Landing page optimization (#lpo) can be a powerful way to increase conversion rates and to get more people to complete online forms.

What you do after the form-fill can be even more important.

If your next step is to follow up over the phone, you are probably kissing away money and costing your company a fortune – unless you dial the phone within five minutes…

Delaying your first-dial response time from 5 to just 30 minutes decreases your chances of qualifying the lead by 21 times!

Even delaying the first-dial from 5 minutes to 10 will cut your lead qualification percentage by a factor of four.

This information comes from a joint study between M.I.T. and InsideSales.com (download the whitepaper)

How much effect does a 21x increase in qualification have on the overall sales revenue of a
company?

How many companies understand the importance of this strategy?

There is no excuse for not having a fast first-call time with power dialers from InsideSales.com natively integrated into CRM platforms like SalesForce.com.

So get off your butt, and on the phone – the clock is ticking…

Germany’s justice minister is less than happy about the direction Google’s headed.  Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger thinks the search giant may become a monopoly, and she’s not of a mind to sit by while that happens behind closed doors.

Germany has often posed something of a problem for Google.  It never won the right to the name "Gmail" in the country, faced criticism over Chrome, and was forced to change its Street View data deletion practices.  YouTube’s been the subject of complaints, too.

Now it looks like another battle might be brewing.  According to Reuters, Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger told German magazine Der Spiegel in reference to Google, "All in all, what’s taking shape there to a large extent is a giant monopoly, similar to Microsoft.  My initial response is not to ban something or stop something.  But I do want to create more transparency and ensure that users know what is going on with their data."

She then continued, "I think the companies have an obligation here, and a lot of things ought to be improved.  If that doesn’t happen soon we may have to take action as legislators."

Given how battles in Germany tend to go for Google, the company’s no doubt hoping it doesn’t come to that.

David Carruthers, the former director and CEO of online sports wagering firm BetOnSports, was sentenced to 33 months in prison on Friday, the Justice Department announced.

Carruthers, a citizen of the United Kingdom, was hired by BetOnSports founder, Gary Kaplan, in 2000 as CEO of the online wagering company, which was based in Costa Rica.

"The prosecution and conviction of Carruthers is significant to the Government’s efforts at enforcement of U.S. laws against offshore Internet and telephone sports wagering businesses, because Carruthers was both a foreign national and a top executive of BetOnSports," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven E. Holtshouser.

"Previously, executives, owners and investors believed that they were immune from the reach of U.S. law enforcement; even their business plans were directly aimed at the U.S. market. Both the conviction of, and sentence handed down against Mr. Carruthers should send a message to any foreign business conducting illegal activities in the United States, that geography does not render it untouchable."

Carruthers was arrested in Texas in July 2006, and pleaded guilty to racketeering charges linked to BetOnSports operations in the U.S. Carruthers agreed to cooperate with U.S. authorities.

The sentencing concludes a lengthy investigation and prosecution effort by several law enforcement agencies, the Justice Department said.

Symantec has put together its "State of the Data Center" report, which is the product of a survey of 573 businesses in 26 countries.

"Although mid-sized enterprises tend to evaluate and adopt new technologies at a faster rate than larger organizations, they still face similar data center complexities that are compounded by adopting new initiatives," says Deepak Mohan, senior vice president, Information Management Group at Symantec. "Standardizing on cross-platform solutions that can manage new technologies and automate processes will drive immediate cost reduction and make their jobs easier in the long run."

Symantec cites the following as highlights of the survey:

- Mid-sized enterprises are adopting new technology initiatives such as cloud computing, replication, and deduplication at 11-17 percent higher rates than small or large enterprises.

-  Most enterprises have 10 or more data center initiatives rated as somewhat or absolutely important and 50 percent expect "significant" changes to their data centers in 2010. 

- Half of all enterprises say applications are growing somewhat/quickly and half are finding it difficult and costly to meet service level agreements (SLAs).

- One-third of all enterprises say staff productivity is hampered by too many applications. Adding to the complexity is the continued increase in data causing 71 percent of organizations to consider data reduction technologies such as deduplication.

- Security, backup and recovery, and continuous data protection are the most important initiatives in 2010, ahead of virtualization. Eighty-three percent of enterprises rated security somewhat or absolutely important.  Seventy-nine percent said backup and recovery is somewhat/absolutely important and 76 percent rated continuous data protection as one of their top initiatives.

- Staffing and budgets remain tight with half of all enterprises reporting they are somewhat/extremely understaffed. Finding budget and qualified applicants are the biggest recruiting issues. Seventy-six percent of enterprises have the same or more job requisitions open this year.

- One-third of disaster recovery plans are undocumented or need work and important IT components, such as cloud computing, remote office and virtual servers are often not included.  Almost one-third of enterprises haven’t re-evaluated their disaster recovery plan in the last 12 months.

- Virtual machine protection continues to be a focus for enterprises, with 82 percent of enterprises considering virtual-machine technologies in 2010. Respondents cited granular recovery within virtual machine images as the biggest challenge in virtual machine data protection.

The security company recommends that businesses employ software that supports heterogeneous environments and eliminates islands of information, and deploy deduplication closer to the information source to eliminate redundant data and reduce storage and network costs.

Symantec also highlights the importance of disaster recovery planning, saying enterprises should seek to improve the success of testing by evaluating and implementing testing methods that are non-disruptive.