As an entrepreneur, you can’t afford to pull the emergency chute and escape when a customer has gotten under your skin.  Here’s a few ways to avoid “pulling the chute” and blowing up your work with a customer who has gotten on your very last nerve.

1. Remove yourself from the on-going drama by stepping away, but don’t go so far as to pull the emergency chute.  If you’re in person, excuse yourself and go to the back of the room, the restroom, or the other end of the table.  The key here is to physically move before you feel so threatened that in that moment you literally will do ANYTHING to get away, no matter the consequences.  If you are on the phone, you can use your emergency exit script, which should go something like this, “I want to settle this disagreement in a way that is respectful to us both, but I can’t do that right now.  I’m going to hang up to give myself time to think objectively, and I’ll be back in touch.  Goodbye.”
2. Close your mouth. By the time you’re totally over it, what comes out of your mouth won’t be anything worth repeating.  I suspect that once Slater held forth, he got to a point that he realized his only way out was the chute.  One way to stop talking is to train yourself to take a sharp, deep breathe in through your nose, and blow it out through your mouth.  You can’t breath  like this and talk at the same time.  Really, you can’t – try it!  When you are appalled and angry, it’s natural to sharply take in your breath.  So you’re going to do that anyway.  Just train yourself to blow that breath out through your mouth, like a big “ha”. Breathing out a big “ha!” instead of giving voice to a string of words that escalate the situation (no matter they may be well-deserved), protects you.  It keeps you from getting to the point that you feel threatened, which is when your reptile brain takes over and common sense goes out the door.  Do this, and you’ll find that after the first sharp inhale and “ha” exhale, the second and third are much easier.  You probably won’t need more than 3 or 4.  Your head will clear, you’ll feel calmer, and your brain will be refreshed by the new and better oxygen supply.
3. Decide later where to go from here.  It may be that you will want to fire this customer from your business.  I don’t preach not to fire customers, although some marketing experts will advise against it.  I understand why, because negative word of mouth about an entrepreneur typically spreads faster than positive word of mouth.  But I’m hoping that you’ve already carried out the first two steps, and that puts you on an entirely different path.  Along with removing yourself and closing your mouth, you’ve created better options than blowing up and disappearing down a sliding chute. You now have time to think objectively about whether to end the relationship.  Let’s say that you are so turned off that you never want to sell to this customer again.  You’ve now positioned yourself to “save it but end it” rather than blowing it to tiny pieces.  You can end it in a way that respects both you and the customer, and that will likely prevent the customer carrying out a negative word of mouth campaign.  Your goal is to end the relationship without hurting your business, and deciding later helps you to do that. Everyone cools off, and a space opens up for better possibilities than ending it with drinks in hand, heading southward toward hard concrete and jail time.

It’s wise to have an emergency plan in place in case you’re ever carrying out business in a small space with someone who pushes your button.  Remove yourself, close your mouth, and decide later are three actions that keep you in control of your emotions, your actions, and your business.  Unlike Slater, you won’t be instantly famous, and your entrepreneurial endeavor will be safe.

I’m convinced that we are now in the pioneer days for marketing.  If I’ve read one article about how push marketing doesn’t work anymore and that it is now all about building relationships with the consumer, I’ve read twenty.  And every time I read one I shake my head and wonder why no one writes that this is back to marketing’s pioneer days.  We now have “Pioneer Marketing.”  It’s what our forebears did in every single city and town, and what the best and wisest businesses still do.

Pioneer Marketing (I think I just coined a new term) has one main tenet, and that tenet is infallible.  It works every time because it is based on a law of human nature.  What’s the law?  “People respond positively and in a timely manner when they are treated with respect, courtesy, honesty, and in a way that has their best interests at heart.”  That one law, rigidly adhered to, will win out every time.  Your attention may be diverted by aggressive and shiny marketing for a while, but in the end you will go where that law of human nature is adhered to.

Simply put, our prospects and existing customers don’t want to be sold into a product or service that serves the seller and doesn’t serve the buyer.  They are tired of push marketing coupled with shoddy goods and lacking customer service.  And this is one huge reason that you, as an entrepreneur, have it over the big guys.  The big guys have used push marketing, shoddy goods, and lacking customer service for so long that they are scrambling right now to turn huge, bloated, bureaucratic businesses around to save their sales.  Meanwhile, you and I can “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee,” meeting and forming relationships with our prospects, selling our expertise, servicing our customers, and making the transaction into a win-win rather than a win-lose.  We have memorable and recognizable faces.  Large, bloated businesses give you a new and usually non-caring face every time you walk in their door or buy from them online.

