Dear CXO, Can We Talk about IBM Domino 10?

Executive Summary (TL:DR Synopsis): You may, or may not, have heard about a 30 year old platform still managing applications and workflows inside the Fortune 100. Would you believe it comes from IBM, not that other blue company that still maintains a legacy 27+ year old office platform? If you have yet to bridge the Internet with your Enterprise, which is where the business benefits can be found, then you owe it to yourself to go listen to your IBM representatives.

Good Morning Sir or Madam CXO,

Once upon a time almost every company used a piece of software that was all encompassing so people who never knew what coding meant, were coding applications that revolutionized their business lines because they had all the pieces they needed right in front of them. 

Yet there is a need within every organization, including your own, where someone says, why can't we do X or how could we do X better?  And the person saying it is not a developer but one of your direct reports, or one of their reports far down on the chart. In some cases that idea reaches an internal business analyst and they may, or may not, know how to solve this or which platform to use for it. There may not be any thought given to how it will integrate to your existing applications, CRM or finance package. Suddenly the simple application becomes a massive project and gets shelved before even starting. It also may have become the project from hell that your predecessor was promised.

But it doesn't have to be this way.

IBM has embraced and extended their core collaboration software package, the venerable IBM Domino application which helped your parents be successful, and is still here to help you as well.

Other vendors will tell you they have a new solution, maybe they do, maybe they don't. 

Another blue logo company may tell you they have solved all the issues in their now legacy 17 year old application, but we know you are smarter than their little charade. 

The alphabet soup kids will promise a lot but so far their collaboration efforts are 0 for 2(G+, Wave) and their Enterprise experience is not up to your level of intricacy.

However, IBM understands your world, in many cases, they built your company for you, and is now putting all of that knowledge into their flagship product. If what's old is new again, then now is the time to revisit a product that provides:

• Applications that seamlessly interact with the Internet, but maintain your privacy and security while enhancing your productivity. 
• Sales people on the road that can visualize and pull their data overlaying a map to know who they can go see in their area.
• Workflows that interact between your CRM, your payroll and finance departments and your HR.
•  There is nothing worse than on boarding staff and telling them to go to 5 departments instead of one workflow app which provides most of what they need automatically.
• Write once code that runs offline, online, via a desktop client or a browser, tablet or phone.
• Reduces development time to days or weeks instead of months and gets apps in staff hands faster.
• More sales leads. Just kidding, it can't do everything for you. 
• However, it can automate your sales funnels, marketing efforts and help on the road sales teams engage in more clients than you do today. (Some assembly required, email me for details)
• Better meaning for your data.
• IBM Watson integration awaits with all your AI needs now easily accessible to anyone, anywhere you need it. Ask the right questions, or the wrong ones, your data will provide you insights.
• A solution that grows with you.
• If size matters, don't worry, you have a long way before you max out the systems, IBM leverages it inside for 300,000+ people worldwide 24x7x365. 

What holds you back from sneaking a peek at the imminently available IBM Domino 10? It is in beta now, over here and if you are lucky, you will be allowed access.

You can be a part of the new revolution, if you are ready, and willing, to work on your future, not repaint your past.

Why Experts Save You Money

Did you ever hear these from clients or prospective clients?
"Your fees are too high!"
"You want how much to do this?"
"I can get a <insert tech solution name> person for $10/hr why do we need you?"

I have heard these, and many others too over the course of my career.

Now let's hear how some others see this issue, these are general references not specific to anyone or anything.

• Sales advisors tell us it is because we have not sold the client on us and our solution that the price still matters. If they are not sold on using us, price becomes the scapegoat. This is true.
• Marketing advisors would say our value proposition is not clearly reaching out target market and we should either move down or up, depending on our circumstances and expectations of clients. This is true as well sometimes.
• Financial people would tell us that they have a budget they can not exceed, which we know is not true because if the CEO, or another executive with power, want something, they get it, no matter the cost. This is true too.
• Technical people will tell you they can get it done in a day or two. However, they first have to clear their existing project or support items and then involve a few teams of people and plan the change management, etc.. This is true too, except it will not get done until next year, usually.

