Business Growth Insights

A well-designed website is vital for the success of any business. Your choice of designer will depend largely on whether you wish to work with someone face to face, or if you are willing to work remotely.

In any case, here’s what you need to consider when contacting web designers in search for the best one for your business:

* Observe how much they ask you about your business. A good web designer will want to know everything and more about your company, because this is the only way in which they can design a website that mirrors you and your business to perfection.

* Check out the websites he has designed to confirm that you like them. Notice if all the sites look alike or if they vary according to the client.

* Ask if the designer created the graphic and layout design of the sites or if he just took care of the programming.

* If he doesn’t do graphic work, ask if he can recommend someone.

*Confirm he has an organized planning process to guide you through the design phase, and that every discussion and decision will be documented. The more you can participate in the planning, the better.

* Investigate the designer’s knowledge about Internet marketing and search engine optimization. Be sure the site he will create meets your marketing and business goals. Just “pretty” doesn’t cut it; your website must be easily found by your clients and prospects so as to generate sales.

* Ask about his fees and the cost of the website you desire. In order for him to give you a good estimate, he will have to know about the content and features you want in the site.

* Ask how he will charge you and if you have to make deposits or pay him directly. The web designer could bill you monthly, or as he finishes phases.

* Notice if he aims to stay within budget or is always suggesting new features that elevate the price. The budget is your responsibility, not his.

* Talk to several of his current clients to see what their experience is like. The web designer must possess good project management and communication skills, and he must be a good listener.

* Ask if he does maintenance work after the website is up and running and how much it will cost. Some designers are only interested in creating websites, not maintaining them; in this case, you have to find an assistant to help you run your website.

* If you are going to do the maintenance yourself, ask the designer if he can keep the design simple and easy to maintain by the owner.

* Ensure the contract says that you own the copyright to the whole website. Everything you hired someone to do for you should be owned by you.

* Make sure you own the domain name, even if the designer registered it for you.

* Ask the designer to give you original and editable source files, otherwise, you or another designer, won’t be able to edit the website.

* You have to enjoy talking and working with the designer. You have to like him, trust him, and enjoy his conversation.

* You shouldn’t feel he is wasting your time. There should be business chemistry between you, and he must offer valuable feedback about your website’s design.

* Make sure the designer can meet your deadline. The best web designers are very busy, thus, you may have to wait in line. If you can be flexible, work with him to create a schedule that works for you both.

It is important to research and interview several professionals to ensure you hire the one that is really capable of giving your business, and you, what you need.

If you liked this article, tell all your friends about it. If you have a blog or website, you can link to it or even post it to your own site (don’t forget to mention www.OneCoach.com as the original source).

“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” – Archimedes

Playing on the teeter-totter in kindergarten, we probably learned what “leverage” is. But what does the term mean in business?

Simply put, “leverage” is the ability to accomplish more by use of a tool than you could through your own direct effort. The most obvious use is in investing, when (for example) you borrow money to buy more shares than you could otherwise obtain.

When it comes to sales, finding a job, or whatever other business goal you are trying to achieve, your success is driven in large part by your ability to leverage the community you build around you. By positioning yourself appropriately, you can call upon not only your own knowledge, skills, and contacts, but also those of the people you know, with relatively little effort. Online networking tools in particular, can dramatically increase your leverage: more results with less effort.

Let’s look at a few specific ways you can apply the concept of leverage, particularly online:

Crossing the Action Threshold

Many people will respond if you ask them for a favor. But it’s far better if they proactively market you and seek out clients for you. It takes a certain degree of trust and relationship strength for them to act proactively — that’s when you have leverage. If your relationships aren’t above that “action threshold”, they’re not really serving you at full capacity. To achieve this goal, you first and most obviously need a high credibility level in what you’re selling. Assuming you have that, you can also motivate that proactive behavior in others by being proactive yourself in your service to them. A finder’s fee is another way to motivate more people to look out for your interests.