Family-owned businesses, solo professionals, and entrepreneurs can step up and capture market share right now.  Most of us have a familiar face to our prospects and customers.  Many of the big guys don’t, and now that they realize that, they are all about “relationship marketing,” thinking they have discovered a whole new world.  It isn’t a whole new world at all, it’s the world that many small business owners never left, the one that our pioneer forebears lived in.  Everyone knew the business owners up and down the street and how they treated customers.  Everyone knew who to avoid and who to buy from.  Business was good or bad depending on the business owner’s savvy and her ability to form and keep relationships.  Reputation was everything, and was based on something real, not something manipulated by copious marketing.

People respond to Pioneer Marketing because it is in our human nature.  We are wired for relationships. On the frontier, relationships and trust in others meant survival.  In the marketplace, it means survival for you, the business owner.  And it is coupled with a sense of trust and satisfaction in our customers, as well.

You don’t have to put on a pioneer costume or grow a mustache to use Pioneer Marketing.  Just plaster that one law of human nature up where you can see it, and build your business from that place.  Let your marketing, advertising, customer service, and sales be aligned with that law.  Couple that with good business skills, and you are good to go.  The next time you hear about the new “relationship marketing” just smile.  You are already there.  So hip, so pioneer.  That’s you!

I just spent over $200 on Magellan’s travel supplies website.  Why?

1. I got their new spring/summer catalog in the mail.  Magellan’s used a direct mail piece, their timing was right (I have several trips coming up), and the catalog renewed my TOMA (top of mind awareness) about Magellan’s.  The key here?  Timing! I regularly receive Magellan’s catalog and usually throw it out without looking.  But I’m excited about upcoming travel, and I needed to refresh a few things.  LESSON LEARNED: Keeping in touch with your customers over time is critical, even if they haven’t bought from you in a while.
2. A notice on the catalog’s front cover offered free shipping on orders over $100.  I figured almost any order would come to that amount, and free shipping saves me money.  A deadline on the free shipping (May 9th) spurred me to take action now rather than lose the catalog on my desk.  LESSON LEARNED:  Make your special offers time-limited, with a relatively short time frame.

Let’s look at what I ordered and my reason for each purchase.

• Spill-proof pouch – because the last time I was on a plane one of my face care products leaked out into my cosmetic bag.  This pouch SOLVES A PROBLEM.
• Electronics travel case – I didn’t go looking for this item, but I saw it browsing the catalog.  I’m thinking “Hmm, I’m sure tired of all my various chargers and USB cables getting into a big knot at the bottom of my briefcase, so maybe I’ll try this.”  This purchase SOLVES A PROBLEM and was a win for Magellan’s because of 1)  A GOOD IDEA and 2) SUGGESTED SELLING.
• Personalized luggage strap – This is actually a gift for my husband.  His luggage looks similar to many, and more than once he’s picked up someone else’s at the airport.  The strap WORKS AS A GIFT and helps SOLVE SOMEONE ELSE’S  PROBLEM.
• Extra-large mesh pack-it cube – These things are hard to find in large sizes, so Magellan’s gets a star for carrying them.  They allow me to pack clothing inside my rolling duffel luggage and quickly pull out what I need without digging around.  If I get stopped for inspection, I can easily pull these out without re-shuffling and wrinkling my clothing.  I’ve used 2 gallon kitchen zipper bags, but the zippers don’t hold up to being open and closed over and over again, and the 2 gallon size is now hard to find.  These mesh cubes SOLVE A PROBLEM but also GIVE ME A FEELING OF LUXURY.  I get to graduate from packing my clothes in baggies. 
• Blackberry pouch – When I’m sight-seeing I try not to carry a purse, but I often need my phone and camera with me, and my pants usually have no pockets.  This handy little pouch hangs around the neck and will hold both my Blackberry and my small camera.  Perfect!  Again, solves a problem and makes something easier for me.
• Walkstool – One of the downsides of having a new knee is that it’s still hard for me to stand on concrete for very long without pain.  This innovative product offers a sturdy, foldable instant stool but weighs very little, and can hang off a belt, a backpack, a purse, or my shoulder.  Next time I think I better not go on a walking tour because we’ll stand and listen to a guide for 15 minutes, I’ll be able to go and know I can sit when I need to.  HUGE problem solved for me and a solution I can live with (not too heavy or too bulky, small and easy to pack).
• Inflatable neck pillow – I use one on planes, and foolishly over inflated mine a few trips ago.  POW!  It burst at 30,000 feet and that was the end of that!  I’ve looked around in airports but balked at paying $30.00.  Magellan’s had one on sale for $12.99.  What sold me?  REASONABLE PRICING and PROBLEM SOLVED.

