Starting your own business: The definitive guide.

First: I hear from many of you who have heard the advice that business should be about your “passion”. If I hear the words “find your passion” or “follow your passion” one more time, I’m going to stick a fork in the eye of the person who says it.

Starting your own business isn’t necessarily about “following your passion”, and you don’t have to “find your passion” before you start a business. Stop beating yourself up for not having a passion that people will pay you large sums of cash for, and follow this four-step process to starting your own business instead:

1. Figure out who your customers are.

Most aspiring business owners start from the wrong place. They start from “What do I know how to do?” or “What’s my passion?” That’s where a lot of people get stuck. They don’t know what their passion is, or how to monetize it.

I start from the opposite end. I listen to people having conversations, and my most common questions when talking to others are “What do you want?” or “What do you need?” That way, I find out what is missing in their lives, and then figure out if I can build a product or service around that.

I love watching reality TV, but I don’t expect someone to come dump 5 figures a month in my lap for me to do so! Instead, I start out looking at what customers will pay for. Then I create products and/or services that I know people want and charge people for them.

The benefit of looking at business from this perspective is that it’s not hard to find customers. You already know there is a market segment that is asking–no, begging–for this product or service. You don’t have to create a market. Just find the people who need what you have to offer and cater to them.

2. Survey some potential customers to see if they are interested in what you want to offer.

Again, this starts with the customers, not with what you want. Ask them what their thoughts are on your upcoming product or service. (This isn’t the right time to pitch them.) Ask them if they would use it. Ask them what you can do to help them make a decision.

This is your time to write down all the questions they have. “Is x included?” “Would I have to…?” You need to be able to understand what questions your customers have, then answer those questions in your website copy or when you pitch potential customers later on.

3. Once you get some “Yes” answers, sketch out what you have to offer.

Regardless of whether you’re selling a product or service, customers generally hate open-ended offers. You want to be able to offer a few packages of services or products and let them choose.

Imagine going into a restaurant and having the waiter say, “Okay, what would you like to eat tonight?” You reply, “Well, what’s good here?” The waiter says, “Everything, sir!”

At that point, you’d probably be stymied. Do you order a hamburger, a steak, or a salad? You’d also probably never come back to that restaurant again.

Now compare that to your sales process. If you’re a web designer or other service professional, you’re probably used to asking the client what they want first. That’s a good sales tactic. But then most people make the mistake of leaving it open-ended, or worse, letting the client decide what he or she wants. (Hint: Most people have no idea what they want. “Um, a website. That gets us business.”)

After you ascertain what the client is looking for generally, you pull out the menu of services that you provide. If the client wants something outside the scope of your menu, you can figure that out with him or her. But your menu sets up some “ground rules” when working with your client, and it also allows you the freedom of being able to systematize some parts of your labor later on.

Always have a menu.

4. Sign a few clients and make sure this is what you really want to do.

In some cases, you will sign some clients and then feel pulled in a totally different direction. When I started Simpli (my web hosting company), I originally planned for it to be a content management system–like WordPress is today. I developed the system myself, putting countless hours into it, and deployed it for several clients.

My clients all needed a really good web hosting company, and I had terrible experiences with web hosting in the past–including having my server, with all my data on it, stolen right out of a datacenter! I didn’t have a company I felt comfortable recommending, so I started my own.

Pretty soon, the web hosting side was growing faster than my content management system side, even though I was putting 80% of my time into my development work. I could tell it was time to switch gears, so over the course of several months, I wound down my content management system business and went full-time into web hosting. And the rest, as they say, is history.

It’s totally fine if you get a few clients and then say “This isn’t for me.” If this happens to you, find someone you feel comfortable referring your clients to and then refer them out. Then do something else. That isn’t “failure” at all. In fact, be proud of yourself for taking the step most people don’t have the guts to take: starting your own business!

A Totally Different Way of Looking at Business

This procedure is totally different from the way most people start businesses. Most people start with “I”. “I can do web design.” “I know how to knit.”

I challenge you, instead, to start with “You.” Who are your customers? What do they want or need in their lives? How can you help them achieve their goals?

Starting your business from what customers want or need will not only free you from the burden of discovering your “passion”, but it will also help you grow your business exponentially faster. Look around–the answers to which business you should start are right around you, in the conversations of others.

What do you wish you would have known when you were starting your own business? What advice would you give to other aspiring business owners? Feel free to share in the comments!

Choosing a domain name: Your difficult
questions answered!

In this post, I’ll answer these questions and more, and make some recommendations to help you choose the right domain name. Some of my suggestions may be controversial!

Short and Catchy, or Longer?

There are basically two types of domain names: short and catchy or long and keyword-filled. (I define “short” as anything with fewer than 8 characters before the dot.) Which type of domain name you use depends on how you plan to attract visitors to your site. If you plan to mostly attract people by word of mouth, use something short and catchy.

I tend to build sites that get most of their traffic from Google. In that case, a keyword-filled domain is preferable. What do I mean by that? Let’s say you own Snazzy Sandwiches in Saskatoon. You’d probably lean toward snazzysandwiches.com or snazzysandwiches.ca (since Saskatoon is in Saskatchewan, Canada.)

But you may also want to consider buying a keyword-driven domain name. In this case, more people are probably searching for “sandwiches in Saskatoon” or “sandwiches Saskatoon” than your business name. Unless you are the only sandwich shop in town, one of the best ways to capture this traffic is to also pick up the keyword-driven name–in this case, sandwichessaskatoon.com or .ca.

The key here is to find out exactly what people are searching for in Google and other search engines, and picking up the “exact match” keyword domain name. That means no “the”, “a”, hyphens, or any other extraneous words. So, if people are typing in sandwiches Saskatoon, you want sandwichessaskatoon as the first part of your domain name.

How Do You Find Out What People Are Typing Into Google?

I’m a big fan of using the free Google Keyword Tool to figure out domain names. Find a keyword that is searched between 10,000 and 50,000 times per month, and see if the exact match domain name is available.

Every once in a while, you’ll hit a home run. I had a client once who did marketing for a certain type of business. He paid me for consulting time to figure out how to get more business from his website.

I ran the Google keyword tool for him and found out that business owners were actually typing in the type of the business followed by “marketing” about 800 times a month! Better yet, the exact match .com domain name was available! With some savvy tricks, I helped him conquer 2 of the top 3 slots in Google for those keywords. It added 5 figures a year to the bottom line of his business…and took about three hours of work.

What if the .Com Isn’t Available?

