This week is “Micro Business Week“, an initiative of the NSW state government who are providing a week of dedicated workshops and events for solo operators, home-based entrepreneurs and micro business people. I’m attending events today in Sydney to meet current and future Saasu customers, and help raise awareness about the event.

You can follow the tweets this week using the #MicroBizWeek hashtag.

If you’re attending any of the events this week, what did you think?  I’d be interested in any examples you heard about of businesses doing things a certain way, their web presence, how they are managing their business.

This is the first, in a series of posts, designed to share my thinking about business communications and how it is constantly evolving.  Twitter is being used by businesses to share great content, help their customers/community and build loyalty.  It can be a competitive advantage to your business.

Take for example the way we use Twitter at Saasu. Last week we celebrated a customer’s success with a retweet and reply, posted a link to a comprehensive Twitter resource, helped a customer with a question they had, and shared a new blog post.  Experienced users of Twitter will use the service this way.  It’s good to keep the “broadcasting” to a minimum and the “listening and engaging” to a maximum as a general rule here.

I often wish more of my customers were on Twitter. It’s an easy, cost-effective and efficient way to communicate with them and be memorable at the same time. Last week, Chris Brogan suggested we don’t need to wait for them to join Twitter, we can invite them! I like Chris’ simple point that “Twitter’s something you can fit into your business in between other things you’re doing.”

One of my favourite posts from Chris is about How to Listen for Opportunities on Twitter Even if you didn’t want to participate in the conversations on Twitter, these tips will have you observing the content that others are sharing and allow you to fine tune the content to your particular needs.

I’d be interested in your feedback – how do you use Twitter?  Do you want to but have doubts about your ability to fit it in to your business?   First 5 commenters get a 5 minute Skype call from me helping them get started!

But, today I was reading an email and wanted a few more options. No, I didnt need to view it in my browser. I wanted to unsubscribe.

I wasn’t interested by it at all.

The only issue – it was a personal message, and as far as I’m aware, there are no regulations around individual emails and one-click unsubscribe links…

But it got me thinking.

Ad men, designers, marketers and the rest of us spend countless hours ensuring our public campaigns are the right length, our mailing list is up to date, the call to action is clear, and the desired outcome after hitting the send button is known…

But, do we apply the same principle to our personal correspondence?

Why use 400 words, when 120 will do? Why schedule a meeting request, when you can let the recipient come back in their own time?

Anyone who has read REWORK knows the hugely successful 37signals team focus on sharing information when it needs to shared, on a need to know basis. Thus eliminating disruptions to the rest of their team. This is something we strive to do here at Saasu.

They also view meetings as toxic and ‘ASAP’ as poison – but of course not everyone is ready to take this stand, and you do still need to get together, occasionally.

But, how many of the messages we send just sit there unread? Do you need to /cc: those 8 other staff into your next email? And of course, what’s the reason for emailing in the first place?

That’s my fleeting thought for the day. And a heads up – if we’re already communicating this way, and my next message is no more than a few lines… You now know it’s nothing personal.

If you’re curious about shaking up the way you work, I highly recommend a flick through REWORK. It’s not the be all and end all of running a business, but with heavyweights like Seth Godin giving it the thumbs up it certainly offers a fresh perspective on the status quo.

Disclaimer: I think email is a great tool. But it’s not the only tool.

On the way to work I spotted a Google Maps Real Estate promo done with LJHooker. Essentially it highlights the ability to search and view houses for sale or rent using Google Maps. You can explore the area where you are looking to buy or rent with Google Street View. Even check out the neighbours houses next door to your prospective property before you even get in the car to have a look in person.

This is interesting for many reasons. It is a classic leap in customer experience we see often thanks to the web. Mashing up a relatively new tool, Google Maps with a time consuming problem of house hunting. Further monetizes Google’s investment in the Maps technology, which was developed in their Sydney, Australia office. The same team now building Google Wave.

What I also like about Google’s approach is the physical marketing device (pictured). It’s different to all the other marketing devices used in the building. The "placemark" symbol has become synonymous with Google. It was also a tangible and sculptural presence. Typically the advertising device of choice at this site is plasma screens, perspex covered billboards or freebies handed out to passers by. I noticed a lot of people stopped to check it out. I think it has a quality that can be very valuable in marketing. It’s "curious". Curious is good, curious is usually a consequence of innovative thinking.

