He told me he really liked an email I’d sent him and that he’d be writing about it in a future book. I had no idea he’d actually written about it until a lovely lady who works for a bank in Iowa contacted me out of the blue citing an article he’d written. I then discovered that it had appeared in many different publications, including:

• The Idaho Business Review — How to make your emails deliver the click
• Midlands Biz, Columbia, South Carolina — Set the hook, get the email
• Crain’s Detroit Business — Set the hook, get the click, capture the e-mail address, and bank the money

Since I don’t consider myself to be a copywriter, it gave me an ego boost. But more importantly, the article makes some very good points about what made Jeffrey “click” on the link in email. So I asked Jeffrey if I could share his article with you, and he kindly agreed. Here’s what he wrote:

I got an unsolicited email this morning that gave me no choice but to read it. My interest had to do with the subject line, the headline, the design of the content, and the copy.

The subject line was: Jeffrey, How to go from market penetration to domination. Ok, I clicked to open:

Then the headline: What one thing determines your success in business, more than any other single factor? Ok, I read it. The very tastefully designed letter said:

Hello Jeffrey,

This is Robert Clay.

If you were asked what one thing determines your success in business more than any other single factor, what would you answer?

Perhaps you’d say it was down to the quality of your product or service, or your people, or trust, or competitive prices, or availability, or profitability, or the number of customers who return to do business with you again.

These are the responses I get all the time. While they’re all good answers, the biggest factor that determines your success in the marketplace is one that is hardly ever written or spoken about … and in ten years not one person, out of the thousands I’ve asked, has been able to tell me what it is.

Perhaps you’ve heard me speaking on the subject in the past, or read about it in my book. The point is, once you know that one factor that makes a world of difference, you can take a few simple steps to move your business from market penetration to market domination.

Just look at Google who now have 85% of the global search engine market; and Apple, now the world’s most valuable technology company, who dominate the market for music players, smartphones, computers priced over £600, and now tablet computers too.

When times are tough you REALLY need to work smart. You need to do what Google, Apple and others have done. You need to know that one factor that can change everything for you.

That factor is explained in my book on Page 10. And you’re welcome to download a copy with my compliments, with absolutely no obligation. Just click here, enter your name and email address, click the confirm link on the email you receive and you’ll be taken to a page where you can download the book immediately.

If you enjoy the book, let me know. If what you learn leads to the transformation of your business, as it has for some, then be sure to let me know!

Click here to get your copy of my book, with my compliments.

Warmest Wishes,

Robert Clay
Marketing Wizdom Ltd

Ok, I clicked, subscribed and downloaded the free book, and immediately went to page 10 to find the answer… Eh, not so fast. That’s not what this lesson is about. The point of this article is for you to see what Robert Clay’s writing was about, what got me to “click,” and most important: how can you use these same elements in your communications – both as email cold calls, and email follow-ups.

The object of an email is NOT to get it opened and read. The object of an email is to get RESPONSE. Positive response.

Here are the “buttons” Robert Clay pushed to make me “click here” to get the free report and the answer to his headline question:

• He asked me provocative questions.
• He made me curious.
• The letter had value-driven engagement.
• The message had perceived value to me as a reader.
• The letter had a free “hook” offer that promised “value-first.”
• The letter had NO offer or obligation to buy anything.
• Clay offered new information.
• Clay offered success information.
• The letter offered something about or for ME!
• The letter had the lure of an “answer” about something I want.
• The letter met a now-need that I have (timing of the message). I want to know this, or have this, NOW.

The reason I’m sharing this information is not to prove a point, or even to provide an “AHA.” I’m giving you this information and challenging you to take a close look at the way you send emails, and the way they are responded to (or not).

Now that you have seen what makes me click, why not study what makes your customers and prospective customers click. What’s their button? What answers are they looking for? Where’s your value?

Or are you just “checking in” or “touching base,” making a feeble (and obvious) attempt at trolling for dollars.

In today’s world you have no choice but to be seen, known, and perceived as a person of value if you want to differentiate yourself, make the sale, and build the relationship.

Every sales oriented email you send should answer the question, “Where’s the value?”

If you want the answer to the question of what one thing determines your success in business, more than any other single factor? Go to www.gitomer.com and enter the word CLAY in the GitBit box.

Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of The New York Times best sellers The Sales Bible, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Black Book of Connections, and The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude. All of his books have been number one best sellers on Amazon.com, including Customer Satisfaction is Worthless, Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Patterson Principles of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching!, and The Little Teal Book of Trust. Jeffrey’s books have sold millions of copies worldwide.

President of Charlotte, North Carolina based Buy Gitomer, he gives seminars, runs annual sales meetings, and conducts Internet training programs on selling and customer service at www.trainone.com. He can be reached at (+1) 704-333-1112 or e-mail to salesman@gitomer.com.

What have you learned from the email and Jeffrey’s challenge to the way you write emails to achieve a response? Please share your thoughts below.

Yesterday I sent out a simple “tweet” saying I was off to give a presentation that would warn people that Twitter should not be used for business. Within moments the broadcaster and communications consultant James Lush had replied saying he’d be fascinated to know why on earth I was saying such a thing. Well, this morning I delivered my suggestions to the Business Leaders Group where several CEOs and Managing Directors had gathered to find out whether or not social networking could help their business.