The Power of Many

Any time you interact in a public venue rather than one-on-one, that’s leverage. For example, public speaking is a powerful way to reach more potential customers of what you’re selling. The same conversation exposes you to, and connects you with, a large number of other people, all for the same amount of effort — plus you get the added benefit of the other people in the community sharing their experiences. When our readers write to us about issues we discuss at TheVirtualHandshake.com, rather than replying vie e-mail, we typically reply with a blog post… which hundreds or thousands of people will read. When people send you a private message in a social networking site, you can suggest taking it to a public channel (where appropriate.) That’s leverage.

Content Recycling

You can leverage your writing by repurposing it for multiple venues. Let’s say you write something in a discussion forum. (Consider composing your replies to web forums in a word processor or HTML editor. That way you’ll have it saved for later revision or expansion, plus you get the benefit of spell-checking your web postings.) You can use your initial text as a discussion starter in another forum, then post it to your blog, include it in your company’s newsletter, and expand it into an article for publication elsewhere. You get dramatically more value from your initial investment of effort.

Don’t Spread Yourself too Thin

Something to keep in mind: with leverage comes risk — the risk of becoming over-extended. Only a very foolish investor would have all of his investments on leverage; you have to keep your debt levels under control.

Similarly, with your community of support, you have to invest the one-on-one time with the most important people, who are typically the people with the greatest buying power and likelihood to buy. You can’t do this en masse. If you spend too much time doing “bulk networking” (also known as spam), you won’t have enough time to spend developing those stronger relationships that you need to actually get your business done. If you become so over-extended that you can no longer service your relationships, don’t expect them to provide any returns when you need them.

Online, it’s very easy to become over-extended with your relationships because some of the tools make it so easy to make trivial connections with large numbers of people. Also, talking with people about business is, for many people, a lot more fun than actually working on your business. We’ve heard many anecdotes of people spending time on discussion forums and networking sites when, by their own admission, they should be pursuing existing leads, putting out proposals, or developing new products.

In Chapter 2 of The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online, we suggest a three-step process to help you keep your focus on high-return relationships. (For this example, we’re focused on the sales process.)

1. Review everyone in your contact database to create a list of hot leads: These are potential customers, employers, or whatever sort of person you are pursuing). This target list also includes people who are not themselves leads, but can introduce you to leads. The head of the local synagogue or church knows many people — it could be worthwhile to ask him if he might know customers for your business.

2. Approach all of your leads over the next few weeks: Work on building your relationship with them. Over time, and depending on context, either try to sell to them or else ask for referrals.

3. Focus on meeting new people only after pursuing the majority of the existing leads: Serving your current customers should be your highest priority, followed by pursuing your hottest leads. Let’s say that you sell your consulting services successfully to 50 percent of your leads (which would be a very impressive close ratio!) In a new, closed-entry chat room, there is only perhaps a 25 percent chance that you will meet someone with that 50 percent chance of revenues — so you only have a 12.5 percent chance of earning revenues from participating in the chat room. A bird in the hand is worth far more than a bird flitting through cyberspace.

Leverage is a powerful concept. Maintain your focus, don’t get over-extended, and you can expect a great return on your investment of time and energy.

Scott “Social Media” Allen is a social media strategist who’s been helping individuals and businesses transform virtual relationships into real business since 2002. He’s coauthor of The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online and The Emergence of The Relationship Economy, as well as a resident expert at American Express OPEN Forum and Business.com. In partnership with OneCoach, Scott will be presenting a six-part course on “Social Media for Business Growth” starting on August 18. Click here for more information.

You’re also invited to join OneCoach CEO John Assaraf and thought leader Scott Allen on Wednesday, Aug. 18 at 11:00 a.m. PDT for a complimentary webinar on “High-ROI Social Media”. Click here to register.

One of the essential strategies of social media marketing is to position yourself as an expert on your topic. You can do this via a variety of methods: publishing articles, blogging, creating and posting video tutorials, podcasts or talk radio, webinars and so on. But one of the easiest and still most effective is by participating in a group — a discussion list, forum or a sub-group within a social networking site.

