It seems that some things in business just never change. Like those people we affectionately call time wasters.

I was prompted to write this, after being emailed today by a reader, who had wasted a lot of time dealing with a time waster.  This guy claimed to be interested in using her as a freelance designer for a large project.  She later found out, after meeting his colleague at a networking event, that the person she had been dealing with, was simply pumping her for free advice, for a project he was going to do in-house, for his boss! The reader explained that she has only been in business for 6 months, and “feels like a fool” to use her own words, for falling for this trick.

As businesspeople, it’s important for us to learn how to spot the time wasters as soon as we can, BUT without missing the people who are genuinely interested in our products or services.

I wrote a post about time wasters, that gives a few tips.

In my experience, I find that the longer you are in business, the better you become at spotting time wasters.  Do you find that too?  I’d like to know.

Sometimes, it’s possible to spot patterns of behaviour, that immediately alert you to time wasters.  In my own business, for instance, I’ve discovered that whenever someone tells me via a social network, that they are going to get in touch to find out about working with me, they never do.  After all, if someone’s interested in speaking with me, it’s easier for them just to call or email me.  Interestingly, 100% of my clients simply got in touch with me, without any public pre-announcements.

Here’s where I would really appreciate your help!

It would be extremely useful if you would share any of YOUR tips for spotting or dealing with time wasters.  If you have anything you would like to share, please leave a comment and maybe help someone avoid the kind of frustration, that lady in the email experienced.

Related posts:

1. Time wasters: How to spot them and avoid them!
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As you may know, I’ve been on holiday for the past 8 days.  Because blogging is such a valuable part of my communications strategy, it was important for me to be able to maintain my blogging pattern, whilst I wasn’t here.

This post is all about how wordpress’ scheduled posts feature allowed me to have a fresh post here for you each day – even though I was holidaying with my family, and why scheduling posts can be so valuable for business bloggers.

WordPress’ Scheduled Posts feature

Like many people who blog regularly, I often write several blog posts at once and then use wordpress’ scheduled post feature, to publish my posts over the coming days.

This is always a really useful feature, but when you are away from work and, as in my case, away from an Internet connection too, it’s pure gold dust!

Why bother posting when I’m not here?

There are a number of reasons, why it makes sense for business bloggers to maintain the regularity, with which they post.  I mention most of them here, in “why some bloggers post every day.”

However, on a very basic level, I have found that just as people get used to visiting a blog regularly, they can also get used to NOT visiting that blog just as easily.  This simple, long established feature of wordpress means that so long as you have the content written up, a blogger never needs to have those 7 or 14 day gaps, where they drop from their reader’s radar.

Do you use scheduled posts?

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I live in a small village, in an area known for its natural beauty.  We occasionally have people walk past our home, who are on their holidays.  They see the open fields, the winding canal and the streams that snake their way through the village, and occasionally tell me;
“You’re very lucky to live in such a beautiful place.”

Lucky?

As with most things in life, luck had nothing to do with where I live.  In order to move from London, where many of my friends were and where 100% of my clients were based, required a huge amount of planning, financial investment and hard work.  I had to totally redesign my business model and leave the city, where I grew up and had lived almost all of my life.

Planning and action

As a marketing professional, I see people every day, who are hoping that they will get lucky one day and suddenly attract the income and lifestyle from their business that they have always wanted.  Their marketing is ineffective, their sales are disappointing and yet they decide to carry on by themselves, so nothing changes.  Sure, they work really hard, but hard work is not the secret of success; if it were our grandparents would all have been millionaires!  We have to be smarter than that.

If you know someone, who is working hard but not getting the results they want from their business, tell them not to wait for things to “just get better.”  In my experience, the world doesn’t work like that.  Every successful business and person I have ever studied, achieved their success through careful planning and taking action to make those plans real.

When we do the right things correctly, it’s amazing how our luck changes!

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This post contains 3 lessons, which have helped Leo Laporte become one of the Internet’s biggest success stories of recent years and which we can all learn from.

Who is Leo Laporte & what can we learn?

Leo is the massively popular guy behind a network of mainly tech-based programs, which can be watched online or downloaded.  Leo started his online broadcasting network after his mainstream TV show was cancelled.

