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Video has clearly become one of the most effective ways to engage people. It taps into more than just a single sense such as the auditory in the case of a podcast, or the visual in still photography. Well executed, video can also touch prospects where it matters most. Their emotions.

One of the most highly effective and convincing uses of video in real estate can be found in client testimonials. They can be invaluable, influencing prospective clients to pick up the phone or write. Done wrong however, they can not only fail to deliver their intended objective, but in fact harm your image and business over the long term.

Banking on extensive experience in advertising, including the management of a major true testimonial campaign for a multinational brand, here are some dos and don’ts for video testimonials.

• ALWAYS feature real clients. The credibility this lends cannot be stressed enough.
• Ensure viewers understand that the testimonial is of a real client. A full screen caption ahead of the actual testimonial, or a small caption that appears during the recording should do it. Some clients may not wish to use their name on the video, so their initials as well as their city and state would do.
• Shoot the video where your client can be naturally happy about the subject being discussed. Their satisfaction would project in their voice and attitude. Inside or just outside the home you helped them buy are good options. A nice backyard with the client’s kids happily playing, or with a spouse smiling at their side are genuine and convincing. If all options are on the table, pick the one with the least noise interference potential (cars, sirens,  air conditioner, yelling).
• Prepare and use questions during your interview with the client that naturally lead them to discuss specific benefits you would like to promote. For example, “tell me how important negotiating the deal on your terms was to you, and how you feel your agent was able to assist you in that area.”
• Keep the testimonials short. 10 to 15 second bites are effective and not boring. Your viewers do not want a dissertation about you but, rather, they want to garner a sense of confidence in you before they make their decision on which Realtor® to choose.
• Film the footage at a slight angle so the subject is facing you and not looking directly at the camera. A tripod would make this task fairly straightforward. When editing or selecting the clips that will be used online, under no circumstance should you use material where the client flips between you and the camera lens.
• Mix into your final edit some close up shots on the subject’s face, to create an instant connection with your viewers. Add slightly wider shots to bring life to the video and incorporate some of the background such as a part of the home or kids playing on a swing or enjoying a board or video game. The camera’s focus should however remain on your subject at all times.
• Lighting and overall quality are key. If you are not confident with your own videography skills,  invest in someone who does. Film school students may be a great resource and may do your projects for you for free, to build their portfolios.
• Do not use ANY footage that sounds like a sales pitch. Viewers connect with real people sharing their true feelings, and are repelled by sales spiels. Tell your subjects to be themselves and when necessary, ask if you could re-take a scene. A camera play back on location is a good way to decide if a retake of a scene is in order.
• Audio is just as important as video resolution. Use a good quality microphone and test it beforehand.
• Capture important sentences and use them in other online and offline marketing materials such as listing presentations, ads and flyers or postcards.
• Prepare and get a release form signed by your client, allowing you to use the footage and content in your marketing, royalty free.

Mark Reid sold Cityfone to Rogers for $26M in 2010. He lives in Vancouver and just bought land on Salt Spring and some sheep while planning for his next business. (Laura Leyshon for the Globe and Mail)

Mark Reid had started and flipped several companies by the time Rogers Communications Inc. came calling for his Vancouver cellphone firm.

The 52-year-old serial entrepreneur had previously brokered the sale of two office supply companies he started from scratch. He knew the drill. But Mr. Reid also knew when to call in the pros.

• The payoffs of owning the podium
• Method not as important as the message
• Going global, with a little help from your friends

“If you don’t, you’ll either sell your business for a whole lot less than you could, or you won’t sell it at all,” says Mr. Reid, founder of Cityfone Telecommunications Inc., which Rogers bought last year for $26-million. The telecom giant bought Cityfone to acquire its subscribers.

Mr. Reid had started the company in 1999 and expected to spend five years building it before even considering an exit. Instead it took 12 years – and nine months to sell.

Entrepreneurs such as Mr. Reid often know a lot about running their companies yet very little about selling them.

In the business world, where egos reign and top performers tend to be those who can do it all themselves, expert deal-makers say the secret to selling a company at top dollar is knowing when to ask for help.

“Selling a business requires very different skills,” says Doug Irwin, a founder of the Vancouver corporate finance advisory firm Capital West Partners.