What is rarely understood, although we do explain this all the time, is your code-monkeys will spend days trying to fix something that an expert sees and can fix in a few minutes or hours. When this is an internal resourced project, it seems, no one cares about time or cost. When it is an external resource, that is another story entirely.

A friend of mine recently spent, per their post, 5 hours on an email configuration issue.After I asked why they didn't ask my help for what I know to be a five minute fix, we then walked through the config and solved it. Even though they knew I have spent over 20 years on messaging systems, they did not ask for help until they had wasted quite some time. ( I am still hoping they used hyperbole and it was really an hour or 2 which is still too long)

Now, if they are the hourly billing type of person they have a dilemma, do they bill for the wasted hours of troubleshooting or part of it or none of it? If they bill by the project, this would not matter because things like this are expected and included in the pricing. It never makes one happy, but on the other hand, you gain valuable knowledge and experience to solve a problem for next time in seconds, and THAT is huge money to be made...when you bill by the project and not hourly. 

Of course, I can't bill for five minutes of work, well I could if they weren't my friend. The bill would be like the famous joke about the guy with the hammer who knew just where to hit the machinery. I could bill anything just to solve the problem, whether it took me five minutes or five seconds. 

Yes, cheaper solution providers exist, but they are not IBM Champions or Microsoft MVPs or Salesforce MVPs or whatever leaders in their respective fields that while we may not have encountered every issue, we are very battle tested and call upon our other friends to help us because that is what experts do in life.

We trust others to help us in return for the help we lend them. This for me is one of the best things about being an IBM Champion and knowing people that are the equivalent across many platforms. No one wants to ask for help, it is seen as a weakness, but once you get over this your world is much better as is all the people you engage with over the years.

If you are an IT manager, price means nothing when the issue is Enterprise important. If you think otherwise, your company will never get ahead of your competition. Work with experts who help make you look better to your boss, not cause your boss to look for replacements for you.

The Dog Ate My Translation Homework and other stories from the ITA Conference

Yesterday I had the pleasure of addressing the ITA, Israel Translator Association, in Jerusalem at their 2016 conference.
It was my first formal speaking engagement in Israel since we moved here.

I had only submitted one abstract, but after reading my background was asked by the powers that be to do a second session about disaster recovery and planning for it. Given where we are right now, it seemed appropriate although I felt it was something everyone already knew. Little did I know.

My opening session went well in a packed room where more than half the attendees were in there listening to my Worst Practices session. The information gleaned over the years but much of the impetus from my experiences managing an SEO team of translators that filled our requests for about 15 languages.

I was trying to get across to everyone the nature of the professional world we live in, but may not always be understandable to them. While I hit on some basic issues, I also covered what we expect from them in return, and what they could offer us so they do not miss any opportunities with us.

The truth is, some of this is perfect for Business Partners, consultants and self-employed people in general. You can see it or download from http://www.slideshare.net/kbmsg/what-were-you-thinking-worst-translation-practices

What were you thinking? Worst Translation Practices from Keith Brooks

The Disaster Recovery session was almost too real. Slides are here:
http://www.slideshare.net/kbmsg/my-dog-ate-my-translation-assignment?related=1

My Dog Ate My Translation Assignment from Keith Brooks

The 2 weeks prior saw the following happen to me:
Primary laptop motherboard died (oddly enough came back to life, but that is another post)
USB drive stopped working or got corrupted
A client had a bad virus attack them (different one had a DDoS, yeah busy times)
My cell phone is constantly restarting

At the session first we had wifi issues, then we had video connector issues, then we had microphone issues, but it all ended quite well given the previous days.

I had more people come up to me after it and thank me for putting it all in simple terms and an easy process to follow. I provided a simple, and FREE, option for automating their data backups. Fbackup is very simple to use, works very well, is FREE, and is for personal and business usage PLUS automatically backs up to Google Drive. Love or hate Google, Google by the way was a sponsor of the event, no one will deny that a fail safe option for extreme data recovery is a bad thing. We talked about Cloud, USB, External Drives, Tapes, sharing systems, viruses, dead batteries, UPSs etc..

