I’m Not Really a Waitress …
April 29, 2011 by +Marj Wyatt
Filed under Featured, Marj Wyatt's Musings
When I launched my wordpress website design business a few years ago, my enthusiasm for helping people make money online caused me to develop a business model for myself that involved a lot of personal time with my clients. They seemed to appreciate the level of service that I offered for reasonable rates and it was fun for me to learn about the various businesses people were trying to bring online. I’ve never had to advertise. My business has grown solely by word-of-mouth and referrals, which is no accident.
Lately, it seems like new clients have expectations that exceed their budgets. It remains true that my all inclusive wordpress website design and consulting services are rare and I totally understand what it feels like to not know how to do what needs to be done where skills are lacking. Wherever possible, I extend myself to help out. I”m recently reminded that the speed with which I isolate and resolve problems seems to be projecting the idea that , because I make it look easy, it is.
I can’t count the number of times that I’ve heard a new client tell me that they don’t want to know how something works and that is why they’ve hired me. I also can’t count the number of times that clients have protested my resistance to continuing without additional compensation. A handful have been presumptuous enough to question why it would take so long to do. Excuse me?
With all due respect, if you don’t know what it takes to get something done and you don’t want to take the time to learn how to do it yourself, don’t challenge the person who does know how to do it when they tell you how long it will take to do what you need to have done!
I like living with the belief that all people are reasonable and that they are also willing to parlay a little give and take in our business agreement. Recently, a handful of new clients and prospects have come my way who are much happier with the “take” part of the equation, however. These same people have had no qualms expressing their opinions about wordpress website design services that I should deliver for free or at an unreasonably low price when the simple truth is that they don’t want to pay fairly for the services they are requesting and they are upset about the fact that they are unable to convince me that I should perform those services within their limited budget because they are low on cash.
For those of you who are reading this and are feeling a twinge of guilt about making similar demands of your website services professionals, please ask yourself these questions:
- If you wanted to buy a luxury car and couldn’t afford it, would ranting at the salesperson change the facts?
- If that sales person felt sorry for you and went the extra mile to find a financial program that lowered your monthly expense, would you blame them for the fact that the payment was still out of your reach?
When I chose an entrepreneurial career, I was happy to leave my IT Executive role behind in Corporate America because I was weary of leading teams whose contributions to the company’s success were repeatedly diminished by some top-level executive who viewed IT as a necessary evil. It would seem that I’m growing weary of explaining to new clients and prospects that the skills and knowledge that I’ve gathered throughout my professional life are worth much more than a waitress’ wage.
Yet, referrals keep coming in from my large base of previously satisfied clients. Several times a week, new business comes in through my website at http://virtuallymarj.com. Generally speaking, life is good and I enjoy working with the many nice people on my client roster. I also enjoy taking on a good challenge now and then so I guess I’ll continue growing my wordpress website design business and keeping it fun by choosing to work with clients who are willing to take advice, understand the value that I bring to their efforts and are willing to pay fairly. 
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Don’t Should on Yourself!
November 30, 2010 by +Marj Wyatt
Filed under Business Basics, Featured
A wise man with whom I worked during my earlier years once came up with a profound New Year’s resolution at our annual marketing support meeting. The entire group laughed out loud when he said his resolution was to never say “it should work” again.
There does seem to be a resurgence of people not thinking through the answers to questions that are asked. Responses like this are pointless:
“It should have been there by now.” or “That should have worked.”
Normally, a long explanation about how the process is supposed to work follows comments like these. All kidding aside, it almost seems like an assumption has been made that I wouldn’t have done something simple, like checking my spam folder or reading instructions. As the support person drones on about how their process works, I’m thinking, “If your system worked the way you’ve described it, I wouldn’t have picked up the phone to find out what was wrong.”
Communicating is such a critical component of business. Whether it is written or verbal, our phrasing has a lot to do with how the other side of the conversation receives our responses. We need to empathize with the caller and, above all, treat them professionally. Without our customers, we have no business. This applies to ALL business models … assuming the business is legitimate.
Even though this may sound cliché, there really is no such thing as a dumb question. Entrepreneurs who are operating a truly customer-facing business must learn how to respond appropriately to their customer’s questions. Here are some suggestions for improving your customer communications:
- Smile before picking up the phone.
- Establish set time frames during work days for taking calls to ensure minimal disruption..
- Draft agenda topics for scheduled meetings and allocate time limits to the topics. Distribute the agenda to all invitees in advance of the meeting. Be flexible to requests to alter or rearrange the agenda and time frames.
- Don’t make customers wait more than 24-hours for a response to their email or voicemail.
- Set “office hours” so your customers are respectful of your personal boundaries. Inform active customers of your vacation plans. If you have a dedicated business line, update your announcement to reflect any extended time away from your office so potential new business doesn’t think you are non-responsive.
- Ensure that you understand your customer’s problem statement before suggesting a solution. They’ve been immersed in it long enough to determine it is a problem. Sometimes you must back them up to the beginning so you can be of better assistance to them.
- Remain calm and be empathetic. Understand that your customer may have struggled for hours before calling you and that they could be tense as a result.
- Set expectations properly if your customer’s issue cannot be handled during the call.
