Really Simple Systems goes Free

This week Really Simple Systems launched its Free CRM product, Really Simple Systems Free Edition. Freemium products are hot topic these days, with commentators divided as to whether they will actually make money instead of just taking market share, so I thought I’d run through the logic of what we’re trying to do and why.

The decision to launch a Freemium product was driven by three issues:

1. We weren’t really making any money from one or two user systems by the time we had run through a pre and post sales process
2. We wanted to get a larger market share in the US, where we have some customers but nothing like the numbers we have in the UK, and we don’t have $1m to throw at offices and marketing
3. If we didn’t do this, somebody else would

We could have probably sorted out 1) by streamlining our sales process. The traditional solution to solve 2) is to raise cash from venture capital but in my experience VCs add a huge amount of pain and cost to small companies and no strategic value, and then walk away with a disproportionate amount of cake at the end. And as to 3), there isn’t an alternative but to be there first, if you believe, as I do, that cloud software will become a commodity offering with correspondingly lower and lower prices.

There is also the challenge that to offer a free product, it really has to be easy to use as we can’t afford to talk people through how to use it, and as the whole ethos of the company is to make CRM really simple, doing this would force us to improve the ease of use of the core product, which would be good for everyone.

So, it will be a learning process for us. We need to work on the documentation, help videos and data load process to help people pick up the product more easily. Our target is to sign 10,000 users in twelve months which will make us the largest (bar none) supplier of cloud CRM systems in the world. All we’ve done so far is put the product on our site and issued a press release and we’re signing up 15 users a day so far, so I think the 10,000 might if anything be on the low side.

As we said in the press release though, “We’re going to make life tough not just for conventional CRM vendors, but for Cloud vendors with high prices and high cost bases.”

Watch this space!

Google changes channel for Nexus

Just when I thought I was the only person who wasn’t impressed by Google’s attempt to sell their new Android ‘phone the Nexus One direct (see umpteen previous posts), I was amused to read that Google has given up it hopes of shifting serious quantities of hardware by selling (but not supporting) direct and will be selling through the traditional channels of network providers and retail shops.

Maybe Google has realised that selling retail needs skills and resources that they don’t have.

Nexus One – not for the man in the street – Part 2

Somewhat sheepishly after my last entry on Google’s new phone, I decided to buy a Nexus One rather than an iPhone – hey, iPhones are as boring as Blackberries these days!

However my honour has been saved – I can’t buy one. Every time I try (different machines, different browsers) I get a “Server Error” message when I enter my credit card details.

No number to call of course, nay, not even an email address. Google doesn’t do that old fashioned people stuff.

Somebody up there msut be trying to tell me something!

Nexus One – not for the man in the street

Interested to see that existing & potential purchasers of Google’s new iPhone killer the Nexus One are unhappy with the level of customer support they get from the Mountain View boys – apparently there is only email support, no telephone number to call.

If Google want to challenge competitors such as Microsoft and mobile phone operators such as AT&T and Vodafone, they will need to turn from being a B2B company that tries to automate away all customer interaction to keep costs down, to being a B2C company that looks after its customers. Not that the telcos are great at the latter, but have you ever tried to call Google with an Adwords problem? Dream on! When Microsoft launched Bing and wanted advertisers to go with them as well as/instead of Google, they really tried hard to woo customers, and part of that was a call centre to help advertisers set up their campaigns.

Google may be the new kids in town – but when it comes to customer service, they are still kids.

How to choose a PR Company

I had lunch today with a customer of ours, Real Training, really nice people (they even paid for lunch – thanks, Mark!) and the subject came up of how and when do you chose a PR company, and how much should you pay them. For a lot of people it’s a black art, and as most of the articles on the subject seem to be written by PR people rather than customers I thought I’d share my experiences on the subject. This article is targeted for small businesses, but some of the truths are universal.

Why PR?