So, I rose to my feet, took a deep breath and suggested the un-suggestible. In fact, James Lush was not the only person who wanted to know why I was daring to say Twitter is not for business. Several people I met this morning at the Business Leaders Group said the same thing. They want to know how could I say such a thing when there are plenty of examples of companies making money using Twitter.

But therein lies the twist in my tale. The companies making money from Twitter are not using it as a business tool. Far from it; they are using it as a social tool.

Consider life before Twitter – if you can remember back far enough, before the internet. How did you go about getting new business in those days? And how did you go about getting more business out of existing clients? Unless you are in the fast moving consumer goods industry, business has always been about relationships. You got more business from existing clients by socialising with them – having lunch, playing golf, going down the pub, even, perhaps, going to their daughter’s wedding. But whatever you did, you didn’t discuss business – politics, yes, other people, certainly and “putting the world to rights”, of course. But business – pah! Who wants to talk about that? Yet, despite no talking about business you got more of it from these people.

And, in the past, when it came to getting new customers, what did  you do? You took every opportunity to get to know them. Instead of filling their minds with “buy this” messages you sat down with them, chatted to them, asked them questions about themselves. You were trying to extract as much information out of them as possible to see where you could “fit”. But the encounter with potential clients was always social, not “salesy”. Indeed, if it were focused on sales, what happened? You were accused of being a “hard seller” using …tactics”. In other words, as soon as the conversation turned to business, that’s exactly what you lost. When the conversation was social, you gained business.

Now, fast forward to Twitter. What happens when you see a tweet that is a business conversation, when it is sales focused? Almost certainly you ignore it; you might even get angry and stop following the individual. You will, of course, find an endless array of “social networking gurus” forcing social networking guff at you on Twitter, which makes it seem that these “experts” know a thing or two and therefore if your business does the same thing you’ll be OK. Wrong. Come back in a year and see how many of the “gurus” are still in business….mmmm….I wonder?

The successful businesses on Twitter are not using their tweets to focus on business. Instead, they are simply being social; chatting, holding conversations, being friendly, even showing altruistic kindness. When you see Twitter merely as a system to hold conversations, as a social tool, your business will do well out of it. All the time you see it as a business tool it will fail you. So, don’t “do business” on Twitter, simply socialise – just like you used to do before the web came along.

Think about it. Every single day, your customers, prospects, and employees are inundated with information from e-mail, voicemails, spam, and memos. So how do you get your important messages across to them in a way that doesn’t get lost in all of that noise? The answer is podcasts.

So what is a podcast?

Podcasts are the new way of distributing audio content. A podcast is an audio or video recording that someone can subscribe to, receive, download, listen to, or watch using a their computer, iPod, M3 player, iPhone, iPad or smartphone. Your customers and prospects can therefore listen to or watch this information whenever and wherever they wish—in their cars, during lunch, in the evening, at the office, at the gym, while jogging, at the beach, up a mountain, by a lake or even on their day off.

A podcast resembles a TV programme or radio show, but is much easier to create and distribute. And it costs nothing to do so. Podcasting requires you to create an audio file, then make it known and available, as described below.

Why podcasting might be a good idea

If you’ve never considered podcasting, let me give you some more reasons why you should. For one thing, tens of millions of people around the world already subscribe to podcasts on virtually any topic you can imagine, and that number is growing exponentially. Even 9 year old schoolkids in the UK are now taught podcasting … which means that it will soon be ubiquitous.

Today’s college students get recordings (podcasts) of their professors’ lectures to play back later. Some company CEOs send out monthly messages to their workers via a podcast. Thanks to groups of dedicated podcasters, you can also take self-guided tours of several museums and landmark buildings by downloading an audio tour before you leave home. The potential uses for podcasts are only limited by your imagination.

Most people think of podcasts as audio files, if indeed they even know what podcasts are. But that is no longer necessarily the case. Podcasts today are a vehicle for many types of media that individuals can use as a means of delivering standalone content, or easily integrated into social media.

It’s easy to add music, digital photographs, company logos, animations, videos or anything else it takes to get your message across.

Thousands of hours of audio in your pocket

The ability to download, organise and carry thousands of hours of songs, audio recordings, podcasts and other programs on a device you can slip into your pocket is amazing. And with the convergence of technology, Apple’s iPhone and iPad also have iPods built-in. Most smartphones also offer broadly comparable capabilities.

Audio is particularly appealing to people on the go, and it has certain advantages over text-based tools and even video. It’s unlikely that you’re going to read something or view video while you’re exercising, but audio is the perfect companion.

Why do you suppose so many car manufacturers are rushing to make their cars iPod-compatible? Because so many people who drive—especially those who spend a lot of time in their cars—like to listen to music, news, sport, politics, weather, and other forms of audio information.

Historically, this was the exclusive domain of radio, an industry that was built upon finding ways to entertain, inform, and then sell stuff to a captive audience of drivers during the highly lucrative drive-time hours. But that was then.

