I always suspected this but now I had quantitative proof and it was more than I expected.  Over 30% of my day was, make that is, going to the care and feeding of email.  And that’s not even counting all of those little click-overs I do when I hear the little mail arrival sound from Outlook.

So here’s my new Five Step Program to getting some of that time back:

Over the next two weeks, I hearby promise to:

1. Turn off the Outlook “ping” sound for new email.  This could be tough and it goes against my sense of curiousity, but I’m gonna try.
2. Stop reading all inbox junk mail, even if it looks interesting.
3. Put all of my e-newsletters directly into a special folder and only read them at designated times.
4. Unsubscribe to anything that does not pertain directly to my personal or business objectives and focus.
5. TRY to only check email only three times a day. OK, that’s not gonna work.  Let’s say six times per day.

I’ll report back on my success.

I’ve been using Sync2It for at least 3 years now and have watched it go from a free tool, to one with a price (albeit worth it), and now back to free again with at least one name channge in the process. But the beautiful part is that it’s all automatic, it’s reliable and it just works great!

Besides providing centralized access to your bookmarks, it also makes them easier to use as it displays them (optionally) in a multi-column window. That alone (for me) is worth the time to install it.  There is also a toolbar (which I haven’t tried) and you can also access collections of shared bookmarks (which I also haven’t tried). 

To learn more or give it a try, visit http://www.sync2it.com/.

Which option provides the:

1. Best customer experience leading to more sales
2. Best customer service for phone orders and resolving customer problems
3. Best control panel making it easier to add/maintain products, obtain reports, set up promotions, etc.
4. Lowest processing cost.

As of today, we use three service providers: Avangate (4 mos), RegNow (3+ yrs), and Plimus (1+yr) which we review in the following paragraphs.

RegNow - One of the Digital River companies. One of the cleanest order forms for the customer, decent cross-sell capabilities that are a pain to set up, US-based vendor support but very slow and usually not helpful, slightly more expensive fees, US-based (but horrible) phone support for customers, outdated control panel (nothing significant has changed in years), support for Adwords but not Analytics (which is ludicrous), large established affiliate network (that never orders anything ;-)), support for CD fulfilment (but on plain white CDs with a printed product name), order form default for extended download service that cannot be turned off.  So why do we keep using it?  Seems to be more trusted by customers and we keep hoping the reseller network will kick in.  Sends funds twice/month right at the close of the period, which is nice.

Avangate - The up and comer but still with a way to go. Very helpful vendor support - clearly better than anyone else, extensive, productive control panel, offers upsell in addition to cross sell during checkout (others don’t have this), good support for Adwords and Analytics, slightly lower processing fees, additional services for marketing and SEO (which is why we decided to try them - seems pretty good so far), but it is HQ’d in the Netherlands with operational staff in Romania, a bit more oriented toward European business customs (e.g., longer order form, a bit too wordy, etc.), provides phone support but only with a Dutch phone number that rings in Romania (this is a problem) and very visible branding during the order process and customer emails, more than any other provider.  With this service, we noticed European orders seemed to go up, and US based orders went down.  Sends funds once/month around the 19th of the month following.

Plimus - US HQ, US based customer phone support, fairly responsive email vendor support by offshore staff (not sure where they are), robust control panel, low visibility on branding, very good support for Adwords and Analytics, poor documentation, takes a little while to learn control panel but then it is very productive, good reporting, one of the few that gives you reports on abandoned orders, can also set a popup for those who abandon, about as expensive as RegNow. Sends funds once/month around the 19th of the month following.

In summary: When Avangate gets a US presence with 800 phone support, trims back their branding and streamlines their order form, they will become the one to beat.  Right now, we have to give the advantage to Plimus with RegNow a very, very distant third.

The cure? Well productivity experts will tell you it’s a three step process:

1. Find out and track where you’re spending your time,
2. Put priorities on everything you do, and
3. Stop doing that stuff you like to do at the bottom of the list. (That’s the hard part for me.)

Simple, eh? Well maybe not but at least there’s a great new tool out there that I’ve recently discovered that actually makes it possible to get a handle on step one. And I have to start out by telling you I’ve been looking for this tool for years now. I’ve looked at dozens of things that are out there. Freeware, shareware, priced ware, desktop, web based, you name it. The problem? Too complex to use. Too cumbersome to use. Too expensive to use.

That is, until I discovered Toggl. A great new tool that has just come out in beta. Toggl is a new .NET desktop widget combined with a web-based reporting system. The personal version is free and of course there are options to upgrade to a priced version (which to me, seems a little pricey for a personal user but fine for a business). But the good news is the free one let’s me at least do everything I’m looking to do.

The desktop widget stays nicely out of the way running in your Systray. To start/stop the timer or change tasks, you just double click the Toggl icon and a popup allows you to perform the operation in one click so it’s really easy to change between tasks. And if you forget to turn Toggl off while you go down to the water cooler, it senses you’ve been gone and asks you if you’d like to remove that time. Your time is organized into Projects or Clients and then tasks within those headings. Adding a new task is really easy.

To generate reports, there’s a link to the Toggl web site where you can generate various reports by day, week, month, etc. With the upgraded premium version, you can also generate billing reports with your own logo and more formatting.

So I’ve begun Step 1 to begin figuring out where my days are going. I’ll report back in a couple of weeks.

So are we now competing with the very consultants that purchase our tools?  Not at all.  In fact, we’d like you to join us in providing these new services. We’ve always had our Consultant’s Directory, but we have often been approached about providing more assistance in using our tools.  So we’ve decided to turn it up a notch and actually further facilitate the process.

Does this mean you’re really a consulting company? Well, no again.  Kinetic Wisdom remains focused as a tool and software product developer / provider.  Product companies (like ours) and consulting services companies have completely different operating models and business objectives that tend to have competing goals.  It is our intent to stay focused as a product developer.

So then why are you doing this? A fair question.  And actually there are lots of reasons.  First off we should disclose that we will indeed make a (very) small commission on the services delivered.  This is principally to help fund ongoing marketing activities and drive marketplace awareness.  But probably the strongest reason is that many of you have asked for this kind of help.  And by building a network of consultants that are conversant with our tools and that can help drive the development direction for them, everyone wins.