As you can see, I’m a buyer who will spend for solving problems.  I also respond to suggested selling and to the feeling of having something a little fancier for myself.  But these are not the only reasons Magellan’s got $200 from me.  They are smart in how they set up their web site, too.

1. Their website is easy to maneuver and loads quickly.
2. They offer customer reviews of their products, which talked me into the stool and the Blackberry pouch.
3. Their page for each item tells me immediately that the item is in stock.  (One of my pet peeves is ordering online only to find that the item isn’t due in for 30 days or so.)
4. Their page for each item offers more pictures than the catalog, allowing me to “look” at items in detail.
5. Their check-out process is easy.

Take a look at what you’ve spent money on and list the reasons why you bought.  You can then look at what you offer to others and think about whether your offers are attractive for those same reasons.  If they are not, tweak them and your sales copy, and see if your sales improve.  I bet they will!

(c) Sue Painter

My business was brand new and very small, one room in an office building. I had to handle everything, whether I was “trained” to handle it or not. I had to discover what I did well, what I enjoyed the most, what I hated to do, when I could afford to hire help, and what help I needed to hire first. I had to stretch and grow quickly. Fortunately, because I had solid experience in growing a business, the Touch Therapy Center (a massage clinic I own to this day) built itself quickly. Within the year, I could hire help for cleaning and laundry service. Next came a bookkeeper. Now, 13 years later, I manage the business while other staff do most of the therapeutic massage, I’m in a medical office building with multiple treatment rooms, and I have a practice manager to handle the front desk, errands, and most adminstrative tasks.

What I want to point out is the rocky path of personal growth it takes to get from year one to year thirteen, turning a profit the whole way. Here are some of the things I had to learn or consider:

1. Watch my operating costs and bottom line – I had to remain profitable even if I was spending more money on getting help with cleaning, laundry service, and so forth. Watching my weekly financial statements was critical, or I could have worked myself crazy and not made a dime.
2. Know myself well enough to figure out what I liked to do and was good at versus what I am not so good at and am not fond of doing. One of these in the massage business is laundry. I didn’t enjoy dragging home loads of sheets and spending my evenings sorting, washing, drying, and folding them. And I wasn’t particularly great at it, either. On the other hand, I’m very practiced and skillful at attracting clients. I didn’t need or want to pay anyone to handle marketing for me, other than getting help with a design for my business card. It was easy for me and saved me money to develop my own brochures and press releases.
3. I had to find out about my willingness to take risk and how to handle the good and bad that came from that risk. Should I move into larger office space and increase my rent? If so, how much more business would I need to generate to remain at my same level of profit? Could I get larger space, spend more money, and at the same time make even more money? Could I negotiate new lease terms that were favorable to me?

Before long, I had a very busy practice and was ready to hire other staff.  Now, I could draw on my past experience as an Executive Director and use my past hiring skills. This time, if I made a bad decision, it was mind and mine alone to deal with, for better or for worse.

And, after about 8 years, I had to make a decision about opening my second business, The Confident Marketer. Other entrepreneurs had been asking me for serveral years how I’d built my business, how I knew what to do when, how I got profitable. I found that I absolutely loved helping other self-employed people be successful. So, about 5 years ago, The Confident Marketer was born. And with it, a whole new level of personal growth and challenge was necessary. It’s one reason I keep myself always working with top coaches who can help me face up to the personal growth and new business skills I need to keep my business successful and innovative.

The point to my story is that it takes courage to be an entrepreneur. You have to be willing to find out what you don’t know, get help with those things you don’t do well, and become expert at a few things that are yours and yours alone. You have to be willing to step up to intimately knowing and watching your financials (something I find many new entrepreneurs don’t want to do). You have to make decisions using both the facts and figures AND your gut feelings — your intuitive skills.  And when there is a problem, you have to be willing to meet it and work it through, taking time to consider whether and how much it affects your customer service and your bottom line.

All this takes a great deal of courage and a willingness to grow both personally and professionally. A great business takes three things – a solid biz plan, a creative and well-thought-out marketing plan, and a willingness to do engage in personal growth. And behind those three vital things is courage.  Step right up, and see how quickly your business becomes unstoppable!