Car manufacturers today know that iPods and iPhones have become such ubiquitous and indispensable devices that people want to integrate them with their in-car hi-fi systems. And now you and your business can be there too, and in all of the other places people take their iPods and smartphones, provided you know why, when, and how to make podcasting part of your business strategy.

Creating and sharing audio

If you’re in any way daunted by the prospect of recording and editing audio, don’t be. Creating and sharing audio is a doddle. There’s even a good chance that all the tools you need are already built in to your computer or iPhone. In any event it doesn’t take long to get up to speed with audio recording, editing and sharing. And once you’ve created your audio content it’s easy to host it on your blog, or use any of a number of sites that are dedicated to hosting podcasts.

It’s also quick and easy to upload your podcasts to iTunes. Since 85% of all podcasts globally originate on iTunes, being featured there potentially exposes you to millions of prospective customers or advocates. And a percentage of them will be searching for exactly what you offer, however exotic your line of business.

OK, that’s the theory. What about the practice?

In the top 10 on iTunes at my first attempt

Encouraged by Ian Scott, who interviewed me for one of his podcasts a few months ago, click here, I recently had my first attempt at putting together two podcasts and submitting them to iTunes, the world’s largest distribution channel for such recordings.

I merely recorded the content of a couple of blogs I’d already written because I needed to work out a step by step process to pass on to participants in my Eureka program so that they could gain hands-on familiarity with the process, as part of a much wider social media strategy. This was one of fifteen familiarisation exercises, each one using a different social media tool.

I had no particular expectations of success. It was just an experiment that took an evening from start to finish. But to my utter amazement the two podcasts reached the top 10 best selling marketing and management titles on iTunes exactly three weeks after submission, and were also featured in the top 3 new and noteworthy podcasts. This was completely unexpected, and I probably wouldn’t even have even known had Ian Scott not alerted me. Click here to hear the podcasts.

Based on what I learned from the exercise, I wrote up around 3-pages of notes on podcasting and incorporated them into the Social Media Roadmap manual I was creating for participants in my invitation-only Eureka program. That manual is one first of four such publications I’ve been developing on social media and online marketing, and much of this article has been extracted from it. Click here to view the curriculum for the first three years of the Eureka program and where social media fits into the picture.

Creating a podcast step by step

Step 1: Download iTunes. If you don’t already have iTunes on your computer, go to www.Apple.com, and download it for your Mac or Windows PC.

Step 2: Try iTunes. Try it, even if you don’t plan on buying and downloading music. See how the interface works.

Step 3: Prepare a podcast. Creating your own podcasts is easy, so don’t be daunted if you’ve never created one. Think about WIIFM (What’s In It for Me?), from your customers’ and prospects’ point of view. What can you tell them in 10 minutes or less that is important to them?

Gather information. Write an opening explaining who you are, what your subject matter is, and what you will be talking about.

Write a script for your content based on your area of professional expertise or other subject matter of interest to you. Or prepare a few bullet points so that you can just talk spontaneously on the subject, without sounding too rehearsed or rigid. And if you don’t want to plan out your podcast—then it’s fine to just wing it!

Write your close or sign-off, reminding your audience who you are; what your subject matter is, and where they can find out more.

Step 4: Download your sound editing software. Plenty of inexpensive or free sound editing software is available to record your podcast. A lot of podcasters use Audacity. It provides easy-to-use, high-quality tools. You can download it from the internet and it’s free! If you have a Mac, GarageBand is probably the best choice as it has an entire podcast studio built in and can handle every aspect of Podcasting for you with ease.

Get your head around the software. Read the instructions and/or go through the tutorials so that you know how to use it.

Step 5: Record your podcast. Once you know what you want to say, it’s time to record it. Use your computer’s built-in microphone or connect an external microphone for better quality. I used an decent external microphone for mine because I found the built-in one was picking up sounds from the computer. Open Audacity or Garageband, hit the record button and let your thoughts flow!

N.B. Most people only have about a 7-minute attention span for audio. Taking any more time than that will likely lose your listeners’ interest.

Step 6: Edit your podcast. Sound editing sounds scary, but it is really easier than you think. It’s as easy as copying, cutting, pasting, and deleting. In most cases, you will at least want to eliminate gaps in your recording and paste together your intro, your recording and your sign-off. I used Garageband which also made it easy to blend a bit of music into the start and close of the piece.

Step 7: Save your podcast to disk. Be sure to save your podcasts in a usable file format. Most people want your content in an MP3 format that is compatible with their digital music players. Be conscious of file size too. Most music tracks runs at about 3-5 MB each, so try to keep your finished files in the single-digit MB range.

Step 8: Upoad your podcast to your blog. Add your podcast to your media library on your WordPress blog. Create a “Podcasts” (or equivalent) post category. Create a new post for each podcast. Add a title and describe your podcast in the post. Somewhere in the post add a link to your podcast file. Select the “podcasts” category and add tags as appropriate. Click Publish, and your podcast will be published as a post in the “podcasts” category.

Step 9: Download and configure Podcast Channels plugin. If you’ll be hosting your podcasts on your WordPress blog, add a Podcast specific plugin. I tried Podcast Channels and Blubrry, and settled on the latter. Configure the settings to work with your “Podcasts” category.

