Soft-Letter

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POSTSCRIPT:.
In August, the Association of Support Professionals will publish a book-length report on this year's "Ten Best Web Support Sites". The report will offer a closer look at the ten winning sites, with . . .

SIDEBAR:.
The Ten Best Web Support Sites of 2001 OPEN DIVISION Cognos support.cognos.com/support Dell premiersupport.dell.com Hewlett-Packard itrc.hp.com Macromedia www.macromedia.com/support National I . . .

WEB SUPPORT: A CUSTOMER-CENTRIC VIEW.
"Jupiter Media Metrix reports that [despite the current economic downturn] 74% of businesses will spend more money on customer relationship management (CRM) infrastructure in 2001 than they did in 2 . . .

DATA POINTS: TECH SUPPORT TURNOVER.
[CHART OMITTED] Tech support departments are famous for burnout and constant employee churn, which adds substantially to the cost of recruiting and training new support reps. In fact, a new survey . . .

HOW TO LIVE WITH MICROSOFT.
There's an old parable about a scorpion who hitches a ride across a river on the back of a frog, and then stings the frog in mid-river. "Why?" the frog asks. "Now you're going to drown." Says the s . . .

CHECKLIST: OEM PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENTS.
Earlier this year, SPSS set up a new "enabling technologies" division to offer statistical and analytical solutions to large OEM partners like Unisys, Lucent, NetGenesis, and Hyperion. David Blyer, . . .

HOW TO HOST AN INFLUENCER DINNER.
"One of the simplest and most powerful ways to build a company's reputation," says publicist Shel Israel, "is to host occasional dinner meetings with a group of 'key influencers'--typically with one . . .

THE ART OF SEMINAR MARKETING.
No question, seminars are an absurdly primitive way to sell technology products. We lure a few dozen people to a windowless hotel room, force them to sit through mind-numbing PowerPoint presentation . . .

DATA POINTS: MICROSOFT'S PROFIT-PER-EMPLOYEE RATIO.
[CHART OMITTED] It's no secret that Microsoft has pulled well ahead of most rivals in revenue per employee, but a less-watched metric--profit per employee-- has widened the competitive gap even fu . . .

HOW TO BE A BAD BOSS.
Executive coach Paul Lemberg is a pretty upbeat guy, but he's often frustrated by how often well-meaning bosses put obstacles in front of their employees and create dysfunctional organizations. "Mos . . .

CHECKLIST: BANNER AD COMPONENTS.
Like most forms of Web marketing, banner ads have lost much of their novelty value. But good banner ads still produce healthy clickthrough rates and even sales--and more than ever, the ad measuremen . . .

ON MINIMIZING SOFTWARE COMPLEXITY.
Greg Gianforte's four-year-old company, RightNow Technologies, sells customer service automation software--a product category that's become notorious for out-of-control implementation costs. But Rig . . .

MARKETING CASEBOOK #2: SIMPLE IDEAS, BIG RESULTS.
Some marketers would like us to believe that it takes a mysterious mix of experience, scientific testing, and creativity to produce a breakthrough campaign. The truth is, there's also a lot of sheer . . .

DATA POINTS: PERMISSION-BASED E-MAIL.
Although spammers get most of the blame for overloading e-mail mailboxes, consumers have currently "opted in" for almost 15% of total message volume in the U.S., according to data compiled by eMarke . . .

HOW TO RUN A CUSTOMER ADVISORY BOARD.
"It's shocking to see how many companies don't pay attention to what their customers are thinking," says Paul Lemberg, an executive coach who works with high-growth technology companies. "They don't . . .

THE AUTODESK SUBSCRIPTION LICENSE.
"When the history of the software industry is written, upgrades will be one of its biggest mistakes." --Autodesk CEO Carol Bartz After two decades of dragging users along a sometimes-rocky upgrade . . .