His network is known as TWiT (This Week in Tech.)  Just 5 years later, Leo’s shows are listened to and watched by millions every month and his advertisers and sponsors include the likes of Visa and Ford.

He now employs a dedicated team of professionals and produces and amazing TWENTY PLUS shows a week.  He’s aiming for a full 24-hours a day “CNN for geeks” service and I know he will do it. More info on Leo can be found here.

Learning from Leo Laporte?

I can see 3 BIG lessons from Leo Laporte’s growing success, which we can all learn from.  Here they are:

1. Quality.  Leo focuses on delivering a very high quality product.  From the beginning, Leo insisted on investing in the best quality equipment possible, and then reinvesting, as the business grew.  He has also worked hard to attract the most entertaining, knowledgeable guests he can.  As the success of his network grew and he was able to start employing people, he brought in the best people he could.  At every step, he has focused on quality, rather than speed or “cheap.”

In my experience, quality does not come cheap, but quality costs far less than when we take the cheap route.  For instance, it can often seem like a wise move to go for the cheapest web host, but what about the cost of all that lost business, if our site is down too often or too slow for people to use?  It might seem like a wise move to hire a cheap accountant or CPA, until you find out that by saving a few hundred a year, you have been overpaying thousands each year in taxes.

It’s about getting the best you can afford and then when you become more financially secure, reinvesting in even better quality.

2. Community. Leo Laporte understands the importance of building a community and engaging with that community.  He takes messages from his listeners and viewers during most of his programs and asks them for suggestions / feedback.  He sets up dedicated chat rooms, where the listeners and viewers can chat with each other and contribute to the show.

There’s a real community feel to Leo’s network, something that helps retain his audience and engage them.  Some of his advertisers have been with him for years, because Leo’s community appreciate that the advertisers are who fund his shows and they are vastly more likely to use and recommend their products.  The advertisers and the listeners are thus, part of the same community. It’s amazing to watch!

As I said yesterday, a community is far, far more commercially valuable than a following or an audience that you broadcast too.

3. Work.  Leo has worked extremely hard to build the TWiT network.  Having come from a mainstream media background, Leo was used to big studios and teams of professionals to get his shows on air.  It must have been hard for him in the beginning, to go from that, to being the guy who made the coffee, wrote the scripts, fixed the equipment and booked the guests.  Until relatively recently, Leo fronted all his shows himself; as well as working with his advertisers, booking guests, writing show plans, working the control desk AND doing a daily tech radio show for an FM station too!

The lesson here is as old as commerce itself.  The best plan in the world will not work for us, if we don’t work for it.

Business leaders are often the first people into the office in the morning and the last ones home; at least during the earlier stages of their business.  All too often, we see people who want to get the result, without putting in the work first.  This is why scammers and con artists have always found an endless stream of people to fool out of their savings, with the promise of easy money.

Quality, community and work.  Three simple words, which bring with them a lot of challenges – But also the promise of something amazing.

What do you think?

Photo: Roland

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Is your marketing shouting at people?

If you go into Starbucks today and start shouting at the people around you, you will definitely grab their attention.  However, it’s not the kind of attention you want to attract.  Many small businesses use a very similar approach with their marketing.  In an effort to capture attention, they act in a way that gets them noticed, but for all the wrong reasons.

They not only fail to generate new business; they can permanently damage the reputation of their business too.

Some examples of how companies shout at people with their sales and marketing:

• Adding people to their newsletter list, without permission. It’s spam.
• Spamming people on Twitter.
• Meeting people at networking events and using that transparent crap; “tell me about your business and how I can help you.” Wake up, it’s not 1985 any more!
• Asking people to join their Linkedin network, claiming they worked with them (when both parties know it’s a lie.)
• Unwanted telemarketing calls to people’s homes at 8pm.  Just what you need when getting a young child to sleep or relaxing after a hard day.

In marketing, it’s easy to confuse movement with progress.  People see that they need to win more business and they know that they must do something – quickly!  So, they do what they hope will generate the new business they need.

The marketing challenge here, is that just because we can do something, doesn’t mean we should.  Just because we can pay someone to spam 500,000 people with a marketing email from us, doesn’t mean it will generate anything positive.  Yes, you can waste half your life attending the same networking events, with the same people, all there to sell, none there to buy – but it’s massively ineffective.

