Monday, November 30, 2009

Marketing Metrics

My weight-loss method notwithstanding, I have hit on a revolutionary scheme to measure my marketing efforts.

One of my tactics is to ‘touch’ my contacts with a phone call.

Like many entrepreneurs, the thought of interrupting someone at their work scares me, but the prospect of going broke scares me even more.

Rick Shea of Optiv8 says that I need to know how each of my marketing tactics works.

Management Measures



I’ve tried making penciled tally-marks on a sheet of paper, but all too often I reach for the phone and forget to tally.

Here’s the scheme:



I place an empty glass jar to the left of telephone.

I place a tiny bowl of nickels to the right of the telephone.

When I reach for the telephone, I can’t help but see the jar and bowl.

I move a nickel from the easy-to-access bowl into the jar, and make the phone call.

If by the end of the day I have enough money for an ice-cream, I shall walk across the street to McDonalds .

Regardless of the outcome, at the start of the next day, all the nickels go back into the bowl.

Contact www.ChrisGreaves.com for this image! MarketingMetrics_GEDC0006.JPG

Here’s a photo of my setup; the phone sits IN the jar, which is an added reminder.


And yes, those are ½ inch washers in the bowl. You don’t expect me to use real nickels on the web, do you?

No accruals! That’s the rule.



P.S. If you have REAL trouble getting started with phone calls, start this scheme with two-dollar coins the first day, dollars the second, quarters the third, dimes the fourth, and settle down into nickels on the fifth day.

Be Nice to Yourself.



P.P.S. I suppose I could extend the scheme to a slab of Brie from Bruno ’s on those days when I email out a proposal.

P.P.P.S Let’s be clear about this: If your stumbling-block is picking up the phone to place a call, move the nickel AS you pick up the phone. It matters not that you got a recording and decided not to leave a message. What matters is that you PICKED UP THE PHONE and were willing to engage in conversation.

P.P.P.P.S You can measure several metrics at once by using, say, nickels for outgoing calls, dime for incoming calls – you get double-points if your outgoing calls result in a call back to you! Try a $5 note for every proposal you are invited to send out, $10 per invoice.

You get the idea ….

Friday, November 27, 2009

Why the Pressure from Scripts?

Another day, another script-set (a) If they pick up the phone (b) if I get voice-mail (c) if I get a receptionist (d) if I get put through to sales, and so on.

I still feel new enough that I edit a previous script, and type in the real name, the real phone number, “star” to use the directory and even the digits that correspond to the person’s name – I am not so good at locating the tiny letters on the phone.

I am suddenly aware that I am using solvent to wipe some erasable marker ink from my whiteboard.

Why Am I Doing this?



I am supposed to be phoning.

I suspect that I am putting myself under too much pressure.

This phone call isn’t going to make or break me – I’m already broke.

I suspect that I am treating this as the most important phone call of the year.

It is

And it isn’t.

It is vitally important that I make this call, but, the outcome of the call is unlikely to have an immediate impact on my business.

I Settle on a New Perspective



The outcome of this call is going to give me an immediate benefit; immediate feedback on how well my scripts are coming along.

With this in mind, I make a few changes to the script, print out a fresh copy, read it out aloud to see how comfortable I am with it, pencil in a couple of changes …

… And make the call.

It Went Quite Well; Thank You for Asking

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Small Steps

Ever since before I can remember, small steps got me somewhere. I crawled, I toddled, I walked, I ran, I bicycled (long distances, for years), and each journey was a series of foot-steps – on the carpet, down the garden-path, on the bike pedals.

It took me fifty years to travel around the world (England to Australia in 1956, Australia to Canada in 1980, Canada to England in 2005) and each leg (sorry!) of the journey was memorable.

This morning I received an email from Jack with 3 attached PDF files; “Read the attached material and call me later in the week”.

This in response to an article I emailed to him about his company for publication in an online newspaper blog, to which I was invited to contribute.

The invitation to contribute coming after I’d posted a Letter-to-the-Editor.

Those three legs encompass about 20 small steps such as “Chat with Jack and learn that he has a distributed office”, “Sketch out the article”; “Call Jack back and ask for more details”, and so on.

I do not know if business will arise from all of this; I hope it does.

But I do know that every day must be spent taking steps along the path, or paths, with each Contact, Client and Colleague.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Have You Forgotten This?

I had!



I’d got my contacts list all cleaned up, and the “follow-up” mechanism working just fine, thank you.

