I mention logistics because I had every intention of seeing these babies through to development. I mean, they were frickin’ awesome. I couldn’t stand to think I might never open that orange cardboard box and drop my feet into a pair. It was beyond comprehension. So I did what any ten-year-old would do: I typed up a letter and mailed the designs off to One Bowerman Drive, Beaverton, Oregon – Nike’s corporate headquarters.

Long story short, I’ve known my whole life that I wanted to be a designer. I always loved to draw and somewhere along the way I figured out that graphic designers are, in a sense, the “professional drawers” of the world. At the very least, I knew I could make a decent living doing it.

I realize now, however, that not everybody has been so blessed – to know at age ten what they should probably be doing at age 30. I don’t envy the position, nor can I empathize with it, but I can tell you what I know to be true about work and life in general, because to me they’ve always been one and the same.

Work At Something You Love

I never questioned whether or not I would draw pictures for a living. That much was always certain. The question was how I would make money doing it. Too many people in this world are way too eager to arrive at the conclusion that they don’t know what they want to do with their lives. I cannot count the number of times I’ve heard someone say:

“I don’t have a special talent, and I don’t really know what I’d like to do, so I guess I’ll just do the [insert job you hate here] thing for the rest of my life.”

These are the exact same people who are ridiculously passionate about sports, music, film, the outdoors, et al. The mistake is believing you can’t make a good living actually doing these things – the truth is you can make your best living doing them. Last time I checked, there were a lot of passionate people spending a lot of money on sporting events, concerts, movies, and outdoor gear. Their money isn’t all going down some proverbial toilet; it’s paying for a bunch of other people to make a living doing what they love.

Work Exactly Where You Want To Work

Before I quit my job and started my own business, I spent a year and a half actively looking for a new job. I mailed out a lot of résumés, had a few interviews, but (thankfully) nothing ever panned out. Oddly enough, once I realized I’d never need to look for a “job” again, I knew that I’d been going about it completely wrong the whole time.

If I had to do it again, I’d forget the job listings entirely. I’d make a list of the designers and creative professionals that I admired most, I’d do some solid research on all of them, and I would go work for the best one.

Easier to say than do, right? Before I quit my job, I thought so, too. Today, I’d say to hell with mailing in a résumé and I would put together a whole damn presentation on why they couldn’t go another day without me. I would make the interview I needed to happen happen, and I’d stop at nothing to get the job. If I had to wait outside the boss’s office door all day long just to catch two minutes of his or her time, I wouldn’t think twice about it. I’d explain the never-ending number of ways in which I would pay for my position (and then some) by working for them, and I’d have the confidence to guarantee my performance even if it meant a trial period without pay.

And you know what? I’d get the job. Because that’s the way the world works. You don’t have to be disrespectful, annoying, or obnoxious – you just have to know exactly what you want and be willing to go after it.

Work For The Decision Maker

I did the corporate thing for long time, and there’s nothing more frustrating than having to ask your boss to ask his boss, to ask his boss, if you can have a raise. Except, of course, having to ask your boss to ask his boss, to ask his boss, if you can pursue a brilliant, no-brainer of an idea that will make the company lots of money and advance your own career by leaps and bounds.

Whatever you do, if at all possible, always work for the decision maker. It doesn’t matter what the person’s title is, or what rung of the corporate ladder they’re on (if any), as long as you’re confident that they are actually the person who calls the shots. Why? Because this way you’ll always be just one successful presentation away from getting done exactly what you need to get done.

If you’re worth more money to the company and believe you deserve a raise, you only have to convince one person. If you want more responsibility (so that you’re worth more money to the company), you only have to convince one person. If you have a great idea, a new strategy, or a brilliant plan you’d like to pursue (that will involve more responsibility, and make you worth more money to the company), you only need to convince one person. Get the idea? Of course, it goes without saying that the “decision maker” you’re working for could end up being a numbskull. In that case, you’ll know immediately that you’ve hit a dead end, and you can hightail it on to greener pastures. Either way, you’re setting yourself up for great success.