But more often, the exact match .com is not available. It’s either in use or for sale for hundreds or thousands of dollars.

Let’s say you’re setting up a site to sell home remedies. You hit up the Google keyword tool and see that “home remedies for acne” is searched 40,500 times a month. (This is true, by the way.) That’s a huge avalanche of traffic if you get ranked #1 for that keyword, and domain names with the keyword in them naturally rank higher than domain names without.

But all the domains are taken. The .com, .net, and .org are all parked–meaning they don’t have any real content on them, and may be for sale. You know the owners will probably want hundreds of dollars for them. The .biz looks like a scam site.

So what do you do? This is a pretty common quandary. Do you go for one of the weird extensions like .cc or .tv, or try to buy one of the more common domains like .com or .net? Or do you just start over from scratch?

First, let’s talk about what all those weird extensions are. Any two-letter extension, like .cc, .ws, and .tv, are actually country codes. Some countries, like Tuvalu, a tiny island nation of just 12,000 people, got extraordinarily lucky in the “domain name lottery”. Tuvalu licensed the .tv extension to Verisign, a top domain name registrar, for “not less than $1 million per quarter.” Wow! (Here’s the entire list of country codes.)

I tread very carefully with these two-letter extensions. Except for ones that have been widely adopted, like .tv and .us, I tend to avoid them. I also tend to avoid .org, unless you just want to set up a blog on it and you’re not selling anything, because .org is, in many people’s minds, still associated with its original purpose of serving non-profit organizations.

In order, I prefer: .com; .net; .biz; .us. Since none of those are available, if you were my client, I would advise you to go back to Google at this point, and search for similar keywords. Sure enough, a similar keyword, acne home remedy, with 27,100 searches per month, has the .biz available, and in this case, I’d advise you to buy that.

But Don’t You Need a .Com?

There’s a myth floating around that you need a .com to rank better in Google. That’s a complete myth, I assure you. For Google, it’s more important to have proper keywords in your domain name than to have the .com.

The reason to get a .com is because people tend to assume that your site is the .com. So, if you don’t have the .com and someone else does, that other site will pick up some traffic that would otherwise go to your site.

If the .com is available for registration, go ahead and get it. I recently found a keyword that had 27,100 searches per month, and the .com was available. I immediately snagged it and plan to use it as an advertising-driven niche site. But more commonly, you’ll find the .com is for sale for a few hundred dollars.

In this case, I recommend that you use an alternative extension, set up your website, and then reinvest your profits. That’s what I did with Blog Set Up. I used the Google keyword tool to figure out which domain I wanted, and then bought the .us. The site was profitable immediately, and I reinvested the profits back in to buying the .com version of the domain name. The acquisition closed this week, so blogsetup.us is now blogsetup.com!

In conclusion, I only recommend buying an expensive domain name if you’ve already launched your business and are making money. It’s perfectly acceptable to start your business on a .biz or .us, especially if you’re getting most of your traffic via Google. Then buy the .com with your first profits. If your business isn’t profitable, then, you’re not out hundreds or thousands of dollars with the .com. But if your business is profitable, I recommend snagging the .com as soon as you can afford it.

Do you have thoughts or suggestions on choosing a domain name? Let me hear them in the comments!

Recommended Reading:

• Namecheap. I recommend Namecheap as a good domain name registrar. Never use Go Daddy to register domains.
• Go Daddy. The link here is to a site called nodaddy.com, which was set up by a friend of mine after Go Daddy screwed up his entire business by shutting his domain name down for days. I know another person this happened to, as well. Never use Go Daddy for anything–not hosting, not domain name registration, anything. Again, I recommend NameCheap (above).

(If you’re new here, welcome! I set 3-5 major goals every year publicly on my blog and update my progress every quarter. Here are my goals for 2010.)

Let’s see how I’m doing!

Goal #1: Create and Release 10 New Products in 2010

This one has slowed down a bit–you’ll see why as you read the rest of this post! I’ve released four products: Guest Post Secrets, Best Blogs, my first one-day workshop, and Blog Set Up.

I did hold my first one-day workshop with four participants on June 26, and it was a huge success! I gained confidence in what I want to teach, which I plan to release as a product later this year. And all four participants gained great insight into their businesses.

I also learned that my projector, which I bought a few years ago, wasn’t up to the task…so I bought a new one! (Note: 1100 lumens is insufficient for anything but pitch black. I upgraded to a nice 4000 lumen Epson projector!)

I plan to hold another 1-day workshop later this year here in San Diego. As my blog readers, you will be the first to know about it.

Three of the products I’ve released have now made over $3,000 in revenue each: Guest Post Secrets, the workshop, and Blog Set Up all crossed the $3,000 threshold.

But what about Best Blogs? Let’s talk about what happened with it in the second quarter:

Goal #2: Create and Launch my Startup

The original Best Blogs prototype was developed in PHP by a developer I hired in Romania. There wasn’t anything wrong with this setup, except that I had to manage him, and I burned out on that pretty quickly. The prototype was (mostly) functional, but I kept encountering bugs, and it seemed like every time my developer added a new feature, something else broke.

The site stagnated. In early June, I realized no development had been done on the site since April. I had to make a critical decision. Either I needed to hire a developer who could be mostly autonomous, and pay him accordingly (U.S. salary), or I needed to scrap it and call it quits. Paying a developer would mean about $20,000 of my own money spent on development costs over the next 6 months with no immediate payoff. It was a big decision.

I thought about it for about a week, ruminating over possibilities in my head. Eventually I came up with what I believe will be an astoundingly profitable revenue model, and mentally let the $20,000 go in preparation to hire someone. (In other words, I promised myself I wouldn’t fret over paying someone $20,000 to develop the site.)

I found a local developer here in San Diego who agreed to redo the site from scratch. Best Blogs will re-launch later this year (probably August or early September), built on Pylons and being far better managed. The interface will be largely the same. I reviewed the revenue model with my developer and he “gets it.” I’ll talk more about that as we re-launch the site, but suffice it to say, it’s a common yet oddly overlooked model. And it has nothing to do with banner or display ads.

I’m again excited about Best Blogs, and having someone work on it with me that I trust makes it so much better. Since he’s local, we meet at a local coffee shop once a week to go over anything that needs to be talked about regarding the site. Next year, assuming all goes well with the launch, I will spin off Best Blogs into its own corporation and give my developer some equity. The business has huge potential, but probably won’t start showing revenue until Q4 2010 at the earliest. It’s a startup, so it’s still a gamble, but I like the odds!

