There are many sayings that have real meaning. They have survived time due to their relevance and just simply by being right, and therefore, memorable. Often it takes us many years, by gaining a little wisdom, to appreciate these things that are so simple and proverbially true. No matter where you are in the world, these statements can take on the persona of irrefutable laws, much like the law of gravity, and the third law of thermodynamics.  

I've jotted down probably more than one hundred of these sayings, because of their particular relevance to me. I'm sure everyone has their own favorites. If a CEO takes the top adages on this collected list and follows them, I believe he or she can run a successful company.

The first one I'd like to share is: "everyone is reading from the same sheet of music." Haven't we all heard this one, and how true it is!  When we see a great team perform, no matter what the sport, you can just tell, they are reading from the same "sheet of music", being guided by the same goals and strategies. It is no different for a company. When a company is delivering value to their customers and all the pistons are firing together, in sync, you can bet there is a playbook, a strategy, a sheet of music, that everyone understands and is and executing upon.  

How is your company doing with this? When you walk door-to-door around the office and ask about how the business plan is working, are the answers consistent, or different? It's a real-world example. The finest orchestras I have heard all have to read and play the same sheets of music to deliver a thrilling concert experience! What are some of your favorite sayings, adages, quotes you like to live by, use in your business, that you can share?  

In the cloud or On-Premise? This model discussion sounds much like many of the model or technology discussions of the past. These discussions are usually driven by investors, and rightly so, as they are searching for the next great model so they can drive a high return for their investments! Or, they are driven by visionaries that are changing /morphing the technology landscape, and again, rightly so! Thank goodness for capitalism.

That stated, our customers are not asking about SaaS (software-as-a service or hosted services, also called on-demand), Multi-tenant, On-Premise or in-the-cloud.  What they are asking is how we can solve their business pain. They're asking about time to productivity. They're concerned about how to improve their business, to grow their business.  They're concerned about security and who owns their data, total cost of ownership, ease of use, customization to their business, and much more at a granular level.

We see several models in the midst of convergence. The Internet was built for a one-to-one model - a capitalistic model. When I shop at Amazon they try to personalize my experience. Small business owners want the same thing for their own business operations around ERP, accounting and finance, supply chain management, and so on. Software should be built in a multi-tenant architecture that provides flexibility and scalability. And, software should leverage open technology and platforms wherever possible, that's what the Internet is all about. One-to- many has its place, but not if it propagates more control and lack of flexibility. When we say to customers "one size fits all and we know best for everyone, trust us," then we are probably not listening to them.

At Everest, we are building software in a 30-day agile development cycle utilizing the SCRUM methodology. We provide customers with ease of use, price, IT outsourcing, and time-to-productivity COMBINED with control they manage, customization, data integrity, ownership and total cost of ownership. We are building software as fast as any SaaS-model company while delivering what our customers say they need - what helps their particular business. While doing so, we never support more than two code bases. These are not customized platforms that all are different. Our customers are able to take advantage of speed and consistency. 

There are many technologies or solutions, such as CRM and e-commerce that are best delivered from the cloud. There are also many software offerings that are best delivered on a LAN or SAN environment, such as point-of-sale, inventory and supply chain management, so that the customers can drive their business their way. These worlds are coming together and will provide value to the customers who rely on software to improve their business.

We should allow the customer to decide versus what model we, as developers of business software, propose as the best business model. Right?  In the end, if we are customer-focused and the customer sees value, the business model will be good for the shareholder!

Mother's Day is coming up, but how many of you have taken advantage of the marketing opportunity. Almost every major retailer, from Wal-Mart to Home Depot, has devoted at least one page to attract those looking for gift ideas for their Mother. I looked around the Internet, spoke with many small businesses, and I don't see this same level of effort by the smaller retailers. To help those missing out on this marketing opportunity (and future holidays), I'm highlighting my top 4 methods to market Mother's Day.

#4 Create a Landing Page
On this page, you include a little information about how your products are perfect for Mother's Day and then list all those products. After created this you need to include a link or banner on your home page to draw attention.  In Everest, you can use item tracking to easily create this page. You could also use software like Microsoft FrontPage to create a page and add your own products.

#3 Guarantee Delivery
As the holiday approaches, the biggest fear of those shopping is that their gift will not be delivered in time. A Mother's Day gift, or any special day gift for that matter,  just isn't the same when it is delivered after the real date. By addressing that concern shoppers can be more reassured-and more likely to buy from you.

#2 Provide Multiple Price Groups
Shoppers will typically have a maximum amount in mind when they are shopping for someone else. Make it easy for them to find products at their price point by creating separate pages. Keep in mind that people tend to spend more on special holidays so make sure you have at least two groups above your typical average selling price.

