After my last article, several people asked me what I consider to be the most important, high-priority things to do.

Here’s what I believe… If you do nothing else with your website, your SEO and for that matter, FreeSEOScorecard.com, you simply MUST DO two things:

1. Get Analytics running on all your web pages.
2. Add robots.txt and sitemap.xml files to your site.

By just doing these two things, you’ll be ahead of the majority of websites… and maybe, your competitors!

In fact, speaking of your site and your competitors, why not use FreeSEOScorecard.com and find out right now?

Here’s all you have to do:

1. In the search box on FreeSEOScorecard.com, enter the website url.
2. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and notice the Analytics results bar.
   
3. If Analytics are not found, you’ve got some work to do
4. Now, scroll to the top of the page and click the Domain link
   
5. Notice Search engine specific files.
   
6. Were your Robots.txt and Sitemap.xml files found? If not, get busy!
7. And how did your competitors do?

1. Why Analytics?

When we conducted our 1 Million Site research, about one-third of websites we analyzed had no apparent analytics running on the page.

While it’s not surprising that Google Analytics runs on the lion’s share of web pages (it is free), it IS surprising, is that even though it is free, there are still 36% of sites without ANY analytics.

Of course, that’s to your advantage.

If you have a website, no matter how small or big, you’ve made an investment. Your time is worth more than $0.00 (or it should be).

Analytics establish a baseline for comparison. If you don’t have analytics running on every page, you have no way to determine if your investment is paying off.

For instance…

• Knowing your most popular web pages and the search terms visitors used to get to those pages
• You added a new page, did anyone visit?
• People are coming to your site, but how do they navigate? What’s the most common path?
• How long do people stay on your pages and what percent abandon your site and go someplace else?
• What percent are new vs. repeat visitors?
• …and so forth

2. Why Robots.txt and Sitemap.xml?

Ever wonder why so few people visit your web site? It might be your fault.

Even with the world’s greatest content, beautiful graphics and killer headlines, if Google can’t find your web page (the purpose of a Sitemap.xml file) or you’ve unintentionally blocked search engine access to certain web pages (by excluding pages with your robots.txt file) you’re not going to show up when a customer searches on “your keywords.”

According to our research, only 30% of websites provide a sitemap for search engines to utilize.

The Sitemap.xml file is like a table-of-contents for all the pages on your website. Every page you include WILL get indexed by Google.

The Robots.txt file tells search engines which web folders to exclude from indexing. It’s not uncommon for websites to muff it and block access to pages that should be indexed. It’s like getting all dressed up with nowhere to go. Your content is ready, but no one’s ever going to see it.

Do these two things and you will get better results. Promise.

And if you want to learn more about SEO, check out this SEO Resource Kit.

Good Selling!

view: infographic

How often do we complain about our favorite sports team not executing the fundamentals of the game? I should know, I’m a Cubs fan. (40 wins, 57 losses, 17.5 games behind the Reds)

In baseball, the fundamentals haven’t changed in a hundred years: hitting, throwing, fielding, and running. I knew them when I was six years old.

Same applies to website content. The fundamentals aren’t a dark secret. We all “know” them.

The downside risk: A prospective customer types “your keywords” into Google, but none of the search results are yours. They’re your competitor’s.

Meanwhile, you’re stuck out on Page 6… you’re invisible.

But the fact is, 90% of web pages we analyzed fail to have basic elements correct. You’d almost think people were intentionally trying to prevent Google from sending them traffic.

1 Million Fundamental Fails

We wanted to know how many web pages had acceptable title tags, H1 elements and proper meta-description tags.

Pretty basic stuff, correct?

After analyzing the home pages of 1 million websites (see Infographic) we found that just 10% properly executed this most fundamental requirement.

I’ve seen the enemy…and it’s us

If you’re ever wondering why so few people visit your web site it could be your fault.

Even with the world’s greatest content, beautiful graphics and killer headlines, if you’ve done a poor job with basic on-page SEO elements or Google can’t find your web page (the purpose of a Sitemap.xml file) you’re not going to show up when a customer searches on “your keywords.”

