Google Apps & How Did it Get Started 

Google has products both for personal and business uses, and while the products look almost identical, they are different.  Google created Google Apps (G Apps) for Business a number of years ago yet did not market it to businesses heavily until the past 2 years. Google is famous for beta testing their products, so they were slowly testing and introducing G Apps to companies all over the world and at the same time, creating marketshare. I saw G Apps really take off after the company opened up Google Marketplace, which allows other businesses to develop their products to link up nicely with the Google Apps’ platform. For example, when I login to my G Apps in the morning, I can click a dropdown menu labeled “MORE” with my other business tools, linked to my G Apps Account (i.e. My accounting software, CRM, Email Newsletter, Schedule Tool etc). This makes working in the Cloud a piece of cake (no more software to open and close on my desktop: all done within my browser). The third party programs that link up to my Google Apps account sometimes provide further integration with my Google products. For example, Pipeline Deals CRM has a Gmail plugin that allows users to link up notes, add deals, new contacts, task and much more, right from within their email. You can also schedule appointments from within Pipeline, which will automatically sync to the Google Calendar.

What Does Google Apps Do?

First, Google Apps consist of all the Google products under a business domain. These would include things like: Gmail, Calendar, Search, YouTube, Google+, News and so on. In short, Google allows you to have a personal and business account. Just like Microsoft wants you to use all MS products, Google wants you to use only Google products! An example of the difference between personal and business, instead of having your email be johndoe@gmail.com you’d use your business email johndoe@yourcompanyname.com. You’d use the popular Gmail application, Contacts, Google Docs and Calendar for your email, schedule, contacts and creating/collaborating on documents. The only major difference you will notice is that your company name can replace the Gmail/Google Logo, access to the Marketplace and you can manage your entire companies’ domain settings: add new users/emails, change passwords, give or restrict company access to certain documents and much more.

Mobile Capabilities

Google Apps for business works incredibly well on Android and Apple smartphones. I’ve tried it on both devices. My favorite is how it integrates with the iPhone. Most people don’t know this, but you can use the Microsoft Exchange Icon (use Google settings instead) to have an Exchange-like 2way sync with your Google Calendar, Email & Contacts. It works perfectly! I wrote a step by step guide to set Google up on an iPad, and the same settings apply for the iPhone. You can also turn on Google Sync to see other Calendars on your phones.

The Pricing Structure of Google Apps

Free Version: The price to use Google Apps can’t be beaten. It is free for up to 50 users of a company to get started. The free version gives you 1GB of Google Document storage and 7GB of email space. To give you an example of how much 7GB is for email. I’ve been using it for about 3 years and have not reached my 7GB space. I do have to empty my email trash to keep it below 7GB a couple times a year and that is about it. I also purchased more storage space for documents. For $5 a year, I got 20GB. I’ve only used around 2GB, so for $5 a year it is great. Oh, and the free version also has Google Adwords displayed. I somehow got around that too. I installed a free plugin to my browser that hides all the ads.

Paid Version

The paid version is around $5 a month per user. You get about 3 times the storage on your email (20+GB) and more files storage. All Google Adwords will be hidden too. The only other main difference with the paid version is the ability to continue to use Microsoft Outlook instead of the Gmail platform. Google creates a two way sync for emails, calendars and contacts. I know of a few companies that do not like Gmail’s look and feel and want to remain on Outlook. I have not heard too many complains regarding the syncing, but it is not fool proof. My suggestion is see if you can get used to Google and make the switch. I was on MS Outlook for 10 years or so and switched. It takes awhile, but I think you’ll find Gmail will work just fine. You can customize many many features in Google Apps.

Should You Be Using Google Apps for Your Business

If you are a small business that tends to be mobile often, I’d definitely recommend switching to Google Apps. You will not have to run expensive Exchange Servers in most cases, which will cut down on IT help. There will be a learning curve and some time to learning and switching to a new platform. So do not make this switch if you don’t have the time to commit to learning a new product. Also, if you ask your IT people, most will tell you not to switch. They don’t like many cloud products because it is putting them out of a job. Believe me, IT people don’t like me! Most of them complain that cloud programs lack security and that Google can’t be trusted. Yet, most of the IT guys are in love with Microsoft. Can Microsoft be trusted? Microsoft knows Google is a threat and has created a similar product: Office 365. As I told one client recently who asked me about Office 365, stay with Microsoft if you have the IT folks local to you to set you up and get you trained. If you don’t have anyone you can trust or set you up, move to Google. Google Apps for Business helps business be more productive and mobile. You can pick up any computer from around the world, login to your account and run most of your business in seconds!

