Selling Geek 003-Jott [13:10m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Have you ever been driving to your next sales appointment, when suddenly you hear something on the radio? Realizing that this means a potential sales opportunity, you search frantically for a pen and a scrap of paper. One hand on the wheel, and the other fumbling around in the glove compartment, you take your eyes off the road for only a second… and are surprised when you look back, seeing yourself en route to an impending collision.

Clearly, this is not the best time to be jotting down your ideas.

Jott to the rescue of lost ideas

When do you get your best ideas? For me, it’s usually not when I’m sitting in my office, in front of my trusty computer, or with a pad of paper and writing implement in hand. No, usually it’s when I’m doing something else – driving, walking, eating, showering – it never fails. That’s when inspiration seems to strike me.

And what happens to most of those ideas? If I don’t jot them down, they evaporate away, lost forever. I shudder to think how many of my “million dollar ideas” have wafted away into the ether, never to return.

But now, as long as I have my faithful mobile phone nearby, I never have to worry about losing a good idea. For the last few months, I’ve been using the well-named Jott, the incredibly simple but supremely elegant voice to text service. With Jott, I simply call a toll-free number and dictate a message up to 30 seconds long. The resulting audio file is received by a dedicated call center, transcribed into text, and sent back to me in an e-mail or text message. It’s a very cool thing.

Jott CEO and co-founder John Pollard realized that people have some of their greatest ideas when they’re away from their PCs, and that the only real appliance they have with them almost all the time is their mobile phone. And he’s built a simple but useful system that takes this fact into account.

Jott: more than an idea recorder

Since its inception at the end of 2006, Jott has expanded and enhanced their original concept into a wide variety of links with other popular services, such as a Jott to Twitter link, where short messages are transcribed into a Twitter feed. (Twitter is a microblogging service that is rapidly growing in popularity… but that’s another show.)

Jott has become very popular with professionals on the go – this is especially true for salepeople, who seem to be in transit far more than most.

The best way to illustrate the elegant usefulness of Jott is simply to experience it… (Click on the player button at the top of this article, and you’ll see what I mean.)

You can also send Jott messages to groups of people, provided that you’ve entered them into your account on the Jott.com website. Imagine being able to send a text message about your latest deal to your entire sales team, just by calling Jott, dictating a message, and sending it to “Team” – all without touching a keyboard.

Or, you can Jott a message to yourself, then stand by – Jott will ask you if you want to send that message to yourself as a reminder at a future date and time. Jott will send an email or SMS text message to your phone at that time – it’s almost like having your own personal secretary.

Other Jott links include integration with:

· Internet-based calendars, including Google Calendar and 30 Boxes

· A wide variety of online task management and “to do” lists, including Tumblr, Remember the Milk, IWantSandy, FortyThree Actions, KeepUp, Kwiry, Mentat, Nozbe, Smartsheet, Toodledo, and Vitalist

· Blogging services, including the aforementioned Twitter, Jaiku, WordPress, TypePad, LiveJournal and Blogger

Jott is also becoming a mobile phone gateway for all sorts of other niche applications, including the ability to:

· Get price quotes and information about items on Amazon.com

· Get real estate cost estimates on specific property addresses from Zillow.com

· Leave questions for investigation and response from Mosio’s people-powered research service

· Poll the Recommendr consumer community about favorite products and stores

·Leave alerts about speed traps and get updates on highway police monitoring in your area through the Trapster.com service

· Record business expenses through the Xpenser service

… all this, just using your voice, your mobile phone, and Jott.

As I said, it’s a very cool thing.

Is Jott too good to be true?

So, what’s the catch?

So far, there really isn’t one. Jott’s service is free, at least for now. But Jott’s management team has hinted that eventually, they will probably introduce advertising in some form in it’s free service, or charge fees for access to premium features, or both. For example, Jott recently announced a new service called Jott Feeds, where users can request Jott to read text from syndicated weblog or news sites. Jott intends to insert ads into this text to spoken word service, and share revenues with the publishers.

But today, Jott is no cost and a no-brainer addition to my sales toolkit. It doesn’t require any special software. It’s practically brain-dead simple to operate. And it’s free. What’s not to like?

