My favorite tilling WM http://wmii.suckless.org/ You can configure it with any scripting language but the downside is the help is lacking compared to the IRC community for XMonad and awesome.
This strikes me as slightly funny/ironic. As a sysadmin/IT person I do small programing jobs for side cash. :) When possible I try not to contribute spaghetti into the wild.
I'm in Vegas. I'm Willing to look for customers in LA, SF and Phoenix as well as here in the Vegas metro area. In reality the job can be done remotely from anywhere.
Do these appointment setting groups provide leads or are they just a mechanical turk to make the calls and set the appointments? Do I give them an Oracle customer list I purchased?
You generally have to buy/acquire the leads from somewhere. If your target audience is generic enough, most decent organizations will be able to help you with that aspect as well.
After that, they are mostly mechanical turk. You'll give them a script and some basic info/FAQs/etc. They will generally present themselves as employees of your company.
I don't have any direct contacts in the Vegas area that can help you out though, sorry.
My contact info is in my profile. If you want to hit me up, we might be able to do a phone call and I can lay a lot of this out a little better for you (wish I had the time to type all the points I would like to make out here).
BTW, my role the last 6 or 8 years has been getting sales operations in startups off the ground from the tech perspective. IE: I generally own all the pre/post-sales functions, but as a result of that have been heavily involved in comp plans, lead-gen, etc.
What you're looking for sounds like an "inside sales" role. These are, IME, usually $60-$80K positions depending on the candidate.
Thanks for the link, and good advice. That's the trouble I'm having now is all the sales people I do know I would consider con artists before I'd call them good sales people.
I'm also having a hard time with compensation. Do you pay a flat % for a sale coming from the "setup fee" and then a small % of the recurring monthly fee's or just a flat salary?
Most are going to want a base+commission sort of plan. You basically determine what the position is worth, we'll say it's worth $100K/yr to use a round number. Now, you determine (part art, part science) what the base vs. variable should be, lots of factors go into this, including how probable it is that the person has a decent shot at being successful. Most skilled sales people will also require an accelerator (if they exceed quota by x%, they get a y% bonus on top of the standard comp).
Then there is also the issue of recoverable vs. non-recoverable draws, if you do any draw at all (I'd try not to).
EDIT: I just realized I left this half-finished...
So if the overall comp is 100K, you might say 75K is base, paid like any regular base, and the 25K is tied to revenue. You'll have a monthly or quarterly goal, with the 25K applied in proportion to the revenue goals. Which means that they might earn ~1K in comp Jan, Feb, Mar, $2.5K in Apr, 3K in May, and so on. You can also divide the 25K by 4, set a quarterly all-or-nothing goal, or a dozen other combinations.
You'll also need to learn more about sales than it sounds like you currently know to prevent yourself from getting steamrolled by someone who knows how to take advantage of the situation.
base + commission. 50% commission is considered aggressive, but offers job security to the sales person. Less base, and it's almost a commissions-only job. Which is acceptable: lots of people work as rep, where the retainer is 0 or very small.
I typed a password, It "stood out" so I had my wife see if she could read it and she couldn't. I had her type a password and I could read it no problem. once she had typed it she could read mine no problem as well. It seems once you've "seen it" it stands out. Sorry, maybe I missed something?
Ha, I'm posting it again, but only because I love this software so much. Check out SizeUp http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/ It has replaced Mercury Mover for me.
Not to keep pushing this software, but SizeUp allows for a keyboard shortcut to do full size windows (for any window) and then snap back to previous size, plus a whole mess of other great features. Its literally the app that kept me using OS X after switching from Linux. And its name your own price licensing.
Some developer blogs might show graphs so you can see the trend of their sales, usually with a line showing where they finally become a viable business, but few release hard numbers. I'm happy to share more hard numbers if anyone asks, since I feel this is very valuable data for anyone considering ISV or the "name your price" model. Feel free to contact me via the site: http://www.irradiatedsoftare.com/contact
It might, if I was really to pay $20 for a hack that does something that should be in the OS by default. And it looks like it still won't let you just resize windows with the mouse from any corner.
