Today, everyone said “Ouch” financially, and consumers and businesses alike are realizing that they will need to tighten their wallets in 2009.  For businesses, credit is going to be harder to come by and professionals and business owners are going to have to do more with less.  This is one of many reasons that I want to point out that the recommendation age has hit the commercial world.

For the last few years as consumers, merely doing a search for what we’re interested in isn’t enough.  The majority of us use our site of choice to read reviews and ratings from other consumers.  We utilize that information as a key factor in our decision making process — whether it’s buying a camera on Amazon.com, finding a restaurant on Yelp, or choosing a hotel on TripAdvisor.  We do this because our money and time is important to us and we want to make the most of it. 

However, for some reason in our professional lives, when it comes to finding an application or service, we’ve been satisfied with usually one of three options:
 •Ask our current vendors if they or their business partners have what we’re looking for (Of course, they do.),
 •Pick a search engine of choice and start fishing through the myriad of results,
 •Pay an analyst firm a good chunk of money for a report of solution providers that they’ve researched but never used. 

Whether you’re a small business owner or a group within a large company…which could soon be bought into a much larger company, none of us will have much money for marketing and we will all need to do our best in selecting the right product or service to invest in when we need it.  That’s why it’s critical that professionals use the same recommendation approach we’re used to in our consumer lives when buying a $200 camera, and use it when our business is buying software for $200,000 or using a lawyer or consultant at $250 an hour.  We need to know what we’re getting for our money before we’ve spent it.  We can’t afford not to.

Going forward, the quality of service and/or the product is going to count for more then the amount of marketing dollars a solution provider spends.  For those smaller businesses with great solutions but not as much brand recognition, this will be a key time for growth.  For those solution providers heavy on marketing and low on value, not so much.  The five customers you take to dinner and sporting events won’t be the only feedback prospects have access to about your solutions. 

When we started FYIndOut, we knew the value it would provide to professionals and businesses regardless of the economy; it was only a matter of time.  We just didn’t think it would come this soon.

We wish you and your business the best of luck,

Scott

First off, welcome to FYIndOut. We appreciate you taking the time to check us out and we hope you take part in our open beta.

FYIndOut is a Chicago-based company dedicated to helping professionals find and promote commercial solutions and events to make the best use of their time and the most of their budget. We want to provide the same community approach to find and review commercial solutions that we use in our consumer lives. With FYIndOut, we can provide each other with the same type of qualified, first-hand reviews to help our careers, projects, or business as we do when looking for a personal camera or plumber.

Our team has worked hard over the last year to build a platform that makes the most of everyone’s time and money. That means those looking for solutions and events and those promoting solutions and events. We’ve been on both sides in large and small organizations and we know where the hurdles and the pain points are. We’ve also taken the time to design the infrastructure, user rights, policies, and terms of service with a commercial perspective in mind.

So now, as with any new business, we’re asking for your help. How, you ask? We’re now at the “chicken and egg” point where we need professionals, solution providers, and associations to provide your information to make FYIndOut the best it can be. With that, we want to mention a few key points:

     1. Registration is FREE for professionals and organizations! It’s also short and easy.

     2. All event listings entered by solution providers, associations, professional groups, and universities during our beta period are FREE.

     3. All solution listings entered during our beta period are FREE through the end of 2008!

     4. We’re currently looking at keeping the beta period fairly short and ending it in late October – mid November.

     5. For those of you that help us get the ball rolling, THANK YOU! We really appreciate it.

In addition to our community entering information, we’re also working on relationships with online event registration providers to feed and promote their professional events on FYIndOut. We’ll keep you in the loop as things move forward.

Finally, please let us know what you think via our Contact Us page. What do you like? What can we do better? While we’ve put a lot of thought and time into this, we know that we’re just getting started and appreciate all of the feedback we can get.

Thanks again,

Scott