Well, I am officially in mourning…… My Canucks (NHL Hockey Playoffs) suffered a gut-wrenching defeat in overtime to go down 3-1 in the best of 7 series. But life must go on:)

As I have mentioned in previous posts, the practice of Outsourcing for Internet businesses has become an inevitable reality as they seek to meet budgets and remain competitive in a quickly change Internet landscape. I would say approximately 85% of the time, I have been very satisfied with my outsourcing endeavors and have been pleased with the results.

But, I want to chat about the 15% today! I recently suffered a set-back with a web application that I had outsourced to an International Firm. The overall performance and productivity of the company had started to spiral downward over the past couple months, which led me to the tough, but inevitable decision of letting this development team go. While this was a difficult process to deal with and costly from a time and invesment standpoint, it was also a great learning experience!

Many of you may have had an opportunity to read my report, Six Success Strategies for building Effective Outsourcing Partnerships. You can access the report at ESalesGuru.com.  My sixth strategy is to establish realistic and specific performance measures. I see that in my recent Outsourced project, I faltered on this particular strategy and let the performance measures get blurred.  The development firm repeatedly missed the mark on our agreed upon performance measures and yet I delayed the tough decision of pulling the project.  Yes, once again I did not follow my own strategies and advice that I always preach about!

I can’t emphasize enough the importance of being a pro-active Project Manager that continually evaluates the project progress against the original performance measures and time-frames that were established.

Well, I am happy to report that the "Outsourcing Blues" are behind me. I have moved on and selected a talented firm and have laid out clear expectations for the completion of our project.  Again, if you haven’t had a chance to review my above report, I highly encourage to to take a read as it may just help you avoid some of those pitfalls that I have personally experienced. Here is a quick summary of the Six Strategies:

1. Define for motivations/objectives for Outsourcing.

2. Know your Core Competencies.

3.  Choose the Right Outsourced Professional/Firm (The report includes a good evaluative process to help in your selection)

4. Build an effective project management Process.

5. Communicate effectively with your Outsourced Partners.

6. Establish realistic and specific performance measures.

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Well, the shovelling of THICK SNOW continues in my neck of the woods in British Columbia, Canada. While I was shovelling about a foot of snow from my driveway this morning and a saint of man pulled up on his quad (with attached shovel) and offered to plow through the rest of my driveway. This guy made my day! Thanks for saving my back!

I want to briefly touch on a important element in establishing a good and productive relationship with your Outsourced Internet Marketing Professional/Firm…. Performance Incentives

Performance incentives in any work setting can be a powerful tool for enhancing motivation, strengthening commitment and improving focus for the respective job or project.  It is easy for a work environment to grow stagnant and unproductive with no incentive for employees or contractors to go “beyond the call of duty” in their work endeavors. Implementing appropriate incentives in your outsourcing relationship can lead to higher productivity and better performance across the board…. I have experienced this first hand! More

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Last week, I had a good dialogue with one of my outsourcing partners regarding the topic of “Expectation Management”. Have you heard of this lingo before? My partner enlightened me on this new terminology and the important of practicing Expectation Management in all our outsourcing endeavors.

First of all here is a definition of ”Expectation Management” that I came across:  More

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