Our Blog

By R. Christopher Haines, President and CEO It’s that time of year again. Did you go to the store with your mom and get a few new pairs of stiff, ugly, darker than they should be, blue jeans? The kind that won’t look cool until they’re washed every week until about...

By R. Christopher Haines, President and CEO Easy for me to say. I’m not in your shoes. But I’ve been there. The big project all comes down to you. The success or failure rides on your shoulders, and you don’t want to let anyone down. But there’s a lot of work. The...

By R. Christopher Haines, President and CEO I didn’t think I was going to survive. But I did. It was rough, but I’m here to talk about it. I made it through four nights on vacation with no cell service. The Glacier National Park area of Montana is special to us and is...

By R. Christopher Haines, President and CEO Well, 2018 is halfway over. Right now most of you are probably thinking something like, “Thanks Mr. Obvious.” But regardless of how evident this fact is, it’s still hard to believe. Kids will be back to school before we know...

By R. Christopher Haines, President and CEO What do you expect when you hire someone to help you? Let’s say you’re painting your house. Do you want to stir the paint while the painter paints? Do you expect to do the painting while the painter stands on the ground and...

By R. Christopher Haines, President and CEO In case anyone had any doubts, everything is still the same. I can confirm this after spending last week at IASA in Nashville. For those not aware, IASA is the Insurance Accounting and Software Association’s national...

By R. Christopher Haines, President and CEO Anyone who reads the rambling nonsense that I put out every couple of weeks knows my dilemma with trying to describe our implementation services. They’re hard to explain. There’s no way around it. We created handouts and...

By R. Christopher Haines, President and CEO I suffer from Indirect Anxiety. I’m not even sure it’s a real thing. But I’ve got it. And you might, too. Here’s a perfect example. I’m waiting on a flight recently at an airport and a woman is talking on her phone. Nothing...

By R. Christopher Haines, President and CEO Well, I recently experienced an out-of-body experience. I didn’t get abducted by aliens or flat-line on an operating room table – it was much worse than that. I was at a convention, but I wasn’t attending the convention. As...

By R. Christopher Haines, President and CEO With many things in our lives, we have to take a leap of faith. These are usually minor things for which you prepare as well as you can but still just have to see what happens. This might be trying a new recipe, getting a...

By R. Christopher Haines, President and CEO I know I’m like a broken record on this stuff. I know some of my good friends are salespeople, and a big part of my own job is sales. But some salespeople drive me nuts. I have to wonder what kind of people actually have...

By R. Christopher Haines, President and CEO As part of my role at Marias, I spend a lot of time on the road visiting companies or attending insurance conferences. Many weeks we host customers, prospects, and partners who visit our office. Through all of this, I get to...

By R. Christopher Haines, President and CEO This week’s blog comes to you from The Most Magical Place on Earth – Walt Disney World. My family is spending time at a place we really enjoy. We alternate between visiting here and Disneyland, are Disney D23 Fan Club...

By R. Christopher Haines, President and CEO This post is likely to get me written off as being biased because we sell hosting. Maybe I am biased. On the other hand, we wouldn’t sell anything I didn’t believe in. And one thing I don’t believe in is insurance software...

By R. Christopher Haines, President and CEO Your insurance company is everything you ever hoped it would be. You’ve got nice products to offer your policyholders. You offer a variety of coverage options that not many can compete with. You treat your producers fairly...

By R. Christopher Haines, President and CEO Software needs to be tested. End of story. Nothing you can ever say will make that fact not true. And as a guy who sells software testing, I’m not even trying to get you to buy it from me. But you have to get it somewhere....

By R. Christopher Haines, President and CEO Okay. The excuses are over. No more blaming the holiday season and being too busy. No more saying we’ll get to that later in the year. And we can’t say the year hasn’t been good and the budget is blown because it’s a new...

By R. Christopher Haines, President and CEO Well, it’s that time of year again. The time for shopping, family, good meals, and resolutions. It’s also the time at which everyone is saying a lot of, “Let’s do that after the 1st.” To say 2017 was a challenge for me and...

By R. Christopher Haines, President and CEO Nothing quite says the holiday season like turkey, Christmas trees, and performance evaluations — everyone’s favorite time of the year, at least for two of the three. Ideally, we’d be doing reviews some other time of the...

By R. Christopher Haines, President and CEO I’ve been in some pretty high stress situations in my life. Throughout my career, I’ve worked some pretty important projects, taken some huge risks, and spoken at conferences in front of large crowds. Through almost two...

By R. Christopher Haines, President and CEO Last week Cambridge University announced it believes it’s discovered a way to stop negative thoughts and, someday, remove bad memories altogether. I totally get the reasoning for this and the desire to develop this...

By R. Christopher Haines, President and CEO You know who these guys are. They know who they are. Or maybe it’s scarier if they don’t. But I can tell you one thing: They give the rest of us who need to sell stuff a bad reputation. This example takes the cake: We had an...

By R. Christopher Haines, President and CEO Does anyone else sell a service that’s hard to explain? You know what it is. Your prospects think they know what it is. But it’s hard to convey what this service actually entails. The real issue is that the service is hardly...

By R. Christopher Haines, President and CEO I’m guessing many of you have worked or attended tradeshows in your careers. I’m no different. We just wrapped up working one of our bigger shows of the year. This show was great for us, but they all have their ups and...

By R. Christopher Haines, President and CEO You could classify our organization as an IT vendor. Though we provide services relating to IT, we’re usually positioned between companies and their IT vendors. So we see it all: the good, the bad, and the ugly. I’m usually...