Happenings March 1, 2024 – ASWi Blog

    In this issue:

• National Day Spotlight
• Customer Spotlight
• ISV Spotlight
• ASWi Q1 Lunch & Learn
• Productivity Tip
• Sales 101
• Events, Blogs, Movies
• Webinars, Community

The purpose of a newsletter is an opportunity for the ASWi team to provide you and the rest of our clients with information on all the new ASWi and Acumatica related things (or “happenings”) that you may not otherwise be aware of.

Please feel free to share this newsletter with any/all of your team. Pease let me know if anyone on your team who would like to be added to the mailing list for the next issue and removed.

Share a Smile Day has origins that date back to 1997. It was established with the purpose of creating opportunities for fostering a good mood and happiness
throughout families, workplaces and communities.

Today is a great day to remind ourselves to be more aware and make an effort to share our smiles with our neighbors, our family and anyone in our immediate
vicinity.

The picture: Ethan Kirkey sharing his smile with one of the 5 mountain ranges in the background that our home was surrounded by when we lived in “the Last Best Place”.

Q: How do you get a mouse to smile?
A: With a cheesy joke.

Q: What is the longest word in the English dictionary?
A: “Smile” because there is a mile between the first letter and the last.

Q: Why did the king go to his dentist?
A: To get a new crown.

I decided to make sure my wife woke up this morning with a big smile on her face. I am no longer allowed near Sharpies in the house.

Q: Why don’t electrons ever smile?
A: They’re too negative.

Q: What makes an anagram smile?
A: Limes

I tried to pay my taxes with a smile this year. Turns out, the IRS prefers cash.

ASWi is very humbled, privileged, and proud to be able to serve some of the most innovative organizations in the country as their ERP and/or IT Services provider and trusted business advisor.

Today, I would like to spotlight and introduce Brake Check to the rest of the ASWi community. Headquartered in San Antonio, Brake Check is a family owned and
operated business that was founded in 1968 with goal to be Texas’ one-stop shop for brakes, oil changes, and alignments while providing the highest quality parts at the best price with expedient service.

Brake Check has 47 locations across Texas. Autofairency is a registered trademark that defines Brake Check’s fair and transparent “Do it right” automotive experience.

Hard work. Best prices. Five star service.

Thank you to everyone who attended our inaugural ASWi Quarterly Happenings Lunch & Learn!

A great time was had by all as Jonathan Council discussed some of the highlights from the Acumatica Summit 2024 user conference, Eric Barrett provided an overview of some of the IT Services that ASWi is able to provide our clients, and Keith Wood provided a demonstration of how Acumatica Cloud ERP can be
used to automate your customer collections processes.

Have you thought about all the ways you can create nexus for your business? The Sales Tax DataLINK have you created this great infographic to help you to determine nexus:

If you would like to learn more about Sales Tax DataLINK’s connector to Acumatica Cloud ERP, please reach out to Customer Success Manager Keith Wood (keithw@aswius.com; 717-581-1226) for more information.

Every day we hear about the cyber threats that are, unfortunately too often, holding businesses’ data for ransom, spreading malicious viruses throughout their
organization and making mission-critical systems and applications inoperable.

This is why we offer enterprise-wide endpoint protection. Equipped with industry leading tools and technologies, ASWi IT Services provides industry leading Security Services to safeguard your systems and data.

The ASWi IT Services team can provide you with a security solution designed to provide you with cybersecurity defenses that will increase your security posture and help reduce cybersecurity risk for your organization. Specifically, our Endpoint Protection Security Service provides:

Prevention
By taking a comprehensive approach in protecting all endpoints and not relying on any single security technique, we are able to stop threats upfront to minimize risk and to reduce both investigation and response workload.

Ease of Use
We provide a cloud-based management console, strong policy settings, and an Account Health Check will enable you to easily manage your security solution without additional training or tuning, allowing you to focus on threat prevention, detection and elimination instead of administration.

Automatic, Adaptive Defense
Upon detection of a hands-on-keyboard attack, our solution will automatically activates extra defenses on the endpoint with a “shields up” approach to stop the attack from proceeding. Adaptive Attack Protection blocks suspicious activities like downloads of remote admin tools, giving your team valuable time to respond.

Suspicious Activity Detection
We can enable you to identify, investigate and respond to suspicious activity across your organization that cannot be addressed by the protections listed above.

Want to Know More?
If you would like to learn more about our Security Services, including our Endpoint Protection services, please feel free to reach out to our Customer Success Manager Keith Wood (keithw@aswius.com; 717-581-1226) for more information.

In the January 27, 2024 issue of Happenings, I provided a Microsoft Outlook user tip regarding the use of meeting “buffers”. I suggested that you adding a 15 minute Microsoft Outlook Appointment before and after each of the meetings in your Microsoft Outlook Calendar as a buffer to both give you time to prepare for an upcoming meeting and to offer you space to finish up a meeting without an abrupt “my next meeting is starting, I have to go!”

Another suggestion that goes hand-in-glove with the use of meeting buffers is to start scheduling 45 minute meetings in the instances that you would traditionally
schedule a 60 minute one.

This encourages participants to get to their points. As we know “the universe abhors a vacuum” and so do meeting participants. What can get done in 45 minutes will also easily fill 60 minutes; often the reverse is also true: what can get done in 60 minutes

By Colleen Stanley

So what makes filling the sales pipeline so hard? If any of you are my age, you probably prospected by calling names in the yellow pages or marketing lists that gave you little or no background on the company.

It should be much easier today. Salespeople have access to amazing technology, websites, LinkedIn, direct messaging, and the ability to follow potential customers on multiple social media channels.

You can google potential clients or use artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and C0-Pilot to gain important information that helps you craft compelling messaging. AI can even assist you with building that messaging. It’s easier than ever to prospect. So what’s the reason for all of these empty sales pipelines?

The reasons for ineffective and inconsistent prospecting hasn’t changed in 50 years. It isn’t about the sales tools, it’s about the salesperson’s mindset and skill set. Here are three to review:

Discipline
I often refer to discipline as delayed gratification. It is the ability to put in the work before you get the reward. The prospecting step of the sales process is about delayed gratification.

You have to put in the work of calendar blocking. That means proactively marking off times on your calendar to reach out to prospects, existing clients and potential referral partners. This is the old ‘plan your work and work your plan approach.’ It’s not a new concept, yet most salespeople are lousy at this basic time
management principle.

Targeting
Put in the work of researching and defining your ideal client. It’s easy to confuse being busy with being productive.

You can be doing all the right stuff—emailing, cold calling, linking in, writing blogs, and attending networking events. The effort is there, however, doesn’t produce results because engagement is not directed at your ideal client.

Analyze your wins. Get clear on your ideal customers.
– What is the common denominator?
– Size of company? Industry? – Pain? – Competitor activity?
– Attitude of the organization? – Life cycle of the company?

Just Do It
I remember a quote from a mentor during my early days in the sales training business. We were discussing the prospecting side of the business and I am fairly sure I was whining about the time and effort.

He looked me in the eye and said, “You don’t have to like it, you just have to do it.”

Nearly every weekday, a motivational quote is posted on X/Twitter by @ASWiDelivered and on LinkedIn by @ASWi.

• “For the best return on your money, pour your purse into your head.” Benjamin Franklin
• “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.” Douglas Adams
• “Accuracy of observation is the equivalent of accuracy of thinking.” Wallace Stevens
• “Continuous learning is the minimum requirement for success in any field.” Denis Waitley
• “While a chicken contributes to your hot breakfast, a pig makes a commitment.” Fred Shero