Work For Performance-Based Compensation

The most difficult thing about starting my own business was, by far, quitting my job. The thought of no paycheck was horrifying to me because I never thought to myself, “I’ll be making twice as much money next month.” Instead I thought, “I might make nothing next month, and I can only go so many months making nothing. I’ll need time to find a new job, too. Wow, I’d be crazy to take the risk!”

Salaries cripple people. Bad weeks, good weeks – they all pay the same. After a while, people figure the job out and stop learning new things entirely. The smart ones move on. Others let five years pass, then ten, and pretty soon they realize they have no idea what’s going on anymore.

Do you really want to be able to calculate what your income will be in five years? Get a job that pays you based on performance if only to rid your brain of that “steady paycheck” stigma. You don’t need a steady paycheck to make ends meet – you need money.

Why would you ever want a cap put on how much money you can make? With a performance-based income, your brain will naturally start firing on all cylinders. You’ll develop more efficient processes and see your paycheck rise in conjunction with your productivity. The universe will smile down upon your gumption and start providing you with brilliant ideas, and you’ll have no other choice but to be wildly successful.

All because your own performance directly dictates the quality of your life.

Work On The Side

Everybody has good ideas from time to time. Some more than others, but everybody’s got ‘em. It may be a funny T-shirt idea, a niche website, or an interesting small-business concept. It may have occurred to you while out with friends at the bar, while driving home from work, or while falling asleep last night. The point is, good ideas are everywhere. It’s action that’s rare.

There’s a definite psychological barrier between thought and action that keeps a countless number of people from being happy, healthy, and rich. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t know it all too well myself. I’ve simply learned to stop assuming that other people know better.

Stop assuming they’re stronger. Stop assuming they have more connections, more experience, or more luck on their side, and just start moving. As Vince Lombardi said, “The difference between a successful man and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will.”

The next time a good idea strikes you, take action – especially if it’s something you can easily pursue while maintaining your day job. Sit down for a half-hour and run through some numbers. How much will it cost you to give it a try? What exactly do you need to get started? Figure it out, make a list, and get going. Even in the worst case, you’ll learn something.

Work For Yourself

The easiest way to find a job that offers all of the aforementioned qualities is, of course, to create it for yourself. You can do what you love, work with the people you want to work with, and make every decision based on what’s best for you. Those “get rich” ideas you couldn’t find the time for with your old job can quickly become the top priorities of your new business. And when it’s all said and done, you might just end up living the life you’ve always dreamed of.

I understand, however, that starting a business isn’t right for everybody. Some people fear the time and energy commitment, and rightfully so. Others fear the financial insecurity, though I would argue that operating your own business offers the pinnacle of job security. Either way, the suggestions in this article can be applied to your unique situation and bring you closer to where you want to be in life, whether you decide to strike out on your own or you feel more secure and more comfortable working for someone else.

As for that shoe thing, Nike was really very nice about it all. They sent me a letter a few weeks later. I don’t remember exactly what it said, but it was something along the lines of, “Thank you for your concern, but we actually have an educated team of designers dedicated to doing this very thing. Duh, kid.”

Whatever it was, I remember feeling confident enough in the company’s ability that I could allow myself to move on to bigger and better things. Like the sixth grade.

Well, more or less it was. First, I had to figure out if it was a name worth pursuing. For all I knew, another unbelievably brilliant design studio had gotten to it first. Being a web developer, the first thing I did was check to see if the URL was available, and it was. The second thing I did was a Google search. Google returned two results. Not two pages of results, but two results, both of which looked to be misspellings. I don’t know about you, but I can usually input gibberish and get a few pages of results from Google. This was a tiny little miracle in my book. The brand “Astuteo” was essentially mine to define.

After a couple of months spent developing the website you’re now visiting, I launched it and started looking for ways to build traffic. I already had a number of personal online profiles that needed updating, from services like LinkedIn and Creative Hotlist. After updating these, I set out to find other valuable services and interesting websites I could utilize. As I can now tell you, there are a number of easy ways to improve your website traffic effectively and at no cost through these free online services. Professional profile sites, social networking sites, online directories, website forums, and map listings are ideal places to start.