I’m a fan of PR, I’ve always found that if you are building a product company it can help you punch above your weight. Service companies are more difficult, it is much easier to build stories around products. You’ll get a few leads but mostly it is about brand building, getting the name out so that when people finally start looking for what you sell they know your name. More recently, as editorial in printed publications get reduced, it can also help your search engine optimisation if you make sure your releases are optimised for your keywords. For example, ours are optimised for simple hosted CRM.

PR Basics

You need to build a list of the key publications (& these days, blogs) that you want to feature in. Conventionally you’ll have an A list of maybe ten publications/sites/blogs, a B list of another 20 and then the rest.
You need to make sure that you can supply the PR company with a story every month: product releases, users stories, surveys, awards. Doing a “We’ve launched a new company” release and then disappearing is not worth the expense of hiring a PR company, if you have neither the budget nor the material for monthly releases then do what you can in house and leave the PR company for when you have both.

Good PR Companies

A good PR company will:

Have some knowledge of your product and market

Know the key editors and journalists at your target publications

Be able to place user stories with your target publications

Allocate an account manager to you who will learn about your company

Get calls from journalists at your target publications who need a quote from somebody in your industry

Have an editorial schedule that tells you what topics the key publications will be covering over the next six months

Tell you what the journalists are wanting to write about this month

Hassle you for stories if you don’t give them any

Come to you with ideas for stories

Work within your budget and not continually try to upsell you to more expensive services

How to find the ideal PR company

Like all suppliers, you need somebody who is the same size as you so you aren’t a minor client for them

Ask your friends, colleagues, social networks for recommendations

Find out who does PR for your competitors. The ideal PR company may have just lost one of your competitors as a client!

Read your target publications. Are there any non-competitive businesses that seem to be mentioned all the time? Get the name of their PR company.

Shortlist three to six, roughly. Meet them. They’ll talk you through how they work. Does it make sense? Are they nice people, do you get on with them?

Don’t choose the company on what you feel about the partner who leads your first meeting and then signs you, choose them on the basis of the account manager who will be doing all the work. Like lawyers, the partner who signs you up will be working on larger accounts once the ink is dry, it’s the account manager (or even assistant) that you will be talking to every day and who will be doing the work. The partners just do lunch.

How much to pay a PR company

All PR companies want you to sign a retainer, and most will want you to sign a contract that gives them three months’ notice if you cancel. I used to try and get out of retainers, but if you are using the PR company every month it is not worth trying to pay on a project basis – and if you aren’t using them every month then you shouldn’t be using them at all. Sometimes it seems that the monthly retainers are plucked from fairy-tale land – if you are a small company then £2,000 a month is the asking rate but times are hard and you can pay a lot less providing that you tell people up front that this is your budget, and they’ll be more as you grow. With your retainer you are buying an account manager’s time, but many PR companies have more time available than customers these days, so anything for them is better than nothing.
If there is a contract, insist on being able to break after three months without notice, and try and get the notice period after that reduced, or removed altogether.

PR Goals

Be realistic. Hundreds of new companies are launched every month, you won’t get regular press in mainstream publications every month. What is a big sale to you is chicken feed to national publications. To start with go for at least one editorial mention somewhere a month, plus coverage in what I call the cut ‘n paste news sites. Try and get a major story out once a quarter.

And finally

PR is a person business. Once you’ve found an account manager that you like, trained them in what you do and the right messaging, you don’t want to lose them. Good people get promoted to bigger accounts – so make it clear that if your account manager moves on, you’ll be asking them and other PR companies to re-pitch. Beware the tell-tale signs that this is about to happen: a new assistant is introduced at a meeting; the new assistant seems to doing all the work; the old account manager gets the new assistant to return your calls; the account manager can’t make the next meeting but the new assistant will stand in. If you know that this is happening you can form an opinion of the new assistant and if you’re happy for them to take over, you can let it happen. If you’re not happy, then a discrete telephone call is needed.

And finally, finally

We use www.itpr.co.uk. They do everything that I’ve mentioned (apart from the bad bits) and most importantly leave you feeling that they have delivered more that you’ve paid them for. And no, they don’t know that I’ve written about them, yet. Cheers, Olivea!