(c) Sue Painter

Disaster visits without warning and quickly.  On a personal level, it could be unexpected illness or the death of someone dear.  For your business, it might be  flood, fire, or an employee who causes harm.  Think about the small business owners in Haiti right now.  If their business is in rubble they have no way to make money even if they could offer what their customers need most.  If their business was left standing there is no security to protect it.  Already, many shops have been looted for their goods.  Some shop owners have simply opened their doors and emptied out their shop, giving away everything they have.

Your business will withstand disaster only to the extent that you have systems in place that you can lean on when something goes wrong without warning.  While this isn’t a comprehensive list, here are your main concerns.

1. Are your business’s assets insured?  What would happen if a disaster caused you to lose your office or the equipment you need to carry out your business?  You can either buy insurance or self insure, meaning that you have set aside money that could immediately be used to replace your lost equipment and get your doors open again.
2. Do you have back-up systems in place, and do you use them regularly?  Could you recreate your financial records easily?  Are your customer records secure and backed up either physically or electronically?
3. Have you thought about how to handle the sudden loss of a key employee?  Do you have a comprehensive list of what that person does and how she does it?  Do you have a way to get additional help quickly if you lose someone to illness or accident?  The more you have your work systems documented in an operations manual, the quicker you can get up and running, back to making income.
4. Have you planned how to handle your business if you become unable to work for a while?  Is there someone who knows enough about what you do to step up and fill in until you can work again?

If you are a business owner who truly depends on the money you make, it is vital to have answers to these questions.  What I see for many solo business owners is that even the slightest disaster shuts them down completely.  These owners ARE their business.  When they can’t work, there is no income at all.  Even an illness like the flu effectively shuts them down.  They’ve never thought about alternatives.  Often, the loss of momentum creates a negative spiral that the solo business owner never recovers from.  Their business just slowly winnows away.

One of my own businesses suffered a mini-disaster over the past few months, in fact.  In early December I had major surgery that I knew would keep me away from the massage clinic I own.  Plans were fully in place for my staff to take over my own work with clients.  My practice manager was prepped and ready to take care of management and administrative work that I normally handle.  My start date to come back to the clinic was set.  My clients were all informed and taken care of.  Well, while I was still in the hospital, the practice manager’s father was found to be terminally ill.  She left town and even now has not returned to work.  Four weeks after my surgery, I unexpectedly had to have a second surgery due to complications from the first, making it impossible for me to meet my return to work date.  One staff member left unexpectedly.  Suddenly, I was down to one hard-working staff member and what I could administratively handle by phone.  The systems I’ve put in place for that business saved my bacon, and allowed us to continue to serve clients, make money, and handle at least the bare minimum of administrative work.  While I used to chaff over the time it took to put operations manuals and back up plans in place, now I am very grateful that I had them.

Disaster don’t have to be as large as the Haitian earthquake to effectively shut your business down.  If you want to recover quickly and continue to make money, get your plans and systems in place and review them at least once a year.  Your bank account will show the results and your business will suffer far less than those with no planning at all.

(c) Sue Painter

• Highly successful businesses don’t compete on price alone.  They are smart enough to know that being the cheapest isn’t a strong USP (unique selling proposition).  Instead, they want you to spend money with them because their service is better, their designers more creative, their merchandise higher quality, they are more convenient, or their knowledge and expertise gives you a value far and above what you pay.
• You don’t want your customers buying from you only because you are the cheapest deal around.   Here is one big reason why – cheap customers are not loyal customers.  They buy only on price, so as soon as Sally down the street offers a floral arrangement for even one dollar cheaper, off they go.  You need repeat, loyal customers.  Constantly having to find new customers AND having to find them only because you are the cheapest deal around will flat wear you out.  You will “churn” customers rather than create a willing customer base for your business.  You will work much harder for every dollar you earn, and you will earn less dollars (because your prices are cheaper).
• When you discount constantly, you get customers trained to never pay full price.  I wrote a blog post about this some time back that illustrates this.  Lately, Talbot’s has gotten into the bad habit of constantly offering sales.  I never pay full price there and I never will – I know that I can always wait it out and get a nice discount and maybe even free shipping.  Too bad for Talbot’s that they have trained me and a dozen other people I know to never pay full price.  That also gets me to thinking that if they can discount THAT much, their prices might be highly inflated to begin with – not something Talbot’s needs me to be thinking!
• It is a strange phenomena but it’s true that people will hunt down the cheapest price, gleefully pay it, and then not much value what they bought.  Now what you’ve got on your hands is a customer you discounted to, and the thanks you get in return is that they really don’t even value what they got from you.  That doesn’t make them want to come back to you, does it?
• If you have set your prices fairly (that means, you are making a good profit but you’re not gouging, either) then discounting may mean you don’t cover your costs.  Service business are especially bad about getting themselves into this trap, because they are not purchasing product to resale.  Instead, they are selling their time and expertise.  I’ve seen hair dressers and massage therapists deep discount 30% only to find they are working like dogs and can’t pay their rent and utilities at the end of the month.  Have they gotten clients?  Yep.  Are they going to stay in business?  Nope.  They have, in essence, worked themselves right out of business.