Each morning an on-screen list of who-I-should-touch-today, and at the end of the day a satisfying feeling that I was keeping in touch with my contacts on a monthly basis rather than just sending them a card at Christmas time.

Then it dawned on me – at least one of my small group of peer-to-peer net workers was NOT on my contacts list?

Why Not?



Probably because we had met, quickly corresponded by phone and email several times in the first week and in subsequent weeks had started to work together on boosting our visibility to our target markets.

Stop Reading - and Do this Now:



Paper-and-pencil time.

Write down the names of those you consider to be your pals in the world of the Transitional Entrepreneur.

Like this:

David
Jim
Julia
Cheryl
Rick
Michelle
Cathy
Ken

Who are these people? These people are the ones you call, and will continue to call, when you have a question about what you need to do next, when you question your sanity, when you need a shoulder to cry on, when you need to celebrate landing that $US6,872 contract and the cheque arrives.

I have eight entrepreneurs on my list; three of them are suppliers (I have paid them small sums of money in the past for goods and services); one of them is new to me, but has already proven himself as a valuable source of ideas for marketing; one is in a business so radically different from mine, and yet we share her passion for her work and have done for over seven years.

Don’t sweat the accuracy, but if you don’t have at least 5 names on your list, go find some more “family”, and if you have more than 10 names on your list, think carefully.

This is not a list of people I enjoy chatting with at, and in between networking events.

This is a list of people who are gradually getting to know me in quite a personal way; people who learn that I can’t afford to pay for lunch this week; people who I trust to read through my confidential pricing in the proposals.

What to Do Next?



Check that each of these precious people are on your contact list, and that the follow-up date is not more than two weeks away.

I am suggesting that this small group of familiar people represents your first circle of valuable contacts, and more than anyone else they are out there pounding, as we say in the trade, the pavement - keeping their ears open for opportunities for YOU.

You owe it to them to feed them snippets of useful information, useful to THEM.

At least once a fortnight.

And it need not be an extensive email dialogue. It’ll be enough that they get a truly useful link to an article or a gadget, or a possibility of a new contact for them.

It better be valuable; it better be free; and it better be directly useful to them.

They deserve it.

They are your family.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

The Follow-up List

The Follow-up List is a generic device which is derived from my little Access table of contacts.

Each contact record has a date field “follow-up”, in which is recorded the date on which I must next contact an individual. Typically: a day later to check that they have received the email, a week later to discuss their feelings about the email, or the day after they return from vacation (the day they return is no good, they are too busy wading through voice-mail and email)

I usually process the list on the screen, based on a screen report that shows the few individuals on my follow-up list for today. This list may include left-overs from yesterday.

I record the number of individuals on the list at the start of the day and at the end of the day.

My objective is to empty the list each day. If several days pass without the list being emptied, then I’m doing something wrong. As Winston Churchill would note “Action This Day”.

An easy solution to this problem is to print out a report on paper, and use that as a solid, tangible work sheet. Having it on the desk, staring me in the face, and crossing items out with a pencil as they are covered, is a great way to stay focused.

Today I am heading downtown for two meetings. I will arrive early, and I will have some dead time between meetings.

My Access database allows me to print a hard-copy report which I will take with me.

The dead time before meetings can be occupied by making some follow-up calls on my cell phone.

Monday, November 23, 2009

What’s The Cost of Duplicate Emails?

You subscribe to, or you mail out an email newsletter.

It happens that from time to time a glitch in the procedure sends out two copies, either within five minutes or within a couple of days.

It is embarrassing (when I’m the sender!), and discovery of the flaw usually results in a few seconds with head-in-hands and uncontrollable-weeping. Heads may come close to rolling.

But they should not.

Here’s why:



Our email newsletters go out only to friends, not to enemies.

Recipients are on your mailing list because they have asked to be placed on your mailing list; you would take them off if they asked you.

Our friends don’t mind our petty foibles (try “feebles” or weaknesses).

My friends, I think, shake their heads and mutter “He ought not to let his cat play on the keyboard”, and then they get on with whatever is important in their lives.

The same holds true for blog entries; so you duplicated your thoughts of a month ago? That’s because whatever it is it is important enough to stay in the front of your mind and examples abound.

The same holds true for blog entries; so you duplicated your thoughts of a month ago? That’s because whatever it is it is important enough to stay in the front of your mind and examples abound.

See what I mean?

How important is that duplicated paragraph?

Saturday, November 21, 2009

How Not To Swat a Gnat

If you’ve ever tried to swat one of those fruit-fly gnat-like creatures by clapping it between two hands, you’ll understand frustration.