Professional Profiles

Professional profile websites like LinkedIn are designed for business-related networking and allow users to post a detailed professional resume or a business profile, along with website links, contact information, and more. If you already have a well-written resume on your computer, setting up your own professional profile shouldn’t take more than a few minutes. Once you have an account set up, you can then use the site to invite your business associates to connect with you and set up their own profiles.

While it can be nearly impossible to keep close tabs on everyone you know through standard means of communication, professional profile sites help keep you up to date with the changes happening in your network. Whenever a member of your network updates their profile with new information, you are passively notified through the site and can easily stay on top of your associates’ career changes and other important developments. As you make valuable new connections in the real world, you can connect via LinkedIn as well, and create a lasting tie between you, your associates, and your website.

As I mentioned, the most popular professional profile and networking website in the United States is LinkedIn. Other sites of the same nature include Doostang, Ecademy, and XING.

Social Networking

Just because a resource isn’t designed for business doesn’t mean it won’t bring qualified traffic to your website. Social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook are used by millions of people every month. Photo sharing site Flickr and video sharing site YouTube are other places it doesn’t hurt to open an account and create a profile, especially if you enjoy creating and sharing these types of media. Research your industry and you’re sure to find a few niche social networks that are being used by your customers. For example, Astuteo utilizes sites like iStockPhoto, The Best Designs, and Tag Society, all of which allow users to post a profile and submit web design work to gain attention and draw visitors.

If your website happens to feature a blog, there’s a practically unlimited number of communities and social networks you can join and contribute to – sites like Technorati and Blog Lines are useful places to make yourself known. If you listen to a lot of music, LastFM and iLike are fantastic tools for profiling your tastes in order to find other similar music. The same goes for wine aficionados and the website Cork’d. If you’re on the web for a fair portion of the day, Del.icio.us and StumbleUpon can both help you keep track of what you like and then discover new websites related to your interests.

The list goes on, but the point is there’s a social network – or ten – out there for everybody. Think about what you enjoy and consider what would benefit you the most, both personally and professionally, and find ways to start contributing.

Online Directories

Online directories are the closest thing the web has to yellow pages, and therefore, they have the potential to drive a ton of relevant traffic your way. That said, there are two main types of listings you’ll want to seek out – regional directories and industry directories.

First, find your city or region’s primary online directories and get your site listed. The easiest way to find these is to search for some basic services based on location. MadisonClick is a popular online directory here in Madison, Wisconsin, that I discovered simply by searching for the phrase web design madison wisconsin. The directory popped up in the first few results on Google, and I turned around and used the site to boost my own traffic simply by getting listed on it.

Second, your specific industry is also likely to have some online directories of its own, which you should seek to be listed on. Creative Hotlist is a perfect example of this in my industry, but depending on what you specialize in, it shouldn’t be particularly difficult to find some for your own industry. Like I said, the easiest approach is to just start searching Google using the terms you’d like your own site to be discovered with, and see if any directories pop up that can be used to your advantage.

Finally, the web itself has its own directory, the Open Directory Project, which can be found at dmoz.org. Visit the site, read the criteria for being listed, and apply to have your own site added. The true value of DMOZ lies in the fact that a huge number of other, more specific directories pull directly from its database, meaning a single listing on DMOZ can actually generate hundreds of other listings on the web for your site.

Forums

Where are your potential customers talking online? Most likely it’s either in a few local forums, similar to Madison.com or The Daily Page, or on a number of different industry websites and forums. In either case, don’t hesitate to start contributing your own thoughts and perspectives. Not only are you likely to learn new things and stay on top of new developments in your industry and local community, but by including your web site address in the signature of your posts whenever possible, you’ll develop hundreds – if not thousands – of relevant links to your web site over time.

Forums are also a particularly good place to establish yourself as an expert in your field. By contributing well thought out, useful information, you’ll keep your mind sharp and show others that you’re a serious player in your field. In time, these discussions can develop into brilliant new ideas, valuable partnerships, and other worthwhile business relationships.