Thankfully, we each have the freedom to make our own choices about the way we market our products and services.  If we use our freedom of choice wisely, our success is guaranteed.

What do you think about the typical small business marketing you see?

Photo: The Dream Seeker

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Many businesses seem to forget that people are people and numbers are numbers.  As a result, they lose touch with the ‘people‘ side of their business.

Here’s why this is a REALLY bad idea:
It’s People who work for us, buy from us, recommend us and help us – not numbers!

When a business starts regarding people simply as ‘numbers’ on a spreadsheet, customer base or mailing list – it becomes disconnected from those people.  This is madness!

Each client, customer, potential client, reader, follower and contact you have is unique.  These people have feelings. They have good days and bad days. They have ups and downs. They have days where they want to cry with joy and days where they cry with sorrow.  These unique, immeasurably valuable individuals are many things to many people, but they are NOT numbers.

Always focus on the people behind ‘the numbers’ that you use in your business and whenever possible, try to connect with them.  Sometimes, something as simple as a sincere offer of help, a quick phone call or even a smile, can turn someone’s day around.

Will this help you grow your business? Quite possibly.

Will it transform the way you FEEL about your business and the way others FEEL about you? Definitely!

Image credit: Kalandrakas

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Here’s a great way to make your business stand out from the crowd for all the right reasons!

A common marketing problem

Most businesses really struggle to develop something uniquely valuable about their services.  That’s why your local; accountants, designers, insurance companies and recruitment firms etc, seem so similar and find they have to sell their services based on prices or fees.

• They use the same generic promises.
• Offer the same or a similar range of services.
• Advertise in the same places.
• Attend the same events.
• … and thus make themselves all-but invisible.

They are pretty-much camouflaged, which is the exact opposite of what they need, if they want to gain the attention of prospective clients or customers!

Companies that look too similar to their competitors, find that their prices or fees are the only thing a prospective customer has, to measure their VALUE compared to the others.  As a result, these companies find themselves competing for business based on price.  They blame the marketplace for being too cost-conscious or fee sensitive; when in reality it is they themselves that have failed to show the marketplace enough unique value.

Marketing and customer service

One way to really stand out and make a GREAT name for your business, is to provide genuinely exceptional customer service.

Here’s why:  Offering exceptional customer service is one of the best ways to retain your existing customers and develop new ones at the same time. It’s a super high leverage activity.

After all, people universally adore being looked after and being made feel special.  If you want to plug your business into the power of word of mouth marketing, this is a superb place to start.

The great news is that customer service excellence is rare today – So rare that when you provide it to people, they tell everyone.  In other words; if you become one of the few businesses that takes people’s breath away with YOUR customer service, your business can generate stacks of powerful word of mouth publicity.

A recent example

I needed to get my car repaired last week, so I used a local garage that had been highly recommended to me.  The garage examined the car and gave me a quote.  They were very highly recommended, so I told them to go ahead and fix it.  They told me that my car would be ready in two days.

The garage owner called me the next day, to say that my car would be ready to collect on time and offering to send someone to come and pick me up, to collect it!  When I arrived at the garage, they had repaired my car and given it a thorough clean; inside and out.  It looked like new.  There was a small note left on the passenger seat, with a list of free extras they had provided.  For example, they had filled up the screen wash and made sure the car’s tyre pressures were correct.  They also must have noticed my 4 year old son’s child seat, so they left a Disney stories CD in the car too, again with their compliments.

These are fairly small, inexpensive things to offer; yet they make a huge difference and have a massive positive impact on how their customers ‘feel’ about them.

What did I do after being treated like this?  First off, they got a MASSIVE tip from me.  In reality, my tip probably paid for all the extras 3 times over.  I also asked them for a pile of their business cards, which I have been handing to everyone I know locally; telling them how great these people are and what an amazing service they provided.

Promising exceptional service is easy.

The CHALLENGE is providing it!

If you want the marketplace to shout about you from the rooftops, your level of customer service has to be worth shouting about.