N.B. You don’t HAVE to host your podcasts on your blog. You can also use services like Podbean to host, syndicate, and distribute your podcasts for free.

Step 10: Create an RSS feed for your podcasts. By RSS feeding your podcasts, you are making them available to literally millions of potential listeners. Go to your blog’s home page. Go to the “Podcasts” category and go to the RSS feed for that category and copy the podcast feed URL.

Step 11: Upload your podcast to iTunes. Tens of millions of people search iTunes every day looking for content that might be similar to yours. Be sure to follow their guidelines to ensure your podcast’s success. And keep in mind that if your podcast falls under the “educational” category, you should upload it to iTunes’ “iUniversity.”

To submit your podcast to iTunes, click here. Paste your podcast feed URL into the relevant box. Click continue. Check that the details on the next page are correct and hey presto, once your content has been accepted, your podcasts will be available to millions of people worldwide.

What next?

I enjoyed my first attempt at podcasting, am still amazed at the results, and will now regularly be publishing podcasts. It is so easy, and so many people like it, that it would be a shame not to. How about joining me in that adventure? It’s easier than you think.

What’s your experience with podcasting? Has this article been useful? Please leave your comments and thoughts below?

Instead I want to tell you about an amazing and inspiring person who has touched my life and left an indelible impression. Her name was Beryl Miller. She was someone we can all learn from. She was my PA in my first two businesses, and a few days ago, sadly, she lost an 18 month battle with cancer.

Beryl was a remarkable person. Although she can’t be with us any more, I hope her example will inspire you.

Where it all started

At age 19 and 23 I set up my first two businesses, with no capital, based in Sussex. Both businesses took off and before long they were operating nationally. When we outgrew our premises on the south coast we decided to move to a more central location.

We settled on the Oxford area, took on brand new premises and moved in. We needed someone to organise the office. Beryl came into my life when she joined us as a temp.

She liked the look of us and what we did. And we liked the look of her and the way she did things. So the arrangement became permanent and she became my PA.

My strongest skills are my ability to look ahead and see possibilities; develop innovative solutions; inspire people; and open doors to new business. Beryl was an excellent organiser, even if nobody understood how her filing system worked; she excelled at building long term relationships; and she had a great sense of humour. The combination of qualities we could muster between us meant that working with Beryl was a match made in heaven.

I could just get on with what I did best. And Beryl could just get on with what she did best. We never crossed over or trod on one another’s toes. And there was never any need to supervise her. We both thoroughly enjoyed the journey, and of course developed enormous mutual respect.

Beryl could always be relied on to get the job done. And she was a pleasure to work with because she never judged anyone; she never complained about anything or anyone; she never criticised anyone; and she was always positive, selfless and proactive. If something had to be done, she would see that it was done without fail. And we never had a disagreement or argument.

There was a natural coordination in the way we did things. It was like finding the perfect dance partner, where try as one might, one seemingly couldn’t put a foot wrong.

Being able to focus 100% of your energies and abilities on doing something you’re good at has a remarkable impact on what you can get done. With our combined efforts we took the market by storm. Both businesses became major players in the UK market, then started to expand globally.

Becoming a global market leader

For some years one of the largest companies in Scandinavia had been suggesting that one of their business units and mine would be a good fit. They also stated that they would prefer to work with us than against us; and they reckoned that at some stage we would need the capital they could bring to the table in order to continue our growth. They were right, so eventually I accepted an offer from them and sold them both businesses.

The business that bought mine was a division of Astra Pharmaceutical (now Astra Zeneca), but soon afterwards it became a subsidiary of an oil company, also owned by the parent company.

It was a condition of the deal that I carried on working for the combined business, and my role was to develop new business with car, truck, bus and aircraft manufacturers, a task at which nobody had previously succeeded.

It took six months to land the first contract. And over the next three and a half years we picked up every contract we went after. Not one competitor got a single contract. Once again, Beryl supported me in that role. And once again we cleaned up.

The fact that many of those companies remained clients of the company for the next two decades without any written contracts speaks volumes for Beryl’s relationship building skills. We had a great double act.

Without Beryl’s support I would never have been able to achieve those results. She was outstanding at maintaining and building the relationships that I established, which left me free to develop new technical innovations and pursue further relationships.

While supporting me in my role, which involved a lot of international travel, Beryl also acted as PA to the Norwegian who had taken over my old role as Managing Director of the now combined UK company. She was magnificent in both roles. The combined business went on to become Number one in it’s field in the world, and we both played a significant part in that.

Buying the business back

I eventually left the company to pursue other interests, which was the start of what later became Marketing Wizdom. The Norwegian MD left soon afterwards, joining forces with the MD of our American company to set up the American Pizza Company, assisted by Beryl’s son. That business became Dominos Pizza soon afterwards when that company launched in the UK, and another legend was born.

Beryl then became the PA to the new Managing Director, and when he eventually left she herself was appointed as Managing Director. This was entirely fitting, as she had done so much to build up the company and keep it running like clockwork. Her journey from temp to MD is an inspiring one that I’ve told many times. Its shows what’s possible if you approach things the right way. But her story doesn’t end there.

