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Strategies & Market Trends : VOLTAIRE'S PORCH-MODERATED -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cactus Jack who wrote (39362)	7/24/2001 8:19:12 PM
From: Ex-INTCfan	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 65232

News from the front: Here are some of the things I have been seeing in my web-based business. One major company decided to program their own help desk survey and use one of our spreadsheets to save money. All we do is write a report. So we are charging them $2800 instead of $4800, and they are spending scores of extra hours on the project. I just got off the phone with a benefits firm who wants to do a survey of around 1000 people. They have no budget. I gave them a good rate and it is 50% more than they want to pay. I can do it at a loss to get future business, or I can turn it down, or I can pare back the service we give. Another major company is buying our $300 help desk spreadsheet rather than having us do any work for them. They are going to spend hundreds of hours figuring out how to do the project. This is a VERY MAJOR retailor. They have been agonizing over whether to spend the $300 for months now. The only reason I'm talking to them is I want to establish a relationship. We have had two companies who contracted with us to do jobs not return phone calls. Both small jobs ($3000 or so). This happens occasionally, but odd to see two at once. Two of our clients are laying off people. One just announced a layoff of 1/4 of the workforce. I needed to buy another copy of blast email software, so I called my usual vendor. In talking to the sales rep, I found out that their sales are down about 30% from last year -- for a piece of software that costs $40! As for us, our sales are up almost 100% over last year, despite the fact that we are getting fewer clients out of the high tech industry. Revenue and sales are not the same thing, however. Invoices are very slow to be paid, almost across the board. What I am seeing is that companies have become penny wise and pound foolish. The beancounters are in charge right now. BTW, don't ask me who these companies are, because I will not say. Thought you might find this interesting. Ex-INTC fan