Are you guilty?

We’ve set up a free site for you to run an instant self-assessment of any web page at http://www.FreeSEOScorecard.com

See how you do and report back.

Good Selling!

56 business days to Q4

Translation: The final push to hit quota.

Having done this for 25+ years, hitting my YE/Q4 numbers comes down to ONE (1) thing:

→ How well I get the word out to people I DON’T KNOW

Why? Because winning ONE new customer can deliver the incremental revenue to put me over the top. I already know what’s in my current pipeline… What I need are *new* opportunities.

But if new deals aren’t in the hopper by September 30, it’s unlikely they’ll close in Q4.

PR is not the only weapon (it’s the first one)

There are a lot of ways to get the word out:

• Social media
• email
• Articles
• Direct mail
• Word of mouth
• Press releases (PR)

I like PR because it gets my story out to a whole new audience: People I don’t know.

Then, I repurpose my Press Release as content for my emails, blog posts, direct mail and social media — for the people I do know. Great for passalong/referrals, too.

Just the process of boiling my message down to ~600 words is valuable.

Plus, it lets me say THANKS to a client when I feature them in the release. (recent example: http://www.marketing-playbook.com/press/FreeSEOScorecard.html)

Resources:

One of my most popular downloads is my 16-step procedure/checklist for Press Releases.

Why? Probably because SEO and Press Releases go hand-in-hand.

Download includes:

• What you must do BEFORE writing
• How to write an effective release
• What you must do AFTER writing
• 10 great example press releases
• PR teleseminar (mp3) from my marketing workshop

plus:

• $100 promocode (25% off) PRNewswire’s national, Tier-1 wire service (valid for the next 12-months)

Download: http://www.pressreleasechecklist.com

Good Selling!

I work with subject-matter experts. Really bright, smart people who are on their game. All the time.

When they get the opportunity to meet with qualified prospects they win the business more than 65% of the time (often without a proposal!)

Problem is…getting those meetings.

“Getting past the gatekeeper” used to be the problem.

Now, when customers look for a new vendor, 78% of the time they start with Google.

So when a prospective customer searches on “YOUR keyphrase,” are you on Google’s 1st page? (or on pg 83?)

Example Free SEO Scorecard

Getting ranked on Google is important to anyone running a business today. That includes you and me.

Somehow we have to figure out how to extract all that awesome, relevant content from between our ears (aka “Content”) and get it onto our websites (so Google can come out and index it).

My 99-Questions Book Publishing webinar was about creating the right “Content.” We ALL have to start with content.

The shame of it all is when you DO finally get the content onto your site and then tragically fail to follow a few simple [Google-recommended] SEO guidelines.

For me, I really didn’t pay any attention to SEO until I realized Google was sending “my prospects” some place… just not to my website!

My mistakes/errors blocked Google from sending me the traffic I deserved.

The missing SEO scorecard/checklist

I’m an engineer. I like knowing 1+1 will always = 2. I’m a fan of predictable results and the 80/20 rule.

As I learned, SEO has its own 80/20 rule. Following some basic guidelines gets you the majority of the results.

And that’s what led me to develop my own SEO scorecard/checklist. A free tool my customers & friends could use without knowing any SEO/HTML jargon.

Seeing is believing

Here’s an SEO Scorecard I generated for a manufacturing company’s home page (spcanywhere.com):   http://fseocard.com/CRp5

You don’t have to be an SEO expert

As you can see, the free tool shows you what to fix. And if someone else maintains your website, just forward the Scorecard link and tell them to fix what’s broken.

Hope it helps you spot web page errors that prevent Google from sending you all the traffic you deserve.

Give it a whirl! And please tell your friends.

“It’s like taking your own blood pressure. You don’t have to be a doctor to put on the cuff, pump up that little bulb-like thing and see if you’ve got high blood pressure. (that’s your scorecard).