Goal #3: Get 20,000 Blog Subscribers

I’m still plugging away at this one. My Feedburner count shows nearly 11,000 people. As we’re over halfway through the year, I’m going to have to pick up the pace. This will be a close one!

I had a nice week where three of my guest posts ran on three consecutive days on other popular blogs. I signed up over 450 new email subscribers that week. (If you’re one of them, welcome!) A few more weeks like that would do me well. It will take some more guest posting to really get those numbers up, though!

And now, the exciting part…my income numbers!

My Income Numbers!

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know that my goal was to make $10,000 a month blogging in 2008.

That didn’t happen.

Then, in 2009, I lost most of the year to being sick, and was eventually diagnosed with Celiac disease. By the end of the year, I was feeling better, but I still didn’t meet my goal.

In 2010, my blog began to really take off and I started posting income numbers. But I still hadn’t hit my goal.

Well…I am proud to announce that in June, 2010, I finally hit the goal I originally set in December, 2007!

It took me longer than I expected, and I had some setbacks, but I persevered.

And I not only hit my goal…I blew it out of the water.

Here is my income breakdown:

Most of the income came from my Profit Instruments review. 183 people signed up through my link for Profit Instruments. What an amazing number! I thank all of you who signed up, and definitely understand what you (my readers) want now.

Marketers always send me programs to review. I go through 2-3 programs a week, and decline to promote 99% of them. (A reader recently asked me to go over why I don’t promote most of the programs people send me…I will write about that in the future.) Profit Instruments was a program I felt comfortable promoting. And while it hasn’t been without its snafus–mostly regarding Paypal–overall, people have been happy with the program. I’ve even heard a few reports of people taking action and using the Profit Instruments system to make money. Good! That’s what it’s all about!

I wasn’t expecting so many people to take action and invest in Profit Instruments, and I was humbled and pleased that so many did! The deluge of emails–both questions about Profit Instruments and people emailing me receipts–was quite a handful. There was one day where I sent something like 160 email replies. I think all I did that day was hit “Reply” and type out responses!

I quickly realized I needed to hire someone. It just so happened that a friend who is in college was looking for a summer job and not having any luck finding one. (She lives in Portland, OR, which I hear is a difficult city to find jobs in.) I agreed to hire her part-time as my virtual assistant, and she became my savior, sorting out all the receipts, getting everyone on an email list, and generally cleaning up my inbox!

(Note: I always have someone ask me when I write about virtual assistants: “Is the email I got from you really you?” The answer is yes–every email with my name on it is written by me.)

She’s also now doing the blog setups, so if you order a blog set up, you’ll get a reply from her! Thanks, Alonna, for making my life easier!

I’ve so far written about two people I hired last quarter. This week, I hired a third–my first full-time employee here at Inspiring Innovators! His name is Matthew and he lives in the Philippines, and he’s doing full-time SEO work for erica.biz and my other websites. So far, he’s on a 7-day trial and working out well. I found Matthew through Replace Myself’s job board.

It’s been an amazing quarter, and I am so grateful that I was finally able to achieve income levels I didn’t think were possible only a few short months ago! I look forward to continuing to grow my business, as well as being able to share my journey and help you along your path, too!

Recommended Reading:

• 2010 First Quarter Goals Update. Posted in April, 2010.
• 2010 Goals. Posted in January, 2010.
• 2008 Year in Review / 2009 Goals. Posted in January, 2009.
• 2008 Goals. Posted in December, 2007.

I was at a local high-end grocery store buying meat, produce, and a pile of gluten-free goodies. Richard, who has recently gotten into cooking, decided to make organic hamburgers for dinner. We were out of cheese, so I walked over to the cheese section to pick up some cheddar slices.

I was confronted with a variety of gourmet cheeses. And they were pricey–running about $4.50 for 8 slices!

I picked one at random that said “cheddar” and looked at it. And that’s when I noticed something odd:

Right there, at the top of the package, in the “money spot” — the spot where my eyes went right after reading the brand — it said “Rennet Free.”

What in the world, I wondered, was “rennet”?

My brain immediately came up with this image:

(Oops, that’s a ferret!)

I buy a fair amount of expensive cheese, and I love cheese. As determined by willingness to spend $4.50 on 8 slices of organic cheese instead of going to a mass-market store and buying a block of Velveeta, I’m definitely in this company’s target demographic. But I have no idea what “rennet” is or why it’s important that the cheese be “rennet free.”

As cheesemakers, Horizon is probably well aware of what rennet is. But their customers probably aren’t. In that regard, most of us are “stupider” than Horizon.

I looked up rennet on Wikipedia, and it turns out that rennet is made from calves’ stomachs and is used to turn milk into cheese. Killing baby cows to use their stomach enzymes to make cheese is a bit disturbing. But the Wikipedia article also says that “by 2008, approximately 80-90% of commercially made cheeses in the United States were made utilizing GMO-based (non-cow) rennet.”

Surprisingly, the back of the package doesn’t go into any detail on what rennet is. Horizon missed an opportunity to educate their customers on why it’s important to buy rennet-free cheese.

I bought the cheese, but I didn’t become brand-loyal–I won’t go looking for Horizon again. Horizon missed an opportunity to gain a long-term customer with their label.

Are your labels (or your websites) doing the same thing to potential customers? Let’s take a look at the flip side…

The Flip Side: A Great Label

Here’s an example of a product wrapper that encouraged me to buy a product based on the label alone:

This is Skippy natural peanut butter. This jar is a bit old, but shows exactly why I bought it.

The first thing that motivated me to pick up the jar was the award. It says “2008 Chef’s Best – Best Taste.” This is important to me. I can’t tell you how many brands of peanut butter I’ve tried that don’t taste that great–especially the “natural” variants. The award provides fantastic social proof–other people have liked it, so you will too!

The second thing that got me to put the peanut butter in my cart was the big “No Need to Stir!” headline. Another problem with “natural” peanut butters is that they tend to separate. Skippy has managed to (mostly) fix this. I find myself still needing to stir it sometimes, but it certainly doesn’t separate like a lot of other peanut butters.

Skippy’s label has gotten me to buy at least 10 jars of its peanut butter over the past 2 years. In fact, I now look for their brand first when I buy peanut butter.

Getting Your Customers to Become Brand-Loyal

Skippy really nailed exactly what their customers wanted, whereas Horizon didn’t. Skippy’s jar speaks in easy-to-understand language that even small children would be able to read. Horizon’s package doesn’t.