If you want to offer a special deal in order to grow your business don’t do it by discounting.  Instead, ADD a small product or service without charge.  This does TWO things – it ADDS value rather than lessens values.  And, it shows your customers a new product or service that they might not have known you have – something they may decide they can’t live without the next time they are in.

Bottom line – in most cases, discounting doesn’t serve you in building your business.  Solo professionals and small business owners are not the same as super-big-box stores who can spend millions advertising and churn new customers constantly.  You want to cherish your customers, treat them well, offer fair value, and give true benefits in your products and services.  This will build a solid business with loyal, repeat customers who value you and what you offer.

(c) Sue Painter

Monday came, no call from her, so 10 minutes after the hour I called her.  She answered, sounding surprised, with dog barking in background.  Reporting a sore throat and a visit to the doctor earlier that day, she said she didn’t feel like talking and had e-mailed me a few hours before to reschedule the call.  Hmmm….doctor in the morning, but no “let’s cancel” e-mail until 90 minutes before the call (point 2).  Feeling sorry that she was ill, I agreed to a call the next day.

Next day, on Tuesday, she called.  I quickly noticed that there was no team on the line, only her.  We talked and I told her specfically that I wanted a site that I could go in and change easily, the type of links I wanted, and that I wanted a Wordpress blogsite.  The website was to be only 4 pages, pretty small, but with a lot of links.  The call was pleasant enough, she asked good questions, and mentioned that her company did develop in Wordpress often.  She agreed to have a proposal to me by Thursday.  I thought that was a little long, but given that her team was not on the call as planned (no explanation given for that), OK.  (Point 3 – no team on the call and Point 4, solopreneurs usually can give quotes right then and there or at the latest in 24 hours).

Thursday came and went, no proposal arrived.  Late Friday I got an email promising the proposal over the weekend.  The weekend came and went, no proposal arrived. (Points 5 &6!)  Monday came and went, Tuesday came and went, no proposal.  Voila!  On Wednesday a proposal came with a suggestion that to move ahead we NOW schedule the call with her team.

Let me tell you, she’d already lost me.  Remember that know, like, and trust factor?  I didn’t trust her word for beans by now.  If it takes 10 days to get a 4 page proposal out of a solopreneur what the heck is it going to take to get a website out of her?  I would not have agreed to work with her if the work had been free, truly.  But, I opened the proposal and to my irritation, frustration, and total astonishment here’s what I saw:

1. A $4900 price tag for a 4 page website.
2. A statement that the site would be built in Joomla.

There was more, but I can stop right there.  The price tag is, in my experience and opinion, ridiculously high.  I have 7 sites and not a one of them cost anything NEAR that money.  Secondly, the proposal was for something I didn’t ask for and didn’t want.  Never did we discuss Joomla in our phone call.

This is exactly, exactly, exactly how NOT TO SELL.  It is a classic case of “let me, the seller, tell you WHAT YOU NEED and HOW IT WILL BE DELIVERED no matter what you say you want or need, because I KNOW BETTER THAN YOU WHAT YOU NEED.”  ARGHGHGH.  Excuse me while I tear my hair out by the roots!  I see people lose sales all the time using this “I know better than you know what you need” tactic.  It won’t work!  There are ways to educate a prospect and gently suggest considering something else, but to write it up with no prior discussion is horrible, terrible sales technique.  It also tells me that SHE didn’t have the expertise to suggest this without talking to her technical help – a bad sign.

This woman could be the most capable, talented person on the planet to do this job, but as I have said a zillion times before, that does NOT matter.  What matters is her marketing skills, which to be perfectly frank stink worse than a dead skunk in high heat.