I’ve long thought that if I were Google, Amazon or any company that has very powerful brand or product base you should have retail presence. Stores build brand, create a feeling of solidity for E-tailers and most importantly are an effective alternative to traditional media marketing spend.

This all comes back to customers buying and experience rather than just a product. Apple proved the theory and many will now follow the strategy.

Every piece of communication you send to your customer demands their time. There is an equation that roughly says the more you demand then the less attention the customer will probably give your demands. If you annoy them too much, they stop listening and reading. So logically you can attribute a cost to each piece of communication. This attention economy is all about treating this attention like a commodity. Every single email, letter or phone call is an exchange of value. If you are selling something and not giving anything then you are spending a large piece of the attention dollar the customer affords you. If you give education then it is lower. If you solve a problem or save their time then you will probably be adding to the attention piggy bank you have with that customer. They will want more.

So you can design this relationship so both you get more attention and the customer gets more value. If you can monitor customer behavior and reaction so as to understand how they would like to relate to your business rather than how much, then you can grow the attention piggy bank. The customer will give you more time because you have created a bespoke or targeted approach to their communication needs, to solving their problems or giving them the actual information they want rather than fire the 12 gauge information shot gun at them. The catch is that this costs time or else money to automate it.

There are many approaches to move to a communications profile model and some very interesting business models are springing up to help businesses achieve this. Companies like Datarati are dealing with medium enterprise in this area using bleeding edge technologies like Marketo. It’s a data driven approach that at the end of the day will have a robustness above the implied or gut feel approach that most business owners currently rely on. Other simple things that can be done by small business are forms that asks customers what they want from your business when they become a customer. Many inexpensive email systems now have features built in to give you insight into customer behaviour so you can provide them with just what they want and when they want it without even asking them.

This is all about the customer deciding rather than the business. Put the customer first, then the business and sales will follow. Listen and watch their behaviour or ask them what they want rather then serve up an overload of communications and information.

All business will be done this way in the future so it really is just about how fast you get there.

Photo by See-ming Lee

This advert for the RWE found on Vimeo is another example of how the problems seem quite small but also the solutions are here and quite do-able when looked at from the giants perspective.

How could you change your perspective when looking at your business?

I generated the following cloud from Saasu’s About page on our website to see what the content looked like. Visit the full size image on Wordle. Hat tip to the Stubborn Mule where I first read about this bit of fun.

Saasu.com/about Word cloud by Wordle

I have never believed in that philosophy. My late mother, Robyn Lehmann, taught me the lessons as a teenager about customer service. She ran a bakery/newsagency (interesting business model for another post) and I have a photo which I keep close to me of her in a business suit behind the counter serving customers. She raised the service bar beyond most people I have met in business and that bakery was a screaming success. She spent time with her customers and it was authentic time, not time to get sales. A genuine interest, the sales just followed accordingly. Her influence extends deep into the Saasu service ethic.

1. The net has had a huge leverage effect on the power of word of mouth

In the old world if you upset a customer they might tell a handful of people. This new world can result in them telling 100′s or 1000′s as they post their upset on a forum, blog or comment section of an online article. The reverse good word leverage also applies. Happy customers will tell the world through email, blogs, forums and the old fashioned way in person. In essence they have more leverage to spread the word than ever. Good and bad. They are your new age sales team.

2. Service is a Sales Channel

I have written about this before but in summary service allows you to have conversations. These conversations are an opportunity to learn about your customers experience in dealing with your business, it’s people and it’s products. Companies spend lots of money trying to find this information out through market research, surveys, focus groups and the like. You have the power to turn what is often thought of as a cost into a learning experience and a sales channel.

3. If business is about problem solving where do your find out what problems exist?

Customers will tell you their problems, they hold the keys to your business success. Just one little idea or problem can highlight a big business opportunity that can be used across your customer base. Your customers are smart and savvy. They operate under a commercial survival strategy. They see the world through a different set of glasses, from the other side of the counter. Their problems are often different to what you perceive them to be. Customer service is a channel into ideas and problems that you can solve for one customer which then could be leveraged and used for many.