What would I do if I were Horizon–and what lessons can you take from this?

1. I’d survey my customers. In the survey, I would ask what values were most important to them. (Here’s my step-by-step video walkthrough on how to survey your customers for free.)
2. I’d redesign my label to get customers to buy. The top value from the survey would get the most prominent placement on my label. I’d remove “rennet free” (or relegate it to the back of the wrapper in the ingredients.) I would make sure even kids understood everything on my label.
3. I would consider adding a testimonial from a satisfied customer on the front of the package. Of course, this would need to comply with any legal requirements regarding testimonials. (Consult an attorney in your area to make sure any testimonials you feature are in compliance.)
4. As an alternate or addition to #3, I would enter contests to win awards with my product, and then seek permission to display those awards prominently on my packaging.

Even if you aren’t selling a physical product, it’s important to consider what message you are sending to your customers. For instance, is your website reflecting the top values of your customers, or is it all about you and your company?

I went through this exercise a few years ago with my web hosting company and realized I needed to completely redesign our website. I blogged about what I discovered here…it’s worth reading if you’re currently selling products online.

How will you take this lesson to heart and change your website and/or product packaging? Feel free to post in the comments.

Recommended Reading:

• Here’s How to Become Rich: Deliver Value. Change the World. An epic post from 2007 where I apply this concept to my web hosting company’s website. Definitely read this one if you’re doing business online.
• Sharing My Journey To One Million Dollars. Written just after I sold my business, but when I was still in the “embargo period” and couldn’t speak publicly about the sale. I write candidly about the ups and downs of building a $1 million business.
• You Are Worth More Than You Think: Overcoming The Key Reason Entrepreneurs Fail. If you have ever said, “I just don’t have enough time to do [an activity I love]“, this advice is for you…

But all the “how to” information in the world won’t help your business succeed. Your own ingrained beliefs are stopping you without you even knowing it. In fact, the biggest obstacle to your success (I hate to say it) may be you.

We all have a set of beliefs about how the world operates. We form many of these beliefs to protect ourselves: we know that a fire will burn us, for instance. But there are some insidious beliefs–perhaps beliefs we don’t even know we have–that can seriously damage our earning potential.

One belief that is incredibly common is the belief that money is scarce–that there is only so much of it to go around. I was reading a friend’s blog recently and came across this paragraph:

“In the end, there is only so much of the almighty dollar to go around…somebody has got to sit in cattle class and it isn’t always the lazy arses. Quite often it’s those people who are ‘making stuff that matters, even if it seems stupid because it feels good and important.’”

Whenever I read, hear, or see someone say that, I know they’re broke.

Is Money Truly Scarce?

Scarcity happens in real life, and it starts at a young age. Your parents probably told you “no” when you asked for something when you were younger. Maybe you reached for that last can of soda in the fridge or apple on the counter only to find out it was gone. You wanted another helping of dinner, but it wasn’t available…the bowls and plates were empty.

That’s scarcity in action, and it’s easy to think that applies to money, too. For someone to be rich, someone else has to be poor, right?

Not at all.

Money is being created and distributed all the time. (If you want the technical details, read up on fractional reserve lending.) Our world has more money, that is worth more than it ever has been before. We live in staggering luxury compared to those only 50 years ago.

Consider this:
In 1950, only 9% of U.S. households had a TV.
In 1970, less than 1% of households in the U.S. owned a microwave.
In 1990, only 0.25% of the world population owned a cell phone.
This year, in 2010, only 26.6% of the world population will use the Internet.

We are unimaginably rich. And the best thing is that the trend will likely continue. There is no shortage of dollars to be earned (or spent!)

Who Are The Unsuccessful People?

I tried coaching people in a monthly program in 2009. I launched quietly–most reading this wouldn’t even know I did it. I took 20 students. I figured I’d be able to easily help them see their first online success.

Some of my coaching students have done really well. But many floundered. At first I wondered what I was doing wrong. Then I talked to some other coaches, and found out this is pretty normal.

One of my coaching students, J, wanted to set up a blog and be making $10,000/month within 30 days. He stated to me in our first 1-on-1 call that this was his goal. I told him I appreciated his enthusiasm, but that his goal wasn’t realistic. I explained he would have to work hard, probably for several months, before he saw much income at all. And only then, after he pushed through The Dip, would he see any real success.

He dropped out of the program. It wasn’t the answer he wanted to hear.

I now understand why many people don’t make it in business. They assume that they can start with 2 hours a week of spare time and no previous online business experience and be making 5 figures a month online within a month or two.

That’s the extreme case. Then there are many more in the “fat middle” who muddle their way through it for about 3-6 months before giving up. In the first two weeks, they have huge enthusiasm. They’re ready to take this on! It’s going to be great! Amazing! And then they fizzle. Slowly but surely, they stop working on their projects. Their blogs fall by the wayside. They get preoccupied with the “next big thing”. They give up.

I can’t tell you how many people I know who made anywhere from $30 to $100 a month and then gave up. The number astounds me. What they don’t understand is that $30 a month to $10,000 a month or more is about 24 months in the making of figuring out the systems that work and replicating them. They only see $30 a month and give up, thinking it’s a waste of time.

So, the honest truth, is that those who “sit in cattle class”, as my friend wrote it, really aren’t lazy. They just give up too soon.

Or they have another harmful belief: They’re uncomfortable with selling.

“Sales is For Slimy People”

Going deeper, we find a strong concern with many budding entrepreneurs: that if you sell something to someone, they are left with less than what they had before. If you sell them a $20 book, they’re suddenly $20 poorer.

To get over this feeling, you just have to be confident that what you’re selling them is worth far, far more than the money they paid to acquire it. Perhaps the knowledge in the $20 book you sell them will enable them to make far more than the $20 they paid for it. Perhaps it will help them find the romantic love of their dreams, or lose weight, or be happier.

It’s that confidence that many of us are lacking. We write the story for our potential customers, making assumptions and judging them. We assume they can’t afford something, so we don’t bother trying to sell it to them. Or we remember other stories similar potential customers have told us about how they can’t afford it, and assume this potential customer is similar.

Here’s an extreme example: Your friend is dying from a disease. Coincidentally, you happen to have had this same disease earlier in your life, and you’re now cured. It took you a lot of time and effort to find the cure, but you finally found a $2,000 pill that worked.

Could you convince your friend to part with the $2,000 to save her life?

That’s selling.