The gnat dances right in front of your eyes, between you and the computer screen.

You raise your hands, palms inwards, at eye level, and bring them together sharply.

The gnat dances right in front of your eyes, between you and the computer screen.

You raise your hands, palms inwards, at eye level, and bring them together sharply.

The gnat dances right in front of your eyes, between you and the computer screen.

And so on.

What’s Happening?



The cushion of air that builds up between your palms as they approach each other flushes the air-like gnat out of the way.

I can hear my gnat screaming “Wheee!” as it discovers the joy of early-morning surfing.

What to do?



Slow down.

A slower bringing-together of the hands achieves the goal with less repetition, less energy, less noise, and probably less mess-on-the-hands.

The same might apply when approaching a prospect.

References: The Akond of Swat

Talk to Me !

Friday, November 20, 2009

Selling the Idea About Buying Ideas

I'm still taking Flak on this business of non-business as my friends see it: Giving Indxr away for FREE.

I am an ideas man; my friends and colleagues concede that.

I come up with great ideas, original thoughts, brilliant conceptions, amusing "takes" on a situation, all very entertaining, but sadly going no way towards paying the rent.

Out There are businesses who could help me pay the rent by purchasing something from me – my ideas, my ability to tackle problems and find elegant solutions.

My idea in giving away the Indxr for free is to communicate to total strangers (people who read the blogs and forums of my word-processing colleagues) the idea that I have come up with a brilliant idea – a tool that identifies all the Interesting Words in any document and hence can mark them as index entries ({XE}) and hence produce an index in an almost-unbelievable time. ("I remember spending three (long) evenings one summer to achieve the same result. And yet, this was more thorough in five seconds than the efforts of those three evenings.")

My idea is that for every 100 technical writers and court reporters and transcriptionists who download this free tool, one in a hundred will contact me and ask "What else do you do?", or better yet, “Can you do THIS for me?".

I am selling the idea about buying ideas

Thursday, November 19, 2009

To Market, to Market, to Sell a Thin Pig

Any fool can sell a fat pig; it takes genius to sell a thin pig, with the promise of things to come.

Your fat pig is your service; mine is, let’s say, design and development of applications software.

Your problem is getting those first two endorsements, testimonials, recommendations.

Your first hurdle after leaving university was that every job advertisement carried the phrase “Min. 2 yrs exp. reqd”.

Now let’s see just how well you know your own business:

Dumb it Down!



Your service is, let’s say, a three-day training session, or a three-day review of existing procedures, or a 3-day derivation of marketing metrics. Or seven-day. It doesn’t matter.

There’s no way you are going to give away a seven-day sample any more than you would a three-day sample.

But stripped of all the exciting STUFF what is the exciting MESSAGE?

Scrape away the meat and get down to the bone (here comes the thin pig!) and you end up with a three-hour presentation that can convey the exciting essential ideas of your service to an enthusiastic but small crowd (6 maximum) of friends and peers. (*)

The Dry Runs



Book a hotel room for $60.

Invite your friends

Dump the news on them

Ask for testimonials.

Keep it honest.

Tell them what you are doing and why.

Let their testimonials be honest.


You didn’t give them the 3-day package, but you did send them away with valuable ideas that will change their business revenue.

They can therefore say that you sent them away with valuable ideas that will change their business revenue.

Everybody chips in with $10 for the room costs; you bring your own ground coffee and cream; homemade cookies.

Or have it at my place and I’ll serve a lunch of pasta and home-made bottled meat sauce; everybody bring a 1lb packet, frozen, of ground beef which will be available for lunch next time.

Will it Work?



You betcha!

Your friends will enjoy a networking session.

You will get feedback on your service presentation.

Everybody will be pumped with new insights, new ideas.

You’ll get invited to six free seminars within the next two months, (You saw THAT coming, didn’t you?)

Bring cookies and a 1lb slab of frozen ground meat.

Prove It!



Let’s take my 4-day workshop on Application Development in VBA.

If I can’t compress that into a 3-hour session on recording macros in Word, building a mini-application by ganging macros, and give you confidence in using the vocabulary of application developers (“VBA”, “Macros”, “Libraries”, “Procedures”, “Functions” etc.) then I’m in the wrong business.

Let’s take your 3-day workshop on Customer Experience in Humungous Global Conglomerates.

If you can’t compress that into a 3-hour session of tips’n’tricks for retaining clients in the Application Development business, then you don’t know much about keeping your friends happy.