4. Keeping it fresh

Continual contact keeps your business relationships alive. Much like calling a relative every now and then. People love to be loved. People are more likely to think of you and your products or services when you keep in contact at that next point of referral that comes along.

5. Just because you should

Life isn’t just about the money, it’s also about doing the right thing. Money is a bi-product of doing the right thing. Sometimes it isn’t, but mostly it is.

Sydney finally has her own Apple flagship store. It is enormous. Right on one of the city central intersections it looks like a lighthouse at night. You can’t miss it.

Sydney is the world’s best city by brand (2 years in a row on ABC), lifestyle (8 years out of 10 on CNN) and especially so now for geeks and business owners since it is also home to Saasu HQ.

The lessons here for marketing any business are fascinating. Focus. Quality. Clarity. Consistency.

Only days after 5,200 Apple geeks meet in San Fran for their WWDC (World Wide Developer Conference) when Steve Jobs announced the new iPhone 3G (watch video) will be 36% faster than the latest Nokia and half the price of iPhone today ($199 from $399), Jobs also confirmed that 98% of iPhone users use it for the web, as predicted in this blog ages ago the iPhone platform is a major structural change to the world of web access.

In case you didn’t already know Saasu works on the iPhone and the iTouch, it is the full web application, not a cut down one. So you can do everything on the iPhone that you can do on any desktop or laptop.

Jobs also announced that iPhone 3G will be in 22 countries on July 11 and a total of 70 by year end. We wouldn’t be surprised to see the current 6m iPhone users go up to circa 100m+ by end 2009 (another blog on why another time).

If you go to the Apple Sydney store opening it is 5pm tomorrow (less than 36 hours ago the construction boards were up, now there are loads of apple geniuses running around and customers sleeping outside in line so they are first in tomorrow. TV and other media are already circling. The saasu team will be there of course to answer questions and do the odd demo. While I was there recently the kind apple crew gave umbrellas to those waiting in impending rain outside – well done gang.

Saasu.com is the best value accounting SaaS on the Mac in the world, we love the Apple iPhone too.

So we are offering 3 months bonus FREE to anyone signing up to a paid saasu netaccounts subscription for this week only. Just type APPLEROCKSSYDNEY when you sign up.

Note to Apple environmentally aware staff, please lobby your light house marketing guys to use efficient bulbs (if you don’t already) or turn off those lights when you go home pretty please.

Oh, and a bit of gossip to finish, something else is happening at 5pm tomorrow too. BRW the esteemed business review weekly magazine is launching their special Web 100 edition. Saasu might get a mention…

The saasu blog is now in the top 0.32% of all blogs on the planet.

Our site is in the top 1.84% by traffic globally.

We have also popped into the first page on Google globally for some search terms.

In return, please accept our humble ‘video link gift’ below in addition to our earlier free CeBIT tickets.

Google strategy insights

It’s definitely worth watching this little gem. A unique bit of insight about how the gurus at Google are thinking on business strategy, product and customers. It came out some time ago but it’s still completely relevant for nearly all business owners today. It’s not just a tech thing.

It’s a video of Seth Godin speaking to a bunch of Google insiders on some strategic topics close to our heart. Seth is one of our favourite bloggers. We have written about his other important work previously.

Thanks again for your support. You are helping us build a truly global product that makes lives better. We can always do better though, so help us by giving feedback on what you want us to do.

CeBIT is THE International Trade Show for Information Technology, Telecommunications, Software and Services. In other words, if you want to geek-out or get a real competitive advantage for your business you will love it.

Last year was good

Last year Saasu won the one and only highly prized ‘excellence in innovation platinum award’ for our flagship product NetAccounts. We were going to insert lots of other blatant boasting and superlatives here but thought that was probably more than you can take already.

This year will be even better

This year there will be something like 750 exhibitors from 20+ countries.

This year we will be speaking at the conference in the Transaction 2.0 section, chairing a session and of course exhibiting.