But here is the interesting thing. Many of the people in the room really do not know that much about technology. I thank Sara one of the event organizers for asking me to do the session. Something I take for granted, to be fair I was doing DR and Business Continuity since 1993 including 2 inside the World Trade Centers, I figured people knew the basics.

It goes to show and remind us that however far ahead we may be, we still have a long way to go to bring everyone with us and that is what started me writing this blog, 998 posts ago. This being number 999. I wanted to write for people coming into the industry, people who did not have the benefit of proper training or even mentoring. Based on the feedback yesterday, I am still doing a good job of doing this.

I also had an article published in their magazine that was handed out and hope that was just as well received.

Startups Against Blogging

Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. The better ones pack their blogs early for that flight into the stratosphere.

Hubspot as an example plans for a methodical path and even break out their blogging into 4 or more parts!

Groupon started out as a blog and became the app/platform that is now common.

Blogs can be powerful, but they can also be an albatross.

The power lies in the long term view of indexed information about your company or business. The more you put into the SEO and links and unique search terms for your business, the easier you will be found. And your blogs live forever, or at least as long as you keep them online.

The albatross which people don't think about upfront is the "I need to write a blog post now/today" nagging in their head. So many more important things to do, it will wait. NO, it won't!

But one day rolls into two and then three. Before you know it, a week has passed, and then another, and your blog is like a ghost town. Where will your magical viral audience come from...if no one ever hears about you?

In no specific order these are the usual reasons startups do not blog:

• No time busy writing it or manufacturing it or building it
• No resources (hint: early on it should be from the founder because no one else has their vision or passion for the project) available to write it
• Language barrier for non-English speakers
• What platform should we use (analysis by paralysis)
• No money to hire marketer
• Poor English grammar
• No idea what to write
• We will, later on (after what?)
• That is the CEOs or marketing role
• Our product speaks for itself (I hear this one a lot)
• We pay for ads

There a tons of reasons not to do it, few of which have any merit.

Why should you be blogging and telling your story, in your words?

Some basic reasons:

• The difference between manual actions and automated ones is not obvious to people.
• You love your app, but no one uses the best part (in your eyes).
• You built the app for teachers, yet corporate HR is using it more than teachers.
• If people like what you are doing, they will read your posts (blog, newsletter, email, tweet) and give you feedback.
• Get on people's follow/email/RSS/ lists
• Content is king
• It lives online forever

You want PR, you need customers, you want people to find you and love you....but you never write, you never care, you just sit there and wait for them to come to you. Never going to happen.

Stop Tweeting, and Facebooking, and just get writing.

Building Competitive Pitches #EvangelistGuide

In my previous post in the #EvangelistGuide series, I discussed writing competitive pitches, but covered quite a bit of ground as well.

As promised, we now move on to the way one builds a competitive pitch. This may take many forms, and formats, with the idea being the same throughout, namely helping the customer say what they need and why they need it.

If you start a conversation with an attack, you put people on the defensive, which is not always in your favor. However, there are times when it not only makes sense, but would be the most direct way to accomplish your task.

Know your audience
If you are speaking to tech people or executives, you need to understand their pain, their business, and their thought process. Many of these people will have logic and minutiae to help them ward off any attack. Your ability to speak their language and work with their fears/loves is key.

Never lose sight of the business aspects, present information in ways that you can say "we provide the option for you to pick which way to implement this solution in house or in the Cloud" instead of "we made this work only in the Cloud" if you are facing companies that cannot go to the Cloud today.

Explain your words 
Do your best not to talk down to the audience, but also not talk above them either. It is not an easy line to walk. Please keep in mind, words and terms which the US may use, or think are normal, may not work outside of the US.

Speak so any person in the room, or their company, can understand your intentions and your solution.

Do not use acronyms, unless the audience has already.

Invest your time
Be there at the moment, no distractions, no phone, no Twitter, just you and them. You may use the same ploys every time, but you need to have many ploys in your bag of improvisational responses. Practice other angles, read more, watch more, write more. You also need to relax and take the time to debrief yourself after you are finished each time.