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Side Notes about Google Docs and IT Professionals: By the way, if you have not tried Google Docs as an alternative to Microsoft Word and Excel, give it a try. If you are doing standard spreadsheets and document creations, it works great. Oh and one final thing regarding IT professionals. First, I respect what they do, and I am not really an IT guy. They can run circles around me. I’m more of a user interface (UI) guy. I know what works best for my clients. IT folks should really spend time learning more about what products work the best for their clients, not just how to fix or setup a computer system. I get asked all the time who can setup their Google Apps, customize signatures, find a good app for taking notes, install plugins, setup a smartphone and many many more user experience setups. If IT professionals spend time doing those types of things, they will always have a job!

This weekend I was reading a book called Leading Change, by John P. Kotter. A couple things jumped out at me as being very relevant for the Summit group.

There was a chapter dedicated to why companies fail at implementing change. Two of the main reasons were:

1. Under communicating the Vision by a factor of 10 (or even 100…. or even 1000)
2. Failing to create short term wins

Kotter spends a great deal of timing talking about the importance of continually communicating the vision to employees, both in words and deeds and in as many interactions as possible. Major change is usually impossible unless most employees are willing to help, often to the point of making short-term sacrifices. Without credible communication, and a lot of it, employees’ hearts and minds are never captured. It’s not enough to read it once at a company meeting (although that’s the start!). The Vision must be kept ” top of mind” and be constantly incorporated in your communications and decisions. I encourage you all to keep your company visions close by and incorporate pieces of it in your weekly meetings.

In Summit, we’ll talk about getting some small victories. This will create a feeling of accomplishment in your company and show them that you are committed to walking the talk. Focus on one, or maybe only two projects. Communicate the projects to the company. Explain how it ties into the Vision. Plan it, do it and celebrate it. Kotter talks about short term wins as more than luck. I have always known luck as an opportunity coming together with preparation. Short term wins come about through planning, organizing and implementing the plan to make things happen. The point is to make sure that visible results lend sufficient credibility to the change effort, which includes creating a focused organization.

Have you picked your one or two projects that will give you the early victories you need to sustain changed? Have you planned them before you started doing them? Have you communicated these to the organization?

“Discipline is remembering what you want.” Our organizations will thank us if we maintain the discipline to focus and accomplish one or two things at a time. You will reach your summit (your vision) in time, one base camp at a time.

Have a great week!

Brian Nolan
610 449-2135
Visit Summit Services Website

By narrowing down your service area, you will begin to build a stronger brand and grow your company. As you grow, you can have goals to expand into other towns, but not until you are #1 in your key service areas.

How do you build brand awareness in your area now? What is working for you? A penny for your thoughts?

1. Visit Google Music
2. Sign into your Google Account
3. Click on Upload Music (top right corner of screen)
4. Download Music Manager (free) and follow the steps to upload all or some of your music to Google Music (very simple)
5. Once completed, download the Android App or 3rd Party App for iPhone (free or paid version)
6. Once you download the App to your device, you just sign in to your google account and enjoy streaming music!

Save your money and enjoy more free storage! For photo storage, try either Dropbox, Egnyte, or iCloud.

Marketing Principle:  Never make your customer feel uncomfortable when a problem surfaces. If you are at fault, do what it takes to take full responsibility. If the customer is at fault, don’t let them get defensive. Create a win-win outcome.

Related To Marketing?

How does this relate to marketing, one might ask? Everything you do in your business, good and bad, is marketing. The way you answer the phone, your voicemail greeting, customer service, the appearance of your employees, it sends a message to the consumer: hopefully a positive one!