Best of all, as part of the Saasu tech community work we do, Saasu will be the sole green sponsor for the event, we are making the venue carbon neutral for the event for EVERY EXHIBITOR just so we can say we did our bit. Gold standard of course.

Special Bonus (or two)

As a special bonus you can register free as a friend of Saasu just quote code SAASUCA08 and you will get in free which is a fairly substantial saving off the normal door price of $40.

If you visit us at the show you will receive an extra month on your subscription for new and current customers! We will be asking all our visitors two questions – what do they like most about Saasu today and what would they like to see in our coming releases?

You will also be able to see our latest release demonstrated and talk to the experts about your needs, wants, desires and passions in the field of financial management success.

Finding Saasu at CeBIT

So do drop by stand S45, on the main aisle right next to our mates from salesforce.com (in case you have been living in a cave and hadn’t already heard, saasu integrates instantly with salesforce).

We are smack bang in the middle of the main business-software/e-finance/CRM section which takes up most of halls 4 and 5.

Want to know more?

We thought you might so here is a taste of what you will see, watch the videos or read some more
from the CeBIT marketers –

CeBIT Australia 2008 is the largest and most important business-to-business technology event in the region. Join 35,000 business professionals at CeBIT Australia this year to understand, analyse, sample and select the right technology solutions for your business’s future success.

Finding the right solutions has never been easier, CeBIT Australia is organised into 30 show floor categories – ranging from CRM, VoIP, e-Marketing & Search Engine Optimisation, Web Applications to Open Source – making it the number one stop for business professionals seeking the competitive advantage.

* 150 FREE show-floor Seminars
* International Keynote Speakers
* Business Networking
* Interactive Panel Sessions
* 6 High-Level Conferences
* 750+ Solution Providers
* 5000+ Technology Experts
* 30 Show Floor Categories

Visiting CeBIT Australia 2008 will teach you how to make your ICT investment work for you

* Get more out of your website
* Unleash the power 2.0
* Retain your top talent
* Discover online trading
* Slash your communications costs
* See next-gen CRM systems
* Learn about Green IT

And much, much more… most importantly you will arm yourself with knowledge that will give you the power to take your business to next level!

See you @ CeBIT Australia,
20 – 22 May 2008
Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre,
Darling Harbour

In the contact screen you will see new icons you can click to check out your contact in various social networks covering over 200 million people already.

I’ll concentrate on LinkedIn today since it is the most professional centric network. Professional and Social Networking really is a far too simplistic simplistic way of describing LinkedIn.

Here are some observations we’ve made in recent times. We would love comment on these points as we believe this has ramifications for product development in Saasu applications. A lot of them relate to the fact your research can be anonymous but connections are permissioned.

If you need to know more about permission, start with Seth Godin because he wrote about it early and well. Permission marketing is changing the world.

Keep track of people you know and like

The simple and best reason to use LinkedIn. You know where people are as they move from one job or city to another. It can be everything from an online business intelligence assistant to an international (or local) research tool to an online CV/resume or yet another contact database. Best of all is it doesn’t stop there, you see who knows who.

Research accelerates the ‘getting to know you’ process for new contacts

LinkedIn closes the knowledge gap you have about candidates, employees, prospects, partners, suppliers and customers. This enhances the legitimacy of the contact. It accelerates you along the getting to know you curve. It can help move you a bit further ahead at your first face to face meeting because you already know more things you have in common, locations, employers, clubs, education, sport and more.

Get personal by de-institutionalising contacts

For a long time companies have not wanted to share ownership of customer and prospect relationships with their employees. These relationships have been owned by the company. LinkedIn allows employees (especially professionals with an eye to having their own business eventually) to de-institutionalise their contacts, taking back some of the dollar value from their employees balance sheet back to their own. A two edged sword of course. Transparency is the biggest winner.

Stay fresh reduce your contact half life

Keeping loose contact fresh is quite difficult. When systematised in a social network the expectation of freshness of permission is enhanced. When you hear from someone through LinkedIn your little shoulder devil says “this person is ok, because you permissioned them”. That same communication via phone would sometimes have the shoulder devil saying “Who is this person? How did they get my number?”. Permissioning extends credibility of contact.