Map Listings

The final resource – one many forget to consider – is a map listing. If you have an office, don’t forget to open an account and get your business listed on the major online map services like Google Maps and MapQuest (Google signup is easy to find on the left side of Google Maps front page. MapQuest signup is here). Astuteo.com receives five to ten visitors per day simply because of its business listing on Google Maps. As of the date this article was published, queries for graphic design madison and similar search terms return Astuteo as the third listing on the map, which appears above even the first organic search result.

In the end, the point is to bring qualified traffic to your site via well placed links in appropriate places. As you can see from this quick overview (and believe me, I only scratched the surface), there’s a huge number of web-based communities and other resources that can be used to your advantage, no matter what your individual interests happen to be. Your job is to seek out the ones that match your lifestyle and start participating. As you contribute, you’ll not only begin to increase traffic to your own website, you’ll also develop a deeper knowledge of your favorite subjects and an even greater appreciation for the community that supports you.

Until recently, local businesses had an unparalleled partner in the Yellow Pages, mainly due to the fact that those in need of service had nowhere else to turn. As many are now realizing, that’s no longer the case. The Yellow Pages are rapidly losing value due to the growing accessibility and convenience of the web. Coupled with the Yellow Pages’ exorbitant advertising rates, it’s become imperative that local businesses find better ways to reach new customers and employ more effective long-term solutions.

There are a number of tactics one can use to pull in customers online, but none so effective as simply being in the right place at the right time – a search engine’s results page. A search engine page is generally split between organic, non-paid results and paid advertising, both of which are highly effective ways to pull in web site traffic. The trouble for many service providers is that even when they have a good idea of what needs to be done – search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) – they lack the time and experience it takes to develop an effective search engine marketing strategy from the ground up.

No matter what your plan, every search engine strategy requires a solid grasp of the keywords and search terms that will wrangle in the most relevant traffic. The system described here will show you how to break down your service business and discover those terms, beginning with a basic list of core terms and finishing with a final list of thousands of search terms suitable for categorizing and implementing in a new Google AdWords campaign.

The First List: Core Keywords

When customers seek out real-world services online, they search for what they need based on one or more of four basic criteria:

1. Their location
2. The issue at hand
3. The service or solution they already know they need
4. The type of provider they already know they need

For example, a marketing director in Madison, Wisconsin, looking to have a new web site developed might go to Google looking for a madison web site developer or web design wisconsin. Both madison and wisconsin reference location, web and web site reference the issue at hand, design references the solution or service, and developer references the provider. By generating a small, but comprehensive, list of core search terms in each category, you will begin to get a handle on what keywords are most likely to drive relevant search traffic to your site.

Here’s an example of what the core keyword list might look like for my company, Astuteo:

Important Considerations: When determining LOCATION, it’s important to cover the many different ways a person might try to find you, so make sure to list all the major neighborhoods, cities, zip codes, regions, and states your company serves. ISSUE refers to the issues, problems, and situations that your company deals with. Make sure to list any obvious variations and alternative spellings (for terms such as web, web site, and website). When listing SERVICES, it’s important to list both one-word terms like design as well as slightly more descriptive forms like graphic design as a little overlap is better than missing a major search component. For PROVIDER, list both general provider descriptions, such as company, and specific provider descriptions, such as designer. It’s also important to list the plural forms in addition to the singular forms because a search engine user may search for madison web design companies instead of madison web design company.

The Second List: Core Key Phrases

After your first list of core keywords is fully developed, you can use it as a reference to develop your second list: core key phrases. This list consists of the Top 50 search phrases that best describe your business and the services it offers. It’s somewhat of a subjective process, but the goal is to assemble the top key phrases that you believe will bring the best prospects and most relevant customers to your site.