If you wimp out on this question with an answer like “If it really worked, I’d buy it for her!”, I suggest you do not start or attempt to run a business. I’m serious about that point. Go find someone who wants to sell and work for them…or make it your #1 priority to learn how to sell to someone who truly needs your product.

Sales: The Key Ingredient to Success?

When you start a business, it’s your job to sell like your prospects’ lives depend on it. And, to take this even further, it’s an equally important job to only sell products that are really worth it to your prospects, in order to engender goodwill.

To take a recent example from my own playbook, I was comfortable promoting the crap out of Profit Instruments both here on my blog and to my email list. I personally reviewed Profit Instruments, thought it was worth it, and even offered amazing bonuses to those who bought through me to help people succeed. I really believe that if you follow the system in Profit Instruments, you can be successful online. (Note: I’m not selling it right now, because Profit Instruments is sold out. I write this because I truly believe it.)

As a result of my genuine belief in Profit Instruments, 183 of you bought it through my link. That is an incredible number. It’s so huge in part because I don’t promote something different every week. I pick a few things that work well and promote them hard.

I was a driven salesperson in the web hosting industry. The more commoditized and cutthroat the industry you are in is, the more sales skills matter. Contrary to popular belief, though, sales isn’t all about skeezy convincin’ and fast talkin’. The biggest sales skill is also one of the hardest to learn: listening. The key is getting to know your prospect’s story first and then fitting what you’re selling to their needs…and being honest if what you’re selling doesn’t fit their needs.

You must be a closer in order to succeed in business. That means, if your prospect really needs what you have to offer, you have to ask for the sale and then get them to take action. Sell something that matters and that will truly help your prospects. Get your friend in the hospital to buy the $2,000 miracle pill. Get creative if that’s what it takes. But close the sale.

Using Your Business Skills to Make a Difference

Lydia, one of my four foster kittens. I sell people what I believe in and what they want to buy. Then I use that money to do awesome things in the world, like help foster kittens. I partnered with a nonprofit no-kill shelter here in San Diego: The Rescue House.

Rescue House gave me four kittens that had been abandoned by their mother. I bottle-fed them, took them to the vet, and loved on them for hours at a time. I’ll have the foster kittens for a few more months, at which time they will go to a permanent, adoptive home. My goal is to foster another set of kittens again next year when “kitten season” comes up, as well.

The foster kittens are just one of my nonprofit, charity activities. Without sales skills, and without believing that what I offer is the best, I wouldn’t be able to fund these charity activities. (Kitten food alone runs $6-7 a day!)

The market speaks for itself. I wouldn’t get paid a lot of money to foster kittens all day. But the market pays a lot for products on how to make more money, so that’s what I sell. I don’t fight the market or beg for it to be different. I don’t whine about inequitable distribution of money. I simply sell what works, and use the money I make to feed four hungry–but very cute!–kittens.

Did you fail the “friend test” above? Buy this book and read it cover to cover: Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got: 21 Ways You Can Out-Think, Out-Perform, and Out-Earn the Competition by Jay Abraham. I’ve read it and it’s one of the few books I go back to again and again for business advice.

Her response: “Well, these people are just starting out…they don’t have a whole lot of money, right?”

I replied: “Be careful. Don’t write the story for your potential customers.”

What Does “Writing the Story” Mean?

We all have a story: a compilation of thoughts and beliefs that got us to where we are today. Where we go wrong is that we tend to assume that everyone else’s story is the same as our story. Case in point: my friend started her business from basically nothing, and wouldn’t have had thousands of dollars to throw at a workshop teaching her how to start her type of business.

But there are plenty of people out there who have several thousand extra dollars and want to use that to create a sustainable income doing something they love. Some of those people will become her customers. She can’t write the story that everyone starting her type of business doesn’t have the money to invest in a workshop on how to run a business the right way.

We often “write the story” for others when we are afraid of doing something. Here’s one that happened to me recently. As you know, I’ve been helping review Profit Instruments. I’ve also been guest posting a lot, and as it happened, two guest posts of mine ran this week on two other popular blogs, resulting in a huge influx of new traffic and brand-new subscribers.

As I sent the launch emails yesterday and the day before, I wondered if I should somehow not send the emails to people who had just subscribed to my list. Here was the story I wrote for them: “They just subscribed in order to receive great content, and the first thing I’m going to send them is a pitch. My long-time subscribers know pitching is incredibly rare for me, but new subscribers won’t, and I may alienate them.”

Wow…that’s quite a story! Ultimately, I realized I couldn’t, and shouldn’t, write this story for them. It may be true that I alienated a few subscribers. However, it would probably also be true that I would lose sales by not sending that email to new subscribers. When in doubt, do what’s best for your business. I sent the email even to new subscribers.

Where Are You Writing the Story?

Are you “writing the story” for potential customers of yours? Are you afraid to send out a pitch for something that’s amazing and would help many of them, because you fear you may alienate a few of them? How about writing the story about how they wouldn’t be able to afford increased prices?

Ultimately, all stories have a root in your own fears–rejection and/or not being liked by others are two of the most common ones. It’s true that when you pitch a product (any product!), some people will complain. But others will buy it. Same with raising your prices…there will be some complaints, but most of your customers will stick around, assuming they enjoy doing business with you and you deliver great value to them.

Overcoming the stories we write in our heads is one of the most difficult tasks in any business. We all want to be loved and accepted, and the stories we write are an “easy way out”–a way to tell ourselves it’s okay to not rock the boat. But rocking the boat, making pitches, and raising prices are what you have to do to run a successful business.

Even seasoned entrepreneurs struggle with this, so you’re not alone. I catch myself writing the story constantly. Once you’re aware of the fact that you’re writing the story, however, you can stop the process in its tracks, recognize your inner fear behind it, and boldly do the right thing anyway.

Where has writing the story for your customers held you back in your business? What are you doing to overcome it? Let me know in the comments!

Recommended Reading:
Here are the guest posts I wrote for other blogs recently. Read them all; they’re all worth your time:

• Video: How to Get Thousands of Visitors from Google. A how-to video blog post I wrote that ran at Daily Blog Tips yesterday. Step-by-step instructions on how to get Google to send your website tons of traffic.
• Struggling With Your Blog? Try These Three Simple Tips. This post ran at JohnChow.com. Straightforward tips, but many bloggers, especially new ones, don’t do these…
• Would You Hire This Freelancer? Another controversial post. This one ran at Freelance Folder and has over 100 comments that debate my conclusion.