If you have a problem, you can go to a physician (in your case, an SEO expert) or start with what you can do on your own, like exercise and diet (SEO = DIY resources, training, etc.).”

I was making room for some new books when I came across Mark McCormack’s classic: What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School. Published in 1984, it spent 21 consecutive weeks at #1 on the NY Times bestseller list.

I blew off the dust, and started reading. I couldn’t put it down. In a time before faxes, email, mobile phones and the internet, McCormack is as right-on today as he was then.

And what was McCormack’s point? What was Harvard (or any B-school) incapable of teaching you? How to Sell!

I carefully typed up Chapter 1, just for you. Enjoy.

Chapter 1: Reading people

What they don’t can’t teach you at Harvard Business School?
How to Sell!

LET ME TELL YOU two stories. One involves a future president, the other a high-living golf pro, and though the incidents happened nearly a decade apart, they are linked in my mind.

In 1963, I was in Paris for the World Cup golf tournament where I happened to have two chance meetings with Richard Nixon, once at the golf club when he came by my table to speak to Gary Player, the other, only a few days later at the Tour d’Argent, when he stopped to speak to Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, with whom I was having dinner.

Nixon’s remarks were pleasant enough. What stayed with me was that on both occasions he used the same words, the exact same five or six sentences. It was as though he were talking to stick figures rather than to real people, as though he had a fund of stock phrases for every type of person he was likely to meet—five or six sentences for a sports personality, a paragraph for a business leader, another for a religious figure.

The other incident involved the flamboyant golfer Doug Sanders. When we first started representing Doug a lot of people told me we had made a mistake. Doug did have some “Vegas” in him. He ran with a fast crowd, got into his share of scrapes, and was known to make more than just a friendly wager every now and then. Some people thought he was too controversial for us and asked why I trusted him. Quite frankly, I trusted Doug Sanders a lot more than some of the people who were questioning me. Which brings me to my story.

Once Doug played a golf exhibition up in Canada. He made all the arrangements himself. I didn’t know anything about it. But about a week after the exhibition took place, we received an envelope from Doug. There was no letter or note inside, only our commission—in cash.

I recall these incidents now because they demonstrate something important about reading people. What people say and do in the most innocent situations can speak volumes about their real selves.

My accidental encounters with Nixon, for instance, indicated a certain insincerity and a degree of phoniness that I remembered ten years later, when he was forced to resign the presidency. Nixon’s troubles probably had as much to do with his phoniness as they did with Watergate. People don’t like phonies. They don’t trust them, and they certainly don’t want one running their country.

In Doug Sanders’s case, the fee for the exhibition was so insignificant it might not have seemed worth the bother. But to this day I can see Doug going back to his hotel room, pulling a wad of cash out of his pocket, counting out our commission, sticking it in an envelope, and scribbling out our address. This was so totally in keeping with Doug Sanders’s character that nothing else would have occurred to him.

One would like to believe that it was a future American president who exhibited quality of character and a golf hustler who came off as a con man. But the facts in these cases belie those conclusions.

How to sell? Character counts

What does this have to do with business? Everything. In the business world it is easy enough to adopt a corporate persona, or several corporate personae, depending on the situation. Some people will act one way with their subordinates, another way with their boss, and a totally different way with people outside their company.

But the real self—one’s true nature—can’t change color to suit its environment. In any ongoing business situation, sooner or later—either subliminally or out in the open—you are going to find that you are dealing with that person’s real self.

If nothing else, you want to hear what people are really saying, as opposed to what they are telling you; you want to be able to put someone’s deeds—his own business activities—into the larger context of character. Whether I’m selling or buying, whether I’m hiring or (in our capacity as consultants) being hired; whether I’m negotiating a contract or responding to someone else’s demands, I want to know where the other person is coming from. I want to know the other person’s real self.

Selling is Personal

Business situations always come down to people situations. And the more—and the sooner—I know about the person I am dealing with, the more effective I’m going to be.

Good Selling!

Just like the previous 45 games, the winner of this year’s Super Bowl came down to one stat. Turnovers.