My Personal Story

The principle I mentioned above is relavant to me this week because I had a situation (still going on) with a service contractor that made me get a little defensive and feel like the bad guy. I won’t mention their names (yet) because they are still in the middle of trying to work on my situation. A long story short, this company provided a service to my home which unfortunately caused a small leak in a pipe that was not fully shut off for several hours. An honest mistake and and an easy fix once discovered. It damaged my ceiling tiles in my finished basement in the 4 hours the leak took place. I’ve had lots of experience dealing with ceiling leaks (being in the painting business) so I knew the water stains were NOT going away. I contacted the company who apologized, came back out, fixed the pipe so it would not happen again and then said, “Call us in a few days once things dry out and see if everything looks ok.” I thought to myself, “Several tiles are brown and still soaking wet…and that is supposed to vanish in 3 days?” I knew right there that this employee was not taking full responsibility. I’m a nice guy and responded pleasantly, “Ok I can do that. BUT those ceiling tiles are soaked to the bone and are stained! I don’t think that is going away. What can you do about it?” His response, “Yeah you are probably right. But go ahead and call us in a few days and see how things are looking.” He then took a few pictures and went away. Hearing nothing from the staff, I made a call 4 days later to follow up. The sales person who sold me the water system called me back the next day. He was very professional on the phone yet still lacked the marketing principle in this post. Even though he was sorry and being positive, he put too much pressure on me and wondering what I wanted to do about the situation. What he should have done is simply said, “Dave, I’m sorry about your tiles. We’ll take care of this and don’t you worry about a thing.” If he said that, I would have backed down and not gotten defensive. Yet I’m still waiting for a call back and a solution that will hopefully not make me look like I’m the one who caused the leak.

The Little Things Matter

It is possible to have a few bad apple customers from time to time. Things happen! Yet it is how you deal with those customers that will determine if they will be back in the future or be customers for life. Yes, maybe there happen to be customers you’d rather not want back. If that is the case, the little things still matter. Follow the principle above and make sure even the tough customers don’t get defensive at the end of a project. You might keep a few from telling their friends or writing nasty reviews online, because you’ve done the right thing. I’ve seem my own father follow this principle numerous times and he rarely ever has customers who walk away upset. He has even returned money to frustrated customers (even when it is the customers fault!). What do you do to keep customers comfortable with your service? I’d love to hear your thoughts below.

Writing before and after blogs is probably the easiest way to start blogging if you don’t know what to write about or where to begin. You have a very visual business.  Your customers want to see the work before it began and what it looks like when finished. Mrs. Franklin wants to know what her neighbor Beth chose for her dining room walls or what type of countertop she selected for her kitchen remodel. This is the perfect opportunity to write up your story. Talk about the project, the location (keywords), what the customer had in mind, how the project went, materials used, colors selected and much more. End with a quote from the client (or a video). Take the blog, once it is posted and submit it to your Facebook or Google + pages (if you decide to use those channels).

We live in an age of information. People want to know something? They look it up online. Be the place that they come to find the answers and get inspired. Have you seen success writing blogs? A great follow up is to read Marcus Sheridan’s post on a similar subject, Why Facebook and Twitter Don’t Mean a Dang Thing for Online Success for Some Industries”

Why a Kindle?

The Kindle uses an E Ink technology which basically looks similar to ink on a newspaper. The benefit to this type of technology and the device:

1. It is easy on the eyes compared to a computer or tablet screen.
2. The Kindle weighs less than most books so it is easy to hold in your hand(s).
3. It is so convenient. I personally like having books at my fingertips instead of a huge collection of loose books. I really don’t need to show off a room full of books to all my friends. Plus, I tend to lose books and spent too much time looking for them. I’ve also never been a big bookmark fan. The Kindle helps me get through a book from cover to cover because it keeps track of where I left off reading.
4. The battery life is probably 10-20x longer than any computer tablet. The newer models of the Kindle can last up to two months on normal reading with the wireless settings turned off.
5. Less distracting than other gadgets. We live in a world of distractions more than ever before. When using the Kindle, there isn’t much else to do on them than read. You can search the web using a WIFI connection, but it just isn’t worth it using E Ink technology. A Kindle was made for listening to audiobooks and reading a good book–that’s it.
6. You can still allow other Kindle friends borrow your e-books and even check out books from your local library.

With Google services firmly leading the pack in cloud computing for businesses (and Microsoft’s MS 360° coming soon), more and more businesses are moving to these services every day. It makes sense! If you are a small business, and you spend $200-400 dollars a month on maintenance for a physical server or email hosting, you are simply paying too much.

Apple Isn’t Much Help Either

My dad is just about ready to make the switch to toss his exchange server and physical server in the recycling box (yes, that was a politically correct term). Yet before he switched, he decided to go and talk to Apple. Why not! They are innovative and big into cloud computing too. Apple isn’t stupid either. They want to sell more hardware and software, like Microsoft. They referred him to a third party IT company who sets up Apple cloud servers.

Though switching to the clouds is neither difficult nor expensive, IT and computer companies are trying to capitalize on the small business owners who don’t know what to do. This Apple certified company gave my dad a quote of around $10,000 to switch from PC computers to Macs and have a cloud server and office. $10,000 for 4 computers; I’m in the wrong business! I looked over the quote this morning and all I saw was the same thing I’ve seen for years: tech talk foreign language that makes no sense to business owners, topped off with a big price tag.