Once complete, this list functions as particularly good resource for measuring the overall movement of your website within search engine results. Search engine ranking software, like the incredible program Advanced Web Ranking, has the ability to emulate manual searches within the search engines of Google, Yahoo, AOL, MSN, and more. In a nutshell, the program tells you exactly where your site ranks for each of your core key phrases. This allows your company to gather and maintain accurate web site positioning reports as changes are made to the content of your web site. This measurability and insight will prove invaluable when it comes to marketing to your specific customer base.The list also provides you and your web development team the additional guidance of a short, yet powerful, list of phrases to incorporate into the content of your website. Each month, Astuteo.com receives an increasing number hits for phrases like website design madison wi and madison graphic design – both of which appear on Astuteo’s own list of core key phrases. As you expand your company’s web site over time, this continually evolving phrase list will help you develop ideal content for your site and reach an ever-increasing number of highly relevant potential customers.

The Third List: Comprehensive Key Phrases

Lists 3 and 4 – the Comprehensive Key Phrase list and the Categorized Paid Search list – are designed for search engine marketing (SEM), as opposed to search engine optimization (SEO) like the previous two lists. Whereas the first two lists defined the basic terms necessary to paint a clear picture of your services online, this list and the next will help you develop the intricate “fishing net” of terms you need to catch as many relevant customers as possible via paid search marketing.

The main problem most beginners have when venturing into Google AdWords is the development of an effective keyword list. Many novice campaign managers put together keyword lists that are either too small, too general, or far too popular. This results in an expensive campaign that generates little to no return on investment (ROI). Successful AdWords campaigns will generate large numbers of highly relevant, relatively low-cost clicks and lead to what is often an incredibly high ROI. The universal characteristic of these successful search engine marketing campaigns is their well-developed keyword lists.

To generate a keyword list suitable for effective SEM, you’ll need a simple application known as a phrase list generator. There are a number of them available for free online – one of the best I’ve found so far is the Keyword List Phrase Generator from seobook.com. Using your first list – the Core Keyword List – merge the following sections, copying and pasting the results into a new text file after each step.

I’ve included the Location field in every list because it’s a defining characteristic of a real-world service and it’s essential in developing a distinct list of key phrases. For example, a plumbing company in Chicago is far more likely to reach relevant customers with key phrases like chicago plumber and wicker park plumbing company, than with a general phrase like plumbing company. You will run into some overlap when certain terms are merged (i.e., website web development developer), but you can easily weed these out using the “find and replace” capability found in nearly every text editor and word processor.

By the end of this process, you will have turned a short list of keywords and a minimal amount of work into a new list of literally thousands of highly relevant search terms. This list of comprehensive key phrases is a nearly perfect foundation for your Google AdWords campaign or any other search engine marketing effort.

The Fourth List: Categorized Paid Search

The final key component of effective search marketing campaigns is the utilization of campaign categories. By breaking your marketing campaign into a number of specific categories, it makes it much easier to analyze the results and home in on what’s working well for you and what’s not.

Before breaking your latest list into categories, however, it’s important to “wrap” each key phrase for even greater effectiveness. Google AdWords has three primary keyword matching options – broad match, phrase match, and exact match – each one progressively more targeted in scope. The terms generated in your third list are already in a broad match format, since broad match requires no wrapping at all. Phrase match, however, requires that each phrase be wrapped in “quotation marks”, and exact match requires that each phrase be wrapped in square brackets [like this]. Fortunately, there’s more than one free AdWords wrapper out there that will do this work for you. Simply copy your last list in its entirety, paste it into the wrapper, and viola! – you’ve got your fourth and final monster-sized list of wrapped and ready-to-market search terms.

All that’s left to do at this point is break your list down into specific ad categories and drop those categories into your search engine marketing campaign. I typically categorize my clients’ AdWords campaigns by both location and service – Madison Graphic Design, Madison Web Design, Madison Advertising, Chicago Graphic Design, Chicago Web Design, Chicago Advertising – because it gives me a good idea of what services I’m marketing successfully and in what locations. That said, feel free to break your own list into as many categories as you see fit, as the more specific your categories are, the more specific your data will be. The level of detail needed to successfully operate a paid-search marketing campaign varies from one client to the next, but hopefully after going through this process, you’ll find greater success no matter what your final structure.

And if all else fails? Well, you can always hire Astuteo.