“Athletes and movie stars have agents and it’s the same thing,” adds Joseph Calvano, who sold Dollar Giant Ltd., which he had started in 2001, to Nasdaq-traded Dollar Tree Inc. for $62-million in 2010. “It’s your business, so you’re going to take it too personally – it’s good to have someone in the battlefield and you can stay behind the scenes.”

For Saul Klein, the former chief executive officer of Saskatoon-based Point2 Technologies Inc., external advisers not only helped broker a deal, they found potential buyers he’d never heard of. Today Mr. Klein is a senior vice-president at Point2, which was bought last year by Yardi Systems, a U.S. real estate and heavy-equipment industry software maker.

“Some potential buyers want a minority interest, others want just the assets, and then some are big private equity funds,” says Mr. Klein, who was running his own real estate software firm in San Diego in 2007 when the five Saskatchewan owners of Point2 recruited him to be CEO. “I don’t have coffee with any of these people – I have no idea where to find them.”

Typically, business brokers will first help a company create a confidential memorandum that describes its operations. This can then be distributed to potential buyers. Then brokers help the CEO prepare a pitch and schedule appointments with interested parties. Finally, they work with the company to negotiate terms and determine a strategy for releasing the news, both externally and internally.

“What I realized is that while you might be all you need to run your business, you are not all you need to sell it,” Mr. Klein says.

HOW TO GREASE A DEAL, MAXIMIZE YOUR PRICE

Be ready: From the beginning, run your business as if the intensive due diligence process – in which lawyers and accountants pore over every contract and cheque in the building – could begin tomorrow.

“You have to have the systems in place, have all financial information accurate, so that anyone from the outside could come in and immediately understand it,” says Dollar Giant’s Joseph Calvano. “Entrepreneurs do things on the fly, but remember at some point you will have a banker or an investor looking at the books.”

In other words, “You have to run your business like a business every day,” he says.

SANTA BARBARA, CA-Locally based Yardi Systems has acquired Point2 Technologies Inc.  Headquartered in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan with offices in Vancouver, British Columbia and San Diego. Point2 develops, markets, and supports online marketing software solutions for the real estate industry. Point2’s entire management and staff will remain with the company.

The company also develops, markets, and supports inventory management and online marketing software for the heavy equipment industry. Customers are located in over 120 countries.

The acquisition will further strengthen the Point2 brand and position in the listing syndication and website marketplaces, according to a prepared statement. “Point2’s strengths and solid market penetration create a significant growth opportunity for our companies,” says Anant Yardi, president of Yardi Systems. “We look forward to capitalizing on Yardi’s capabilities in combination with Point2’s expertise and traction to take the business to the next level.”

Saul Klein, Yardi senior vice president of Point2 and former chief executive officer of Point2 points out that “Point2 is very excited to become part of Yardi, one of the largest and most successful software companies in real estate today. Our vision and cultures are a perfect match.” He adds that “The combination of Point2 and Yardi puts us on a fast track of innovation that will serve our customers and business partners well across the industries that we serve.”

Earlier this year, Yardi also acquired New York City-based PropertyShark as GlobeSt.com previously reported. Yardi acquired PropertyShark “to integrate deep property data into the Yardi suite of real estate investment management and property management software,” according to a statement by the Santa Barbara-based company.

That purchase of PropertyShark also followed Yardi’s previous acquisition of Waltham, MA-based RentGrow. That acquisition, according to Yardi Systems founder, enabled Yardi to “meet a growing demand among multifamily housing providers to incorporate credit checks, rental payment history searches, background checks, and other applicant screening functions into their core property management system.”

It’s a big day for Saskatoon’s Point2 Technologies. The Canadian company, which develops, markets, and supports online marketing software solutions for the real estate industry, has been acquired by Yardi Systems Inc., a successful software company. Point2 has 130 employees, was founded in 1996, and has secondary offices in Vancouver and San Diego. Capital West Partners was Point2′s advisor for the deal.

“Point2’s strengths and solid market penetration create a significant growth opportunity for our companies. We look forward to capitalizing on Yardi’s capabilities in combination with Point2’s expertise and traction to take the business to the next level,” said Anant Yardi, president of Yardi Systems. 