Contrary to popular opinion, effective marketing in forums and discussion lists is not about volume, it’s about presence and positioning.

If you want to be perceived as an expert, act like a true expert.

Seems like a simple enough concept, right? If you want to be thought of as an expert in your field, besides just knowing your stuff, if you could figure out how experts — not wanna-be experts, but true “A-list” experts that people respect, quote, hire and buy from — act, then acting like them, rather than acting like a wanna-be, should boost your credibility even more.

You know the wanna-be experts… you’ve seen them. They always have an opinion about everything posted in the group. They’ll ramble on for paragraph after paragraph, making their case ad nauseam. And it seems that whenever there’s a flame war, they’re right in the middle of it, even if it doesn’t look like they started it.

Over the past five years I’ve studied how “real” experts behave in online groups. And when I say “real” experts, I mean the ones who earn significant revenues from their business, have published books, speak at conferences, have peer-reviewed papers in trade journals, and so on. Are they necessarily the most knowledgeable on the topic? No. But they have the best reputations and are generally far more financially successful than the wanna-bes.

If you want to be perceived as a real expert, not a wanna-be, you need to act like one.

So how do real experts act?

In order to understand how real experts act, let’s look first at two key attributes of experts:

1. They’re busy: They’re working — writing, traveling, speaking, consulting for a client, whatever… Point is, they have better things to do with their time than spend all day in a discussion forum.

2. They’re extremely careful about what they say: They know that people are paying attention to them, and that has two consequences. First of all, they know that their reputation is on the line every time they open their mouth — that everything they say will be subject to scrutiny. Secondly, they also know that people will put a lot of weight into what they say and probably act upon it, so they feel a strong sense of responsibility to provide good information.

When you understand those things, it’s easy to see why experts behave as they do in this context:

Experts post less frequently: They aren’t usually heavily, heavily engaged in the group unless it’s their own group or they have some kind of leadership role. Depending on the overall posting volume, anywhere from a 2 posts a week to a few per month is sufficient to keep their name out there.

Experts aren’t quick to reply: They usually aren’t the first ones to join in the conversation. Remember, they’re not sitting there watching for posts as they come in — they may only even read the group posts once or twice a week. Also, they read and reflect on the reactions of others before posting their own thoughts.

Experts consolidate the conversation, not fragment it: There’s a tendency in active groups for conversations to “fragment”, i.e., multiple people reply to the original post, then people create replies to the replies, and so on. Experts don’t typically reply to people individually, but rather create a single, longer post that addresses what several people have said all at once.

Experts substantiate what they say: Experts are researchers. Sure, they have opinions, but most of them didn’t earn their reputations based purely on their opinions. So when they make statements in these groups, they often back these up by citing sources, whether it’s something they’ve written themselves or that someone else wrote. It’s especially helpful if you link to the sources you’re citing. And if it’s yourself, that’s a great promotional tool at the same time.

Experts keep it professional: They don’t participate in flame wars, and they rarely bring their personal issues into the group. They don’t put people down — they may correct, but they don’t insult in doing so. Why? Because they’re not threatened.

Experts don’t “act” smart — they are smart: True experts don’t talk down to people, but they also don’t use jargon or complex language in order to sound impressive. In fact, they are generally more able than most to put the concepts into plain, simple language that everyone can understand, and are patient and willing to do so.

Let’s be clear… this isn’t about gaming the system to pretend to be an expert when you’re really not. This is about making some smart decisions about how you use your time and how you engage people in online communities. You’ll find, as you put these into practice, that not only will they slowly but surely enhance your reputation, they’ll also give you more time than random, unfocused participation does. You can use that time to go do the same thing in another group or site, or to go do other things to enhance your expert reputation, like write a blog or better yet, a book.

Act like a real expert, not a wanna-be, and you will attract more business.

