Steve Bass Likes the INVISUS Service, but Not So Much the Marketing

Steve Bass, who writes for PC World and has a great blog, has been a good friend of mine since I presented to his Pasadena User Group about five years ago, and we hit it off onstage when I used muvee autoProducer 6 to put his photos of China together in a video. So we get together every year at C.E.S. and when we can for a beer (yes, that's singular since Steve has great fun ribbing me for being a teetotaler) when I'm Steve's neck of the woods.

So anyway, Steve signed up his Mom for a trial of INVISUS service, and it worked out well for them. Steve said in an e-mail out to his mailing list that he liked the service, but didn't like the marketing. What didn't he like about the marketing? Well, a couple of things. First and foremost, you have to know someone to sign up. You can't just call up an 800 # or go to the corporate web site and become a subscriber. Well, to be more accurate, you can go to their corporate web site and click on Subscribe Now, but you then need what INVISUS calls an "ISA Sales ID" or a "Customer ID" to get any of the services. Steve doesn't like that aspect of the marketing, and I have to admit that it's a problem. I understand the INVISUS reasoning, however. 1) They don't want to compete with their word-of-mouth marketing network and thus want all subscription commissions to be assigned to someone other than the company, and 2) they want to control their growth rates and keep them at manageable levels. I've spoken with INVISUS CEO James Harrison about this, and I think he agrees that there should probably be a way for interested parties to sign up for subscriptions without going through an existing rep. I'd guess they'll be working on that in the future.

Anyway, for now, blog readers can use "ESPLIN1550" as their ISA Sales ID. In case you're wondering where that ID came from, Joe Esplin (ESPLIN1550) is in the Air Force and is married to my daughter, Nicia and is the father of my first grandaughter, Alyssa. My ISA ID is WHITTLE1200, but I'd rather see people sign up under Joe.

The other thing that some people are uncomfortable with is the fact that INVISUS uses what is a unique marketing plan to promote its services. Nobody can decide what to call it. Mike Duvall loves network marketing (MLM), so he thinks its network marketing. My experience with network marketing and MLM, however, is that the products are usually overpriced to pay commissions, over-hyped to allow them to be overpriced, and the salespeople get paid more from having you join and buy product they don't need than they are from just selling product in the first place. NONE of that is true with INVISUS, however. I've never been involved with MLM or network marketing before, however, so before I got involved with INVISUS, I was skeptical and investigated it and its marketing plan extensively until I understood it completely from every angle I could think of - ethical, legal, competitive, and cultural. Now, after 3 years of experience with the company and it's services, I'm totally comfortable with them and very proud to be representing them - but I do recognize that some people will automatically lump them in with other MLM companies they've had experience with, and will dismiss them and their offerings with regrettable prejudice. That's OK, though, because lovers of quality are used to being in the minority.

So interestingly, INVISUS seems to be attracting quality people with open minds who don't automatically assume that the market leaders are the quality leaders or even the value leaders. So if that describes you, then investigate INVISUS thoroughly and give me a call. If that doesn't describe you, then Ignorance is bliss and I wouldn't want to disturb that bliss. So just leave this blog immediately - Microsoft has PC security and support offerings that you should subscribe to, and Lifelock has a form of Identity Theft Protection you'll find appealing. The one option that's penny wise and pound foolish in this day and age of Windows, cybercrime and identity theft (not parallel, I know): going without any form of Identity Theft Protection, trying to be your own PC Security Expert, and being your own PC systems engineer.