My only complaint after using the service for a few weeks is that it is not perfect. About one in every ten messages seems to have a mis-spelling of some sort. This usually seems to happen whenever I’m recording the name of a new product or Internet website – and let’s face it, some of those are hard to spell anyway. Now I’ve gotten into the habit of spelling out proper names – bingo, no more mis-spells in my Jott text messages. Having real human beings doing the transcription seems to work exceptionally well. I shudder to think what Jott would be like if its transcription engine was generally automated – that technology has a long way to go before it’s ready for prime time… but that’s another show. I also wonder if the Jott team can keep up with the workload as the application’s popularity rises. And finally, when and how will Jott figure out how to make money – and how intrusive will that become on what is currently a delightfully simple, straightforward service? These questions give me pause, and make me wonder about the future of Jott.

But today, as the summer of 2008 dawns, Jott is just plain cool. And darned useful, too, if you are a busy sales professional. And did I mention that it’s free?

Sales Pro Value Score

So, because of its ease of use, high utility, and (so far) zero cost, Selling Geek gives the Jott service a Sales Pro Value Score of 4.5, out of a possible 5.

UPDATE: Here are some great ideas for using Jott from the Sales 2.0 blog

UPDATE: Jott introduces tiered pricing plans

Tags: Jott, Jott to Twitter, Podcast, Review, sales tool, selling geek, voice to text

 

 Selling Geek 002-YouSendIt [9:50m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Last fall, I was working on a sales improvement project for a client in the UK. They asked me to develop several short videos for their team. This was a rush project – with a very short deadline. They couldn’t wait for me to burn the videos to a DVD disk, and ship the disk overseas – they wanted the files right now.

“No problem,” I thought, “I’ll just email these 150 megabyte files to them.” Ah, not so fast, grasshopper. Did you know that most corporate networks reject media attachments to emails, or at least block emails with attachments over 10 megabytes in size? For some reason, my usually geeky brain had forgotten that even Google mail and Yahoo mail have file attachment size limits. (Duh!)

“No problem,” I thought, “I’ll just set up a little FTP site on my home server using FileZilla. (A very cool file transfer protocol server program – but that’s another show…) And so I did. But, alas, my client was most displeased. I’d forgotten that my AT&T DSL broadband service provided lightning-fast 6 megabytes per second download transfer speeds, but my upload speed was limited to just 512 kilobytes per second – and so my client was pulling his hair out and cursing my now twice-demonstrated technical naiveté. (Argh!)

So, what was I to do? Enter, my savior… YouSendIt, the slickest file transfer service I’ve ever used, and clearly of immense value to any sales professional that has to send large files to prospects or customers.

YouSendIt enables you to send large electronic files to anyone with an e-mail address. And it’s a breeze to use. You simply use your Internet browser to log in to the YouSendIt.com website and upload your file, which is stored in a secure, private location. YouSendIt sends an email to your intended recipient, and provides them with a web link to your file. They simply click the link and download the file to their computer.

Also, YouSendIt can be used by your customers to send you large files, too. They simply upload their file to your private dropbox location on the YouSendIt website, and you receive a notification e-mail that it’s there, ready for you to transfer to your PC.

Costs

What does YouSendIt cost? Well, that depends. For most sales pros, the totally free Lite subscription will meet the needs of salespeople with occasional large file transfer requirements – the Lite plan allows file transfers up to 100 megabytes in size, with a monthly transfer bandwidth limit of 1 gigabyte, and a maximum number of 100 downloads per file. That means that you can send up to ten files per month if they are the maximum allowed 100 megabyte size.

If that’s not enough capacity for you, the next level subscription, called the Pro plan, costs US$9.99 per month, and allows file transfer sizes of up to 2 gigabytes each, with a monthly download bandwidth limit of 40 gigabytes, and up to 500 file downloads per month – it also gives you 2 gigabytes of online storage space, and more control over your file tracking and distribution.

For sales teams, YouSendIt also provides even more advanced subscription plans – the Business Plus plan at US$29.99 per month, and the variable tier priced Corporate Suite plan with unlimited bandwidth and downloads. These advanced subscriptions also provide the ability to brand your download pages with your company logo and colors, if you wish, or integrate YouSendIt capability into your own website, and other flexible features.

Even if you have the free Lite subscription, YouSendIt provides for exceptions, allowing you to transfer a file larger than 100 megabytes (up to the maximum of 2 gigabytes), for a one-time fee of US$8.99. That’s pretty pricey for a one-time exception fee – but it’s still cheaper than most overnight express shipping charges, and of course, the transfer is instantaneous. And, you can always upgrade your free Lite subscription, if your transfer needs grow beyond what you expected.

