Do your eat your own dog food?

Zig Ziglar liked to say that with that one question, you could tell if someone was a successful life insurance agent. If they’re not willing to buy it with their own money, how can they honestly persuade someone else to do so?

If you’re in the music business but you never buy tickets or downloads, can you really empathize with the people you’re selling to?

My favorite: if you work for a non-profit and you don’t give money to charity, what exactly are you doing in this job? I’ve met some incredibly generous people in the charitable world, but I can also report that a huge number of people—even on the fundraising side—would happily cross the street and risk a beating in order to avoid giving $100 to a cause that’s not their own. And the shame of it is that this inaction on their part keeps them from experiencing the very emotion that they try so hard to sell.

Money is more than a transfer of value. It’s a statement of belief. An ad agency that won’t buy ads, a consultant who won’t buy consulting, and a waiter who doesn’t tip big—it’s a sign, and not a good one.

There are very few industries where this is not directly relevant. As a software and technology provider are you investing internally to ensure your business is benefiting from the right technologies? Have you upgraded to GP v10? Are you rolling out GP V11 Beta? If you hadn’t received your GP license for free would you have chosen GP? What role does Sharepoint play for your organisation? When you rolled out Microsoft CRM did you hire a CRM VAR to help with design, install and build. When you are talking to a prospect can you candidly explain how your website integrates back to GP and the amazing benefits MOSS has brought to your remote consulting team.

10 or 15 years ago everyone in the GP community was excited about technology. As we as partners have matured, I wonder if we are now more excited about utilisation and AEP collection than we are technology?

I put my hand up that some changes need to be made. At eOne we do have direct online ordering, with immediate access to reg keys online for our partners (of that I have been pretty proud). We do use eXtender extensively and SmartConnect for our integrations. But, being honest here, I am off today to schedule our upgrade from GP 9 to GP11. My immediate thought was that I should see if any of my developers have some spare time for the upgrade, BUT NO, I am calling my VAR and getting an upgrade expert in to do the job leaving my team to do what they do best.

So over the holiday’s, spare a thought abut what the dog is eating and also about getting our own houses in order during 2010.