ISA Firewall Quick Tip : Creating Detailed Reports Using ISA Server 2006 and Excel

aMila oNlinE — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 04:10:00 GMT

Ever wanted to create your own Reports ??? Are you wondering how to create a detailed report for a specific amount of time ,user, URL, Protocol ,etc... Open ISA Management Console Under the Monitoring node, click on Logging Example will create a report with the following filters ( you can customize your reports as needed) a. Logging Last 7 Days b. Action Allowed Connection c. Protocol HTTP d. Client Username Not Equal to Anonymous ( Here you can choose a specific user for example ) e. Specify on which Firewall Policy we want to run the logging for. # Click on Edit Filter, to start editing and adding our filters. # Click on Log Time, then under the Condition drop down list, choose Last 7 Days, and click on Update Click on Action, then under the Condition drop down list, choose Equals, and under the Value drop down list choose Allow Connection and click on Update Under the Filter By choose Protocol, under the Condition choose Equals, and under the Value choose HTTP then click on Add To List Under the Filter By choose Client Username, under the Condition choose Not Equals, and under the Value write Anonymous then click on Add To List ( we want to monitor all authenticated users by username ) Under the Filter By choose Rule, under the Condition choose Equals, and under the Value choose the Firewall Policy you want to run the report for, in this article we have a rule called Allow Internet For All then click on Add To List # Click on the Start Query # The Results will be fetched and displayed . Note that a pop up windows will state that a maximum of 10,000 records can be displayed only. Click OK If you clicked on Help, you will know the reason why a maximum of 10,000 resulted can be displayed. Now, to copy the results to Excel, on the Right Side Pane, under Tasks, click on Copy All Result to Clipboard....(read more)

Building Startup Sales Teams: Tips For Founders

Amila Kumanayake — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 02:31:00 GMT

First off, just to be clear, I’ve never been a sales person. All the points below have been pulled from startup sales teams that I think work pretty well (including the team at my marketing software startup).

Building Startup Sales Teams

1. Don’t hire sales people too early. In the early days, the founders should be able to sell (and should be selling).

2. You don’t need sales people, you need sales. Don’t think VP of Sales — think “Revenue Engineer”. (Not the greatest analogy, but just like you won’t hire a development “manager” as one of the first 5 people in a startup, you shouldn’t hire a sales “manager” either). Don’t get caught up in fancy titles — focus on dollars in the door.

3. Don’t hire several sales people at once. Your goal is to figure out the “pattern” of what kinds of people are best based on what you’re selling and who you’re selling it to. You need some feedback from the system so you can continue to iterate on your hires.

4. If you’ve never hired or been around sales people before, be prepared for a bit of a shock to the system. They’re not bad people, they’re just different. If you're an introverted geek like me, it's helpful to remember that your startup needs to sell stuff.

5. Resist the temptation to create complicated compensation plans. If it requires a spreadsheet to figure out the commission, it’s too hard. You’ll have plenty of time to confuse sales people later — start simple.

6. Agile methodologies can work in sales as well. Iterate! Refine your demo script, your slides, and any other collateral information. Capture the lessons learned by the best-performing people and spread it to the rest.

7. Sales people will generall act in mostly rational (but often surprising) ways based on incentives. The rules of the game defines the behavior of the players. You were warned.

8. ALWAYS connect incentives somehow to ultimate customer happiness. If you reward just “deals getting done”, you’ll get deals — but at too high a price. You might get push-back that sales people don’t control/influence customer happiness, but they do. They “pick” customers, they set expectations, they control the degree of “convincing” applied.

9. Make sure you understand the economics of your business. Figure out your total COCA (Cost of Customer Acquisition). This includes sales people, marketing people and marketing campaigns. Quick example: Lets say you paid a sales person $10k, a marketing person $10k and you spent $5k on Google AdWords (for a total of $25k) last month. If you sold 10 customers last month, your COCA is about $2,500. Different businesses have different needs in terms of sales vs. marketing spend. Make sure neither is too far out of whack.

10. Your life-time-value (how much revenue you expect to generate per customer) should be higher than your COCA. No, I did not need a degree from MIT to figure that out. Once your LTV is a multiple of your COCA, you’re ready to start turning the knob and scaling the business a bit (hiring more sales people). But, if your LTV is way lower than your COCA, proceed with caution. If there is no hope for LTV getting higher than COCA, you’ve got a problem. Don’t try to hire additional sales people until the economics sort of make sense. If the car is pointed towards a brick wall, hitting the accelerator is not a good idea.

11. Track data maniacally (even if it’s just in a spreadsheet). Information you will want includes: What was sold, who sold it, when, for how much, etc. This data will be invaluable later as you start to scale. For example, you should be able to answer the question: We had 14 customers cancel last month — who sold those customers? Is there a pattern? In the early days, you likely won’t have the volume (or the time) to analyze the data — but you should at least capture it for future use.

12. Your pricing should be in line with your sales structure. For example, you can’t expect to have an outside salesforce (that meets with customers in person) if your average deal size is only $10,000. The math won’t work.

13. Once you get beyond three or so people, running your sales in a spreadsheet will become painful. Start looking at CRM systems (like Salesforce.com).

14. Start watching the shape of your “funnel” as early as possible. How many leads are you getting a month? How many turn into opportunities? How many of those convert into paying customers? Once you understand your funnel, you can slowly start tweaking your system to fix the “leaks”.

That’s all I’ve got for now. For those of you that have built early-stage sales teams, what are your ideas and insights?

amila : tips

ISA Firewall Quick Tip : Creating Detailed Reports Using ISA Server 2006 and Excel

Building Startup Sales Teams: Tips For Founders