Degree’s of separation permissioning

Linked in creates a new type of commercial relationship legitimacy. Invited recipients will tend to accept being network beneficiaries themselves. The established connection has value, an unrealised dollar value. It costs us anywhere from $0.10 to $100 to get a permissioned contact in most businesses so connections in social tools are real permissioned assets. Let’s be honest about this, it’s just good business. Participants in the LinkedIn community can monetise their connections via sales and marketing activities. This is the conversion of unrealised value into realised value because a certain percentage of those interactions result in sale and thus revenue. You are converting your virtual inventory of permissioned contacts into your revenue line. The beauty being that virtual inventory can be resold to, it doesn’t require a cost of goods sold entry to re-acquire another permissioned contact. Don’t think of it just as product sales. It could be a better career, some venture capital, a new partner, and of course selling your product.

Channel Degradation – BACN

If you plan to use LinkedIn for sales bear in mind that there is a direct relationship between frequency and value of the permissioned contact set you have. Your behaviour could become known as a commercial version of spam called BACN. Equally, as more participants use the medium for sales and marketing activities the value of the connections will diminish. You only have to look at the C2C social networks to see how this can happen. Permissioned spammers (BACN) looking for love from your wallet wears thin real quick.

New ways of looking at non-so-new information

Check out the company profile pages on any major company on LinkedIn. You can see who is who and any changes. Recently LinkedIn moved to formalise companies and organisations in their network for the benefit of data rigour, their members and themselves. It was a good move, it cleans up the problem where many users add they workplace to their profile resulting in 100′s of version of that work place where picking it from a list would be better. In short companies and organisations are now centrally managed. A great benefit of this is that the tracking of organisations over their lifecycle will be very accurate versus some of the rubbish you get from old style directory providers Yellowpages and Whitepages.

Another new Software as a Service (SaaS) idea that might work for some of our business customers is Avatars.

Avatars are a digital representation of people. You find them all over the internet these days, in virtual worlds and increasingly in commercial use for customer support.

A more recent innovation however is the use of these Avatars to sell your products. In pre-sales not post-sales, as it is a very different area because people are less tolerant of poor quality voice or images.

We set one up recently to welcome new visitors to saasu. If you have any feedback let us know. It’s easy to get one for your own site.

The downside of course is that they appear less ‘real’, you can’t replace people. The upside is substantial in some industries. You can do many things that you can’t do with professional talent. For example support multiple languages and cultures within the same language with one ‘actor’, even try different text to test effectiveness. An area that we are sure will catch on.

The good providers even allow you to use their talent library of people from around the world as well as text to speech or even load your own sound file in WAV format or phone in if you don’t have a microphone use the telephone and pin number to record it.

This will be an interesting area to watch as the ability to tailor appearance such as hair type, eyes, skin tone and clothing merges with other technologies such as the hologram the Prince of Wales used recently to attend an overseas conference and present.

Prince Charles was criticised for his huge air travel carbon footprint recently so he solved it with a video recording that was converted to a hologram. It is only a matter of time before the 3d avatar meets the holgram and allows his to acheive the same result with a simple email. Perhaps with simple markups to recognise emotion.

Y-gen and late X-gen are most likely to be the demographics who will readily accept them. After all they look distictly like the characters you see running around in Second Life and the The Sims.

We started looking for a decent virtual store provider last year and were very impressed with cafepress.com, so much so that we set up the Saasu.com Store with them.

Have a look. If you buy something and send us a photo of yourself wearing it we will give you an extra month’s free subscription or an extra user or file on your saasu.com paid subscription.

• Why did it take so long for Captain Cook in his ship ‘The Endeavour; so long to find the world’s best harbour in Sydney?
• Why are yachts always ladies?
• Why don’t we do this more often ?
• Why is it so hot?
• How does animoto let you make such great videos in under 10 minutes? Why don’t we use it more often? Why doesn’t every small business use it on their website when it is sooo easy?

Seth Goddin has a great quote in the opening page of his new e-book which launched today. It is the simplest way to describe the problem at hand. “The web is a haystack, the biggest haystack the world has ever known. The reason that Yahoo and Google are so important is that they help us find what we want in the stack. And your lens or blog or page or store is just a tiny little needle.”