According to Stats, LLC, the team that wins the turnover battle wins the game. Not the team to win the coin toss (that’s true only 49% of the time), scoring first (66%) or even the team that leads after the 3^rd quarter (84%). Rather, the team that hangs onto the ball ultimately is the victor.

Winning the turnover battle is even a better stat to watch than the more sexy “average more yards per pass play” stat (78%).

Sure, this year’s battle had only one turnover (an interception), but there could have been two turnovers had not NY been called for a penalty for having 12 men on the field (and who knows what the score would have then been).

Do Turnovers Predict Business Success?

I started my sales career with Intel—back in the go-go days of the late ‘70s. Intel was not the chip leader it is today. While we were dwarfed by Texas Instruments, Motorola and many others, Intel sales management was maniacally focused on customer wins.

When we won a new account, the Customer Win was celebrated. As a sales guy, it was a nice notch in your belt, especially when it was recognized with a Telex from the sales vp, Hank O’Hara, or a handwritten note from a regional manager like Frank Gill.

But the bigger prize was a Customer Win earned by taking away an account from a competitor. It didn’t even matter how big the account was or if the customer had some marquee value.

Nope. Stealing an account created heroes.

Same, too, for battling it out with a competitor for a current account. Nothing seemed to get management worked up into a lather like the prospect of losing an existing customer. Even a young field sales rep like me was given full license to call upon anyone in management to fly in for a customer presentation.

It was just part of Intel’s DNA to never ever lose an account and to pull out all the stops to win a new account.

Turnovers in Your Business?

Since I left Intel several years ago I’ve had the opportunity to work with hundreds of small businesses with revenues under $50 million. Some are rising stars. Unfortunately, though, most have flat-lined—having reached a steady-state of customer wins vs. customer losses.

With eerie predictability, the “Turnover Stat” holds true. Even in slow-growth industries, those businesses driven by customer retention AND customer acquisition just do better.

They make more money, have happier customers and are better places to work. Everyone just seems to understand the priorities without mission statement plaques.

How about your business? Does this “Turnover Stat” apply to you? Do you track it?

A Manifesto for turning the Marketing Dept into the Sales Team’s Secret Weapon

We’re all marketers now Engaging customers today requires commitment from the entire company—and a redefined marketing organization.

No doubt, 2011 was the tipping point for the marketing department. Marketing Automation, Content Marketing and analytics entered boardroom conversations.

Even at the smallest of companies (for which I consult), marketing directors and channel managers find themselves in the spotlight for the very first time.

So how should the CMO, marketing director and CEO respond?

I think that’s the real question McKinsey & Co. attempted to answer in their July 2011 report, “We’re all marketers now.”
(fyi: this report was the #3 most read in 2011, falling in just behind articles on strategy and brainstorming. And in typical McKinsey fashion, their research involved more than 20,000 customers…talk about comprehensive research!)

Here are the highlights (you may also grab my personal, marked-up, highlighted version of the report here):

• “Customers no longer separate marketing from the product—it is the product.”

• “In the era of engagement, marketing is the company.”

• Customers are on the hunt for a solution waaaay before you can even think about reaching out to them in traditional direct/push marketing fashion. Translation: the conversation has morphed from “a monologue to a dialogue.”

• “Customers thirst for objective advice” and in response, “some have built publishing divisions to feed the ever-increasing demand for content required by company.” (aka, content marketing)

• “The marketing organization itself needs to become the customer-engagement engine, responsible for establishing priorities and stimulating dialogue throughout the enterprise.”

• The firm will “require a new kind of marketing organization…that orchestrates the delivery of the end-to-end customer experience.”

• What’s more, “’Marketing is going to become a much more science-driven activity,’ says Duncan Watts of Yahoo! Research.”

• “A premium will be placed on problem-solving and strategic-marketing skills.”

How will you respond? What are your plans for YOUR marketing department in 2012?

Just after completing my third webinar on my new Book Publishing Workshop last week, Frank Gillham called.

