Subscriber Discussion

Best Or Worst Business Owner's Decision Made In 2016?

MM
Michael Miller
Dec 30, 2016

As 2016 comes to a close what was the best or worst decision you make for your business this year?  This could be moving locations, switching business software, changing business processes,  joining a networking group, adding a new product line.....  

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UM
Undisclosed Manufacturer #1
Dec 30, 2016

Best decision was dumping our old CRM, which was also being shoe horned into the role as a service ticket system. We moved to a new CRM, but separated the service ticket system to another platform that's cloud based. Costs us less money overall because the license cost for the service platform is less than the CRM licenses.

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MM
Michael Miller
Dec 30, 2016

What CRM did you have and what did you switch to?  Is your ticketing system integrated into your CRM system or invoicing solution?  Do you manually have to copy ticket info from your service tickets to your invoices? 

UM
Undisclosed Manufacturer #1
Dec 30, 2016

I can't say the previous one, but we moved to Salesforce, which of course most people use. There is no integration between the two. Would have liked that, but those ticketing systems that did have integration with Salesforce were way more expensive and didn't do all we wanted them to do. Invoicing is not done from the ticket system yet, but it does have that ability and may eventually do that, or use the QuickBooks integration. Will give more detail offline.

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Sean Nelson
Jan 06, 2017
Nelly's Security

We also moved to Salesforce and I consider it a great decision as well. Although it was teeth grindingly agonizing to get it to integrate with everything we have but we literally have it integrated with everything. We use Zendesk for ticketing system, Magento for our website platform and 8x8 for our phone system, and all 3 of those are seamlessly integrated into Salesforce. I can literally see any and every point of contact that my salespeople have with our customers. I will say if you have a phone system like 8x8, look into getting tenfold, its a chrome plugin that will log all of your phone calls. It also pops up customer information in your browser when someone calls in. Its the best thing since sliced bread.

Its also a great reporting tool. I use it to calculate commissions for my salespeople which otherwise was a arduous task using excel spreadsheets. Now its all done automagically and emailed to me every pay period. 

I will say that salesforce was a pain in the a$$ to get setup at first. If it werent my good on staff web designer who spent countless hours getting this setup, I would have kicked salesforce to the curb. I consider a CRM just like starting a website, it will take much hours to get it setup right just how you like it.

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KL
Keefe Lovgren
Dec 30, 2016
IPVMU Certified

This is a great topic.  Without putting a lot of thought into it one of our best moves happened within the last six weeks by implementing Adobe Sign into our proposal process. 

Digital signature and customized fields and electronic documentation has streamlined our proposal process.  We used to either deliver paper document or email a pdf., customer would review and then sign, scan and email back, this seemed to take a while.  Now they sign within the document and we get a copy uploaded to our dashboard, our median completion time is approx. 2 hours now. 

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MM
Michael Miller
Dec 30, 2016

We switched to Quosal this year to get the same results but with more functionality.  Quosal generates a web page which the customer can view and sign their quote.  They can also adjust quantities of products and we can setup options so the customer can basically pick from a menu.  This saves us from having to do multiple quotes and/or multiple revisions.   The next phase is adding CC payment button the web portable so the customer can appove, sign and pay without any interaction from a team member. 

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UI
Undisclosed Integrator #2
Jan 02, 2017

Michael, do you know if Quosal integrates with Quickbooks?

MM
Michael Miller
Jan 02, 2017

Look like it will directly: Quosal/Quickbooks 

I know it when used with Connectwise it will too. 

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UM
Undisclosed Manufacturer #1
Dec 30, 2016

Do you still have a person present the proposal in person? We've found a correlation in the successful closing of a sale being there in person vs. sending something electronically.

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MM
Michael Miller
Dec 30, 2016

For new customers yes I would agree.  It always helps to sit with the customer and review the quote with them.   

We have a lot of repeat customers so we try to make doing business with us as efficient as possible. Sending them a quote which they can pick and chose options then update the quote and pay without having us involved has helped a lot. 

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KL
Keefe Lovgren
Dec 30, 2016
IPVMU Certified

#1,

Yes if the customer prefers and in person delivery we can do that.  Salesman can bring a paper copy and collect that or have them sign on a surface pro as well.

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Armando Perez
Jan 02, 2017
Hoosier Security and Security Owners Group • IPVMU Certified

Underestimating the cost of going from contractors to employees only. It was a massive learning curve.

MM
Michael Miller
Jan 02, 2017

How many employees did you have before and after switching.  What made you switch?

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Armando Perez
Jan 02, 2017
Hoosier Security and Security Owners Group • IPVMU Certified

Before we had one tech employee and several contractors. Total staff of 5 at the time. Since then we have added three more technicians and eliminated contractors and added another sales person and another inside tech person.

Quality control. while costs and labor efficiency were built into the project pricing before, we have major fluctuations in quality. It was embarrassing. Quality is now under control and well-defined, but obviously costs are much harder to control and the cost of adding a technician from scratch is quite large. 

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John Bazyk
Jan 02, 2017
Command Corporation • IPVMU Certified

Dumped NVRs for a real VMS. Our technical support staff have seen a serious reduction in tech support calls. We also stopped hardwiring home security systems and have started using the XTLplus from DMP for faster more reliable installs so we can move on to bigger projects. 

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Armando Perez
Jan 05, 2017
Hoosier Security and Security Owners Group • IPVMU Certified

Really don't want to see this thread die. Can learn a lot here.