Test new ideas
If you are on a path of evangelism you should have already read or watched or listened to as much as you can on the subjects of sales, overcoming objections, persuasive techniques, hypnotism, poker, body language, non-fiction business biographies, The Godfather, the Bible, The Art of War and The Prince.

If you are still interested in going into the discussions that make sales people cower, now the hard work begins. Just like you need to push people beyond the law of 3 (3 no's, 3 excuses, 3 yes's) you need to be ready with so many more methods for your attack in case you are thwarted early on. It will happen to you, especially in the earlier days, but even later on, you need more ploys.

You can try to reason with the person on the other side, just remember if you are one on one, they will LIE to your face. Never have these discussions one on one, you want their people in there to listen to you and hear their own management make a case for themselves. You can be on your own, in fact, I advocate it should always be one on many. I like them to feel they can gang up on me, I like those odds.

When reason fails, resort to other tactics that match up with your opponent. They may say they want openness, yet are a closed company. They may be happy with their incumbent, but is that because they fear the new, the unknown or just are afraid to MAKE MORE MONEY. Never be afraid to point out the obvious. Push them to think, push them to visualize the problem through a story of your own. If you cannot reference other companies, or provide a good enough story, you need to practice this further and do more research.

Sometimes the simplest method is the easiest. I like to listen to people tell me why they don't like our solution or a specific vendor while I take notes and wait and listen. You then have them telling you what is wrong, what is important to them, and what the largest issue they face is on this topic. If there is a team of people at the meeting, they may all have input, but the executive is the only one we really care about, so watch the executive as the underlings toss out red herrings.

Help them make a decision
The hardest part is having the customer say what you want to hear, without you saying it first. Just like in salary negotiations, the one that mentions a figure first loses, if you or I suggest an outcome, prior to the customer stating it, we will lose all of the time and effort we put into the pitch.

Walk along with them as they explain themselves. Check in with them while they are speaking by verifying what they have stated in their terms. Lead them if you need to, but work on helping them solve their problem, not on you providing the solution. They will love you all the more, and never look back at the competition.

Coming up in this series, why executives lie, why one on many is important and the differences between Enterprise customers and Family owned business/startups.

If your sales or marketing teams are in need of training on this topic please contact me now as Q1 is getting busy.

Think About This for a Moment

According to the National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS), more than 1.5 million nonprofit organizations are registered in the U.S. This number includes public charities, private foundations, and other types of nonprofit organizations, including chambers of commerce, fraternal organizations and civic leagues.

This table, can give you more details of breakdowns, data up to 2009.

Because of the ALS #IceBucketChallenge, which has raised over $94 Million since July 29th alone,
there are now roughly 1,499,999 marketers working at non-profits who may be:
Afraid for their jobs
Depressed that they didn't think of it
Trying to do their own spin of the ice bucket challenge but it better be AWESOME

The problem with being a copy cat is obvious.
Unless you make a really awesome change, think Elon Musk's Tesla's, you will end up like everyone else and get your sliver of market share and that is all. But to your boss you look good. Good, far from excellent or great.

Don't be marginal! Be exceptional!

Easier said than done! I know this first hand.

You want to do so much, but your company gets in your way, fear of lawsuits creeps in, naysayers chime in, budgetary imprisonment meetings keep you from sanity.

Marketers are always pushed further to be original, creative, "viral" and many do fill these traits.

Companies are happy to join in the "me too" game of Fakeopoly. Look they bought a Cloud developer company that focuses on Chinese game sites. The next thing you know anyone saying they do it also gets gobbled up and at the end of the day, you look like the next marketer who has a "challenge" for everyone.

Reach beyond what yous see! Cross the chasm and grab the golden chalice!

The chalice may not be obvious, you need help, you need to ask people, get feedback, find your Rosebud.

Creativity comes from the competitive side of ourselves that pushes each of us to be original, thing differently, solve a problem, work with what we have, be MacGyver.

Come up with the next challenge, product, idea, whatever you need and think bigger and broader.