#1 Offer Gift Baskets or Bundles
When you create bundles, you can either put specific items together or make each a personal choice by allowing shoppers to decide from among multiple items. As indicated, people will spend more during holidays and gift baskets are a great way to combine products in the higher price ranges.  As you group products together, keep the holiday in mind and target the emotion behind it. A DVD store on Mother's Day, could offer top five mother-daughter relations movies of all time.  If you sell beauty products, what top scents for Mothers.  A little extra thought on how to target the holiday theme along with family and friends as the recipients can really boost your sales.

Although I targeted Mother's Day, you can follow these same tips for any holiday.

CEOs should work hard to ensure they are in touch with all the ways a company enacts customer communications and understand "the buzz" from the customer base. At Everest, we strive to make customer satisfaction, and therefore good customer communications, the responsibility of every employee. We all own it, we are empowered, and accountable. We just introduced our latest channel of customer communications, our first user conference. It's a recognized fact, one of the greatest benefits of holding a customer or user event is a venue for networking with other businesses that are the same or similar to their own. It's often appreciated as an extra service provided by a company, particularly with software products. Users are able to exchange ideas firsthand and find out how their peers are solving similar problems or building special customizations. It's a time for them to meet face-to-face with company executives and product managers to put a personality with their telephone and email experiences. It's seen as a platform to make their voice heard to company executives who have especially allocated time to listen. 
 
Our first Everest World was held in New Orleans April 22-24, and what an event it was!  It was incredibly rewarding to see our customers learning, interacting with each other, and providing feedback real-time to the Everest team.  We found ways to capture much of it, including some customer video testimonials that were volunteered by some of our attendees. In the keynote we discussed talking AT, TO, or WITH our employees to build a culture of customer responsiveness. The same is true for our customer base, with whom we believe we're building a mutual culture and synergy of purpose.  We had some fun, we worked hard to spend as much time as possible with each of our interest groups. The overwhelming feedback we've had so far is-they can't wait for the next user group meeting.  We look forward to our next event and being WITH our customers!

Having so many customers at the conference wanting to maximize what Everest can do for their business has been fantastic!    The product presentation sessions have been great and everyone attended the Everest 5.0 detailed preview and got to see most of their product suggestions come to fruition.    The feedback has been unbelievably positive and customers are more excited than ever to get Everest 5.0.    

Here are some of the things I've heard:

"I had no idea CRM Studio could do that"

"Very cool stuff"

"I can't wait to get my hands on it"

"Where do I sign up"

"When the next conference"

"You guys did a great job"

"I wish I would have brought more people"

"I was having so much fun last night"

I had expected our new eStorefront offering to be the center of attention, but in reality many other product areas have also been a hit.     It's pretty clear that most small and medium businesses really do want it all.

My impressions for the Top 10 Everest 5.0 Features Buzz going around at Everest World:

10. Taxbridge -  Our Sales Tax solution
09. Gift Cards
08. Memorized and scheduled transactions
07. eStorefront Standard - Paypal and Google Checkout Integration
06. Improved pick and pack - Scanning barcodes to quickly fulfill sales orders and pull sheets
05. Improved Advanced Query builder - Custom browser lists
04. eStorefront Professional  - Ability to Browse and narrow product selection quickly with product specification filters
03. Excellize - Integrating Excel with Everest in real time
02.  CRM Studio - Our advanced business rules, activity monitoring, and workflow engine
01.  eStorefront Professional - How easy it is to customize the look and feel with CSS and HTML Containers

There is nothing more important than having a great culture! At the onset of any leadership role I strive to have the team collectively understand what culture really means at their organization. How is it manifested as both an internal and an external personality? Meaning, where are we as a company, how do our customers feel about us, what is our market position, and for internal qualities, how do we measure up for attitude, motivation, teamwork, cooperation and problem-resolution capabilities? Once we, as a company determine this, we can collectively understand where we are, and therefore, establish where we really need to be. We identify goals that become more clear and universally understood. We start to acquire the necesssary accountability. From that moment forward, everyone understands they own the progress-or the failure that ensues. Everyone becomes aware that we each, personally, own the wins and losses and how projecting a winning, positive attitude affects our customers. The tone becomes one of a customer-focused organization that holds one another accountable.  True customer focus is still an unbeatable differentiation in any marketplace. If this is done correctly,employees can rise to the challenge. Transparency, accountability, trust, resilience, tenacity all begin to show themselves and a winning culture is built!