Scott “Social Media” Allen is a social media strategist who’s been helping individuals and businesses transform virtual relationships into real business since 2002. He’s coauthor of The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online and The Emergence of The Relationship Economy, as well as a resident expert at American Express OPEN Forum and Business.com. In partnership with OneCoach, Scott will be presenting a six-part course on “Social Media for Business Growth” starting on August 18. Click here for more information.

You’re also invited to join OneCoach CEO John Assaraf and thought leader Scott Allen on Wednesday, Aug. 18 at 11:00 a.m. PDT for a complimentary webinar on “High-ROI Social Media”. Click here to register.

Do you know the difference between wants and needs? They may sound similar, but they’re as different as day and night. As a small-business owner, it’s important to distinguish between the two in order to attract more clients and grow your business. By learning the specific wants and needs of your clients, you can learn how to better market your product or service in a way that speaks to your ideal clients and better compel them to buy from you.

A need is something you have to have, something you can’t do without. A good example is food. If you don’t eat, you won’t survive for long. You might not need a whole lot of food, but you do need to eat.

A want is something you would like to have. It is not absolutely necessary, but it would be a good thing to have. A good example is music. Now, some people might argue that music is a need but you don’t actually need music to survive.

It may sound completely counter-intuitive, but the fact is, wants are much more powerful than needs. Even though their needs must be fulfilled for survival, most people make their purchasing decisions based on their wants, rather than their needs. For example, people need to lose weight for health reasons. A weight-loss clinic might assume that clients would respond to a weight-loss program that is positioned to help them feel better and improve their health. But what most people want from a weight-loss program is not health, but to look better, attract more romance into their lives, to receive compliments from people and gain confidence. You may need a car to commute to work, but you want to do it in a BMW. Those are all emotional wants versus objective needs.

When marketing your product or service, stay away from focusing on promoting the need for it, because until you identify why clients want your product, you will never be successful selling to them.

Many business owners are allergic to planning. After all, there are too many things to do to stop and plan!

Big mistake.

Your plan is the key to focusing on the right things at the right time, and it helps measure progress toward your goals. Creating a sales and marketing plan as a subset of the overall business plan is critical for accelerating your business growth.

The fundamental function of marketing is to generate qualified sales leads. There are any number of tools that can be used to do that–but how do you know which tools to use if you don’t have a plan? And how do you know if you are investing in productive marketing activities if you don’t know have a budget or know what results you are trying to produce?

A marketing plan doesn’t need to be an extensive document. First, start with your business objectives for the next 6 months or year. You should already have these, in terms of target revenues if nothing else. Now, what marketing objectives align with those business objectives? For example, how many leads need to be generated in order to give sales sufficient numbers to close the deals necessary to reach the revenue objective? What strategies are going to meet those objectives? Will you need to get more publicity? Expand into a new market? Reach more people in your current market?

At this point, you know what you are aiming for, and you know how you need to hit the target. Now, determine what specific activities will achieve your strategies and objectives. This is where you choose from the enormous pool of marketing options–and you choose the activities that will work best for the audiences you want to reach and the results you want to produce. You might need to have a tradeshow program where you get face to face with your market, you might need to launch or improve your web site, you might need to implement a campaign for current customers. The list goes on and on.

Whatever the right activities are, put them together into an integrated program and create target metrics (e.g., number of click throughs, number of lead cards collected). There’s your marketing plan. The next step, the sales plan, focuses on the leads generated by marketing, how they will be converted to customers, and how follow on sales will be made to those customers. Articulate sales metrics in terms such as conversion rates, overall revenues, and revenues per customer.

Now you have something to measure against and you can review things periodically to see if you are on track in terms of the results you need to get or if something needs to be adjusted.

This whole process doesn’t need to take a lot of time. And having a sales and marketing plan will give you a lot more insight into how well this part of your company is working, and will let you make changes quickly if things are off course.

Need help in creating a plan? Check out the Business Momentum Club to learn the fundamentals of creating a successful sales and marketing plan.