She went on to be appointed to the board of the global parent company, part of a group with £6 Billion annual revenues, an entirely fitting recognition of her amazing contribution to the company, not just in the UK, but internationally, where her competence and qualites touched many other people too.

The Swedish owners of the business eventually sold it on to a Swiss company who also supplied the automotive industry. Beryl later negotiated a management buyout of the UK subsidiary and ended up owning the original UK business that I’d started years before. And Beryl being Beryl, she kept it going magnificently.

Her husband, previously an RAF Air Commodore, and later a Business School Professor, soon joined her in the business. They ran it together until she decided it was time to retire. They then sold part of the business to someone who for some time had been, and still is, one of my clients. And right to the end she still employed several of the same staff that we had started with years before.

Retirement and world travel

When Beryl retired she devoted herself to her family, having great fun with her son, daughter and their seven children. Meantime we always kept in touch and it was one of my great pleasures to meet up with Beryl from time to time and catch up on the latest news.

In recent years Beryl also became very involved in Zonta International, an organisation founded in 1919 to advance the status of women, particularly women in business. Beryl’s competence was soon recognised and it wasn’t long before she took on a pan-european role which required her to travel all over the world. One minute she’d be in Moscow and the next in Chicago. I always enjoyed hearing about her travels, and sharing in the pleasure she derived from this association.

I never tired of telling people about my former PA who started as a temp and went on to own the company.

The secrets of Beryl’s success

So what were the secrets of Beryl’s success? In my view they were her strong work ethic; never judging anyone; never complaining; never criticising; always being positive, selfless and proactive; and an ability to nurture and build trust with contacts like few others I’ve ever met. That’s a formidable—and rare—combination of qualities. And she certainly deserved all the success she achieved.

Sad news

In March this year I received the very sad news from her daughter, by now a long-time friend, that Beryl had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and was beyond treatment. She had been ill and declining for more than a year, but until then nobody had managed to diagnose the cause.

I made arrangements to see her at the earliest opportunity. It was a very emotional reunion. We were both thrilled to see one another. And true to character she didn’t utter a word of complaint. She was positive as always, and only wanted to talk about me and what I had been up to. As I said, an amazing lady.

I wasn’t there to speak about myself, so we DID get to speak frankly about her situation, and I’m so glad we did. She was in surprisingly good form considering her devastating affliction, and even came out to see me off. I’m glad I took a photo by which to remember the occasion. All in all it was a wonderful afternoon.

Hearing that she was deteriorating, I was very keen to see her again a few weeks ago, but she was rushed into hospital just as I was about to visit. I arranged to see her there a few days later, but had to postpone again as she was being sent home that day.

Sadly that visit was never to be. She deteriorated overnight and passed away the following day. I’m glad that her husband, son, daughter and sister were all there for her in her last hours and minutes. I’m also so glad that her husband managed to pamper her and look after her every need for her last six months. His military planning skills ensured that she was able to take all the right medications at the right time. And he even learned to cook. By all accounts those six months were filled with fun, laughter and visits to lovely locations, as she and her husband grew closer than ever before in the knowledge that their time together was limited.

When Beryl passed away, it was of course devastating for her family, as it was for me and all who had been touched by her. It will take time for everyone to get over their loss. It was a great honour to deliver an address at her funeral last week, which was the least I could do to give her a good send off. She was an amazing and inspiring person.

Looking back, I’m thrilled that I was able to play a major role in Beryl’s life, starting her off on the major career of her life. I am grateful too that she played a major role in my life. If it hadn’t been for her I couldn’t have achieved what I did at the time. We created a partnership the like of which few will ever experience.

Those whose life she touched can be truly grateful, and none more than me. If you’re ever lucky enough to know or work with someone like Beryl just once in your lifetime you can consider yourself truly fortunate. What she achieved will always inspire me. And I hope it inspires you too. But more than that, I hope for you that you have the privilege of finding or working with someone like Beryl at least once in your life.

I’ve spent years looking for another Beryl, without success. But amazingly that person may have found me when I wasn’t looking, as with so many of the best things in life, just as Beryl did. If so I’m a lucky person indeed. But that’s another story.

Here’s to Beryl Miller, a great lady who will live on in my memory forever.

So is relationship selling dead?

It sure feels that way today! You rarely reach your prospects on the phone and when you do, they quickly brush you off. When you’re in meetings, they want you to get right to the point.

Sometimes they’re so busy multi-tasking, that you’re not even sure if they’re paying attention. Even your long-term customers fail to return your calls for months, making you wonder what you did wrong.

Welcome to the new normal! Your prospects are suffering from Frazzled Customer Syndrome, a debilitating condition brought on by increased expectations, excessive workloads, unrealistic deadlines and fewer resources.

They’re good people who are doing their very best to survive in a frenetic workplace. Their calendars are overflowing, they’re constantly falling behind and they feel powerless to stop the escalating demands on their time.

The truth is, they don’t need another “relationship.”

They barely get to see their best friends anymore. They even eat lunch at their desk everyday so they can get more done. It’s all work, work, work. New relationships are a low priority.