My friends Pace and Kyeli wrote a whole book about how we assume everyone else’s story is the same as our story. I own it and it’s a great read. Check it out: The Usual Error.

But today, I bought one. And for some of you, I think it might be the right decision, too. Hear me out, and you may be on your way to making money online, too:

The product first caught my eye because it’s a fairly straightforward way to make a significant amount of money online with small “niche” sites. It’s simple, really, and that’s the beauty of it. Each site he creates is a simple review site of a top-selling product. He teaches you how to get massive amounts of traffic for free by ranking for certain keywords. Then you set up a site, get traffic, and some number of people every month buy that product, making you completely passive income.

What’s awesome about this system:

• Requires no technical experience (he walks you through every step)
• Doesn’t require you to keep writing content every day
• Doesn’t even require you to set up a mailing list!
• Doesn’t require you to have a mailing list

Basically, even if you’re a beginner, you can make money with this system. And the system owner shows some nice proof…he’s making over $20,000 a month with this system. (I checked his traffic stats for myself, and he’s for real. First BS meter test passed.)

Of course, those big numbers are sales letter hype. He’s been running a “pre-launch” for a week, and I’ve watched all the videos, but I wanted to hold off on promoting it until I got my hands on it. I wanted to see for myself whether this was really possible.

I bought his product this afternoon and am already creating my first site. I found a product right under my nose that fits his criteria for promotion. It’s a product I already own and use. This made me excited…I didn’t want to have to promote scummy crap offers to make money.

I’ve already registered the domain name and set up the blog, and I’m looking forward to seeing how well I can rank and how many hundreds of dollars a month in passive income I will make with his system.

So, is it right for you? That depends. My policy is to be 100% honest, so here’s who I recommend this for:

• If you’re ready to make passive income online and don’t have your own product, this is a good fit!
• If you’ve set up a blog before, this is an excellent fit and I wouldn’t hesitate to put down the cash right now…you should be well on your way to making thousands of dollars a month within 30-60 days!
• If you’re looking for a good way to make money without developing your own product, this is a good fit.

Who is it NOT for?

• If you’re down to the last $200 in your bank account and need money tomorrow, do not buy this product. This product will take 30-60 days to return income. (Most affiliate programs take 30-60 days to pay out commissions.)
• If you have your hands full with 100 other products or don’t have a few hours to really dig into this product, don’t buy it.

 I can tell you for sure, despite the hype-y sales letter:

• I paid full price for the product and think it’s worth every penny
• This is a legitimate technique that should work in ANY niche, not just promoting “make money online” products
• He has proof it works in niches as diverse as health and fitness, finance, Farmville and Mafia Wars strategy guides, “how to” ebooks, digital cameras, tour guides, products on Amazon.com…pretty much anything you can think of!

If you know me, you know I do NOT promote B.S. I strive to test every product I promote. This passes my test with flying colors. I decline 99% of the products people ask me to promote. This product is in the other 1%. It’s worth it, and I feel strongly enough about it to stake my reputation on it.

It will work for you (or there’s a double your money back guarantee in case it doesn’t.)

Here’s my thinly-disguised affiliate link:

http://profitinstruments.com/812.html

I make a few dollars when you buy the product through this link. So, in order to thank you for ordering, here’s what I’d like to do for you:

Once you order, forward me your receipt (erica@erica.biz) and I will send you an invite to a free bonus online 1-hour workshop I’ll hold just for people who order through me.

In the workshop, I will reveal to you the website I’m creating as a part of this project. I’ll hold the workshop 30-60 days out so we can see together how much it’s earning and where it is in the search engines. And I’ll answer your questions about the sites you’re building through this product, and help you get them ranked higher in the search engines.

I will also reveal the names and oDesk links of the virtual assistants I’m using to create my site. This will save you hours of time and help your sites rank more quickly. That will be part of the workshop.

If you’re looking to start making money online, this is it. This is the only product in this niche I’ve recommended in months. Again, I’ve paid full price, gone through most of the product, and believe in it. Take action now, and I’ll be here to help you with my exclusive online workshop:

Order now or find out more information:

http://profitinstruments.com/812.html

Important note: This is a launch. This offer will close down in a day or two. DO NOT WAIT. I have waited in the past and regretted it. Don’t make the same mistake. If you’re ready to take a huge step toward earning passive income, and get my personal support and assistance on the workshop, go for it!

One caveat: Once I ordered, for some reason, I didn’t get the download link. If you have the same issue, please contact Ritoban’s helpdesk at http://customerhelp.in/. They responded to me pretty quickly and got everything straightened out, so please contact them directly.

Don’t forget to forward your receipt to me once you order!

Thanks, and I look forward to seeing you on the workshop in a month or so!

-Erica

P.S. Don’t pass this up. If you’re ready…go for it: http://profitinstruments.com/812.html

UPDATE: Wow, the response has been amazing! I sent this out to my email list last night and already nearly 40 people have signed up via my link! I really want you to succeed, so here’s what I’m going to do:

Assuming you buy through my link, I’ll hold not one, but two online workshops for you:

The first workshop, in 7-14 days, will be to walk you through the Profit Instruments method step by step and help you pick your niche. We’ll be going through the system, live, and I’ll answer your questions. (We’ll also record it in case you can’t make it.) In this webinar, I will reveal my own review site and show you what I’ve done so far with Profit Instruments.

The second workshop, in ~45 days, will help you make sure you’re getting the most traction in the search engines. I’ll go over some of my advanced SEO strategies so you can ensure you’re going to make money with this system.

I’m working this system to make money, and I encourage you to join me. I’ll be here to help you via these two workshops. Don’t hesitate…this launch will close down soon!

-> Click here to join us and start making money!

A product roadmap helps you figure out
where your business is going.

Great question, Amy! I’ve shared my goal about creating 10 products in 2010, but I haven’t talked much about how they all fit together…

The Problem: Infinite Opportunities

It is possible to do a nearly infinite number of things to make money online. There isn’t just one “proven path” to riches…witness the huge number of crazy inventions that make their inventors millions. (Ever had that feeling… “I could have done that! I should have done that!” Right? Me too!)

I want to do so many things. I’d love to write a book to help out people who are discovering that they have gluten intolerance or Celiac disease. I know that would be profitable. I constantly have ideas for WordPress plugins, video products, a product on great businesses to start online…

Pretty quickly, I had to learn to focus. I had to think strategically…not only about which products would make me the most money, but how those products would integrate with each other. This is the real key.