Add-Ins and Extensions

While most salespeople will be happy to use the simple-to-use website to transfer individual files, YouSendIt also provides optional software and plug-in extensions for Photoshop, CorelDRAW and Aperture, so you can upload multiple files from directly within those programs on your PC. There’s also an Outlook plug-in that adds a YouSendIt file transfer icon to Outlook’s toolbar. If you do a lot of file transfers, these special YouSendIt applications and extensions can save you time, as they increase transfer speed and do away with the need to access the YouSendIt website with your browser.

Minor Complaints

What’s not to like about YouSendIt? Well, if you need to send files that are larger than 2 gigabytes, this service isn’t for you – that’s the maximum file size allowed, even at the most advanced subscription levels. Also, one missing feature I would like to see is a notification email back to me, telling me that my intended file recipient successfully retrieved my file. There’s no way to do this automatically within the YouSendIt site, so when I send a file, I always tell my recipient to let me know when they got the file by reply email, which is a minor inconvenience for both of us.

Sales Pro Value

These small complaints aside, YouSendIt is a godsend to sales pros that need to transmit large files safely, securely, and with a minimum of fuss and bother, both for themselves and their customers. The next time you need to transmit a large proposal or RFQ response, YouSendIt might give you that small but important professional edge that helps you get ahead of your competitors – and all this at little or no cost.

By the way, using YouSendIt, I was able to transfer my large files to my UK client in just a few minutes, and they loved how easy it was to retrieve them. Their perception of me quickly changed from “blithering idiot” to “good reliable bloke”.

So, because of its ease of use, reliability, scalability (to a point) and low cost, Selling Geek gives the YouSendIt service a Sales Pro Value Score of 4, out of a possible 5.

UPDATE: YouSendIt secures additional venture capital funding

Tags: file transfer, Podcast, Review, sales tool, selling geek, YouSendIt

While salespeople continue to peck away at their trusty Blackberry devices, or just make calls on their conventional mobile phones of various makes and models, three giant forces quietly accelerate towards a cataclysmic confrontation. These titanic forces shall soon collide, and the cacophony and chaos that this clash creates will stun and stupefy sales pros with a bewildering array of new choices, none of which will be immediately correct. But one will eventually emerge as the victor.

The names of the three forces are: Google, Apple and Microsoft. And the great battle that is about to begin will be known as the War of the Phones. And salespeople will be caught in the crossfire.

It’s gonna be great.

All three companies have begun to unveil pieces of their respective visions of the next great technology: fully functional, hand-held, connected computing platforms. Oh, and they’ll make phone calls, too. In fact, we’ll all call them “phones” — and the three giants will, too — but don’t be fooled. Making calls will be only one useful thing that these new devices will do.

These devices will also contain enough processing power to be genuinely useful client computers, and their interfaces will be swift and intuitive enough to make hand-held document creation and spreadsheet jockeying do-able, if not outright pleasant. Further, these devices will feature fast near-broadband or better Internet connectivity speeds, enabling practical cloud computing and collaboration, all in the palm of your hand. Coupled with the absolute requirements of email, calendar, contact management, messaging and voice telephone, the next generation of mobile devices will become the primary tool in every sales professional’s stock in trade.

Google Android

If you haven’t seen any Android phones yet, don’t worry — that’s because there aren’t any. Android is a software system for mobile devices based on the open source Linux operating system. Google is promoting Android as an open platform for the next generation for mobile computing and telecommunications, and so far, they have been successful in attracting a significant number of technology companies to begin developing and supporting Android-based devices.

Android is a very interesting operating system for mobile devices. Google’s Andy Rubin, who heads up the Android development project, recently demonstrated a prototype at a San Francisco developer’s conference:

Observers of the prototype demonstrations have commented that the initial versions of Android devices offer many of the user-friendly interface functions found in the popular Apple iPhone, with speedy connectivity and computing power.

Apple iPhone

The user interface of the Apple iPhone is revolutionary. If you haven’t experienced it, you can see an overview here: iPhone Guided Tour. The intelligent multi-touch screen and gesture-based commands make the iPhone a truly unique and highly intuitive user experience. There simply isn’t anything else like it on the market today. As a result, Apple has sold nearly 10 million units since the iPhone was first introduced last year.

Microsoft Windows Mobile

Microsoft’s Windows Mobile operating system has been around since 2003, but it has been upgraded and improved steadily over the years. Recently, Microsoft demonstrated a touch screen interface for mobile devices, which included multi-touch and motion-based commands, similar to the popular iPhone interface. Industry analysts speculate that this is part of the next release of Windows Mobile, planned for the latter half of 2009. Microsoft’s leaders, Bill Gates and Steve Balmer, also recently stated that multi-touch screen interface support will be part of the future Windows 7 operating system.