But you want a relationship! Of course you do. You’re a relationship seller. Your best customers love you. They value your work. They refer others to you.

And, you love them back even more and take great care of them. Working with people like this feeds your soul – and pays well too!

Wanting to replicate these strong relationships is natural. But establishing that great connection can be a real challenge when dealing with stressed out people who seem more intent on pushing you away than inviting you in.

Here’s the good news! Underneath all that rude, brusque behavior are normal human beings who desperately want relationships with people who they can trust to help them achieve their goals.

That person could be you. But first, you need to understand what’s going on in their mind in order to create the connection you want.

What Your Prospects Think

Whenever you deal with frazzled prospects their brains immediately start firing off alert signals: “Warning. Pay attention. Salesperson.” While you may not see yourself that way, they do and that’s what matters.

They evaluate your voicemails, emails and initial conversation to determine if having a more in-depth conversation with you is worthwhile. They make lightning-quick decisions to allow you access to them based on these criteria:

• Is this aligned with what I need to accomplish?
• How big a priority is it? What’s the urgency?
• Does this person provide value?
• How simple is it? Will it take lots of effort?

Unless you can convey all this very quickly, you won’t get your foot in the door. But it doesn’t stop there. To retain or grow a relationship, you have to keep your focus on these decision-criteria at all times too.

Relationship selling today goes far beyond the warm fuzzy feelings that you get from working with people you like and vice versa. It’s about creating partnerships where you’re a contributing team member, working towards your client’s short- and long-term success objectives.

SNAP Rules Change the Game

You need to follow the new SNAP Rules to be successful with the “new” relationship selling. Here they are:

Rule 1: Keep It Simple

Your goal is to ensure maximum simplicity in everything you do. That’s going to require you to look at all aspects of your interactions with your prospects to see where complexity can be eliminated or minimized.

When you keep it simple, you make it easier for your them to buy from you.

Rule 2: Be iNvaluable

Today’s crazy-busy prospects want to work with sellers who “know their stuff” and bring them fresh ideas on a regular basis. Perhaps you’ve never even seen that as your role. But today it’s essential to turn yourself into the competitive differentiator.

When you become invaluable, people choose you over competitors, are less price conscious, and remain loyal.

Rule 3: Always Align

This is all about relevance and risk. At the onset of your relationship, clients need to see an immediate connection between what you do and what they’re trying to achieve. As they move through their decision-making process, they need to know that the alignment extends into core beliefs they value in the people they work with.

When you’re aligned with their critical business objectives and core beliefs, clients want to work with you.

Rule 4: Raise Priorities

It’s an absolute imperative to work with frazzled prospects on their priority projects. With their limited capacity, that’s all they can currently focus on. Because your prospect’s priorities are constantly shifting, you need to be alert to what’s going on in their organization.

When you raise priorities, your sales process goes much faster and you get the business with less competition.

Relationship selling isn’t dead. In fact, it’s more alive than ever before. You still need to connect with your prospects on a personal level, but it’s no longer sufficient.

You have to earn the right to have a relationship with them first.

They want your expertise focused on their priority business objectives, issues and challenges. They want you to continually bring them fresh ideas and provocative insights. They’re looking for you to simplify the complex and make their life easy.

When you do this, they’ll be friends forever.

Want to learn more about the new rules of selling to crazy-busy prospects? To get four FREE sales-accelerating tools and download two chapters of SNAP Selling, visit www.snapselling.com or email jill@snapselling.com

Net Promoter Score

Frederick F. Reichheld is a global authority on customer loyalty. He is also the father of a simple but powerful theory known as the Net Promoter Score. The theory states that if you ask a sample of your customers the one simple question “How likely is it that you would recommend our product, service or company to a friend or colleague?” you can calculate your net promoter score by finding the ratio between those customers who are promoters and those who are detractors.

Each customer is asked to respond to the question using a 0 to 10 rating scale, with 10 being “extremely likely to recommend” and 0 being “extremely unlikely to recommend.” Reichheld considers that those giving a rating of 9 or 10 are promoters, those with a rating of 7 or 8 are passively satisfied, and those with ratings from 0 to 6 to be detractors.

By subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters, you arrive at your net promoter score. Based upon Reichheld’s research, companies with net promoter scores of 75 percent or higher are held in high esteem by their customers.

One question. Meaningful insights

Overall, the net promoter score can offer meaningful insights into how your marketplace feels about your business, product, concept, or content. By measuring audience attitudes in this way, you can evaluate your offering, your competition, and even new concepts.

The net promoter score is a useful way of determining both the relative strength and the execution of a concept, and it provides an indication of the concept’s word-of-mouth or viral potential. We recommend that participants in our Eureka program use it, among other things, to evaluate whether a social media strategy or concept has any real-world merit.

You can learn a lot by asking several hundred people who have been exposed to your concept: “Based on what you now know or have experienced, how likely would you be to recommend this product, service, company or concept to a friend or colleague?”

By asking just this one question and averaging the scores of a few hundred respondents, you can begin to determine the true potential of any concept. You can then refine and tweak your concept to better satisfy the needs and preferences of your marketplace. You can also position your concept to ensure that it appeals to their attitudes, values, and beliefs, and set expectations for doing future business.