Step 1: Test With a Free Product

I started testing the market for blogging success materials by releasing my free Blog Success Manifesto. I went over the top with it as a free product. It’s 62 pages, jam-packed with practical advice on growing your blog faster than you ever have before. I could have easily charged $17-$27 for it, but I wanted the readership growth instead. (And I got it…nearly 4,000 people have downloaded their free copies!)

More importantly, the success of my free download proved there was a market that was interested in growing their blogs. I then launched my Guest Post Secrets product to serve that same market. I edited my Blog Success Manifesto to refer to Guest Post Secrets, and put a big mention about it here on my blog. Now I had two products working together, like this:

Step 2: Go Upmarket

My next step was to present a higher-ticket offer. I created my one-day workshop and offered a free webinar to my list (most of whom joined up originally because my Blog Success Manifesto.) I sold 4 out of the 5 slots right away, and the 5th one closed later. (That means my first San Diego workshop is now sold out! Hooray!)

These products worked in tandem like this:

Step 3: Fill in the Blanks

Now I wanted to create more products. Once you have a couple of paid products out the door, you can start filling in the blanks.

Part of Best Blogs will be a mailing list bloggers can sign up to, so I added that into my roadmap. Then I launched Blog Set Up as another low-price opt-in similar to Blog Success Manifesto:

My next product will be an intermediate product offering an hour with me for $497:

And then, I plan to release a product guiding people step-by-step through setting up their blog and driving traffic to it:

It’s pretty cool to see how these products fit together, isn’t it?

The key here is that once you have a buyer, you need to offer more products to that person. It’s much easier to sell something to someone who has already bought something else from you. If you don’t have the products to fill in the blanks, you should go out there and find great affiliate products that you are happy to promote, and make money that way.

Step 4: Automate

The final step in your roadmap–after you’ve launched some products–is to automate much of the cross-selling. You can do this with an email autoresponder series — something I plan to talk about in a later post. (I use Aweber as my email service, and recommend them.)

Four days after you download my Blog Success Manifesto, my email autoresponder follows up with you to make sure you got the download–and also introduces you to Guest Post Secrets. The Guest Post Secrets homepage allows you to opt in to see some high-value free videos, and over a 4-day period, gives you a special deal on buying Guest Post Secrets.

As I launch larger products, I will integrate these into my autoresponders, too. My goal is to have a defined roadmap of products to create in a “funnel” that automatically rolls people over from buying a low-ticket product like Blog Set Up or a free product like Blog Success Manifesto into buying higher-ticket items. Many of these products will be hands-off on my part, allowing for an automated income stream of thousands of dollars a month.

It is incredibly difficult to make a million dollars online selling one-off products…especially if they are inexpensive ebooks. Here’s a typical example: A person decides to make money online. They sell a dog training ebook, then the next month peddle psoriasis cures, then leap to the “make money online” niche. They now have three different lists, each with only a handful of people. And imagine trying to write content about dog training, psoriasis, AND making money online all in a few days! Forget it.

Multiple products are a good thing. But without a product roadmap, and a plan of action for seeing how they all fit together, multiple products are less than worthless. I vastly prefer becoming an expert in a few small fields and selling products in those fields only. I may pass on the next overhyped “million-dollar idea!”, but I can feel confident that every customer I gain will pay off far more than the people who simply hard-sell one or two items.

Repurposing Your Products

By the way, here’s a roadmap I’ve been developing for my next set of products:

You may see now how some of my existing products can be re-purposed for a different audience. Can your products do that? If not, you may want to consider changing your product roadmap.

Questions, or comments? What’s your product roadmap? Let me know in the comments!

Recommended Reading:

• How To Make A Mind Map. Do you ever feel completely overwhelmed by some of the projects you are working on…like you’ve set an impossible goal? Here’s a video on how to make a mind map and get all that junk out of your head…quickly and easily!
• Creating A New Product. A four-step guide to creating your first product.
• Products I Love. If you haven’t seen this yet, check it out…it’s the full list of all the products I use on a regular basis and recommend!

Blog Set Up.

If you’re new here, I write my goals publicly on my blog every year, then update regularly with new information. My biggest goal for 2010 was to create 10 products and release them. This was a challenge to myself to learn to create and release products quickly.

So far I’ve released:

1. BestBlogs.net (more on Best Blogs in a later post)
2. Guest Post Secrets
3. One-day in-person workshops

And now, my latest creation: Blog Set Up.

One way to get more customers for your products is to create more customers. Guest Post Secrets is geared toward bloggers, and I have another product (not yet released to the public)–video tutorials on how to set up your blog. What better way to sell these two products than to help people get a blog set up?

As part of an “implementation challenge” at a conference I attended, I set up Blog Set Up from scratch in about 24 hours. On Thursday, May 20, I did keyword research and eventually settled on the domain name blogsetup.us.

The site works like this: You sign up for a HostGator account through us, and we set up your blog for you for free. We get paid by HostGator to refer you as a new customer, so that’s how the site makes money.

Once we’ve set up your blog, we send you an email inviting you to opt in to our Blog Set Up email list, which contains a free helper video on how to set up a custom design for your blog (WordPress calls this a “theme”.) Then, we’ll send you some more cool content in the hope that you will purchase Guest Post Secrets or my as-yet-unreleased blog tutorial videos.

Testing Your New Product

By Friday, May 21, I was ready for my first customer. I mentioned it at the seminar I was at, and five people there signed up.

When you launch a site, you’re not going to get it right the first time. Watch others go through it–and keep quiet. Ask them to run through their thought process out loud. Note any questions they have–those are questions your site needs to address up front.

After watching two people go through the process, I redid a significant portion of the site, then launched an AdWords campaign to drive traffic to it. The AdWords campaign is getting an amazing click-through rate, but people aren’t buying, so one of my next steps is to address that.

The good news is that people who do know me are buying, and the site is just about to crest $1,000 in revenue in its first week!

I also shot two quick video testimonials from people at the seminar whose blogs I set up. I’ll add those to the site over the next few days to show some social proof. (Tip: Video testimonials work far better than text ones. Invest in a camera and record them on the spot, then edit and post them!)

Next Step: Outsource the Work

Right now, I am doing the blog setups, but one of my additional next steps is to find a capable person to outsource this to. I plan to use oDesk to find the person, then use Camtasia to shoot a how-to video with my exact process for setting up a blog, and then watch my new employee go through a setup his/herself. That way I’ll know quickly whether I’ve hired the right person.