“Point2 is very excited to become part of Yardi, one of the largest and most successful software companies in real estate today. Our vision and cultures are a perfect match,” said Saul Klein, Yardi senior vice president of Point2 and former chief executive officer of Point2. “The combination of Point2 and Yardi puts us on a fast track of innovation that will serve our customers and business partners well across the industries that we serve.”

Quote Point2′s website:

“The people behind Point2 that you’ve come to know and love will remain at the company.  Any contacts you’ve made here will remain the same too.”

“What does this mean for our customers and members?  This is an exciting time for our members as well.  With Yardi on our side we’ll have the ability to accommodate many of the requests for new product features and expand our horizons at a much faster pace. We anticipate surpassing the expectations of our membership by leaps and bounds.”

There is not yet final word on the amount of money involved, but sources say that as a result of a rather unexpected bidding war, Point2 pulled in more than originally anticipated. There will definitely be celebrations in Saskatoon tonight.

Point2 Technologies Inc. has added another 10 multiple listing service and real estate association contracts to its books, bringing its 12-month total to more than 100 partnerships representing 125,000 real estate brokers and agents and more than 550,000 listings in the United States.

The Saskatoon-based company has been forming partnerships with MLS and real estate groups during the past year – contracts that allow the organizations access to automated listings and networks that include close to 20 high-traffic consumer real estate search sites and search engines and more than 250 media websites across the United States.

“Organized real estate’s adoption of  ‘distribution trumps destination’ as an operating mantra has accelerated significantly over recent months, recognizing the benefits of publishing listings where consumers go online when they shop for real estate,” said CEO Saul Klein.

Point2′s latest contracts include real estate associations in the greater Cincinnati and northern Kentucky regions.

© Copyright (c) The StarPhoenix

April 1, 2007

By Walt Moore, Senior Editor

Eight years ago, René Bates, owner of René Bates Auctioneers in
McKinney, Texas, casually wondered if he could use the Internet to
dispose of vehicles left over from a live auction. To test the idea, he
developed an easy-to-use online bidding system. It worked. Last year he
conducted 475 online auctions for municipalities, utility companies and
governmental agencies that were disposing of used equipment. Early this
year, Bates handled an online auction for Dallas-Fort Worth Airport,
and at the time, he told us that visits (lookers and bidders) to the
auction website were averaging an amazing 900,000 per day.

No denying that the phenomenon of online buying — and selling — via
the Internet is attracting more and more attention. For some
individuals and businesses, buying and selling online is a practice as
natural as breathing. Others, however, are somewhat skeptical of the
process — distrustful, perhaps, of the electronics involved or the
unseen humans at the other end of the electronics.

No matter which camp you might be in as a buyer of construction
equipment and heavy trucks, you have ample online opportunities these
days — if you choose to use them — for investigating and purchasing
everything from welders, air compressors and light towers, to
skid-steers, pavers and gooseneck trailers. And increasingly, it seems,
potential buyers are using these online sources.

For example, according to Nakkia Gray, general manager of
EquipmentTraderOnline.com, a website used by both dealers and private
sellers to advertise equipment, the site averages 200,000 visitors per
month, and these potential buyers conduct some 760,000 product searches
among the more than 40,000 items typically available. Because the sale
of equipment advertised on the website is handled privately between
buyers and sellers, no actual sales figures are available, but the
number of traceable e-mail and phone inquiries from potential buyers to
dealers is significant, says Gray.

In some instances, though, sales of equipment from online sources
can be tracked, and the numbers are impressive. For instance, according
to Rob Alleger, chief executive officer of IronPlanet, an online
auction company specializing in construction equipment and heavy
trucks, sales range from 600 to 1,200 units per month (depending on the
time of year), and dollar volume on those sales may range from $12 to
$20 million.

Contractors increasingly are using the Internet to research and
purchase equipment, says Chester Hagen, vice president of sales for
Point2 Technologies, which created on “online marketplace” (UsedIron.com)
in 1996. Much of the research is done in the evenings or on weekends,
says Hagen, either directly on dealer websites or via
listing-aggregation sites, which collect listings from multiple
websites. UsedIron.com, says Hagen, each day generates around 10,000
detailed views, each representing a potential buyer who has viewed
information for a specific machine.

