General Consultant Discussion

How is this blog working http://www.erpsoftwareblog.com/ -- does it produce new deal inquiries of higher quality compared to other methods? @MarkChinsky ? They have an impressively consistent blogging schedule though reading through the articles -- and admittedly my focus is not Microsoft GP -- many of them are veering toward press releases or they have really generic headlines.

It's split among states. By the time I got involved, only MS was available so I do it for our Tennessee/Alabama office which only does Dynamics NAV. Yes, its super 'salesly' and I'd say 85% of their posts are in that category. I also am very impressed at the volume of content they get from their members (but they have no socialcast like collaboration, purely group blog) Us two being active bloggers, it very much impresses me how much content they get from their members. We know 90minds.com and other ventures where 90% of the posts come from 5% of the members. The cost is fairly low, like $50/month and they have a person (Anya), who's very dedicated to running it. They also do weekly webinars on SEO, etc. Microsoft likes it and cross posts the content on one of the microsoft blogs which gives it strong SEO value. (google erp software) Most of the leads they capture are the automatic reverse ip search type where you get a company name, location and public phone number based on the IP of the viewer. These are distributed based on the 'state' you 'own.' I've not gotten any business from it, but I don't know if that would be different if I had a useful state like NJ or NY. They have a few other group blogs now, mostly microsoft centric (one for CRM) but this is definitely the highest volume. It also adds link juice to your own website because you can refer back to your own, and they are 'follow' links, in your blog posts.

But I'd say in general, I'm not finding meaningful inquiries from companies who want to spend real money on real initiatives. Most are price shoppers looking for $90/unemployment consultants working in their basement on a pure net 30 basis. Nobody looking for new systems. I've notice a distinct dropoff in quantity and very distinct dropoff in quality from findaccountingsoftware.com which says the market it just baron right now beyond referrals from qualified relationships. Anybody seeing any different elsewhere?

I'm solely looking at it from the existing user point of view -- leads from existing people ebb and flow with the economy (my perception). When there's good economic news we tend to hear more from people. When the economic reports are negative things get quiet. My observation on web leads matches yours - the bulk of people contacting you via the web (unless there is a referral relationship either via person or subscriber to your newsletter/website) are sending out email blasts to gather the lowest rates. Since Sage 100 is also such an old system we are starting to see more customers on the 3.x level who have no intention of upgrading but want consulting help to clean up messes. We just had one about a month ago that was on 3.x and did not want to upgrade, bad mouthed Sage and their upgrade fees but wanted all sorts of assistance cleaning up an inventory mess (think PO, purchases clearing, IM that has inaccurate quantities). Honestly I think it's now more about saying yes to the right opportunities and no to the ones that are phantom growth and do nothing for recurring revenue and in most cases dispute the bill and only want 1/4 hour billing arrangements. The problem is that there are fewer and fewer opportunities and I expect that this will continue for the foreseeable future. Interesting feedback on the blog. It is not a great situation to be limited to one geography when web visitors often don't care (especially existing users) where you are located.