Marketing Metrics to Manage Monies?

Get real! Not one of your friends is going to be spending $$$ on marketing any time soon now, but they do have some time. And time is money. Transcribe your methods to a cheat-sheet using time or events as metrics, and get feedback from THAT.

Policies Procedures and Manuals?

What budding entrepreneur doesn’t need some sort of written plan for dealing with the regular and irregular events in their marketing and sales and promotions and prospecting and contacting departments.

Oink!



Get richer and fatter quicker
(*) If you don’t have 6 friends and peers, I’m available!

P.S.



Once you’ve done the dumbing-down exercise and got a 3-hour workshop, DUMB IT DOWN SOME MORE, say to 60 minutes.

Now you are a speaker at Networking Meetings!

There! That was easy, wasn’t it?

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Why Do These Misconceptions Prevent an Entrepreneur from Blogging?

There are two types of entrepreneur: those who blog, and those who don’t.

In most cases, those who blog would occasionally love to not-have-to-blog-today for any one of a number of reasons. (I’m not one of them; give me two minutes, a scrap of paper and a pencil, and I’m blogging in the elevator, on the train, in the meeting, …)

Those who don’t blog always have a good reason for not blogging, and it is usually one of these (but see below):

(1) I don’t have the time
(2) It takes too much effort to set up a blog
(3) Who would read it?
(4) I’ve never done it before (if that were a good reason the human race would have died out millions of years before)
(5) I can’t think of anything to say
(6) I don’t know what to write about


Below: If you have a reason that doesn’t appear here Talk to Me and I’ll add it to the list with a link to your web site.

None of the reasons above apply to me. Those of you with eagle-eyes (I know who you are!) will have observed a flurry of activity the past two weeks when I plugged in many gaps in the early days from a vast stockpile of articles that were threatening to block my arteries of communication.

So Here we Are



You and I.

I



… have a surplus of ideas I’d like to write about. You blog but are short of time and/or material?

I’ll write a guest post for YOUR BLOG, based on your theme.

I will, of course, write a link to your blog to drive traffic to it.

You



… have never blogged before but wonder what it’s like to have your name in print.

You’ll write a single article for my blog based on my theme (which is, let’s admit, pretty broad).

I will, of course, write a link to your blog to drive traffic to it.

No excuses

Get cracking

Tips



Share something that went right this week.
(It could be a new client, accolades from a client, a tough deadline that was met, …)
Recap what’s on the horizon for YOU next week.
Recap what’s on the horizon for YOU next month.
State a problem to big to solve in a short time
State a process that is broken and needs repair.
Who was your best client/boss and why?

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Every Cloud Brings Life-Giving Rain

In “Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining” I outlined what I considered to be a disastrous meeting with bureaucracy. Honestly, I walked out of there fuming, determined to shake the dust from my feet, and headed straight to a rewarding meeting with a fellow entrepreneur.

In the late afternoon I received an email from bureaucracy telling me I am penciled in to deliver a talk in January.

Calm now, I realize that yesterday morning I had achieved my penultimate objective – a sit-down FTF meeting with the organizers, and I did well, because by the end of the day I had achieved my goal – an opportunity to present myself for evaluation as a speaker to transitional entrepreneurs.

Despite the roadblocks of attitude thrown in my path, I have succeeded.

I was away most of the day in meetings, and missed two phone calls I had been working for over two weeks.

My disappointment at not being here to take the calls is mollified by the fact that BOTH parties did try to get in touch with me.

The first party wants to talk with me – so I feel sure that we will make contact.

The second party has misinterpreted my voice-mail; or perhaps it was a poorly-worded voice-mail.

Today I will re-read my voice-mail script, re-listen to the voice-mail left for me, and work out what went wrong.

By a calm deliberate study of facts, I can probably salvage a FTF meeting from the second party.

But let’s not lose sight of the fact that BOTH parties called me back. That’s a Good Thing, and is a far better result than not having my called returned.

My voice-mail scripts are getting the action I want; all I have to do is tweak them a little.

(Sorry: “a little bit more, again”)

Monday, November 16, 2009

Wake up! You Don’t Need Your Beauty Sleep.

From the University of Western Australia’s “Science Matters” Vol 4. no 2. October 2009.

I find that if you don’t sleep, you get an awful lot done”, says Robyn Williams, ABC science broadcaster, with a smile.

I know that to be true.

I often am awake by 3 a.m. with an idea pulsing through my head.

Wide awake.

No hope of sleep.

