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Optimism, Positive Thinking, and Job Retention

2010-02-23T07:16:00-05:00

(WebHost Blog) Let’s face it, it is easy to fire someone who is a total menace. When it comes to someone you despise, vengeance can come quickly and mercilessly, severing the former employee from the company in a master stroke. And to be honest, you probably feel good about it too. But what about firing someone who is upbeat, well-liked, and a genuinely good human being?

I was reading an article over at Datamation by Eric Spiegel entitled Dealing with Unaccountable Developers. He discussed having to fire a developer who was decent at their job but always late in turning in assignments. He confessed that if the developer was a jerk it would have been no problem, but since he was a well liked guy it was very difficult.

Now imagine a new scenario. You work in a decent sized company (not too large that everything is impersonal, but not so small that everyone can go to lunch at the same restaurant, at the same time) and unfortunately a round of layoffs is about to happen. Let’s now take you and a duplicate of you. Both does the same good job at work, one though is upbeat and helpful the other is well a jerk.

It’s not just the fact that positive people are pleasant and the working environment is such a nice place with that sort of work conditions (ok well that is a really big reason), but optimistic, positive people are, as they said in the Army, a force multiplier. Positive people make me work harder because work becomes fun. It also makes it so I don’t dread getting up in the morning.

Which one do you think will keep their job? I know what you are saying, "Dave, it’s not even a contest me and myself obviously have the same skills and between the two of us of course they are going to keep the person who isn’t a hellion."

True enough. So how about this, you have a team of say ten employees. Out of the ten, your brightest star is a real ass. The type of guy that put everyone in a foul mood. Unfortunately the guy is absolutely brilliant, a fact he knows all too well and reminds everyone of it every day. The other 9 employees aren’t great, but they are bad. They get the job done for the most. You need to cut one person from the team for budget concerns. Who would you cut?

Difficult. See the easy route would be to fire one of the under performers. However, the question is, why are they underperforming? Just as the positive people make work less of a problem and may even make it fun and a joy to do, the negative people produce a hostile working environment. Instead of focusing on work, the nine people could be starring at the clock waiting for the work day to end so they can get the hell out of Dodge. I was talking to Ron about this the other day and he had actual experience with this a while back.

He had a star employee, one who performed far better than anyone, however he was difficult to be around let alone work with. The rest of the team wasn’t bad, they were, well average. Ron had to fire one of them, but the choice was difficult. In the end, he fired the "talent." He was just too high maintenance and was not a team player in the truest sense of the word. What was interesting was the change to the team that took place after the jerk was fired. In a few days, the office environment was jovial and warm. The team ended up producing a lot more. In fact, they produced more than enough to make up for the loss. It was a gamble in some respects, obviously the jerk was the best employee and if all things remained as is, firing him would have crippled the team. Often times however, an individual’s performance doesn’t just hinge on themselves but on other varying factors within the office.

So in summary, optimism and positive thinking, doesn’t just help you be content, it helps those around you and it may even save your job.

About David Dunlap
Over the past ten years David has been a prolific author of hundreds of blogs, commentaries and reviews found here on WebHostBlog.com, as well as WebHostMagazine.com and other sites around the Internet. David manages the daily operations at both WebHostBlog and Web Host Magazine & Buyer's Guide, and as the head editor, David uses his unique analytical skills to ensure that both sites maintain their integrity and tough, but fair minded, reputations. Prior to his active career analyzing the Web Host industry, David specialized in networking and communications for the U.S. government. David's expertise in traditional and search engine marketing has helped boost companies both inside and outside of the Web Host industry.

http://www.gawkwire.com/business/optimism_positive_thinking_and_job_retention.html

Top 10 Speakers to Watch at Parallels Summit 2010

2010-02-22T06:36:00-05:00

(WebHost Blog) Parallels Summit has been a really good venue for the hosting industry. A fact that only increases each year. Looking over the speaker list I was surprised to see a few Google speakers, considering some of the comments Serguei Beloussov (CEO of Parallels) has said about them in the past. Be that as it may, there are a lot of exciting topics to choose from with two major themes. A great deal of the speakers will discuss the cloud and quite a few will be talking about unified communications. Both I think will be gaining more importance throughout this year.