- Publish an FAQ page on your website and refer people to it first. Whether you have a product or service, if you’ve been in business a while you know what questions are most frequent.
- If your product is digital, prepare documentation that assumes the least amount of knowledge while making it complete enough for advanced users.
Most of this blog’s readers are aware that I have a service business and that one of my services is WordPress Website Development. Many of my clients are unfamiliar with the software and part of my service fees include one-on-one training. I welcome client calls because I love teaching people things that will make them feel more self-sufficient and confident with the products and services they have purchased from me. Because I also enjoy the clients with whom I work as people, I have to monitor the gab time with some of them because we have so much fun just talking.
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Email Marketing and Your Business
August 19, 2010 by +Marj Wyatt
Filed under Email Marketing, Life as an Internet Entrpreneur
Email marketing came of age after direct marketing practitioners realized that their methods of engaging customers with postal mail could be applied to the Internet. For those who are unclear about what email marketing is, it is using email to promote offers and/or obtain new customers. Reports have proven that this is the next best marketing technique after search marketing.
You can rent a list, purchase a list based on demographics for your niche, or set up an opt-in page to gather list members from your target market. Even though it takes longer, building your own email marketin list from scratch is probably the safest and most reliable method to use.
No matter where you begin with your list building, a well-written email marketing message can gain a prospect’s trust by disclosing relevant information that helps them to make informed purchasing decisions. Email marketing also has potential to enhance relationships with existing customers if you continue to provide valuable communications that facilitate repeat or referral business.
The major advantages of email marketing is that there are multiple ways to automate your scheduled or broadcasted communications and it is much more cost-efficient than postal mail. In addition, your offers have potential to “go viral” because members of your lists can easily forward messages to friends and colleagues who they feel might be interested, which increases your opportunities to make sales and add new customers to your email marketing lists.
Within a relatively short period of time, a large audience can be identified and targeted. Autoresponders, like Aweber, allow you to monitor the responsiveness of your list with email open statistics and click through rates on your embedded links. They can also help you craft a message that won’t be filtered out by built-in spam catchers.
The sales ratios of your email marketing campaigns or inquiries from members of your list may lead you to new ideas for products and services. Email enables you to engage your customers in dialogue that helps you to scope your new product development by inviting list members to take surveys or provide feedback on ideas that you are forming. Talk about convenience!
How Much and How Often?
Loose statistics from direct marketing resources indicates that new customers may need to hear about an offer up to 10 times before making a purchasing decision. Equally important is that your messages must be timed in such a way that your new list members don’t feel overwhelmed. For example, I’ve enrolled in campaigns and opted out immediately after receiving multiple messages in quick succession or too many notes in a week.
In my opinion, more than one email marketing message a day is too many. I’m also of the opinion that more than a couple (3 or more) email marketing messages a week is too much volume, particularly prior to conversion. Setting up your campaigns to send email every 4th day, or so, keeps your offer on the prospect’s mind without seeming overly aggressive. That is the whole idea, right?
If all of your all of your email marketing messages are pitching something, people will learn to ignore you. Keep your email marketing messages relevant and brief. Most folks are dealing with information overload when they peruse their email inbox so your subjects must stand out if you expect your email to get opened. Using fantastic email marketing titles that compel people to open may work according to some people but it also can make you seem less trustworthy. To earn and keep the confidence of your list members, stick to actual facts about your offer and try writing messages that DON’T require disclaimers in tiny print at the bottom of the note.
Email Marketing Can Have a Dark Side
Some companies collect email addresses of people illegally and send irrelevant mails to them, which can be very annoying. To get past spam filters, these messages will often have many lines of irrelevant text below the offer with “safe” words in them.
Some hackers intentionally design an email that looks like an advertisement but, when the ads are clicked, malicious software is downloaded that creates headaches for an unsuspecting or naive end user. I will never understand why smart people, like hackers must be, use their creativity and talent to wreak havoc on people! Even though your email marketing message is not malicious, you need to understand that everyone with a computer and email has heard one or more horror story and this will affect the success of your campaigns … especially if you have purchased or rented a list.
In my previous post, I discussed the highlights of the CAN-SPAM act of 2003. Caution is recommended for any list you choose to join but this does not keep you from receiving unsolicited email marketing, just as postal regulations do not restrict sending demographic based mail to your home.
Since the CAN-SPAM act only applies to US businesses, it is legal to initiate an email marketing campaign from a purchased or rented list as long as a physical address and a functional opt-out is included in the message, and email marketers are allowed up to 10 days following the request to remove people, the CAN-SPAM act seems to protects marketers more than consumers. Sadly, my single voice isn’t loud enough to get these laws changed anytime soon and corporate entities with much more influence than me are working hard to loosen SPAM regulations, not tighten them.
Most email clients and webmail systems have spam filtering capabilities that can help to keep your inbox clean but those algorithms aren’t perfect. How many times have you found a legitimate messages in your spam folder? How many legitimate messages have you accidentally deleted?
Email Marketing is Only ONE Marketing Channel
As the saying goes, don’t put all of your eggs in one basket. This is especially true for marketing and advertising expenses. Email marketing is a great tool for building your business out there but you should also be testing other marketing methods and you should always be tracking the effectiveness of your campaigns.
Go forth and prosper, and make sure you use this marketing method wisely.