I rise and start writing, developing, or whatever it is.

Sometimes I go back to bed at 5:00; sometimes I just carry on and watch the dawn.

It is not the life of the 9-to-5er, with a bus ride at each end.

But I can do a lot of creative or maintenance work that requires no personal communication in those few hours, freeing up my day for the phone calls and meetings.

And on a day like yesterday, when a one-hour coffee meeting with a fellow consultant stretches into a fun-filled spiral-out-of-control three-hour two-coffee two-cake marathon, I can relax, knowing that I have earlier earned the hours to spend in real conversation.

I arrived back in my home office at 4 p.m. and spent thirty minutes on the phone chatting with another consultant about a potentially lucrative money-making scheme.

Again, I felt no constraint to chivvy the conversation along; I’ve earned the right to spend time that I have earned.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Cold-Storage for Prospects

I continue to prune my contact list as I add a better-quality type of contact.

This morning I was scheduled to contact Susan; I have been trying to reach her for three weeks. I get to her voice-mail each time I call, and since leaving an original voice-mail or two, I don’t feel like leaving any more.

She is not a high-profile contact for me; someone who took a day’s training ten year’s ago, and while she makes occasional noises about work, we never do do business.

It’s time to say goodbye.

As I reached for the Delete button a thought crossed my mind: maybe she just doesn’t feel like having me as a supplier but can’t bring herself to tell me.

I know another consultant, closer to her line of work, who might be able to winkle something out of her.

Before I delete her I should pass her details on to David. He can mention my name, if he thinks it will do any good, and for all that I have no plans to establish any business with her, if David senses some business for me he will be sure to pass it back to me.

I’m going to make David love me by passing him a contact, and Susan won’t really go out of my life. Chances are strong that if I have anything to offer her, I’ll stand a better chance of reaching her through David than I do directly.

It’s worth a try.

Friday, November 13, 2009

Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining

A Disastrous Start to the Day

I met with an organization for whom I hoped to make several presentations – to get my name known.

I arrived on time, they weren’t ready; they started 15 minutes late with no apologies and didn’t offer me a coffee. Worse – they had not prepared by reading the material I had sent at their request.

I have spent two hours phoning, four ½ days attending current presentations (to get a good idea of their target market), a ½ day attending their downtown workshop – for what?

I couldn’t wait to get out of there and head to my next meeting, but I grabbed a copy of “Enterprise” on the way out. The Vol 11. No.4 September 2009 issue, as it happens.

In there I found SIX articles of compelling interest to ME, and I am who/what counts in this story.

I have written off the first meeting a signaling a dead-end down that avenue, but the magazine was worth the trip.

And yes, my second meeting was with a private-enterprise entrepreneur, and it was the best time of the past month, for me.

On the way home I reflected that if I can’t pull something good out of a bad situation, how can I claim to be truly valuable to any prospect?

Thursday, November 12, 2009

A Social Experiment

I am now involved with a marketing guru, at no expense to me (except a cup of coffee) and from the initial meeting has evolved a mousepad!

No kidding!



Each day of the week I will track, with a pencil mark, events as they occur.

At the end of the week I will tally the marks and enter them into a simple spreadsheet.

The spreadsheet will show me that after a lag of several weeks, things start happening (“IN”) perhaps as a result of what I’ve done in the past (“OUT”).

This is a preamble to a more accurate scheme developed by Rick Shea , “… a promotion industry veteran with a deep knowledge of promotional marketing dynamics gleaned from 18 years with leading organizations Nielsen Promotion Services, NCH Promotional Services, Herbert A. Watts and Resolve Corporation.”.

Whether I take the dollar-oriented package remains to be seen, but a simplified yes-no scheme, on which I spend no money, is something I can afford, and will, at the very least, let me see whether I need help.

(I do!)

Talk to Me !

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Cell Phones

Nasty creatures. The interrupt my conversation with you; their ringing distracts me during meetings and movies.

They are as bad as desk-top telephones, when a ring brings out the gambling instinct in everyone – the bet that the incoming call is more important than the current conversation.

I am in the habit of turning my phone ringers off during a meeting, on the grounds that nothing is as important to me as your presence right now in my office. Call me old-fashioned …

I bought a cell phone two years ago when I felt it would have been valuable in helping a contact who was lost find me at the restaurant.

I rarely carry it, and turn it off as soon as I have reached the client site or the coffee-shop.

Cell phones do have their uses, I don’t deny that, but all too often we allow them to control our life.