It is a good read because it highlights an often missed aspect of search ranking success called ‘recency’. Building lots of cross referencing weblogs and websites, or creating piles of content filled pages isn’t a shortcut to clicks. Businesses trying to win clicks need to provide valuable content, keep the content current, dynamic and be a little different. Same old doesn’t work, by default you are simply one of many.

Customers often ask why we change the Saasu.com website regularly, this is one of the reasons. It is one of the factors which helps us maintain a position on the first search page in Google.com for “online accounting”.

Are you in a crowded market space?

So the dilemma is if you are in a demographic that a lot of other businesses compete in then ‘unique’ isn’t simple to achieve. How do your create niche, differentiation and value beyond the crowd?

Applying a bit of Spock logic tells me that you can only create value over and above in one way.

• Be an inventor, creationist, a generator of IP
• Deliver it to your customers and potential customers.
• Do this on a regular basis through communication, product and customer experience.

Then they shall become fans.

37signals have done a good job of this and so has the grandmaster himself Seth Goddin.

You may be wondering why I am such a fan of Seth’s work. Seth brings authenticity and morals to marketing. If the worlds great doers all operated the way we would be giving half our newspapers content to scientific discovery instead of sport stars and bad advertising. We could all spend more time with family rather than working to fund the huge slice of consumer product price that is spent on interruption marketing.

Seth Goddins blog | Seth Goddins e-book

Industry terminology is like a verbal business card for all the players in the industry. Terms define who we are and how clients and prospects recognise us collectively. They are important because they are a key marketing channel.

For example – Do you recognise these terms and know what they mean?

• SaaS
• On-Demand
• CaaS
• S+S
• SasS
• Live
• PaaS
• UIaaS

Here at Saasu.com we are amazed at the word games other players in our industry are using to try and confuse the market.

SaaS means Software-as-a-Service. It is our preferred term and the one the industry uses mainly. Lets stick to it!

Particularly at a time when SaaS is still growing so we have a collective responsibility and need as providers to you our clients and prospects to educate you and (at least we believe) to not confuse the issues.

At Saasu.com want to make things clear not complicated.

In the SaaS industry we currently have some very large players happily confusing the market with terms they are making up, we think it is still very simple – we provide Software as a Service, the term On-Demand also is good. Both are plain English, makes senses, doesn’t confuse and has been in use for a long time. Here is what is happening out there in more detail -

• Salesforce.com – great CRM people and products which we like and integrate with, are using the term ‘on-demand’. They also say ‘no-software’ and on a good day also say good ol’ SaaS.
• Microsoft.com – the industry giant (we use some of their products just like most companies) are using the very new Microsoft only term Software + Service (S+S) pretty consistently now but are muddying the waters with this and ‘live’ services and have even seen the need to refer to SaaS and even another new one CaaS (Channel as a Service) and S+S and Live all on one page in an attempt to explain it all. At least they are trying I suppose.
• Netsuite.com – the SaaS accounting company – they started a year or so before us here at saasu.com – back in the 1990s – and they now use the term Software As Service (SasS) which seems unduly confusing and incorrect English at least to us. We hope that one day when we are as big as they are we won’t use our size to confuse the market.
• Salesforce.com (again but in a different category) – these guys don’t just do CRM, they are also providers of shared infrastructure to technology developers and they CRM clients who want to build more. Their CEO recently announced two new terms PaaS and UIaaS which mean Platform as a Service and UI as a Service respectively. They are alternatives to buying server and development software from people like Microsoft. They are fairly technical terms but also fairly logical extension of the core SaaS idea. We think thought that these new terms will confuse the main consumer and business market in the short term.

Here at Saasu.com we are a SaaS utility, we make sophisticated technology as easy to use as any other utility such as water, electricity and more. We wish you luck and will do our best to help you keep up with the terminology pollution.