Don’t get me wrong—they were not scamming him by overcharging for their services. The hourly rates and all that were in line with what IT cost are these days. Yet I feel that their quote was not in my dad’s best interest. The quote included all kinds of irrelevant extras, as well as items that he can get for free (or very cheap) elsewhere. His business is already using Google Apps for his email hosting etc, but IT companies don’t really want you to use Google because they know they can’t make money on it. There isn’t anything for them to troubleshoot anymore.

So What Should You Do

When I finished reading over the estimate for this new IT company, I sent off an email advising my dad to put on the brakes. Whether he gets Macs or stays with PCs, I don’t care. The bottom line is he really only needs the following:

1. Google Apps for Business: Email, Calendar, Two Way-Exchange-like Syncing to iPhones/Androids, Google Docs (getting better every month) and Contacts. A business can still use MS Outlook if they don’t want to use the Google User Interface.
2.  A Cloud Customer Relationship Management Software that works well with Google. There are dozens to chose from. For the painter or remodeler out there, Pipeline Deals works great and has excellent goal and reporting information. $15 a month per user with mobile access. No brainer. (For those who want less features, I use Highrise CRM. For those who want more… Salesforce, but that is very expensive)
3. Egnyte, which will do a two way sync with your files on your computer. You can access those files from any computer. You can take a laptop with you in the field, pull up your email and Egnyte, and you’re good to go (a virtual office).
4. Google Chrome or Firefox Web Browser: don’t use anything else. Each one has a sync option. This means you can have a laptop and desktop with the exact same look and feel (bookmarks, password keepers etc).
5. External Hardrives: This doesn’t hurt. I sometimes backup my Mac computer on an external hard drive just for the extra security.

What Does This Cost?

•Pipeline Deals $15 a user per month
•Google Apps for Business $50 a user per year (free version is just as good too, just less storage)
•Egynte: Best pricing is probably the 1 terabyte per month at $45 a month
•Microsoft Office ($170+ each But if you want to save money, go to Google Docs or Try Open Office)
•Setup: depends on who you hire. $300-1000 to set up Google Apps for Business is probably a good faith estimate (depending on who you hire). Egynte isn’t that hard to setup and move files. Their free tech support can guide you how to do that.
What else is there? Training and every now and then some IT support, which is normal. Things happen. So, before paying thousands of dollars to upgrade your office at the end of this year or go to the clouds, make sure you think carefully who you are hiring and why!

Step By Step

Note: I’m giving you the detailed step by step approach. Advanced users of the iPhone know there are faster ways to access Gmail)

Step 1: Open up Safari and type in m.google.com in your browser

Step 5: Once logged in, touch the Menu button at the top left corner 

Step 6: Then touch the Tool icon at the top right corner 

Step 7: Final step is to tap the button that says, “Enable vacation responder” Choose your dates, add your message and tap APPLY when done (top right hand corner)

Good marketing does not just involve creating good advertising pieces, having an attractive website or a nice salesperson. Good marketing involves listening to what your customers wants, and then you, the contractor, meeting those needs. Your customer will never tell you that you should accept the AMEX, but deep down, they are really hoping you will. I use the American Express quite often. I used it for business for a couple years and recently switched back to a VISA card because I got tired of businesses telling me, “No I’m sorry. We only take VISA.” It is actually a little embarrassing. The last thing you want is to make your customers feel uncomfortable.

Forget about the Fees!

What? You don’t accept any credit cards? Really? It is 2011 folks. You’ve got to accept plastic, my friend. Consumers want to use their credit cards so they can rack up their vacation miles, and you’ve got to help them get those miles! Doing a painting project or a light remodel can sure make getting points or miles easy. Now, there are ways you can ask nicely at times to get a check. Also, you don’t have to advertise all over the place that you accept VISA, MasterCard and (hopefully now) American Express. But always make sure that you remain positive when it comes to talking about money with clients. When you get down to signing a contract, the homeowner may ask, “Oh yeah. Payments. Do you by any chance accept Credit Cards?” You respond with, “Absolutely! We even take American Express!” I’m sure you’ll see a little smile begin to form from your new customer. I’ve sure seen it happen. I’ve even heard them respond with, “Oh good! I may get a free flight out of this paint job!” Wealthy people using their credit card(s) does not mean they can’t afford it. They just are being smart with their money.

Feedback

How do you make your customers feel comfortable when talking about credit cards? Do you accept American Express? Will you?