Like the time you spent struggling for one hour over the layout of a fax asking to meet for lunch. Pick Up The Phone!

I have just had a most unpleasant run-in with my cell-phone service. I shan’t name the supplier because I don’t want to embarrass Telus.

But I do want to mention Andrew Cook of Compare Cellular.

No matter how happy or disgruntled you are with your current supplier and device, trot across to Compare Cellular and check out how what you’ve got stacks up against the other players.

It's FREE!

Then phone the other players and make a deal.

Lost the little user guide that came with your phone? Compare Cellular has the user guide available for download.

Not sure of your coverage? Compare Cellular has it all mapped out for you; go ahead, take a run up to the cottage!

Want the dealer nearest you? Use the dealer’s page at Compare Cellular.

Go ahead!

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Marketing vs. Sales

Yup! Another definition.

This one makes the most sense to me, and I am indebted, as are you, to Rick Shea of Optiv8 for the insight.

It’s all about people, and it’s true for your business and mine, the local diner, the large department store, the churches, the banks and the telephone companies.

Marketing



Marketing is what you do, generally, to people you don’t yet know.

Writing a blog, or a newspaper article, public speaking, handing out business cards or mailing out flyers.

In each case your are sending out, broadcasting, a message about you and your services, hopefully to recipients in your target market area.

There’s not much point in the local Etobicoke (Toronto) church taking out an advertisement in the Montana Standard about next Sunday’s services.

There’s little point in The Montreal Deli getting door-to-door flyers pushed through letter-boxes in San Diego.

Marketing is to people or contacts who are not yet looking towards you, who are not yet facing you, who are not yet asking you questions by phone or email.

Sales



Sales is what you do, generally, to people you know.

Sales is to people or contacts who are looking towards you, who facing you, who are asking you questions by phone or email.

Sales is the process of moving people you know towards a cheque.

The Funnel



Or if you prefer, the pipeline, but a funnel looks better on paper because (quantitative may vary) for every 100 people who express interest in your services, only 20% might ever get to the Proposal stage, and of them, only 60% might get to the cheque stage.

Nonetheless, you do the marketing and with the responses you get, some of that vast number of (un-)identified of targets respond and by doing so they become the objects of your sales efforts.

Traditionally marketing was a one (you) to many (them) exercise, while sales was a one (me) to one (you) exercise.

This Blog



I never thought you’d ask!

This blog is a part of my marketing.

It is read by who-knows-who. Everyone of them unknown to me.

If and when you send me a comment or if you subscribe to the blog you become available to me as an individual and, strictly speaking, a sales prospect.

Of course I have other marketing efforts, and of course, if you send me a comment I won’t deluge you with flyers, postcards, emails etc.

But we may well start a relationship that may well blossom into a sale (”cheque”) for one or both of us!

Thanks Rick!

Monday, November 9, 2009

Reciprocal Marketing – New Heights

I took my first baby step this morning. Cycled down to The Montreal Deli for exercise and chatted with George.

They've never done promotion, never advertised (they don't need to) but he warmed to the idea of a reward for valued business customers.



My kit included the news that, as far as I was concerned, the $250 coupons were transferable. It's no skin off my nose if the President of Rugs'N'Carpets passes his coupon on to the VB Finance of Computers'R'Us.

I still get a new client and The Montreal Deli gets the kudos.

On the way back I realized I could do better than that.

In the memo being prepared (in my head as I cycled) for today's Hot Prospect I realized that I can offer a $250 coupon to first-time clients, but rather than hand it out to them – I could tell them to pick it up at The Montreal Deli.

That way The Montreal Deli gets another visitor who may well return!

They should love me.

What did I learn?

Quite apart from the novel experience, I learned from George that I should describe the training.

The Gift Certificate merely says "$250.00 worth of on-site TRAINING from …" without telling anyone what training is available.

I should use the back of the card to list the broad areas in which I offer training.

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Co-Operative Effort

I am reluctant to title this "Co-Operative Marketing" for while it leads to a form of marketing, it's really about building a team of volunteers to do a lot of work for free with benefits for every single member of the team, especially ME!

My 1-click Indxr has taken off, and I have decided to send Under, Trail, MRUse and ZoomP down the same path.

Under is a collection of over 640 macros, many of which I have documented, but most of which I haven't.

Over the years I've made an effort, so the documentation is scattered across my hard drive.

Simple Macros that I use on a daily basis take me about five minutes to write up. Macros that I've not used for seven years require that I examine the program code itself, test it, and perhaps fix a couple of problems; could be 30 minutes.