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Tyler Blake
Jan 06, 2017
BCI Integrated Solutions

Switched business software and our monitoring off of Dice (garbage software and business to work with) after a decade to Bold for central station and simPro for ticketing/quoting/CRM and quick books online / gusto for accounting and payroll. Couldn't be happier to be as far away as possible from Dice and the nearly 10k a month we're saving to get better software that actually works.

I highly recommend simpro to those looking for service/CRM/ticketing systems to those in this thread. After getting a dozen plus systems they had the most robust system for customer contract management and inspection reporting / preventative maintenance planning. Can't say enough how much it will help with transparent costing.

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Brian Karas
Jan 06, 2017
IPVM

Tyler - what did you like about BOLD? What other platforms did you look at?

Also, are you doing (or planning to do) any video verification integration with BOLD?

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Tyler Blake
Jan 06, 2017
BCI Integrated Solutions

We already do video integration. We looked at IBS, Microkey, MAS, SIMS, and Bold.

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Sean Nelson
Jan 06, 2017
Nelly's Security

Worst Decision: I thought that since our sales have been rocketing up the past 3 years that I would plan ahead and hire on more people in prediction that our sales would continue to skyrocket. Wrong, sales are down this year and put me in a tough decision, had to lay my first guy off and make some other tough decisions as well. Before then, I was the type of guy that never hired someone until we absolutely 100% needed them, I should have kept that philosophy in 2016. I will from now on.

Best Decision: I have a couple:

Implementing Salesforce -  Is a great insight tool and couldnt live without it. See my post above on the pains of implementing though.

Opening up a new business -  Never put all your eggs in one basket, and that includes the businesses you own. I have a business selling all kinds of different stuff on Amazon that is completely unrelated to my Security Business. Cool thing is, I have found a really nice selling product line that has prompted me to possibly open up another offshoot business of it.

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Adam Messina
Jan 06, 2017
Qumulex

I rolled out Salesforce a couple of months ago and have been regretting it.  However, based on this thread I may still be in the early pain process, so I will keep plugging away.

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Brian Karas
Jan 06, 2017
IPVM

I have used/implemented SalesForce at multiple companies, almost since it first launched.

It has always been a giant pain and mostly required 1 of 2 approaches:

1) Contort your business processes to work the way Salesforce "thinks". There are ups and downs here, you are probably doing some things "wrong" and it will be more efficient to manage your processes in the way Salesforce works, but it is also likely you are doing some things "right", for your particular business, and converting to the Salesforce way is a pain. Either way, the net result is "be open to change".

2) Recognize up front that you are going to need a lot of customization.  Pay a Salesforce consultant $10K-$20K to setup everything up and customize reports and processes to a way that is least disruptive to you.  Plan to pay this person at least $5,000/year for random ongoing things.

It is easier if you implement Salesforce early on, so that you have not built up as many habits, processes, and expectations around something that works differently.

The Salesforce API can be very handy, in many cases I found it easier to write my own stuff that would build reports from data in Salesforce and layout things the way I wanted vs. trying to do it directly in the Salesforce config and related modules.

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Adam Messina
Jan 06, 2017
Qumulex

My biggest beef with Salesforce is that I upgraded from from SalesforceIQ (cheapest version at $25 per month, per user) to Professional ($75 per month per user) and lost some valuable features.  To get those features back they suggest buy a $400 app here and there.  For $20G's I could have a custom solution written just for my needs.

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DL
David Lieberman
Jan 09, 2017
IPVMU Certified

From the client perspective....

I'm not a business owner nor a business researcher, but I am a business observer. The worst mistakes I see businesses make is changing their purpose; they begin by providing a product, service, financial instrument, etc. then change their purpose to making greater profit.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard people say that the purpose of any business is to make a profit. But as Simon Sinek very aptly phrased it, "Profit is a result, not a purpose".

In almost every case where the purpose changes to profit, the business has gone under. I've seen this with small business and large. Consider Enron whose only purpose was profit. And consider Arthur Anderson -- one of the largest accounting and audit firms in the world. They sacrificed their integrity for profit by covering for Enron. They're gone. Adelphia cable, MCI WorldCom, Blockbuster... all gone.

Circuit City's initial purpose was retailing electronics and appliances, but their purpose and focus then became insurance on the products they sold, as it resulted in greater profit. Gone. Countless mortgage companies. Gone....and they took the world economy with them. Goldman Sachs would be gone if not for the bailout, but many others weren't as fortunate. Gone.

On a smaller scale, some years ago, I left an integrator because of the nickel and diming. Charging a 25% restocking fee when I returned a defective part. Sending the furthest located technician to our site to rack up maximum travel charges, and so on. They're still alive but barely.

On an even smaller scale, there was a fast food restaurant near my office. Where as most provide free drink refills, and some charge 25c, this restaurant charged the full $2.29 for a refill. I paid the $2.29 but never went back. They're gone.

There are, of course, some exceptions, but barring extraordinary circumstances, as a general rule of thumb: If you take care of your customers, you'll succeed. If you take GOOD care of your customers, you'll flourish. If you don't...Gone.

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Luis Carmona
Jan 09, 2017
Geutebruck USA • IPVMU Certified

[Simon Sinek very aptly phrased it, "Profit is a result, not a purpose"]

I'll have to remember that, thanks.

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