give them the same functionality that they would have if they worked in your office. If you have a sales force, they can be more accessible out in the field and be more productive. Lastly IP telephony can untie the small business owner from the business while still allowing them to manage and direct it.
The benefits of this type of technology can be even greater for small to medium businesses than they are for big business and open source technology puts it within affordable reach of those businesses.
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