Microsoft is selling a lot of Windows Mobile devices already. In fact, a Microsoft spokesperson projected a 50 percent growth in sales per year over the next two years, which translates to almost 60 million units sold between 2006 and 2009.

Who will win?

We said that we expected one of the three behemoths to emerge victorious from this clash of titans, and we think we know who it will probably be. At least, we are willing to speculate as to who it should be. And we can justify our conclusion based on one simple principle: maximum customer freedom.

With an open architecture, more developers can produce applications and add-ons for a mobile device much more cheaply and easily. As a result, in a mobile device based on an open architecture design, users should have enormous flexibility in configuring that device to their specific requirements and tastes, and at attractive prices — in fact, in many cases, enhancements and add-ons will be free.

But an open architecture can only succeed if it garners enough support from developers and manufacturers to create enough devices with enough options to interest large market segments of potential buyers. As a result, many open architecture initiatives have been relegated to niche markets, or failed outright.

Google, however, is doing everything right, so far, in establishing Android as an open architecture with a broad base of manufacturer and developer support. And they’ve built into that architecture the potential for further extensibility and enhancements, all at an individual user’s option. Further, the demonstrations of the early versions of Android phones have been very impressive — if the final released versions perform this good in real-world use, and if they are priced competitively, they will be very tantalizing indeed. For these reasons, we think Android could eventually be the mobile device platform that everyone, especially sales professionals, will want to have in their hands — when those devices begin to appear “in the second half of 2008″, according to Andy Rubin.

Before the folks at Google start popping the champaign corks, however, a lot of things have to go right. And meanwhile, their competitors are not going to be sitting idle.

First, Android is behind in the race. Apple’s new 3G iPhone will do very well, if it is released early this summer as many experts predict. The new iPhone should include improved Internet connectivity speeds, ability to receive “push email” from Microsoft Exchange servers (a “must have” for corporate acceptance), and support for third-party add-on applications. The iPhone user interface is indeed a leap forward in user friendliness — it’s intuitive nature simply makes the iPhone the most fun device to use. And for these reasons, despite fairly high anticipated introduction prices, the iPhone should quickly capture a respectable share of the market.

Apple has some challenges, however. Although Apple will soon support third-party developed applications, they do so under some heavily controlled conditions — Apple will almost certainly require its approval of all applications and require sale exclusively through it’s iTunes distribution system. To be fair, Apple is trying to protect users from unpleasant experiences with badly written software, which is good. What is less good, however, is that these restrictions could become a significant barrier to many third-party developers, and thereby reduce customer choice — which will look more obvious if Android successfully attracts many more third-party developers. Still, the iPhone should enjoy several months of virtually no comparable competition, and with the new 3G capabilities and a broad array of worldwide carriers supporting the device, the newest edition could capture a huge market share in the summer and fall of 2008.

Microsoft is so far behind that it’s hard to imagine how they might catch up with their more nimble competitors in this race. While Windows Mobile is selling a lot of devices, and there is a lot of speculation that the next version will incorporate a much richer user interface, it will be at least a year before we see any new devices on the market that take advantage of these capabilities. By then, the iPhone and Android phones will have carved out large and highly defensible shares of the next generation mobile device market.

And what of the old reliable Blackberry devices, from RIM? Will they be able to hold off the onslaught of these new platforms? Are salespeople so addicted to their “Crackberries” that they will be unwilling to switch? Certainly it seems that RIM is counting on this, and hoping that all interlopers will stumble and fall. Meanwhile, RIM’s next generation of Blackberry devices appear to be solid, incremental improvements over the previous versions — but while they are faster and have more capacity, they really don’t offer anything radically new in their interface or extensibility — at least, not yet.

Perhaps some other player will emerge in the next generation mobile device market that we haven’t yet identified — perhaps Nokia, who still sells more mobile phones than anyone, with a revamped Symbian-based operating system. Or the once venerable Palm – although that seems very unlikely, given their recent track record of development mis-steps.

We think it likely that one of the three giants now entering the fray will eventually dominate the next generation of advanced mobile devices, although we expect the lead to change at least twice, and perhaps three times, over the next two years.

It will be fun to watch.

Tags: Android, Blackberry, iPhone, mobile devices, mobile phone, Nokia, Palm, sales tool, War of the Phones, Windows 7, Windows Mobile