Frank is founder/CEO of Funding Architects in Tyler, Texas. Known as “capital campaign strategists,” his firm works with non-profits on their capital campaigns.

His pitch is simple:

While leaders of non-profits (churches, for instance) are skilled at their particular mission, it’s rare if that same leader is capable to raise the funds necessary to support the cause. Given that most capital campaigns occur (at most) every 5-7 years, there’s little opportunity to develop any fundraising expertise.

The cool thing about Frank is that he’s not some young pup. Frank is 80-years old. He’s even got a 10-year plan! And no, he’s not retiring any time soon.

But his phone call to me was about his greatest regrets: Relying on Word-of-Mouth Marketing.

What’s wrong with Word-of-Mouth Marketing?

I’ve always said that if you’re going to rely upon Word-of-Mouth Marketing as your main source of leads, you better have a lot of mouths talking you up. It’s a numbers game.

But Frank’s complaint about Word-of-Mouth Marketing had nothing to do with it being a numbers game. No, Frank’s issue is that Word-of-Mouth Marketing isn’t strategic. By definition you can only get more of the same customers you already have.

That really struck me as some very wise advice. I thought about it over the weekend, and then called him Monday to have him repeat it so I could record it and share it with you.

It’s just 6 minutes. Well worth a listen. Feel free to forward.

Download and listen here:
http://expertsmp3.s3.amazonaws.com/FrankGillham-on-Marketing-with-JohnFox.mp3

I look forward to your comments.

Early on in my sales career at Intel, a customer asked me to “help” him write a request for proposal (RFP). I say, “help,” because he really meant for me to write the entire thing. And this wasn’t just any RFP, it was for the very products I was selling.

Junior sales guy that I was, I debated my customer’s motivation. I had three questions:

1. Was this guy just trying to pawn off work on me? I mean, wasn’t he getting paid to do this?
2. If I did help him out, wouldn’t the RFP be (unfairly?) weighted in my favor?
3. Am I the only one he’s asking for help, or has he extended the offer to my competitors?

If you know anything about me, you know my immediate reaction was to offer help. But before I could, I had to get my questions answered. [Spoiler alert... answers are: Yes, Yes, No]

To the first question, I found out that Yes, he was trying to pawn it off on me. For good reason, though. The products he needed were not commodities or something his firm would be buying any more often than every 3-5 years.

As an example, telephone systems fall into this category. You need to get smart about a particular product, make sure you’re buying the right product at a good price, but once the deal is done, you can file it away for years. No need to revisit that purchase for a very long time.

Okay, check one. He needs help getting it done and has no interest in becoming an expert in my product line. Don’t fault him for that at all.

Question 2…was it fair? No. Writing an RFP for my customer would not be fair…to my competitors. Would the resulting RFP be weighted in my favor…Yes! Moral dilemma? No.

If you don’t mind, allow me to take a side road for just a moment and comment on something many B2B marketers don’t get about sales. Not to paint all B2B marketers with the same brush, I do have to say the great majority don’t understand this one, very important point:

People buy from People they Trust

When it comes to non-commodity purchases, buyers don’t buy stuff from people they don’t know. Why? Because Murphy’s Law is still law. Something’s bound to go wrong and when it does, you better have a relationship with the guy who sold it to you so he can make it right.

That’s kinda hard to do when your relationship is with a website and the only customer service contact is an e-mail address no-reply@widgets-inc.com

What was true in my Dad’s day of selling petroleum products for Sinclair (yeah I had all sorts of little green dinosaur toys) to my days at Intel to today… People buy from People they Trust.

And that’s why I agreed to help my customer write his RFP. I’d be the one who had to fix it if anything went wrong. I wasn’t introducing bias into the RFP, I was writing it so he’d get the best product for his particular situation… Mine.

Lastly, was I the only one helping him? To answer that I have to remind you that Trust is a two-way street. I didn’t even have to ask.

I wrote the proposal (I actually typed it on an IBM Selectric) and won the business.