Want to Launch a Product Fast? My Tips…

I’m proud: I was able to break through a lot of my own barriers and launch a complete website in just over 24 hours! That’s a new record for me, and makes my 10 products goal for this year much more achievable. This website should also boost my income significantly–especially if I can get the AdWords clickers to actually take action and buy a hosting package.

There was no way I could have launched Blog Set Up in 24 hours if I had to write all the HTML by hand. So, for quick implementation, I used WordPress as my content management system–even though Blog Set Up is not a “blog”.

I have to give credit to WooThemes and their amazing “Optimize” theme. It looks fantastic on Blog Set Up. Plus, I found a bug in the theme and they were able to fix it just a few hours after I posted on their forum. Optimize was well worth the investment.

Since I’ve had such great support with WooThemes, I find myself buying from them again and again. (erica.biz runs on their Fresh News theme.) I highly recommend WooThemes if you want to launch a site quickly. Check out WooThemes.

Need a blog set up? Have you been procrastinating on getting started with a blog? Take advantage of Blog Set Up today and get your blog set up by our experts!

Have questions about fast product launches, or about Blog Set Up itself? Ask ‘em in the comments and I will answer! Also, feel free to share your own product launch experiences.

P.S. Stealing this product idea would not be a good idea. Find your own product idea.

Recommended Reading:

• oDesk Review. Is outsourcing worth the effort? Here are my thoughts, plus my step-by-step guide to using oDesk to outsource labor.
• What to Do When People Aren’t Buying. Ever get the comment “I’d love to buy your product, but I just can’t afford it”? Or–how about the even more blunt “That seems expensive!” You probably don’t need to lower your price! Read this for what to do instead…
• How to Read People’s Minds… …and create the product they most desire! It would be great if we could read people’s minds. As far as I know, that product doesn’t exist, but these two methods come pretty close.

Here’s how I not only found a top executive at a large company, but got an urgent issue with that company fixed in record time…

Recently, I found a bug in a popular piece of software: the Alexa toolbar for Firefox. Firefox notified me that a new version of the toolbar was out, and I clicked to install it without thinking much of it.

When I opened Firefox, I immediately noticed that links in Gmail and Facebook were displaying blank pages when clicked. I used the first rule of tech support to troubleshoot: Undo your last change. I disabled the Alexa toolbar and restarted the browser, and sure enough, the links were working again! Uh-oh. Big problem for Alexa.

I went to the Alexa site and clicked the “Help” link, which led me to their customer support forums. Another user had already reported the problem, so I added a “me too” response.

I gave Alexa a day to respond. The next day, they still hadn’t responded, and there was no indication that anyone from Alexa was even reading the forums. I decided to escalate.

Step 1: Find The Right Person

I perused Alexa’s management page, looking through all the names and trying to figure out who would be the best point of contact.

Tip: Don’t always shoot for the president. Sometimes, someone lower on the food chain (such as a middle manager) often will have more time to listen to voicemail and may even pick up his/her own phone!

I decided the most likely person in charge of the toolbar would be Steve Dawson, Alexa’s software engineering manager.

Step 2: Find The Company’s Phone Number

Phone numbers can be tricky. Alexa doesn’t publish theirs on their website. I decided first to try whois for their domain name. To use whois, I went to domaintools.com and typed in alexa.com. All companies are required to have phone numbers on their domain names, but some will be an invalid number.

I dialed the phone number and was excited to find I had reached Alexa’s headquarters. Lucky–Alexa had a real phone number on their listing!

Step 3: Dial by Name (or Ask for a Specific Person)

“Support” usually sends you to a low-level person who really doesn’t have any leverage in the company. If you really have an urgent issue, you need someone who can fix it right away. So, instead of waiting for a prompt like “support” or “sales”, I opted to dial by name. (If you get a receptionist, you can do the same thing by asking for that person, and then saying “An urgent issue regarding [your problem]” when you call.)

The phone rang a few times and I was directed to Mr. Dawson’s voicemail. I left a message clearly explaining the issue. And I did one important thing that made sure my message would get attention…

Step 4: State What You Want Them to Do

You need to not only be able to clearly state the issue, but also clearly state what needs to be done. Do you need them to call you back? What, exactly, can they do to resolve this issue for you?

In this case, I didn’t care whether anyone at Alexa personally followed up with me or not. I mentioned the forum where no one had replied, and asked him to have someone reply on that forum. I didn’t leave my phone number or request a followup. If this is a general complaint, you can ask them to issue a statement, post a blog, or email their customers once it has been fixed.

Step 5: Ask Your Contact to forward to the Appropriate Person

After I explained the issue, I said “If this isn’t your responsibility, can you please notify the person whose responsibility it is?” This ensured that I wouldn’t encounter a “That’s not my job…delete!” Hopefully, most executives wouldn’t do that anyway, but this safeguards against that.

Step 6: Follow Up (and my Success Story!)

The day after I called, I checked the forum. Sure enough, there was a post timestamped just a couple hours after I called! In it, an Alexa employee said they had rolled back the toolbar to the previous version and were working on a fix. He apologized for the inconvenience the issue had caused.

Now, there’s no way to know for sure my phone call was the catalyst. But there are facts supporting that. A day went by and there was no response in the forum. A few hours after my call, an Alexa employee responded and took action to resolve the issue. Either way, I will chalk that up as a victory!

In summary:

• Find the right person.
• Dial by name.
• Clearly state your issue and what action you need the person to take. Ask them to forward to the proper person if he/she is not the right person to resolve the issue.
• Follow up to ensure that the requested action has been taken.

Caveats

Finding the company’s real phone number can be tricky. For huge companies, Get Human offers phone numbers.

If you know the city and state where the company is located, or can find it on their website, using the yellow pages is also an option. YellowPages.com has most listings in the U.S. (They’re showing Alexa’s phone number correctly, too.)

This technique not only works, but it works well. Use it wisely, though: Don’t use this for sales calls. Use it when you have a real issue with a company and need serious help resolving it.

Have you used this technique (or a similar one) to reach an executive at a business? What other techniques have you used that are successful? Let me know in the comments!

Recommended Reading:

• How to Negotiate Your Phone and Cable Bill. Save thousands of dollars with one phone call. Read the comments–you will be amazed at how much other people have saved!
• How to Download Videos. We buy or download all this great video content, but then we don’t actually watch it. Does this happen to you, too? With this simple trick, I was able to fly through many hours of information products…
• How to Survey Your Customers for Free. Never pay for an online survey tool again! I show you how to survey an unlimited number of customers for free using a little-known Google product.