A crude estimate is then 640 x 15 minutes, or about 160 hours.

I should not and can not and will not donate 160 hours (that's one week solid, 24 hours a day!) to document something that I know how to use for a bunch of people who will obtain the product for free.

What to do?



Get someone else (plural!) to help out.

Who?

People who are good writers and who use Microsoft Word on a daily basis and hence will understand the need for each macro.

The obvious choice is the crowd who download my 1-click Indxr . If some of them are grateful that I reduced one job of 5 hours down to 5 minutes, perhaps they would like to show their thanks by writing up one or two of the 640 macros in Under.

Pick a macro whose name suggests utility to YOU and I'll cobble together an overview and turn it over to you. You test the macro and decide what it does for you in your own words, the words of an end-user, and send it back to me.

I'll incorporate your efforts into my web site with an acknowledgement in the form of a link back to YOUR web site.

A product like MRUse or Indxr that requires a serious amount of effort might be tackled by a VA who would like a larger acknowledgement and an opportunity to showcase their work as a technical writer.

For that VA, a potential client could be sent to my web site to inspect the User Guide, and might even download the package to see how the guide stacked up against the program.

The Result?



Good for me.

Good for the VA.

Friday, November 6, 2009

Reducing Volume Of Email


No, your are not supposed to worry about reading the fine print.

I am fortunate in having attracted a small but extremely competent team of beta-testers and evaluators. It is possible that only an isolated programmer can appreciate this. It's a cliché but true: It's lonely here with no human to whom I can turn and ask "What do you think of this?", or "Please check this for me".

I have much to ask and tell of this team, but they each have their own lives, jobs, families, not necessarily in that order.

I hit on the idea of issuing ONE email early each morning to the group. My five precious colleagues will get one email from me with general information about new releases, updates, bug fixes etc., and with a bit of luck any further emails will be from and to individuals.

If Lily is bored and wants to bat emails back and forth, that is OK with me; and if Jaime Lee is frantically trying to finish a project and remains silent, that's OK with me too.

Instead of sending 6 separate emails on six separate issues, as the gurus recommend, I'll send just one, anticipated daily digest and be done with it.

Today is Saturday. This day's email went out at 6 a.m., and since then, at intervals during the day, I've been accumulating snippets of news in an email whose subject line reads "Chris Greaves - Sunday 11th October 2009".

By 6 a.m. tomorrow, I will have read and re-read it through, and perhaps something that was relevant at 6:30 this morning will no longer be relevant at ten p.m. tonight, in which case it can be deleted from the draft without ever having bothered five busy people.

Lest it be all work and no play, I try to pose a work-relevant riddle as the last item on each email, thus:



Thursday, November 5, 2009

Flak

I'm getting a lot of flak from well-meaning friends and professional colleagues.

My 1-click indexer is getting rave reviews across the country from Court Reporters, Technical Writers, Virtual Assistants and the like.

My friends are all of one voice: "Why aren't you SELLING this?!!???"

They see 60,000 to 100,000 people downloading this FREE UTILITY and multiply that by $7.00 to come up with … a lot of dollars.

Their mathematics is correct, and with the Indxr on, perhaps 20 desktops right now, there's no stopping it. It will "Go Viral" in the vernacular.

I could slap a $7 sticker on and sell maybe not 60,000 copies, but enough to pay next month's rent.

  • Here's My View

Every man and his dog is walking around with a baseball cap they didn't pay for, a ball-point pen they didn't pay for, drinking coffee out of a cup they didn't pay for.

The baseball cap reads "MCI Industries".

The ball-point pen has " Michael Belfry And Associates " on it.

The coffee cup? "Laidlaw Waste Industries".

  • All free.

The really smart marketing/sales guys all say the same thing:

People love getting something for nothing, and once you have trained them to accept something from you, they'll accept anything from you".

  • They are correct.

That's why your mail box is stuffed with $5-off Pizza flyers.

  • It works.

I have no idea what the flyer costs per household. At a guess, two cents; materials, handling, delivery.

And tired people have it in their hot sweaty little hands as they trudge up the path to the front door wondering what's for supper tonight.

The professionals who word-process have a copy of Indxr on their desktop when they produce a document.

"Click". There's the index. I love this little tool. Ten seconds just saved me six hours.

  1. I wonder what else he has written?
  2. I wonder if he converts documents?
  3. I wonder if he could do this for me.

And just as it does at the Pizza House, the phone will ring at my place once for every hundred flyers mailed out.