Customer appreciation is a tool that every business has at its disposal, yet very few choose to utilize it to its full potential. As a business owner, I believe there is no better investment than to put time and money into sincerely appreciating one’s customers. That “appreciation” can be defined as an increase in monetary value is more than appropriate in this case: it truly is the easiest way to strengthen your business and earn more money.

In my experience, the biggest obstacle to implementing an appreciation system is figuring out exactly how to incorporate it into a greater business plan. While I’m extremely grateful for the support and confidence of each and every one of my clients, I often allow my own gratitude to go unexpressed – save for a simple “thank you” – simply because I have no established process to which to refer. Recognizing this, I set out to expand my current approach, in the process creating a simple plan for integrating appreciation into my business and personal relationships.

Say Thank You – All The Time

The easiest way to begin showing your appreciation is to purchase a large box of Thank You cards and immediately send handwritten notes to all of your best customers, thanking them for their support. (A typed note on your company letterhead works just as well.) Put the remainder of the cards out in the open where you can see them. By keeping gratitude within sight and within reach, you will naturally begin to thank people more often.

As a bonus, Thank Yous serve as excellent marketing vehicles: they help to maintain top-of-mind awareness. You never know when a new project will land on the desk of a past client, and your well-timed Thank You may arrive just in time to win you the job.

Treat Prospects Like Paying Clients

Always assume that the prospect contacting you is about to become your next big client. This state of mind will help you treat your prospects as well as you would your best-paying clients; more often than not, the people inquiring about seemingly insignificant work have huge projects waiting somewhere in the wings.

Standardize Your Sales Process

Gratitude should be incorporated into each phase of your sales process. If you don’t have a standardized sales process, now is a great time to start putting a process checklist together. Whenever I meet with a prospective client for the first time, I go back to the office and drop a Thank You note in the mail so that it arrives the next day. A week later – after I present my job proposal – I put another Thank You in the mail, expressing gratitude to the prospective client for their time and consideration. Finally, when the job is finished I send a letter of thanks out in addition to the invoice for the project. (Note: Obviously, I could simply include the Thank You with the invoice for the project, but I feel that it makes a better impression if the Thank You arrives separately; it’s a personal note of thanks, sent to a person to whom I’m grateful.)

To really take it up a notch, figure out what your client’s favorite restaurant is during the course of the project and send them a $50 or $100 gift card when the job is finished. (If you’ve planned to do this from day one, the cost of this grand gesture quite possibly may be built right in to your initial proposal.)

Put Gratitude on Your Calendar

If you know you’ll be as grateful in six months as you are today, why not prepare to show your appreciation in advance? Focus on annual holidays or different seasons of the year and develop your own original gift ideas. Maybe you’d like to drop by with lemonade in July, or send hot cocoa in January; chocolates are great on Valentine’s Day, and anything goes at Christmas time. The point is to figure out your own unique ideas in advance, put them on your calendar, and execute them when the time comes.

A great extension of this idea can be found at The Marketing Mix – an awesome blog put together by Peleg Top and Ilise Benun. Peleg’s Thank Yous not only thank his clients, but also ask them to refer any friends or associates who might be a good fit for his services. Talk about a brilliant idea!

Track Your Ideas with a Gratitude List

Every so often I think of a great gift idea for a certain person. I could be walking through a store, browsing the web, or just talking to the person, when all of a sudden I think of something they would absolutely love to receive. So a few months ago, I started what I call my Gratitude List.

The Gratitude List is simply a three-column spreadsheet where I keep track of the names, specific interests, and possible gift ideas for all the people I care about – both personally and professionally. When I find out that an associate has a specific interest, or when I happen across a great gift idea for someone I know, I simply add it to the list. Not only does the list function as an archive of thoughtful gift ideas, it also serves as a regular reminder to be a thankful and generous person.

