Las Vegas Technology Briefing

Thanks to everyone who attended our Sales Technology Briefing in Las Vegas (held in conjunction with the Results Seminars Top Producer program.) Here is a list of the products, services and websites that we reviewed during our event:

Results Seminars
www.closemoresales.com
This is our official site that tells you where we are going with our events and what's happening in our group. Check it out!

Nightingale-Conant
www.nightingale.com
NC is THE name in the personal development industry. Check out their website and you'll discover an entire world that you didn't know existed... dedicated to improving your sales career and your life!

Bankrate.com
www.bankrate.com
Everyone who deals in interest rates and financing should bookmark this site! What is happening on a daily basis in interest rates is kept up to date for you by Bankrate.com.

Send Out Cards
www.sendoutcards.com
This is a cool site dedicated to helping you stay in touch with your clients. Pick the cards that you want to send and this group lets you customize the card and even sends it for you. This is a truly automated BUT personal process. You have to see it to believe it.

Stuffbak.com
www.stuffbak.com
This was our featured site. Stuffbak makes a label product that you can attach to all of your personal effects (keys, mobile phones, PDAs etc.) This is a no brainer. Buy these and put them on everything before you lose it and some nice person keeps it because they don't know who the heck you are!

Google
www.google.com
Have you heard of this company? Duh. Of course you have... but are you using:
Google Alerts?
Google Desktop?
Google News?
Google Gmail?
Google Earth?
Google Calendar?
Remember, it's all FREE and all capable of assisting you be more efficient.

Metro Free
www.metrofreefi.com
This is the website that lists different locations in Vegas that offer FREE access to Wi-Fi.

Broadband Access:
Verizon
www.verizonwireless.com
Sprint/Nextel
www.sprint.com
TMobile
www.tmobile.com

Business Card Scan Product
www.cardscan.com
This is the cool business card scanning product that can scan cards directly into your Outlook or other contact management software. You can type in 100 calls in 4 hours or scan them in 10 minutes. You pick!

Start Your Own Blog
www.blogger.com
Good for staying in touch with clients and getting your presence on the Internet. Remember - this one is FREE.

Remember... 5 things in 72 hours!

TK

April Tech Review - Send Out Cards

Check out http://www.sendoutcards.com/ if you’re looking for a fast and efficient way to stay in touch with your clients. Send Out Cards is a product that my friends Jeff and Adam Packard turned me onto last year. I’ve used it and also witnessed it become a better product.

A quick overview of the service…

Send Out Cards allows you to take your contacts from Outlook or some other database and import them in their online database. Once your contacts are on the Send Out Card servers you’ve got a back up of your data – nice side benefit.

From the website you can select a contact and send a card to them using the automated selections for the occasion, the type of card, the type of message and other cool features. Some of my favorite customizations are my own custom message, adding photos and even using my own handwriting!

My handwriting? Yep – simply fill out a form and fax it to SOC and they’ll scan your own handwriting and you can choose to make a card look just like you wrote it. Pretty sweet.

The cards come with a stamp (a real stamp) and are mailed out of Salt Lake City and are the closest thing to real I’ve ever seen. I’m pretty discriminating and they do look good. If they didn’t, I wouldn’t be recommending them.

Want to send a gift card? Send Out Cards can throw in a Starbucks gift card (along with others) that is sure to be a hit – even if your card doesn’t get read!

If your interested check them out on the web or give me a shout at tomk@resultsseminars.com and I can point you in the right direction.

TK

Apple Runs Windows... Oh My

Hell has frozen over in the tech world, and I'm not the first person to use that phrase to describe Apple's recent announcement to run Windows XP on its hardware.

Why is this a big deal? Well there are many reasons, but for me, the top reason is that my Windows programs may soon be running on cool Apple hardware. Some people love Apple's operating system and some love their unique programs. I don't care about that stuff, I want one of those beautiful white iMac's on my desktop. White (like my iPod) and nothing under my desk. Nothing.

I last used an Apple desktop in college. The business school at my university had IBM units by the hundreds down in the basement. They ran WordStar and VisiCalc and some programming languages. Pretty blah.

One day someone turned me on to the fact that the architectural college had these computers called "Macintoshes" and they ran programs called "Word" and "Excel" and they were the BOMB. The gooey operating environment was something I'd never seen before. It had a mouse (there were no mouses to be found over at the business school.)

Those were the days. I bought my first Mac the month I graduated from college... I also received a PC for graduation. So without ever opening the boxes, I sold my first Mac to my brother-in-law. It was close to 20 years later before I bought another Apple product.

Although the Nano and the 30 gigabyte video iPod I bought recently are very cool, nothing has hit me more than the iMac. The 20 inch iMac is the coolest piece of computer hardware I've ever seen. Beautiful and functional. BIG yet a footprint that is INCREDIBLY small. I played with one of these last year in Chicago at the Apple Store on the Miracle Mile. I sat there forever staring at the screen and wondering "why can't Dell make something so functional and stylish."

If the new Windows operating system, which is called Vista, ever comes preloaded on the iMac... I'll buy it immediately.

From a business perspective, Apple stands to gain if others think like I do, they want their PC apps to run on Apple Hardware. I think the potential is huge for the consumer market, but what about the business market? Would large corporate clients invest in Apple iMacs? Perhaps. I can think of one company that might pull the trigger on a few thousand units - Disney - perhaps this will be Steve Jobs' first piece of business on the Disney board.

TK