Adrian Kingsly-Hughes wrote a great article on his zdnet blog entitled “Turkey Day” tech support survival kit. Even though Thanksgiving Day is behind us, those who are technically inclined will have ample opportunities through the rest of the Holiday Season to be buttonholed by family and friends who are…um…technically challenged.

This article describes how, with a little planning and preparation (and a few large-capacity USB flash drives), you can be ready to ride to the rescue of those whose plaintive cries for help can’t be ignored without negative social consequences.

Fenwick J. Moose (our PR Manager) attended last week’s Seattle Interface show. In addition to hanging out at the Watchguard booth, Fenwick took a turn around the show floor, where, of course, he was mobbed by people clamoring to have their pictures taken with him. Here are just a few (click on picture to view full size):

Working the Watchguard booth

With Peter and Kristin of Watchguard

Yuan-Chi Hsu and Julian Wilcoxon of Citrix

With Chad Arnold and a colleague at the TW Telecom booth

Our friends at 3R Technology - the PC recycling folks

Our buddies Dave Brown and John Ford from DataCore

You can also view more Interface pictures on Fenwick’s Facebook page. (Yes, he has his own…and if you’re on Facebook, you too can be a Friend of Fenwick.)

I have gone through an interesting business exchange recently. It left me confused and irritated – not to mention I have now wasted way too much time on getting no results. As marketing manager here at Moose Logic I am always trying to find ways to best leverage money vs. time when it comes to marketing activities. Things have been picking up a bit lately and at the time of this story I have 4 confirmed live events happening in the next 3 months. I am realizing that I no longer have time to properly advertise one of the aforementioned events, but I do have budget for it.

To my luck Moose Logic has recently been contacted by a company that is offering the exact services I need. Since I have never contracted out for these services I was in no position to just “sign up” without doing my due diligence. I looked around a bit on the internet to discover certain trends and tips when hiring for these types of marketing services. Feeling better prepared to handle the outsourcing of this task I now went looking for pricing. The marketing company that had contacted Moose Logic (let’s call them Company X) got the benefit of my first call because of their proactive efforts in contacting us.

I asked another co-worker to reach out to this company and find out what their pricing is. The initial contact was simple – they asked what services we were looking for, when we needed the services, etc., all of which we happily answered.  At the end of the conversation my co-worker asked for a quote for their services. A few hours later she received an email from what I assume is the supervisor of the person who answered the phone.

Form Letter from Marketing Company X

This is clearly a form letter that is updated with our information, but totally disregards the phone conversation we just had with them, and more importantly does not give us any pricing for the services just requested.

So we reached out to Company X again to say thanks for the information but we are really trying to getting a quote for services. Shortly afterward we got another email – with a PDF attachment. “Alright, a quote!” I think to myself as I open the attachment.

Boiler Plate PDF from Marketing Company X

This is just page 1 of 3 of the PDF we received from Company X. Needless to say, there was no price attached anywhere – not in the email, not in the PDF.  Just more “boilerplate” saying what a great company they are, how awesome their services are, etc.

So, this got me thinking about how we do business here at Moose Logic. How many road blocks to business do we put up without even being aware of it? Do we try too hard to tell everyone why do business with us, rather than just doing business? If there are hurdles in our business, how do we find them and address them?

What about your business? Do you make it easy for your customers to do business with you, or are you losing business without even realizing it? Who do you ask to find out?

Well, I offer up Moose Logic and this blog post as a forum for anyone who wishes to tell us one way or the other on our business processes and our responsiveness to customer needs, or anyone who just wants to relate a similar story. We may all learn something new.