  • What's one percent of 60,000?

And wouldn't you like your phone to ring that many times with people asking for help.

And not just people, but people who already trust you and know that you have (not "can") saved them time.

  • And time is money.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

The 1-6-10 Rule – How Did it Work?

Just one month ago I wrote The 1-6-10 Rule .

This morning I had need to search my contact database for a special-purpose and to my delight discovered that the most-stale contact was dated the 8th October, 2009.

Just one calendar month ago!

What does this mean?

(1) Every one on my contacts list was "touched" by me sometime in the past month. In most cases we chatted by phone. In a very few cases, someone I've known for 20 years, I just shot off an email announcing Indxr.ca .

(2) Every one on my contact list is someone I'm not afraid to call; there are no people-I've never-spoken-with, people-I'm-ashamed-of-calling and so on.

(3) I won't feel at all bad come December when I do my annual Christmas letter mail out.

(4) Since I have eliminated the deadwood, my mailing costs are lower.

(5) Since I have eliminated the deadwood, my Christmas letter can be more intensely personal or time-relevant to the recipients; they have all heard about Indxr.ca and so a newsy update 2 months after launch should be of passing interest.

(6) I feel BETTER about myself, culling 8 names from the list this morning for a special call about a novel (to me) marketing campaign that will help THEM!

This is the bottom line:

  • My daily worksheets have helped me get the job done.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

So I Madly Got Changed And Dashed Off to Toronto for the Second Time Today

From a colleague:

"After running around all day, I got home a little after 5:00 PM. I made dinner, spent some time with my daughter then went downstairs to my humble office area to answer a few emails. About 10 mins. into it, I realized I had an event I was supposed to be at in Toronto. So I madly got changed and dashed off to Toronto for the second time today. I only got home about 20 mins. ago. Needless to say you did not receive a phone call."

From me back to my colleague:

About You: You worry me, but then I don't know you that well.

{If **I** had your opportunities}

Unless it was for a $1,000 paying client, I'd say "Sod the evening downtown" and spend time with my daughter.

Too much running around is not good for us Transitional Entrepreneurs.

But then, what do I know?

{/If **I** had your opportunities}

Here's the thing with my phone, just so as you know:

I'm the only one here.

I don't have call identification, call waiting, call screening, call showering or call-tub-wiping.

BELL voice-mail is all I've got and I'm getting rid of it at the end of this month.

If the phone rings, I pick it up; it might be business; or a friend asking me out to lunch.

I often wake at 3 am and go back to sleep. In which case I turn my phone up at or around 8 am

I as often wake at 3 am and am wide awake and DON'T got back to sleep.

In which case I turn my phone up at whatever time it is.

I aim to be in bed by 9:30 pm, at which time I turn my phone off.

If I'm going out for the day, I turn my phone off so as not to disturb Jupiter .

I don't have family, and all my friends have their own family, so I never get "family emergencies"

My clients don't have emergencies; it's my job to make sure that they don't!

These days I am on the phones from 8:30 a.m. until 5 p.m. I have changed around completely from the man I used to be last March.

But if someone (hint!) calls and leaves a short message saying "call me right back", I do so as soon as I've finished the call; my caller has usually worked out that I'm hitting the phones, but knows that a quick let's-do-lunch call is ALWAYS welcome.

And if someone is dropping by to pick me up for lunch, I turn on my cell phone as the "alternate channel" until we are together.

Then I turn off the cell-phone.

(see "emergencies" above)

Now if all that sounds draconian, I would like you to consider that it works FOR ME, especially in my no-family no-emergency situation.

But I also want you to know that you CAN call me 24/7, and if I've gone to bed, it won't disturb me at all, at all, and I'll get your call as soon as I wake up and pick up my phone to turn it ON!

I hope that makes sense.

Monday, November 2, 2009

I'm Getting the Hang of it Now!

I have wanted Alex to send me the preliminary files for a possible project for two weeks now.

I am reluctant to call him again – it makes it seem as if I am desperate, which I am, but I don't want him to know that!

So I plod on my daily routine, phoning people, phoning people, phoning people, and stumble upon George who mentions the sphere in which Alex specializes.

I send George an email, and CC Alex, putting them in touch.

And waddayaknow!

Here is an email from Alex with the preliminary files.

I'll never know unless I ask, and I may never ask, but I have this feeling that "sending" George to Alex was enough to trigger benevolent thoughts about me in Alex's mind!

The most profitable part of networking is offering a continual stream of benefits to prospects and clients.