But I digress. The Top 10 speakers to watch this Parallels Summit are:

Day 1
1.Melanie Posey – Public Cloud Trends.
2.Tim Mueting – Building a Scalable and Power Efficient Cloud Computing Infrastructure
3.Lance Crosby – Take your hosting business to the next step
4.Rafael Laguna – Tough Times Enforce New Thinking
5.Adam Eisner – Act, Don’t React: An Insider’s Perspective On Key Emerging Hosting Trends.
6.Matt Domo – How to launch and make money from Cloud Services

Day 2
1.Jason Waxman – Accelerating Cloud Services Through Data Center Innovations
2.Rurik Bradbury – Unified communications — now for hosters
3.Bogdan Carstoiu – What do hosting companies need to deliver Unified Communications?
4.Panel Discussion – Masterclass Online Marketing

Unfortunately, a couple overlap, so choose which sessions you attend wisely. For those travelling to Parallels Summit I wish you safe and speedy travels.

http://www.gawkwire.com/events_html/top_10_speakers_to_watch_at_parallels_summit_2010.html

Tech Specs: What is the Answer?

2010-02-09T06:09:00-05:00

(WebHost Blog) Yesterday we discussed the problems associated with tech specs and web hosting. The main problem with tech specs in web hosting is the vast bulk of the customer has little to no knowledge of anything found in the technical specifications and has no desire to learn them.

When we talked about the difficulty of selling Web Host plans, including the difficulties in defining the true value of a Web Host plan that actually represents a non-tangible, unfinished Web site, we concluded that test driving a Web Host plan is all but impossible.

Since I teased everyone as to why I say test driving is difficult; saying I will explain later I might as well explain why I think it is a problem. First off, there is a problem with compatibilities. Let’s say someone started with a host who offers ColdFusion and so they programmed there in ColdFusion then decided to switch to a cheaper host. Well, the inclusion of ColdFusion normally means a higher cost so chances are good the lower cost plan does not have CF and therefore when they port it over, it doesn’t work. They have to start over again or find yet another host only this time (more savvy) find a host that offers CF. Or maybe someone has a site that is ready to go, uses WordPress, so fairly standard for any Unix based host. They go to move it and are hassled with a variety of problems they don’t know how to solve, which also includes the modules they might have used and importing database information.

These problems add up and only compound frustrations with finding a web host, whereas with a car you get the keys and go. Web hosting; not so much.

You can’t just drop your old Web site off and hop into a new one and drive the new Web Host plan out of the lot. It may take a day of effort to get it up and running or a week (if things really get screwy) and while these problems are going on, the site is losing customers, traffic, maybe even links and SEO rankings. Even if the web developer was smart and used a secondary domain name, put in a back up database got everything working, figured they like the web host so swapped the DNS records over and got it running as the primary site, problems can still occur making you wonder is choosing a new host worth the hassle? Therefore not a true test drive.

So there are two ways to get around a lot of these problems, however both require effort. There are no silver bullets in this industry, what I present is merely a logical path based on the facts at hand. In order to implement them, you also need to figure out a way around some of the problems each answer gives.
First the failed method, though maybe I should say work in progress. It hasn’t necessarily failed as yet, but it is not really gaining any traction or making anyone’s lives easier. So the first method used was categories. It was based on familiarity found in places like the car industry such as sports cars. Sports cars carry like types of features and performances. A web hosting category such as Budget would have set parameters such as less than $14.95 (when the standard was first enacted). Since then it has dropped to less than $4.95… oh how times have changed.

And that was the start of the problem. The standard for the categories were never really pinned down and agreed upon. Mainly because many of the plans various companies came out with could be identified into multiple categories. The Ford F-150 is a truck… there is no way anyone can say it’s a sedan. However, you can have a Budget/VPS/Blog Plan. How would classify it? Well in all fairness you would have to say well it fits in the Budget, VPS, and Blog categories, adding to the confusion. What should have helped to concentrate audience wants and needs into a simple grouping of plans ended up increasing the confusion. Also there was a lack of unity in the dissemination of this information. Web hosts of the day didn’t understand the need for classifications. They didn’t understand that by making the customer’s life easier it would help in increase the customer base. How much faster would the adoption of web sites been if the customer could understand basics of a plan by looking at a category standard badge of some sort, in the same manner as cars or milk or a million other products?

With the advent of tagging and tag clouds, I am going to assume that categories will continue to be a non-issue, which is a shame on many levels, but no sense it dwelling on the spilled milk… simply blame the dog and be done with it. 8-D

Now the second method for surmounting the problems of web hosting. Actually this shouldn’t come as a surprise to those I have done some consulting work for, or for those who have gone to some of the conferences at HostingCon, or read various industry pundits. Instead of selling a product that is not really a product or selling a list of features, instead sell a solution.