At one of our first quarterly customer advisory meetings last year we were discussing our product roadmap; a customer who has been using the software for years asked "What is your software designed to do?" Caught a little by surprise I gave a standard answer and we moved on, but the question stuck in my head. It may sound very basic, but at the time there was no clear-cut answer. Over the years I had seen hundreds of customers use our software in different ways but I never really narrowed it down to its most basic components. Shortly after, our product managers worked towards gaining a better understanding of how to answer this basic but critical question. Working directly with as many customers possible, the product managers broke down how they use our software, validating their needs, and understanding their expectations.

We found our customers basically do three things, want three things, and use three primary areas of the software: 

Things They Do	Things they want	Software Areas they use	Key Word
Attract Customers	Grow Revenues	E-commerce & Marketing	Grow
Execute Sales	Mitigate Expenses	Inventory & Order Processing	Streamline
Retain Customers	Control & Visibility	Accounting & Reports	Manage

We re-aligned most of our organization and product planning around these themes. We now have product managers responsible for each of these areas. They constantly debate the importance ranking of these areas but no clear winner has emerged. What's important is, our customers want all three!  A software solution that's designed to help them "Streamline, Manage and Grow their business." 

With the recent sunset announcement of Everest 3.0.1 and the new Everest 5.0 release around the corner, the question is on a rampage. Most customers to whom I've spoken don't like going through a major upgrades period, especially taking chances with major upgrades when they first become available.  

I know, I know...

• You don't have time to mess with upgrades.
• Why upgrade and take a chance of breaking what's working?
• You have lots of customizations and don't want to deal with the costs and pains involved with testing/updating the customizations.

Unfortunately, upgrades are a part of running your business.  You need to recognize the importance of staying current on a fully supported version.  Most people, on versions past their end-of-support lifecycle, do not seem to account for, nor understand, the associated risks. I cannot begin to tell you the angst I feel personally when a customer on an unsupported version has a catastrophe and calls in for help because their software is down.  Often the only solution for them is to upgrade to a supported release in a unplanned manner.  Their system is down so they are flooded with calls and escalations, they can't create or ship orders, and basically the business is on hold.  Among all this mess, they are simply not prepared to upgrade in middle of business hours.   Many have large databases that would take many hours of effort to upgrade, and even worse - they have customizations they rely on!  I can't emphasize enough the how critical it is to keep up with and stay on supported versions of the software. Upgrades can be planned for, catastrophes can't.

Therefore, minimize your risks by planning ahead for at least one major upgrade a year to stay current; schedule them during your slow season. Contact support and sign up for our Managed Upgrade services, especially if you don't have an IT resource in-house. We try to make the upgrade experience convenient and as painless as possible for you, so you can focus on running your business.  

If you are still on Everest 3.0.1, I am sure you are contemplating going directly to 5.0.  Its going to be a hot product with tons of new features and a new ecommerce engine built on .net.  However, my recommendation is: unless there is something you must absolutely have in 5.0, don't wait any longer and schedule your upgrade to 4.0.2, our most stable supported version, as soon as possible!  

With all complex applications, a new major release has a higher potential risk for the existing functionality.  It's a common practice for most businesses to schedule major upgrades a few months after their initial availability. This minimizes their risks as they have more prep time and access to any service packs that become available.   

If you are already on 4.0.2, great job staying up to date!  Now wait for the 5.0 release and when it does release, call in and schedule your 5.0 upgrade during your slower season and at least a few months after the release. 

Staying ahead of the wave is always a winner!  Don't get caught behind as the risks and pains are simply not worth it.

In a time where our economy is struggling and businesses are trying to figure out how they will manage continued growth, it's encouraging to see there may be some bright signs among the gloomy predictions on which most media seem focused. A recent Internet Retailer article cites their belief that, despite other poor outlook forecasts, the online retail sales market will grow at a rate of 17% this year.  Working with many small businesses, I get to see this trend in action as they work to create or fortify their online positioning.  Those who have seen the highest returns, and will continue to do so, are the ones who take the time to correctly identify their target audience and their audience motivations.

Finding your target audience can be as easy as taking several customer service phone calls a day or acting as the business cashier. Strike up conversations with each buyer and find out what you can about them as individuals as well as shoppers. Summarize the information and create a personality for each different type of target audience.  You may arrive at two or three different targets.  I usually give the example of a photographic equipment store selling to both professionals and novices.  Each of their buyers "speaks" a different language, responds to different types of motivations and therefore requires different marketing. 

While having your conversations pay attention to the words used and find out where else they like to shop. You can use this information to craft a message that speaks to your target audience and find logical locations to place it to attract that particular audience. Putting an ad with multiple iterations of the same camera in "cool colors" and simple or "salesy" terms will completely miss the mark if it is shown on a website for professionals.  On the other hand, if the same ad is placed on a social Website, it will probably have better results.

Understanding your target audience and how they react will help you focus your advertising better and maximize results.