THE CASE FOR E-MAIL NEWSLETTERS.
Every month, FirstPlace Software president Brent Winters cranks out a long, densely technical e-mail newsletter about search engine algorithms and keyword positioning strategies. FirstPlace gets an . . .

NOTES ON METHODOLOGY.
The Soft-letter 100, published annually since 1984, is defined formally as "a ranking of the top 100 personal computer software companies in the U.S., based on calendar year revenues." That definiti . . .

THE 2001 SOFT-LETTER 100.
[CHARTS AND TABLES OMITTED] When we published our first Soft-letter 100 rankings back in February 1984, the "personal computer software" category was easy to define: Inexpensive, mass-market progr . . .

DATA POINTS: CONSULTING METRICS.
Software companies usually have good productivity benchmarks for the product side of the business, but service metrics--especially for high- cost consultants and application developers--are often a . . .

HOW TO RUN A POST-SHOW TRAINING SESSION.
As travel costs escalate, getting users to attend training sessions has become tougher than ever. Granite Bear Software's Mark Riffey says he's found a simple answer: He hosts training events in con . . .

THE JOEL TEST.
As a "pipsqueak" junior programmer at Microsoft, Joel Spolsky saw a few death-march projects and occasionally locked horns with control-freak bosses. But most of the time, Spolsky says, Microsoft pr . . .

THE INTUIT WEB MAKEOVER.
This month, Intuit will formally relaunch its Quicken.com Web site, a key part of the company's strategy to generate "portal" revenue from personal finance information and services. The site, which . . .

NOTES ON THE BENCHMARK CHARTS.
Data for this survey is compiled from annual reports, 10-Ks, and other financial data supplied by public companies that meet the basic eligibility requirements for our annual Soft-letter 100 ranking . . .

2001 ANNUAL FINANCIAL RATIOS.
[CHARTS OMITTED] In theory, financial benchmarks are a good way to measure how well a company takes common "raw materials"--the pool of available employees, basic technology, shared marketing chan . . .

DATA POINTS: MARKETING SALARIES.
[CHART OMITTED] The Internet has transformed almost every aspect of marketing, but a new salary survey suggests that the fattest paychecks still go to traditional product and brand managers. Accor . . .

THE PROFIT SHORTFALL.
Okay, let's stop picking on foolish dot-com entrepreneurs who "forgot" they were supposed to earn a profit. The folks who started and funded Web businesses screwed up in a lot of interesting ways, b . . .

CHECKLIST: OFFSHORE DEVELOPMENT.
Pavan Muzumdar's company is based in a small town in Michigan. But much of the company's development work these days takes place halfway around the world, in Jaipur, India. "There's a small cost adv . . .

"EXCEPTIONAL GUARANTEES".
"Everybody offers some kind of vaguely-worded guarantee these days," says pricing expert Eric Mitchell. "But only a few companies offer exceptional guarantees--promises that really stand out. All th . . .

DATA POINTS: DOT-COM FAILURE RATES.
[CHART OMITTED] In the past few months, cash-starved dot-coms have been going dark at a typically Internet-like pace. According to Webmergers, an M&A firm that specializes in Web properties, more . . .

HOW TO WRITE BETTER WHITE PAPERS.
This may come as a shock, but customers actually read those leaden, indigestible "white papers" that software companies use as ballast for press kits and sales handouts. A recent study found that 79 . . .

CHECKLIST: CHANNEL AND WEB PROMOTIONS.
Over the past two decades, software marketing consultant Rick Chapman has tracked literally hundreds of promotional campaigns. Some produced dramatic gains in sales and market share; others bombed. . . .

MANAGEMENT: "RIGOROUS, STRUCTURED, CARING".
In a world where espresso bars and ping-pong tables have become icons of enlightened management, Dick Cook is almost a throwback. An old- fashioned boss who spent 25 years rising through the ranks o . . .