The main reason this will work is because there is no assembly required on the part of the customer. Your average customer can tell you with remarkable clarity what they need, regardless of whether or not they know the features. A business might say I want to be able to sell stuff. An individual might say I want to start a blog. These are wants, with a problem (obviously I can’t sell stuff right now, how do I sell stuff) and you have the solution, buy this and you can start to sell stuff. Take this package and you will be able to blog. A customer has no need to remember any extemporaneous information and no need to learn new skills and vocabularies.

Now I had said there are no silver bullets and this is still not a silver bullet. The web host still has to figure a means to show value and a means of comparison to competitors to prove worth (though this could be considered optional). It also is more based on niche markets. A company already focused on a niche can use this method far easier than a company who provides everything. Also the features for a solution still need to be worked on, but that comes from learning from your current customers; what they use, what they don’t use, etc.

So in closing, I just want to say make it easier on your potential customers. Give them the tangibility of solution based services as opposed to tech specs. Like automobiles, still list the tech specs, but do not make them center stage. On a side note, if you want to solve the blank canvas problem either offer to help them build their site, or better yet form partnerships with web designers.

Although no dogs were injured in the writing of this blog there was one cat that was plotting world domination.

http://www.gawkwire.com/technology/tech_specs_what_is_the_answer.html

Tech Specs: What are they good for? Absolutely nothing

2010-02-05T07:41:00-05:00

(WebHost Blog) I have often wondered why web hosting plans are sold by technical specs… computers too for that matter. Don’t get me wrong, technical specifications of a product are pretty much as detailed as it gets for buying purposes. It can tell us exactly what we need to know. However, without some form of training in web hosting or with computers, you might as well be given a list written entirely in Koine Greek.

Let’s leave that right there for now and look at one of the most successful products of all time, the car. The best part of selling a car is that the whole process can be reduced to one feature, price. A great deal of the features and even the uses for the car can be quickly learned just from looking at it. We know that trucks are used for towing, hauling, carrying payloads, etc. We know that your average smallish car will probably have great fuel economy, no leg room, and also won’t go very fast. Cars with an increased amount of curves and a sleek look will probably go really fast, go through gas like there is no tomorrow, and you will have an insatiable urge to only want the car in either red or black.

In each of these three cases, we have tech specs accompanying each vehicle. In a car lot, they are normally all located on the sticker sheet attached to the window. The difference is the spec sheets are not center stage. Even on the sheet itself the price is in larger print and in a location readily seen.

In most cases, we go to a car lot already knowing the type of car we want. This way we can remove about 90% of the lot from our search. The next deciding factor is price. We already know what we are looking at in terms of budget and they decrease the field even more. Lastly, we know a HANDFUL of things we want. For myself, the engine has to match the car (i.e. you will never see me drive a truck with a 4-cylinder, ain’t happening), it has to have cruise control, and lastly it has to have power windows.

After that is all done, I take each vehicle I have left for a test drive. In the end, it is further whittled down to only a small few (I love to drive so I am extremely picky with how a car handles). From that I look at maintenance costs (gas mileage, how often the make and model breaks down, cost of parts… gotta love having a smartphone and browsing the net for car problems while you are looking) and the cost of the car itself to produce a sort of value number in my head. The car with the highest value wins.

Problem with web hosting is you really can’t test drive it per se (more on this later), you can’t just look at it and know what it does (same with computers really), and lastly it is very difficult to determine value.
Equally problematic is using a feature list to prove value since the average user doesn’t know what the features mean and if we have learned anything from computer sales, the average person doesn’t want to learn about the features.

So how do you go about solving the problem of selling a product a lot of people need even though they have very little working knowledge about it?

Oh nearly forgot, the biggest hurtle of all. Web hosting provides 0 products. Instead it would be me giving someone a paint brush, some paint, and easel and saying get to it. Some of us (yes I include myself in that hehe) can build masterpieces with the tools given to us by web hosts. However, and I am going to make up a number cause I like making up statistics, 95.7% of the web hosting audience does not.

So for homework tonight, I want everyone to think about how you can go about selling a product that:

■the majority of people need
■that is not tangible
■that is difficult to determine apparent value
■that is not a finished product
■whose features are mysterious
■and test driving is difficult considering the amount of effort involved moving stuff (again more on that tomorrow)
Tomorrow we will go over the answers to this interesting problem. I will say this, there are currently two ways to do it and unfortunately one of them has failed thus far.

http://www.gawkwire.com/technology/tech_specs_what_are_they_good_for_absolutely_nothing.html