“Contractors are demanding rich content in the form of more photos,
descriptions, conditions and details,” says Hagen. “And sellers who
provide this content can expect to receive more inquiries than those
who use fewer photos and less information. The ease of use, speed and
accessibility [of online research and buying] have changed this
business forever.”

So, if you’re interested in buying (or just investigating)
construction equipment and heavy trucks online, you can go at it in a
number of ways. We contacted a selection of online buying resources
(some responded, others didn’t) and assembled a sample of available
services. The list is not intended to be all-inclusive, nor does
mention of a particular service indicate endorsement by CE.

And we’ll take the liberty up front of passing on a bit of advice
offered by nearly everyone we contacted: Use good judgment when buying
and selling machines online. Perhaps Point2 Technologies’ Hagen says it
best: “Buying equipment online should be done with the same due
diligence as buying offline.”

BuyerZone.com

If you want to do comparison-shopping and, at the same time,
potentially encourage competition among possible suppliers, you might
try BuyerZone.com. Owned by Construction Equipment’s
parent company, Reed Business Information, BuyerZone.com is a free
service designed to connect the buyer with a number of qualified
suppliers.

For example, by clicking the Industrial heading on BuyerZone’s home
page, and then on Backhoe-Loaders, you bring up a short questionnaire
that helps detail the machine you’re considering — for example, New or
Used? Application? Dig Depth? Financing Preferences?

When you submit the questionnaire, you create a Request For Quote
(RFQ) in the Buyer-Zone system, which immediately matches your
information with as many as six backhoe-loader suppliers within a
practical distance of your zip-code area. Since these suppliers are
paying BuyerZone to receive your RFQ, and since they know they’re
competing with other suppliers, they typically respond quickly by phone
or e-mail. From that point on, you evaluate what you hear and do
business with your chosen supplier.

eBay

On the other hand, if you like the prospect of landing a deal at an auction, plenty of online action is available.

For example, Tony Quarrick, president of Quarrick Equipment &
Auctioneers in Uniontown, Penn., conducts live auctions for his
clients, many of whom are construction-equipment dealers. But for
selling his own inventory, he relies increasingly on an electronic
auction service, eBay. During the
past five years, Quarrick has sold nearly 500 pieces on eBay, and he
now has one employee whose full-time job is to answer questions from
prospective online buyers, arrange for buyers to inspect equipment, and
assist with shipping.

Quarrick sets no reserve on the items he places on eBay, that is, he
doesn’t require that a minimum price be met before he sells, agreeing
instead to sell to the highest bidder. In fact, he sets ridiculously
low opening bids, for example, $99 for a recently offered Toro
Dingomini-skid loader. Low initial bids and the lack of a reserve, he
says, stimulate aggressive bidding.

“I won’t deny that we’ve lost money on a few deals,” he says, “but the bottom line is that we make money.”

IronPlanet

But, if you’re hesitant to buy from an auction website that sells
everything from tubas to trenchers, other online auctions specialize in
equipment.

IronPlanet, for example, is
an online auction service that conducts “featured auctions” every other
Thursday. Machines in featured auctions are offered on an unreserved
basis (Iron Planet does, however, set the opening bid) and are
typically “on the block” for five to 10 minutes. You’re advised of the
auction date and time when you preview an item. If buyers can’t be
online at the time of the auction, they can submit an online
PriorityBid, which allows IronPlanet to bid on their behalf.

IronPlanet has achieved a measure of distinction in the online
marketplace with its inspection reports, which detail the condition of
machines for sale. The reports, available well in advance of the
auction date, are compiled, says the company, by a team of more than
350 experienced inspectors who use standard evaluation forms to assess
machine condition at the seller’s location.

If buyers find machine condition to be other than represented in the
inspection report, the company’s IronClad Assurance program provides
recourse. IronPlanet also handles the transfer of funds and machine
title between buyer and seller.

Ritchie Bros.

While some online auctions are electronic only, those conducted by Ritchie Bros.
are adjuncts to selected live auctions, meaning that online bidders are
competing with bidders at the live auction. Items are offered on an
unreserved basis (“as is, where is, on sale day”), and all potential
buyers are welcome to inspect items at the live-auction site prior to
sale day.