Did the ALS team know this would happen? Not necessarily and neither will you, but if you never try it, you will never know.

SugarCon is Coming to NY and I am Speaking Again

Hard to believe it has been a year since Sugarcon 2012 but here we are and this time we are going to be in Manhattan. Yes, New York City at the Waldorf Astoria.

You can find more information about the event, including the agenda, here.

IBM are the big Diamond sponsors, which means I did not have to do my pitch on IBM integration with SugarCRM like I did last year.

I will be speaking on Wen. the 10th at 3:40-4:15pm slot under Customer Engagement Strategy.

This year's session is an update from last year's successful session,
Business Anti-Social: Why the Boss Doesn't Get It

This year is:

Business Anti-Social: The Boss Needs SugarCRM, Give it To Them!

After the huge success you had following last year's session, your executive now uses SugarCRM right? Probably not all of you won that battle, ready for this year's? You need to be doing more, faster. Did you get messages out before and after the storms hit? What does this have to do with CRM? Everything! You need to help your CEO look good to the outside world, not just help the sales teams with business development. What other ways can you help your company look better to the outside world? Come listen as we revisit the mind of the executive and provide a few options to keep them even happier with your efforts. Leave the session with a new song list and a better understanding of how to help your executives, and yourselves, but most importantly your customers.

See you in New York. If you are coming, let me know, and if you are in town and want to meet up let me know as well.

Can you Social Business Opera?

Wen night I was one of the lucky ones, for a second time, to live tweet a dress rehearsal of the Palm Beach Opera's latest show, this time it was La Cenerentola. For some of you, it is Cinderella. And NOT the Disney version. A common mistake, no thanks to Disney. Opera rocks! Well, Tommy does, but still it is something impressive to hear a hall full of the singers voices with no microphones or amplification.

Pictures here for those interested.

The live tweeting of the opera is a genius move by the PBO. With a cross section of Tweeters that have various sizes of followers, we had TV personalities, magazine editors, writers, social media people, store managers, owners of their own businesses, men, women, older, younger to see if there was a thread and correlation to produce some help for the opera.

I think they could gain more benefit by having us tweet about the show a little earlier than the night or two before opening but I also understand how hard it is to get everything right and practiced in time.

So I went to the opera last night, tweeted all about it, but we had few retweets, so was it our tweeting? The opera itself? Me or us? The timing, 7:30-10:30pm? The night before Valentine's day? These questions are at the heart of every marketer and social media effort. Last time we had many more followers, possibly due to the leads. When I worked on Broadway it was similar problem. the title of the show helps but a known star or lead is really what brings people in, whether the show was good or not, they want to see the star. No doubt this is a similar situation for the opera. I wonder if IBM would let me borrow Watson to do some analytics to help the PBO?

So we were up against TV. Big deal. On the other hand, I don't expect everyone to be staring at their phones or monitors all night either. But this is the question, not just for opera but any business that works on a live or spur of the moment effort. What is the best way to get people to see, hear you?

Has America lost it's ability to respect the arts and music? Is it this generation which was limited in it's music classes or rather better promoted sports efforts because one can be a winner instead of a singer, dancer or artist? It is the arts which provide encouragement to many and also inspire greatness from others.

This show still has tickets, unlike the last one, La Traviata, which sold out. if you want to go and are in town, link was posted above. No doubt they have a sizable subscriber group and patrons, but in many cases they are older and as the curtain falls on their lives, few are behind them to fill int he gaps.

If you have some ideas about how to bring opera to the masses or at least how to help spread the word, let Amanda Kahan know or leave me some comments.

Choices Made

While spending my 2nd week on site at a client interesting parallels have emerged between my last two hotels and how IT works.

Let me explain.

I have to abide by certain guidelines of the clients to book my travel. Not a problem, they don't want one to be in a dump but they do want their value. In both cases the hotels offer a free continental breakfast. Mostly equal which is fine. One thing which is interesting is the juice and coffee available. In both cases, coffee is available 24x7. However, juice is not.