In my experience, business owners typically believe they already offer a good enough level of customer service, when in reality they are not even close.  They try hard and go the extra mile – but so do all of their serious competitors.  That’s just average – it’s not ‘exceptional.’

It’s easy to find out if we really are offering this level of service, because we will already have people eagerly recommending us to their contacts and friends.  We will already have the marketplace buzzing about the wonderful way we look after people.  We will have people sending in their résumés, because they really want to work with us.

If you are not getting that kind of traction, you might want to try this: Think of some companies you know, who already offer breathtaking customer service.  They don’t need to be in your industry.

Next, write down what it is that they do, which YOU could do, to make people feel just as good about you and your services.

Over to you

What great examples of customer service you have experienced and what impact did it had on you?

Please share your experiences below.

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Whilst it’s relatively simple (if time consuming), to develop a large social network, many business owners tell me they find it difficult to successfully market their products or services via social networks.

Here’s why I believe this happens & how to fix it!

People talk in terms of “increased brand awareness” and “being part of the conversation,” yet many struggle to turn the time they invest in social networking, into bankable results for their business.

One person, with over 100,000 people in his social network, told me that he has not made a penny for the thousands of hours he has invested in developing it.

Social network or commercial network?

Part of the marketing challenge with social networking, is the social part.  Our social network is considered by most, to be our family and friends – The people we actually socialise with outside work. This helps explain why people get the same negative response when they try and “sell” something on a social network, that Multi Level Marketers used to get; back in the old days when they were told to sell to their family and friends.

It just feels wrong!

Whilst professional networks like LinkedIn are designed from the ground up for commercial networking, other networks like FaceBook and Twitter etc were not. These were designed for social networking – Places where family and friends can keep in touch and have fun.

If someone uses Twitter or FaceBook for business and they are not getting the results they want, I find it’s usually because they have built a social network, instead of a commercial one.  When they then introduce a commercial component to their messages, their social network often kicks back against it.  If you have used Twitter for any period of time, you will know exactly what I mean!

As I write this, my business has generated over £60,000, via commercial contacts I have made on Twitter in 2009.  I have a 100% commercial network on Twitter and as such, I love to chat about marketing and share great marketing ideas with people.  Yes, I let my personality come through, but I do that off-line too.

Because people know me as a marketing professional on Twitter, if I had a marketing book and offered it to my network there, it would feel right to them.  It would be totally consistent.  Equally, because people associate me with the marketing of small and medium sized businesses, when they want to speak with a marketing specialist, they feel totally comfortable giving me a call.

Commercial networking tip

If you network online for commercial reasons (like I do), focus on developing a great commercial network.

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Did you start using Twitter in order to waste a stack of time attracting “followers”- Or to generate more sales, leads and business connections?

Did you invest in those expensive brochures in order to watch them slowly go out of date – Or to increase the effectiveness of your marketing?

Did you invest in your website in order to remain invisible online – Or to generate a regular, predictable flow of sales, leads and enquiries?

Marketing tip: Focus on your outcome

It’s way too easy to start a marketing activity with all the right intentions, only to realise one day that you have been slowly drifting off course and are now getting little if anything in return.

Grab yourself a coffee and take a few moments to look at your current marketing activities.  Are they on track to help you make more sales and generate more high quality business?  If not, stop whatever you are doing and either get back on track or develop a more effective marketing strategy.

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If you want to develop the effectiveness of your marketing and increase your sales, I have a piece of advice, which could help you massively improve your results.

Stop pushing!

If you are walking down the street and a stranger pushes you, they get your attention!  Of course, the attention you are giving them is 100% negative, because people don’t like being pushed!

If your sales or marketing is based on pushing, perusing or pestering people, you can expect the same negative attention from the marketplace.  Yes, prospective clients or customers will notice you, but for all the wrong reasons.

Common types of pushy marketing

• Cornering a stranger at a networking event or conference, while you recite your well-rehearsed “elevator pitch” to them.
• Sending people unsolicited email, no matter how “special” your offer is. They will consider it spam and everyone hates spam.
• Sending automated, DM’s (direct messages) to strangers, who have just followed you on Twitter, telling them to click links or add you to their FaceBook or LinkedIn network etc.

If you want people to be attracted to you, your business and what you have to offer, don’t push them away.

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