The company’s rbauctionBid-Live system allows online participants
“to see an image of the machine on the block, to hear the auctioneer
call out bids and to place bids.” When online bidders have activated
the “Bid” button on their computer screen, the dollar amount displayed
is the current asking price for the selected item, and clicking the
button submits the bid. If the bid is the first to reach the central
servers, it is forwarded to the auctioneer. By submitting an online
“proxy bid” prior to the auction, buyers allow Ritchie Bros. to bid on
their behalf. Winning bidders must abide by the company’s terms and
conditions regarding payment.

AssetLine.com

Although we couldn’t find a North American contact for AssetLine.com,
an online auction service, we include the company here, because it
seems to have a significant international presence. If you’re a
contractor needing to secure and place equipment in various parts of
the world, this website and its online bidding system might be worth
investigating. Registered bidders have access to detailed
machine-condition reports.

UsedIron.com

Among the listing-aggregation websites, which bring buyers and sellers together to transact business on their own, is Point2 Technologies‘ UsedIron.com.
According to vice president of sales, Chester Hagen, machine listings
on UsedIron.com originate from a number of sources, including dealers
using the company’s Point2 MANAGER inventory-management system;
contractors (who may advertise up to five machines free of charge on
the site); and syndication partners, such as online auction services
and other listing-aggregation sites looking for additional exposure.

“UsedIron employs a proprietary monitoring system for all Free
UsedIron Premium Ads [those placed by end-users] to eliminate
fraudulent sellers,” says Hagen, “and to keep data accurate and
reputable for buyers on the site.”

MachineMart

MachineMart presents an inventory of used machines available in the inventories of North American equipment dealers who are members of the Associated Equipment Dealers (AED).
The website’s home page presents a list of the top 10 machine
categories (by frequency of search), and clicking on a category brings
up a complete list of machines available, noting make, model, price,
year of manufacture and state location. Subsequently clicking on
Details presents a general description of the machine’s condition
(often with photos) and contact information.

Or, the site visitor can browse by manufacturer and, again, the home
page presents a list of the top 10 manufacturers by frequency of
search. Statistics recently presented on the site advertised that 97
AED distributors, doing business in 350 locations, were offering nearly
8,300 machines for sale.

EquipmentTraderOnline.com

EquipmentTraderOnline.com
lists items in such categories as earthmoving, lifting, concrete,
attachments and trailers. Visitors to the site can search by machine
type, manufacturer, state or zip code/specified distance criteria, and
an advanced-search feature narrows selections by such categories as
specific model and price range. Once the potential buyer pulls up the
listing for a specific machine, complete seller contact information is
available.

According to general manager, Nakkia Gray, the company uses an
advertisement-verification process to help protect both buyers and
sellers from fraudulent activity, plus it maintains a security center (www.traderonlinesecurity.com) to address potential seller (and buyer) scams.

CatUsed.com

The inventory on the CatUsed.com
website is primarily used equipment, parts and attachments available
from Caterpillar dealers. The prospective buyer can search generally by
product type or manufacturer, but can potentially narrow the search by
specifying exact models and geographical locations, as well as
selecting a range for year of manufacture, hour-meter reading and price.

The listing provides a summary that details the unit’s features and
notes its price, general location, hour-meter reading, and a rating of
its overall condition. If potential buyers want to further investigate
a machine, they are encouraged to first select a Caterpillar dealer
close to their location. Cat’s logic is apparently to help the buyer
establish a relationship with a nearby dealer, who can work with the
machine-owning dealer to arrange the sale and who can provide product
support after the sale. Caterpillar promotes the integrity of the Cat
Used.com system by saying it is based on the stellar reputation of Cat
Dealers.

MachineryTrader.com

According to MachineryTrader.com,
its website features a continuously updated database of equipment,
parts and attachments for sale directly from dealer inventories. The
site also allows investigating rental sources and auction results.
Machine listings typically include serial number, hour-meter reading,
price, name and location of the selling dealer and a general
description of the machine and its condition.

MachineryTrader.com is international in scope, but according to the
company’s Chuck Lewis, North America is its core market. The company’s
website listings are extensive, having, for example, more than 40,000
units in just seven major earthmoving categories. Activity on the site
continues to increase, says Lewis, but he cautions (as do most online
services bringing buyers and sellers together) that buyers must do
their homework, including, if the situation warrants, traveling to
inspect the machine.