As a person who does not drink coffee, this is odd to me. Yes, there is probably more expense in providing juice 24x7 but if it is already free, in place and not moving, why limit it? One can take apples, bananas or oranges, while they last, at any time of the day or night. But juice? No.

Parallel this to IT. They provide access to all kinds of products and services, but if you need a keyboard, monitor, some cable or a mouse, you have to sometimes go through a lot to get one. Why? shouldn't there be a stack on hand? A dozen or so just to make life easier on everyone? Our clients like that we have these available for them. It's a small price to pay but rewards IT with a better feeling from the employees and makes life easier.

Then there are the IT shops that lock everything down so much that the users can't even change their passwords by themselves. How does this help anyone? Make life easier not harder.

The hotels do not have a restaurant, they are suites, but one has a pantry with some items to purchase, the other does not. So what is one to do? Go out and fend for themselves? One would imagine the incremental money made with having some pantry on site makes some ROI, but also is one more thing to like about the hotel chain. The lack of one, is one more thing not to like about the other.

One chain upgraded their cable and TV and now you can only see a handful of channels of HD, everything else it is snowing on TV. When I asked if someone could fix it while i was at work, I was informed this is how it is since they upgraded the wiring. I kid you not. The other has a full selection of channels and perfect pictures on their TV. Which one got it right? The reverse of the previous paragraph! That's right, the one that has no pantry has better TV. If I cared to watch TV that much it might make a difference to me. But again this is an item that may sway someone to stay again at your chain.

Now look at IT. Did they get some project done properly and yet other issues plague you perpetually? Great they let you use your iPad now, but when will they resolve the printer that keeps going offline regularly for no reason and causes you to go down the other end of the floor to get a print out only to find there was no paper or ink and have to go back and forth to resend it?

The choices we make as owners, managers or leaders influence how everything else in our company walks or runs and in the long run whether or not the business or your job survives.

Helping a client get into Computerworld

It was a great surprise to see and read about Flexcon in Computerworld.

Saw the post from Ed this morning.

This is an example of how social media, client relationships, marketing and time can help anyone get their message out.

It is not always about IBM or Lotus but we work with various press people to get the word out either about our company and offerrings or about our clients and in some cases like this, get our client some great press as well.

At least 3 others in the Yellow Bubble work with  Flexcon and I am happy to say we all get along quite well and respect each others projects and efforts. Thank you to both of them.

Be open to opportunity, get legal or marketing on your side, get published, get quoted, do something for yourself and your company. There are opportunities DAILY if not hourly to get the word out so help your clients or company and provide this service to them.

Helping your clients is never a bad thing even if it does not involve a project, money or licensing.

If you want Lotus products, or for that matter, any products to stay for the long haul, help them by helping yourself.

To those friends and clients that could not take part in it, I will keep trying to include you, we will find something your legal will accept :-)

Quick Post about sales and the NFL

This article probably rarely if ever would get brought up in Europe.

The New York Jets American Football team have appealed to the league office to change a game(s) starting time, or even the location/date so their fans can attend and not get stuck 2 weeks in a row without attending a game. Or from a business angle, the stadium may lose 2 weeks of dearly needed revenue.

Why?

Rosh Hashana falls on the 1st game and the night of the 2nd starts Yom Kippur.

This is interesting to me on many levels of business, aside from personal reasons. But I am a Miami Dolphin and have to record the games anyway sometimes.

Sales and marketing get hurt. With 2 games out of 8 at home this "could" impact ticket sales at a time which already sees high prices and shortage of money, in some areas.

Business must think more broadly in terms of scheduling events or conferences to not alienate part or even a majority of their potential attendees. Although there is always someone, somewhere that may get offended, check your calendar, digital and in print. Note: Google and Yahoo calendars do not by default show holidays. For that matter neither does Lotus or Microsoft, go set them up and never use technology as an excuse again.

Oddly enough I wondered if there will be an ad campaign aimed at the jewish fans which could be interesting on many levels as well. In an age of individualism or customizations, can a niche market get any traction for something like this and if so, how many other niche markets can they try to target?
Anyone from the jets want to get a hold of me I have some ideas for you.