Radical change

While easy to grasp, the Net Promoter Score metric represents a radical change in the way you manage your customer relationships and organise for growth. Rather than relying on customer satisfaction surveys that all too often are ineffective, you can use Net Promoter Score to evaluate and measure customer relationships as rigorously as you now measure profits.

You can also use it to hold employees accountable for treating customers right, and it clarifies the link between the quality of your customer relationships and your growth prospects.

How do companies measure up? According to Frederick Reichheld’s research, the average firm sputters along at an NPS efficiency of only 5 – 10%. In other words, promoters barely outnumber detractors. Even worse, many firms—and some entire industries—have negative Net Promoter Scores, which means that they are creating more detractors than promoters day in and day out.

Abysmal Net Promoter Scores like this explain why so many companies can’t deliver profitable, sustainable growth, no matter how aggressively they spend to acquire new business. Companies with the most efficient growth engines—companies such as Amazon, eBay, Harley-Davidson and Costco—operate at NPS efficiency ratings of 50 – 80%. So even they have room for improvement.

In concept, it’s just that simple. But obviously, a lot of hard work is needed to both ask the question in a manner that provides reliable, timely, and actionable data—and, of course, to learn how to improve your Net Promoter Score.

If you’ve used Net Promoter Scoring in your business, please comment on your experiences. If you haven’t used it, what do you think of the idea? Your comments and thoughts are welcome.

The simplistic view of social media is that you join sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. You create a profile. You find people you know and invite them to connect with you or follow you. Over time your participation grows. You follow and connect with more people that interest you. And you develop your own following. Eventually you build relationships and trust, some of which results in new business.

That’s absolutely fine, as far as it goes. It can also be enjoyable, even addictive. But it isn’t exactly a strategy to take you to market leadership in your niche using social media.

So with this article I want to share with you an overview of what I’ve learned about preparing for social media success in your business. This has come about as a result of several months invested in developing an in-depth social media roadmap, supported by detailed written materials, a series of exercises and a number of interactive planning tools for the aspiring market leaders in my Eureka program.

Can you define the term “Social Media”?

The explosive growth over the past few years of online marketing in general and social media in particular has attracted the attention of millions of businesses. It’s dawning on more and more businesses leaders that social media is likely to be one of the most important changes that has ever come about in business.

Millions of businesses know they need to embrace it. But many still can’t explain the meaning of the term, and few know how to develop a meaningful social media strategy, or have any real idea of what’s involved.

It turns out that nearly 70% of the 600-plus respondents in a 2009 survey were unsure of the meaning of social media. But nearly every respondent felt that social media would somehow revolutionise the world. They felt that they should know the meaning of the term, but didn’t, and in some ways they also feared social media because they didn’t understand it’s implications or whether it would even threaten their existence.

This parallels the reactions that occurred when railways, telephones, cars and aircraft first started to proliferate. People instinctively understood that these new technologies would change the world, but they also feared them because they knew they would change the status quo. They also had no idea how it would impact on them; what part, if any, they would play in the process; or what sacrifices they’d have to make to accommodate these new advances. And that’s exactly where social media stands today.

My own journey

As an early participant in several of the better social networks, I learned what they were about. Along the way I read a lot, put ideas I learned into practice and accumulated considerable knowledge, data and experience.

Among other things, early in 2009 I managed to achieve the largest following on Twitter in the UK for a non-media celebrity. And in March 2010 I was ranked the UK’s No.1 marketer out of 42,559 UK advertising and marketing professionals on LinkedIn, based on recommendations. So I think I can say I have a reasonably solid grounding in social media.

Bit by bit I observed and analysed how the top social networking sites worked; watched them grow exponentially as people increasingly got involved; and have witnessed a fair amount of feature convergence as the sites themselves began to understand what people can, and want, to do using social media, and as they borrowed good ideas from each other.

Above all I was looking for a way to build a solid step-by-step social media strategy that would serve any business well. Participants in my program need to exactly know what to do, when to do it and why. So bit by bit I’ve been assembling an in-depth social media roadmap based on a logical series of steps that can be used to create create a worthwhile social media presence and community.

Step 1: Understanding

The first step in the process is to understand what Social Media is. I like David Meerman Scott’s 61-word explanation of social media marketing:

You can buy attention (advertising)
You can beg for attention from the media (PR)
You can bug people one at a time to get attention (sales)

Or you can earn attention by creating something interesting and valuable and then publishing it online for free: a YouTube video, a blog, a research report, photos, a Twitter stream, an ebook, a Facebook page.

This explanation makes it clear that social media is much more than mere participation in social networking sites. It requires you to become a publisher of written, audio and/or video content. You then need to build a community around that content.

Step 2: Familiarisation

The second step is to become familiar with the essentials of each social media element. That requires you to get to know, understand and experience all of the following: Social networking; publishing; photo sharing; audio; video; microblogging; livecasting; virtual worlds; gaming; rss; aggregators; search; mobile marketing; interpersonal communication technologies and an ever-growing array of productivity applications.

As you become familiar with each element in the social media ecosystem, it’s worth taking time to consider the possible applications for each element in your business.