Become an Educational Resource

A great way to establish yourself as an expert (and to show clients how much you care about their successes) is to give away valuable professional advice at no cost. Different ways to do this include white papers, newsletters, e-books, blogs, and free seminars. While some people worry that they’ll give away all their trade secrets to the competition or make their contracted services unnecessary, I believe this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Giving away free advice puts your knowledge – and your company – on display, which makes more people want to work with you. A potential client is much more likely to choose the person who has already showcased their expertise versus the person who has said nothing. As for the competition, they can certainly try to mimic your ideas, but if you’re always striving to learn more there’s really no reason to worry about them catching up to you. It’s much more beneficial to put your ideas down on paper and claim ownership over them than it is to remain silent.

Finally, from a marketing perspective, giving away free advice every so often keeps your current audience – as well as others who may be interested in your services in the future – attentive.

Let Your Customers In On The Excitement

Let’s face it: owning your own business is exciting. Sure, it’s also a lot of stress, long hours, and hard work, but that’s not why people decide to do it. People go into business for the thrill of it – the freedom, the fun, and the possibilities. Why not share some of the excitement with your customers?

Everybody loves free stuff. Invest in some T-shirts and fun promotional items to give away to your clients. It works to market your business and helps maintain the “top-of-mind awareness” I mentioned earlier. I was having coffee with S.J. Barlament the other day, and he came up with a great suggestion (as he so often does): Invest in some high-quality stickers and start including them with every item of communication you send out – especially invoices.

If you have an office, throw a “client appreciation” party once or twice a year. Get a bunch of food and drinks and let people have some fun. It could be a pre- or post-party surrounding another big event, or just a small celebration of a recent success. Whatever the reason, your clients are virtually guaranteed to have a good time and appreciate you, in return, for providing that good time to them.

Treat Your Customers Like Royalty

In Jeffrey Gitomer’s Little Black Book of Connections, there’s an excellent chapter on wowing customers. A “WOW!” is an extraordinary gesture that pairs value with memorability, and as you might have guessed, makes the customer say “WOW!” Imagine showing up at a client’s office one afternoon with a $100 present for no reason at all, except for the fact that you appreciate their support. The gesture sounds so grand it almost seems unreasonable – until you consider that for a mere $5,200 each year, you can turn 52 new people into your strongest advocates and gain a lifetime of support for your business.

If that weren’t reason enough, consider the fact that well-planned WOW!-ing targets people at the heart of your target market. Think of all the meetings, places, and events where these people will go and express their appreciation of you to other potential clients after you’ve impressed them with your gratitude. I haven’t done the study yet, but I think it reasonable to predict that a $5,200 WOW! budget, once implemented, could generate hundreds of thousands of dollars in new business over the course of just a few years. (Plus, if you also implement the Gratitude List mentioned earlier, you’ll discover priceless gift ideas worth far more to your clients than the $100 or so that you’ll spend on WOW!-ing them.)

That said, I understand that $5,200 can be a substantial sum of money to a business that’s just getting started. If you need to begin with a smaller budget, then do so. But give one big gift every other week (or each month), rather than cutting back on the size of the gifts you’ll be giving. The purpose of a WOW! budget, after all, is to create memorable, lasting impressions – the type of impressions that can only really be achieved with gestures far beyond the ordinary.

Conclusion

Dale Carnegie noted that the craving to be appreciated is “a gnawing and unfaltering human hunger, and the rare individual who honestly satisfies this heart hunger will hold people in the palm of his or her hand, and even the undertaker will be sorry when he dies.”

The benefits of being a grateful person are immeasurable. By successfully incorporating simple, appreciative gestures into your daily life (and daily matters of business), you will begin to generate profound goodwill and support among the people around you. Over time, the consistent application of a gratitude system will effectively bulletproof your personal and business relationships alike, positioning you for a lifetime of wealth and success.

After consulting with a new client, do you walk away knowing of many different ways you can help, but proceed to act only on their initial request? Do you hesitate to sell additional services simply because you don’t know where to start?

Being in the service business myself, I know what it’s like to get a request for a new brochure when what the client truly needs is a new brochure, a better identity, stronger creative and a more effective website. I was satisfied fulfilling my client’s immediate requests until I realized that fulfilling requests did not necessarily mean I was fulfilling my clients’ actual needs.