Crane Network

Crane Network
was created in 1998 and specializes in online crane sales, in which
buyers deal directly with sellers. The number of units listed typically
is around 2,000, ranging from small truck-mounted units to rough
terrains to towers. According to the company, the site has an estimated
30,000 visitors per month. Listings typically include photos, basic
machine information, and seller contact information.

Where is the most advanced real estate software developed? Not in hot
real estate markets like Calgary or Vancouver. Not in high tech hotbeds
like Ottawa or Toronto. Each month, a Saskatoon-based technology
company signs up thousands of new customers to its real estate
software, constantly sending to new heights a monster client base that
today stands at 76,000 Realtors® from 77 countries around the world.
From their start in e-commerce software for the heavy equipment
industry, to their current rise in the real estate market, Point2
Technologies Inc. is becoming known as a leader in technology solutions
that enable buying and selling over the Internet.

Point2
started in 1996, when current CEO Wendell Willick, his brother Barry
and three friends saw an opportunity. The group knew the expanding
Internet was an ideal venue to enable buying and selling of used mining
equipment around the world. Steady positive growth enabled the company
to constantly improve its services and technology. In 2001, Point2
licensed its software to Caterpillar Inc. The agreement granted the
world’s largest heavy equipment manufacturer the rights to use Point2’s
technology to power its global used equipment dealer network. This
partnership facilitated the development of more innovative technology,
including techniques for compressing and storing data and pictures
required to describe the products for sale online.

In
2001, Point2 recognized an opportunity to apply its technology in the
real estate market. “People shopping for equipment online need pictures
and descriptions. We saw the parallels in real estate, a huge market
with substantial growth potential for our business,” explains Willick.
Point2 did their homework. They learned how buyers and sellers
interact, as well as the role of the broker and the agent. They tested
their products in the field and incorporated their lessons before
taking the product to market. The company created Point2 Agent, a
product supported by leading edge technology, but is extremely simple
to use — a winning combination.

Where
has this led? First, what started out in spare rooms in Ottawa and
Saskatoon has grown into an organization that employs over 80 people in
its Saskatoon headquarters, and a regional office based in Vancouver,
British Columbia. Each year, the company enables the management and
sale of several billion dollars worth of used equipment, through over
300 dealerships worldwide. Point2’s real estate software empowers tens
of thousands of Realtors® around the world every day with leading edge
tools to effectively market their services on the Internet.

Wendell
Willick is confident about the future of the company: “We’re working on
new projects all the time.” Most of the financing for development and
expansion has, to date, come from Point2’s existing revenue and
profits. To help fund growth, Point2’s management has also taken
advantage of technology development programs such as those offered by
the National Research Council Canada — Industrial Research Assistance
Program. Point2 involves all its staff members in its growth, with 15%
of the company owned by employees. With a bright future ahead, Point2
management’s vision and investments already seem to be paying off.

GE Capital announced
today a marketing agreement with Point2 Technologies heavy
equipment marketplace at Point2.com (http://www.point2.com).

GE Capital, the financial services unit of General Electric
Company will serve as Point2′s exclusive financing provider.
Under the alliance, Point2.com’s 6,000 daily users will have
access to the diverse array of financial products and services
offered by seven GE Capital businesses through GE Trucking
(http://www.getrucking.com)
and GE CFO Solutions (http://www.gecfo.com)
– GE’s newest finance portals.

By forging this alliance with Point2 we’re providing their
customers, buyers, dealers and manufacturers of heavy equipment
with access to flexible financial solutions,” says Steve
Poole, General Manager of GE Capital’s B2B Portal Initiative.
“Users simply enter a few pieces of information and our configurators
do all the work – matching their needs with viable financing
options.”

GETrucking.com was launched in October and offers a comprehensive
selection of financial and service solutions for companies’
transportation needs. GECFO.com was launched in November and
helps busy CFO and financial executives find financial products,
services, research and information.

