Memo to Agents and IT Guys

From Ron DiNocco, Small Business Owner
Re: Our Relationship

I’m your typical everyday “let’s make a million and blow this joint” entrepreneur. I like to cook my own dinner, mow my own lawn, and run my own business. Like you, I want to be rewarded for my performance, not the hours I spend pretending to be busy in one of those cubicle thingies. In another life, we would be best friends. Unfortunately, we can barely tolerate each other. You see, I can’t understand your language, and you can’t understand my ignorance. It’s a contempt that’s been brewing since deregulation, and, like most dysfunctional relationships, no one is winning. Call it Trump vs. Rosie, Arizona Cardinals vs. Making the Playoffs, or George Bush vs. The English Language. I simply call it a big fat waste of money.

Here’s My Story:

A little more than two years ago, I was presented with an opportunity to buy out the founders of a small software company. I was employed by this company for nearly six years and had changed jobs from controller to controller/support manager to controller/support manager/sales manager. Those that have worked with small high-risk companies know this is not uncommon. We had survived the tech bust of 2000, the tragedy of 9/11 and multiple fundraising failures. Unfortunately, this company, in its current form, was on its last legs. We went from “putting out fires” to “massive evacuation” in about six months. It was the same old story: cash was short, promising sales evaporated, and secured creditors went from partners to plaintiffs. I’ve always believed that within chaos lies opportunity, so, with the support of the current stock holders, I took full control of the corporation.

Like any 30-year-old with a young child and two mortgages, I was absolutely terrified by this. For me, fear is not a necessarily a bad thing, in that it provides a compass to actionable activities. Fear may have kept me up all night and sucking on a bottle of Pepto all day, but it certainly got me moving. At a very high level, my plan was simple: Cut every imaginable expense and bring in technology that allowed us to sell to new clients and support active customers. Cutting expenses usually means cutting people. Although this is absolutely heart wrenching to execute, it’s quick and quantifiable. The other expense hogs are usually office and IT-related. I concluded that we would become a virtual corporation. I’d heard about VoIP and how we could save a ton of money while gaining all kinds of flexibility. IT Guy sold me on it in about five minutes. “Get it done,” I told him. “We’re moving out under cover of darkness this weekend.” I wished I was kidding.

I remember when the trouble began. It started with a single e-mail. “You’re 800 number isn’t working. Are you guys still in business?!?!” I dialed our main number from my cell phone, received an error message and nearly punched a hole in the wall. I called IT Guy and got voice mail. I was like a crazy ex-girlfriend speed dialing incessantly until he finally picked up. The conversation went something like this:

IT Guy: “I’m with a client can I call you later?”
Me: “No, our phones are broken.”
IT Guy: “They’re not broken. I tested them over the weekend.”
Me: “Why is our 800 number not working then?”
IT Guy: “Because you have a new 800 number. The old one should be forwarded to the new one.”
Me: “What? Well, it’s not working.”
IT Guy: “It should be.”
Me: (deep breath) “It’s not working. Can we get our old system back?”
IT Guy: (hint of amusement) “Uh, no. That was an on-premise PBX that required PRIs. It would take about two to four weeks to replace that. You’re using something completely different now. It’s a VoIP PBX using the SIP protocol. This is what allows you guys to work from home and transfer calls to each other. Just give it a little more time for the forwarding to kick in.”
Me: ???????????

I’m asking about an 800 number, but I’m getting an answer that resembles FDR’s alphabet soup.

Unfortunately, this was only the beginning. My new IP phone would just ring on its own, transferred calls would loop back to me and we’d have outages that could be blamed on six different providers but usually ended up being IT Guy’s server in El Cheapo colocation facility. We were also having domain name problems because we replaced our Microsoft Exchange server with a hosted solution. I realized technology was becoming an obstacle when I started following up every e-mail and fax with a phone call. Whenever I had a problem, my conversation with IT Guy went something like this:

Me: “XYZ isn’t working.”
IT Guy: “Hmm, let me check on it. Yep, everything looks fine.”
Me: “But it’s not working.”
IT Guy: “It should be.”

This guy was a colleague of mine, someone I would call a friend, but he was quickly turning into my nemesis. These issues are very different for small business owners than they are for IT professionals. IT professionals comprehend the technology and see failures as a challenge. They don’t suffer panic attacks because they know a solution is moments away. For a small business owner like me, failing technology creates a dark cloud of doubt that makes me question my own abilities. More than once I thought, “If I can’t get our phone to ring, how the hell am I going to sell software to Procter and Gamble?” I would lie half awake at night wondering if customers were calling our 24-hour emergency line. Then I would think about IT Guy sleeping soundly in his condo. Then I would imagine slashing his tires before slowly drifting off.

Eventually, I got my hands dirty. I did a lot of reading and even more trials of technology. Once I gained a few nuggets of knowledge, I was able to manage my own systems. I realize IT Guy isn’t completely at fault; there’s just a lack of solutions for small businesses with less than 10 employees. If IT Guy was on my payroll, I have no doubt that these problems would have been minor short-term inconveniences. But what was my alternative, AT&T? Can they set me up to transfer calls to different extensions? Where do I go for e-mail and fax? Who can synch my iPhone with Outlook?

The bottom line is that even though we are small business owners, we still want the best. More importantly, we don’t want to look like small businesses. That’s why we rely on agents and IT consultants to point us in the right direction. I now realize, however, that frustration goes both ways. I really don’t blame telecom professionals for avoiding us. We are not a great source of revenue, we require a lot more hand holding, and we’re comparatively, well, dumb.

So where does that leave us? Within chaos lies opportunity, that’s where. There is a natural migration from early adopters to mass market with any technology. Computers were used by enterprises for decades before the advent of Windows. The technology never really changed, it just turned DOS into something you and I could put on our desks. Not long ago MP3 players were exclusive to gadget junkies. There is nothing innovative about iTunes and the iPod; they just made the technology accessible to everyone. Similarly, I think there are a lot of very cool back-office technologies that are just languishing in the “IT Guy” community. These hosted IP solutions work; it’s simply time for an iPod-like makeover.

Small business owners don’t think “data,” “voice,” and “convergence;” they think “phone” “e-mail” and “Internet.” They’re not out looking for the best individual providers, simply because they’re not big enough to realize any substantial value. A small business owner’s No. 1 resource is time, and he wants technology that operates as consistently as his refrigerator.

As an agent or IT professional, your opportunity is this: Build trust with the small business owner by directing him to a vendor that fits, stay in the supply chain, and wait for the up-sell. Small businesses that are successful soon will need more hardware, then more data and finally more onsite services and sophisticated communications. As most great salespeople know, the best way to gain business is to give something away without expectation. So offer them a solution that really fits their needs, and you’ll be amazed how much comes back to you.

Ron DiNocco is an entrepreneur whose frustration became a catalyst for the creation of Freebird, an all-in-one provider of phone, e-mail, fax, hosting and help desk for the companies with less than 10 employees. The service is available for sale through commissioned agents. He can be reached at [email protected].