SERVICE MARKETING: THE RELATIONSHIP FACTOR.
Geoff Moore, one of our favorite marketing gurus, many years ago wrote a wise and now-famous book about the "chasms" that exist in marketplace behavior. Moore was most concerned with the gap between . . .

E-MAIL NEWSLETTERS: "DON'T FORGET WE'RE HERE".
"Newsletters are tough," says Trellix's Paul Simpson. "Some of them are just painful to read." But Simpson's own twice-monthly newsletter is a clear exception. Written for an audience of amateur and . . .

TROUBLE ON THE RETAIL FRONT.
December is ordinarily a blowout month for retail PC sales. But this year something went wrong: According to PC Data, the leading channel research firm, retail and mail-order PC sales in December ac . . .

HOW TO SCREW UP A SURVEY.
When one of our most ambitious survey projects crashed and burned last month (only 25 responses, half with unusable data) we decided it was time to get advice from an expert. So we tracked down Dr. . . .

2001 TECH SUPPORT SALARY SURVEY.
Support salaries are often a remarkably sensitive indicator of the software industry's health. When times are tough, companies tend to freeze support costs and headcount, even though the result is u . . .

DATA POINTS: SEARCH ENGINE REFERRALS.
[CHART OMITTED] Don't count on well-chosen keywords to generate site traffic from search engines. That's the conclusion of a recent Web traffic analysis study from StatMarket, which found that sea . . .

INFORMAL MARKET RESEARCH SOURCES.
Like most analysts, we get a steady stream of calls from people who need instant market research. ("Instant" here means "not like Starbucks, but hot and thick enough to serve to investors."). We use . . .

HOW TO MOTIVATE MIDDLE-MANAGERS.
"These days, a good manager is supposed to keep rank-and-file employees motivated and happy," says management skills coach Mia Melanson. "But who worries about the managers themselves? They're peopl . . .

THE MICROSOFT/GREAT PLAINS MERGER.
Microsoft has a reputation for gobbling up software companies, but in reality most Microsoft acquisitions have been either tiny startups with sexy technology (Firefly, Entropic, VXtreme) or "strateg . . .

DATA POINTS: PRESS CONTACT FREQUENCY.
[CHART OMITTED] The press may make or break a company's reputation, but most software executives don't seem to have much to say to reporters and analysts who cover their companies. In fact, a poll . . .

TURNAROUNDS: HOW INSIGNIA EXITED THE RETAIL CHANNEL.
When Rich Noling took over as CEO of Insignia Solutions in 1997, the company was in deep trouble. Most of its revenue came from mass-market "virtual machine" utilities that let users run Windows on . . .

MAVEN MARKETING.
Maven--"an expert; a really knowledgeable person; a good judge of quality; a connoisseur." --The Joys of Yiddish, Leo Rosten They trickle in almost unnoticed--fan letters, suggestions, quick . . .

A SERVICE PRICING CHECKLIST.
If there's anyone who understands the arcane art of how to price services, it's Al Hahn. Hahn's consulting firm has spent more than a decade fine-tuning service and support programs for literally hu . . .

DATA POINTS: PUBLIC COMPANY DIRECTOR FEES.
Public software companies pay their outside directors in a variety of ways, including annual retainers, fees for regular and special committee meetings, and option grants (which usually vest over se . . .

THE COSMI RETAIL SURVIVAL FORMULA.
For most consumer software publishers, the retail channel has turned into a financial nightmare that never seems to end. Major players like Mattel, Havas, Corel, Intuit, and Infogrames have seen the . . .

SUPPORT: "WE CALL EVERYONE".
Like many developers, SoftWright invites sales prospects to download a free trial version of its flagship product, a terrain analysis tool for placing radio transmitters. But a day later, there's a . . .

HOW TO BUILD A BETTER BOARD.
In small and subtle ways, the center of power in many technology companies has begun to shift. Company founders no longer set strategy and make key decisions by themselves; usually, they now operate . . .