Founded in 1996, Point2 Technologies has quickly become a
leading heavy equipment marketplace on the Internet. Point2
was recently named the #1 e-business in Canada by a Bain and
Company study sponsored by Canada’s national newspaper, The
Globe and Mail. Point2 designs proprietary, patent-pending
Internet software for heavy equipment manufacturers such as
Caterpillar, John Deere, Komatsu, Case, Hitachi and Volvo.
Over 70 global heavy equipment companies at more than 350
branch locations across North America and Europe, rely on
Point2 software to power their e-business.

GE Capital, with assets of more than US$345 billion, is a
global, diversified financial services company with 28 specialized
businesses. A wholly-owned subsidiary of General Electric
Company, GE Capital, based in Stamford, CT, provides equipment
management, mid-market and specialized financing, specialty
insurance and a variety of consumer services, such as car
leasing, and credit cards, to businesses and individuals around
the world. GE is a diversified services, technology and manufacturing
company with operations worldwide.

Contact:

GE Capital, Stamford
Marcy Brucellaria, 203/961-2281
marcy.brucellaria@gecapital.com

Being recognized as the No. 1 best managed and most promising
“dot-com” company in all of Canada was an honor for the Willick
brothers who say this is something they will remember for
the rest of their lives.

“To stand out from our competitors in the dynamic dot-com
world is a real tribute and reward to the hard work, diligence
and vision that we and our entire team have shared since going
into business a few years ago,” adds the brothers.

When the brother team identified an opportunity to use the
Internet to connect buyers and sellers of heavy equipment,
Point2.com was founded in the fall of 1996. As development
proceeded, Willick and Willick realized that the technology
could be pushed further, allowing sellers to leverage their
data to produce many marketing opportunities.

The Point2 Heavy Equipment System is a user-friendly Internet
interface software application that enables users to maintain
and coordinate inventory, sales and marketing and can be accessed
and maintained from anywhere in the world.

Wendell Willick, CEO, says as he tried to introduce the listing
service to heavy equipment dealers, he realized that most
of them were not technologically savvy. “Most of these people
were not zooming around the Internet. To have them use the
Internet to plug in data, take photos with digital camera,
resize them and then save as a compressed format so it wouldn’t
be too big to send over the Internet, was too much to ask
for,” says Willick.

Wendell and his brother Barry Willick, President, knew the
only way they were going to make their online business work
was if they developed software applications that simplified
the work for their clients and that’s precisely what the brothers
did.

It didn’t take long for the business to take flight. “All
of a sudden we became a development house of world-wide heavy
equipment applications that helped non-technical people interface
with the Internet,” Willick explains.

“Barry is an incredible programmer. He was really the original
architect of our technology and he was the one who put all
the grunt work into the programming and did a fabulous job
at it,” Willick (Wendell) enthuses.

Willick says most clients utilizing the software application
are U.S. companies with $100 to $200 million dollars in revenues.
These companies include heavy equipment giants such as Holt
Company of Texas, Hoss Equipment Co., and RDO Equipment Co.

In addition, Willick notes they have also licensed their technology
into a new sector to be used in the emergency vehicle re-sell
market. “This is actually a co-venture as the licensing agreement
stipulates we receive 25 per cent of the company. This is
a great example of how our software application can be used
in other vertical markets,” says Willick (Wendell).

The Idea
In 1993, long before the Internet was thriving, Willick kicked
back with a mining friend over a couple of beers. That’s when
the idea hit him: there’s money to be made with the re-sell
of heavy equipment. “My friend, who was a senior executive
for a mining company in Manitoba, was telling me that a mine
he knew of was shutting down and they were just leaving millions
of dollars worth of mining equipment in the ground. There
was no other use for it locally and they didn’t know how to
market it,” says Willick.

Point2 currently employs 25 full-time professionals in two
locations. Head office is located in Saskatoon, with a sales
office in Vancouver. More than half of their employees are
systems development professionals.

MNP and Point2 Get Wired
As the business grew, the partners saw the need for a
highly qualified CA firm and people who had the vision and
expertise to guide us them through their rapid business expansion
process. MNP, particularly Peter Clark, had initially provided
Willick with services in the past, so the choice was obvious.
Saskatoon MNP partners Les Wall, CA and Les Cannam, CA, quickly
joined the team.

Meyers Norris Penny Publications, Beyond
Numbers, September 2000.