Your clients aren’t supposed to be the experts – you are. By creating an upselling system (and you can think of it however you’d like: call it a “service program” or a “service plan” if you’d prefer), you establish yourself as an expert while helping fulfill the true needs of your clients as completely as possible and maximizing your revenue in the process.

1. Make a List of Your Services

Begin by making a list of the key services you have to offer. For example, accounting professionals offer quarterly financial reviews, annual tax filing, 1099 distribution management, QuickBooks training, and more. Graphic designers can create logos, business cards, brochures, and websites – among other things, of course.

Public speaking and lecturing, albeit frightening to many, is a service that practically any business can offer. As long as you exist to provide a benefit to others, there’s value to be found in what you have to say. Is it possible to add training or seminars to the list of services you can provide?

If you don’t offer multiple services right now, seek new ways to develop your business. Strive to expand by strengthening your core services rather than by diversifying. If you mow lawns, start fertilizing them, too. If you write brochures for a living, you’re probably the best person around to optimize your client’s web site content.

2. Develop a Service Plan

Once you know what specific services you have to offer, start developing them into a comprehensive service plan. How do your various services relate to each other? How can one service add value to another? How can additional services performed now save money for your clients over the long haul?

Describe each service in detail. Make a list of reasons why the service is beneficial to your client. Make another list of the detrimental effects of not completing the service. Finally, wrap it all together in a concise summary that you can use to educate new customers.

Once each of your services has been summarized, the goal is to tie them all together in succession – first step, second step, etc. – and eventually produce a multi-level service plan aimed at achieving the ideal results for all of your existing clients. By illustrating the ideal situation, you’ll naturally establish a goal for your clients to achieve.

3. Offer To Perform a Free Audit

When you take your car in for an oil change, the mechanic looks over the entire vehicle to make sure everything is running smoothly. As a customer, you appreciate this basic service, and you often pay more than what you had been planning to spend in order to get any additional problems fixed while your car is in the shop. Why then doesn’t every service business offer to “check things out” for its customers?

By contacting you, a client has already acknowledged that they have an immediate need for your services. By offering to do a free audit of their situation, you open the door to a stronger relationship and a greater opportunity for both parties. For example, a company looking for a new website may have no idea how important a strong corporate identity is. A diligent assessment of their situation may be all it takes to, say, triple the size of your contract.

The audit itself is fairly easy. Simply compare what they already have against the list of services you’re able to offer them. Could they benefit from those additional services you offer? Compile this information, grade their overall performance, and present the client with an honest assessment of both what they’re already doing very well and what they could be doing better.

4. Provide Options

Once you have developed a valuable service plan and customized it for your client’s situation, chances are the client will see the value in the additional services you have to offer. This is not to say, of course, that they’ll have the budget to accommodate your full proposal. Providing multiple options at this point will improve your chances for a successful contract upgrade.

For the sake of example, let’s suppose there are 10 key components to your service plan. You should present the client with three basic entry points – 100% completion, 50% completion, 10% completion.

The 100% package should feature all 10 of your services. It’s the best of everything you have to offer, and it should work as a comprehensive solution to your client’s current issues or needs. It is, of course, very expensive – but it’s well worth it.

The 50% package should be the best service package you can offer for half the price of the first plan. It should either feature the first 5 of your 10 services or the most important 5 of your 10 services.

Finally, the 10% package is a single next step for your client to consider. By providing a clear next step, you are reiterating that there is an end goal to be achieved or an ideal situation to be reached. If the client doesn’t upgrade with you today, this will help to ensure that they at least walk away with an idea of what to do in the future.

5. Refer Other Businesses

The final item to consider when developing your service program is the possible inclusion of your friends and business associates in the plan. Just because you are personally unable to offer a particular additional service that could benefit your client is no reason to not upsell your client into additional services. If you see gaps in your plan that can be strengthened with adjacent services, seek out other good service providers to fill them. By referring more business to others, you will see your own business flourish through the referrals you receive in kind. You’ll also earn respect and create good faith that will pay great dividends in the future.