Comments on: Lead generation for professional services, Veotag style

By: Emily Coltman

Emily Coltman — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 14:31:40 +0000

Sounds a good wheeze.

I don't in fact know of anyone who's used the Sage CD-ROMs – but I could always make a posting on AccWeb Any Answers and see if I get any feedback. Any other ideas for research gratefully received.

By: Dennis Howlett

Dennis Howlett — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 14:14:03 +0000

Sounds advice.

Real users aren't that difficult to come by. Emily already has a pool of those in her current practice as a starting point. As to taking the lead from real users – anything less is taking the mickey.

Those who add value do so because they take the client's position and work from there. More value gets added by offering workarounds to commonly met problems.

Who knows – if Emily is good enough she might get an offer from Sage that's too good to refuse.

By: Emily Coltman

Emily Coltman — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 13:16:18 +0000

Thanks both.

Â£55 spent on something I don't need is not a good plan!

By: alastair

alastair — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 13:04:50 +0000

actually, it would not just be Â£55 – think of the time you would have to waste in looking at the stuff!

double actually, perhaps what you might find useful would be to talk to some real people that have used this stuff – get them to tell you what was good about it, and what was bad about it. You can’t beat anecdotal evidence from real users. Don’t know how you would find them though?

triple actually, thats probably advising you to do something I (and Dennis) advised you not to do! Perhaps I am becoming a consultant?

By: Dennis Howlett

Dennis Howlett — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 10:56:52 +0000

Excellent advice Alastair. Here's a clue which might persuade M.

By: alastair

alastair — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 10:47:09 +0000

I'm reminded of the phrase "curiosity killed the cat". Emily – if you look at what they do it will inevitably influence what you do, and it will consequently be poorer.

IMO that is true in lots of circumstances – if you have faith in what you do then go for it, and don't look over your shoulder.

By: Emily Coltman

Emily Coltman — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 10:28:56 +0000

That's my point Dennis – I don't know I can do it better till I've seen what they do

By: Dennis Howlett

Dennis Howlett — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 08:29:44 +0000

M:
Don't bother – you know you can do it better anyway so why give Sage more taxes?

By: Emily Coltman

Emily Coltman — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 07:22:20 +0000

My ears have pricked up!

I like the sound of this very much – particularly as I’ve thought of various Sage “snippets” videos, and an index would be very useful.

I think I need to investigate Sage’s existing training offering, because what I do would need to be different – I know they do CD-ROMs – perhaps I need to buy one and see what they’re like.

By: David Tebbutt

David Tebbutt — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 05:09:57 +0000

Hi Dennis, thanks for the links.

Your readers might be interested to know that I then wondered if something similar could be achieved with Google Video and a bit of simple hackery.

Answer = yes!! And, of course, it can be achieved for free. And control is in the user's hands if they don't mind a bit of simple URL editing.

I uploaded the same screencast (picture quality in both cases suffered during the upload/processing, by the way – I'm sure it can be fixed though) and made a list of regular html links to the movie. Each had minutes and seconds added to the end of the link which made Google Video kick off the proceedings at that point.

eg to see the movie starting at 9m35s, add #9m35 to the end of the Google Movie URL.

There's an example on thinkerlog:
http://www.brainstormsw.com/weblog/archives/241