Recapping -

• SaaS – Software as a Service : The preferred industry term that is established, widely used, self explanatory and widely encompassing the industry.
• On-Demand: Also an acceptable and established industry term.
• CaaS – oh dear a new variant we didn’t need from Microsoft
• S+S – Software and Service: ditto
• SasS – Software as Service: ditto
• Live – Microsoft one demand product family, mainly consumer – probably ditto, excusable as a product line name.
• PaaS – Platform as a Service A new one from Salesforce.com that is a bit techo
• UIaaS – User Interface as a Service: ditto

Bacn is simply spam you asked for. It’s the dozens of emails you get that you would like to get (sometimes) but they still annoy you and more importantly they chew up your precious time.

You probably wonder why we don’t send many emails to you from Saasu. Well this is why.

We don’t want to be a stone in your shoe unless we have something very valuable to give you or very important to tell you. You should only get emails for important things like major new features that save you time or the immediate responses our service team gives to your queries.

Stopping Bacn

1. Stop! Why are you putting yourself on those email lists? Will it improve your business, your life and save you time? If so great go right ahead … Otherwise, fry that Bacn!
2. Give your permission to quality correspondence sources and ditch the rest. I rely on RSS reader services to avoid filling my email inbox with too much email Bacn except the emails that save me money or time with their magic.
3. Apply continual improvement to your in-box. Ditch ‘underperforming’ Bacn (shall we call it fatty or short on good protein?) email and add new better leaner Bacn email. (Heh bloggers, same goes for your RSS feeds).
4. Don’t be ashamed to stop Bacn from you dearest friends. Those funny jokes, feel good emails and power-points that can be viral bombs cost you time (which equals dollars). Send them a ‘please remove’ email. Just preface your request to be removed of their list with your honesty, “I have too much email so I’m cutting back to critical business communication” or my favourite scare tactic “I don’t want you to be at fault if I get a power-point from you that takes down the companies network”. That will usually stop them sending it to all your other friends who have well branded company email addresses.
5. Start valuing your time higher and you will be far more careful giving people permission to do anything to you at all including Bacn email.

And for the other end of the cable/fibre…

If you are a business trying to seek your client’s or prospect’s permission to email you MUST give your reader something of value. I don’t mean nice to read email or an email newsletter. I mean give them tangible value:

1. Ideas that are more akin to intellectual property with value.
2. Money in the form of hard cash, free gear and decent discounts. If its less than 10% don’t bother.
3. Unpublished or very recent information (not regurgitated content).
4. Important product and service news you really need to tell your customers (the test here is will they be annoyed if you don’t tell them).

Last week was a good example – a crowd of SaaS trendies gathered to hear about a bunch of business solutions at the upmarket Establishment Hotel chaired by our good friends and premier partner – sqwarepeg and was billed as ‘like speed dating for business solutions’.

So how does it work? The format is simple.

Prospective clients register online and get to spend a few minutes with each vendor. Just like real speed dating the convener rings a bell at the end of the allotted time (3 minutes for singles meeting at traditional speed dating or in this case 10 minutes for prospects meeting vendors) and everyone moves on to the next ‘date’. In this case the date was held at a ‘pod’ complete with plasma and internet connectivity with demo SaaS application up and running.

If you are interested in continuing the ‘relationship’ you exchange cards or in true speed dating style write your details on the sheets provided.

Now repeat for each vendor until every prospect has seen every product once.

The great thing about this format is for clients they see a broad section of offerings quickly without risking getting stuck with a boring geek (just like speed dating). For vendors they get to meet a variety of clients and tailor the pitch just a little to stress the client specific needs just enough to follow up later.

Vendors showing at this session were Saasu.com showing our web finance engine (of course), Google showed Adwords, Omniture.com showed their rather cool web analytics (for higher end clients who outgrown Google Analytics), Eloqua, salesforce.com and Sqwarepeg also showed their own products.

The amount of cross-over between vendors was interesting, a good number were using each other’s products.

This event was called the ‘On Demand Circuit’ which is a face to face version of our own nascent Connectors hub – both of which are trying to build the local Developers SaaS Ecosystem.

Next time we aim to show the applications interacting and really demonstrate the power of the SaaS ecosystem in action. This will be great e.g. Saasu already talks to salesforce.com and so do other products.