I was already totally un-sold, but now I was both un-sold and hacked off.  I’d just had 10 days of my time wasted on this project and been treated as if my wants mattered not one whit.  So I wrote a short, polite, two-sentence email that said, “Thank you for the proposal, but it was not delivered to me in a timely manner, nor is it a proposal that matches what we discussed in our call.  I don’t want to pursue this further.  I appreciate your time in speaking with me.”

Will you even believe that I actually got an e-mail back (this time in less than an hour, not 10 days) that basically said “we know better than you what you need, you will never get what you want using WordPress, my develop is a genius, and I stand behind what he said.”  Defensive posturing NEVER works in sales.  Nor does telling the prospect that she doesn’t know what she is talking about.  Even if this is true, the tactic won’t work!

Take a note – don’t attempt to sell this way.  Marketing is about relationship building – and this woman missed her cues about 5 different times.  Marketing is about being timely – and she was not.  Marketing is about gentle leading – she did not.  Marketing is about asking for a budget, she did not. Marketing is about not hacking off your prospect – she did.  And when you are told there will be no deal, marketing is about taking the hit and moving on, not answering back defensively.

Ugh, what an icky feel.  Makes me sad, though.  I like to see solopreneurs succeed, but I doubt this one will.

(c) Sue Painter

Resolve to keep uppermost in your mind that energy follows thought.  When you really get this concept you will understand that working in each moment to create your life as you want it is the highest and best use of your time.  Resolve to keep on this track, and watch your business thrive!

Well, the answer is “you can’t say thank you enough,” and here are a few stories to underscore that fact. I spent Thanksgiving Day with a life-long friend (www.bobgifford.com) who is an A-list realtor. Were we talking business? Of course! He and I have been entrepreneurial since we rescued old, cast-off copy machines from schools, reworked them, and sold them to churches around Huntsville. But back to the point – his customer relationship program prompts him to thank or “touch” each and every client 33 times a year. That, along with his creativity and focus, makes Bob the successful businessman he is. Thirty-three times – even I was impressed with that number!

In my decade-old massage therapy business I’ve long made it a point to say thanks as every single client walks out the door – no matter that I see many of the same people week after week, month after month, year after year. (Some of my massage clients have had the same standing appointment time for nine years or longer now.) Last year just before Christmas a client called – someone I had not seen in several years. She wanted to come by and purchase ten hours of massage therapy as gift certificates for friends. At the end of our call she told me that she came to my business for the 10 gift certificates because she knew I would thank her for the purchase – something she didn’t think a nearby local spa would do. This woman remembered my simple “thank you” for several years and that alone drove a substantial purchase.

Along with simply being good manners, reaching out to touch someone with a word of thanks keeps us in the energy of gratefulness. And from a business perspective, those times we touch someone with a kind word helps drive our business to top-of-mind awareness (TOPA). TOPA most definitely helps your business thrive.

Oh, and thank you for reading this!

Last night we punched the button on our built-in microwave oven and it black out and died. This morning, rather than running all over Knoxville looking for a Jenn-Air microwave that would fit into the now-empty hole, I went online, did an online chat with Peter A. of Jenn-Air, talked to a very helpful Sherry, and ordered the replacement microwave and the trim kit. I didn’t even think about driving around in traffic hoping to find a local store with this particular model in inventory.

Seems to me that an online presence for nearly any business is an idea whose times has come. Even if it’s just a simple e-brochure, a website gives you the ability to reach and influence far more potential customers than you will ever be able to do face-to-face, or could afford to do via snail-mail. Internet – it’s here, it’s real, it’s now. if you don’t have a site at all, it’s time to embrace the web.

There are dozens of great web designers out there, here’s a link to someone I trust (you can click this link just to buy a website domain name, too!). The point, though, is to educate yourself about how to effectively use a site to increase the breath and depth of your business. I’ve learned dozens of useful tips from the best designers, here are two that I commonly do not see used on business sites:

1. Have a “contact us” or “sign up for our news” block on every single page, not just on the “contact us” page at the back.
2. Spread your customer testimonials throughout your site, onto every page. If you have a separate page called “testimonials” few people will take the time to click and read through it. And, match your testimonials with a picture of the person if you can. It adds instant warmth and credibility.

If you want to know more about building a decent website stay tuned, I’ll have more tips in upcoming blogs and will have a web designer talking to my Bet You Build Your Business Mastermind Group soon after the first of the year. Meanwhile, budget site development if you don’t have a site, and budget updating the site if you already have one you don’t visit very often. More about both, later. Web presence is definitely on the list of how to make your business thrive.
Sue P.