Step 3: Hands-on exploration and assessment

Once you understand the purpose of each social media element, I’d advise you to embark on some hands-on exploration of some of the better known tools in each category. This first hand familiarity will allow you to broadly assess the available social media tools, and determine which of them potentially fit in with what you do.

Participants in my program are asked to undertake a series of specific exploration exercises, followed by the completion of a scorecard for each of the tools they experience.

Step 4: Discover your social media niche

Enlightened by these first-hand experiences, your fourth step is to assess your strengths and weaknesses relative to each social media category, and also identify the opportunities and threats.

Once this SWOT analysis has been completed and the results summarised, it should be possible to identify the right social media niche for your business to focus on. This will be where you can play to your strengths and start building a community around the people who share the same interests as you.

Your community may be local, regional or national. Or it may be global.

Step 5: Plan for your social media success

With your niche decided, the fifth step is to build a solid set of foundations for your future social media success. To operate successfully in the social media ecosystem you have to view yourself as a publisher of content relating to your areas of interest or expertise.

Audience: You therefore have to identify which audience or market niche you will be serving and with whom you will be developing an interactive relationship. Achieving a clear definition of your audience is crucial to your success.

Doing so requires you to understand their behaviours; attitudes; values; beliefs; needs and preferences. You need to assemble demographic data and discover any common interests or goals.

You also need to identify the small number of individuals within each group who have a knack for influencing what the other members of the group say, believe and do. Knowing who these influencers and promoters are will add tremendous viral value to your eventual offering.

By carrying out this research you can establish the common characteristics that will allow you to interact with four or five clearly defined audience personas.

Competition: Once you have a clear idea of your proposed content and the likely characteristics of your audience, you need to assess your competition. This requires you to ask some important questions. For example:

Who else is already catering to the same audience? In what ways are they doing so? What tools do they use? What is the quality of their content? How many people are part of their community? How much interaction occurs on their site(s)? What is the quality of that interaction? What are the compelling advantages of your concept over theirs? What additional compelling advantages could you offer?

Concept: By now you should have gathered enough information to start building a value proposition that describes how your intended audience will benefit from your content. Your content in turn will relate to the products or services you offer; the additional expertise you bring; and the things that will encourage your audience to contribute.

As you go through this exercise, you may well find that you have several workable concepts, each with its own distinct audience personas. In each case you have to define your concept, thinking in terms of the needs of your potential community rather than the needs of your business.

Based on your research you will now need to convert your concept into a 100-150 word concept statement that you can share with almost anyone in less than two minutes.

Sample content: You can then start expanding the details of your offering, perhaps even producing some sample content to demonstrate to your potential audience the flavour and feel of your finished offering, and highlighting the advantages you’ll be offering over your competition.

Audience input: I recommend that you then invite a reasonable sized sampling of your potential audience to assist you in the process of refining, developing and positioning your offering. In tapping into their collective wisdom, I have to point out that you will only gain and maintain their attention if you can demonstrate your sincerity in communicating with them, and of course by incorporating their feedback in what you do.

Sales viability: As a business engaging in social media you should always be mindful of the sales viability of your concept. This is where you need to carefully consider which revenue model or models to adopt.

You can sell products, services or information; advertising and sponsorship; earn commissions on your site’s role in selling transactions carried out by others; offer subscriptions; operate a “Freemium” model where you offer certain content free but you also offer premium versions at additional cost; or you can offer software as a cloud-based service, of which there are many well known examples.

It’s often possible to offer several of these revenue models simultaneously.

At the end of this planning process you’ll know what audience to target; have an appealing concept that’s been tested and refined with their help; an understanding of who you’ll be competing with; a number of compelling advantages to offer … and one or more revenue generation models.

Step 6: Evaluate and organise your existing resources

The sixth step is to evaluate and organise your resources. This requires you to evaluate the social media awareness of your entire team; tap into their collective wisdom and experience; and engage them in your social media plans.

From there you should be able to pinpoint your social media starting point, i.e. The strategies you should deploy at the outset of your social media journey.

The right strategies at the outset are likely to vary enormously from one situation to another depending on how far you’ve already travelled down the social media road; your level of competence in doing so; the social media skills of different people within your team; and the final destination you hope to reach.

Step 7: Creating your social media implementation plan

Having completed the first six steps in the process you can now take the seventh step, which is to create your social media implementation plan.

Your implementation plan should be realistic because it’s not practical to simultaneously introduce hundreds of tools from the social media ecosystem into the daily operations of your business. The introduction of even a dozen tools could be disruptive, so it’s important to pace yourself.

While human nature often compels us to try lots of different alternatives as fast as we can, it is better to think in terms of adding one new tool every month.

That will give you the time and space you need to promote each new tool to your employees, prospects and customers, and evaluate how effective you have been in implementing each tool. As the year progresses you can also evaluate how well the tools complement each other … and you can measure the effect on your revenues and profits.

If it becomes evident that adjustments are required, you’ll be able to do make them as you go along. The key is to remain flexible and experimental.

The implementation process

With your planning completed, you need to start the all-important implementation process and roll-out.

That implementation process will involve such things as:

• Building your online destinations using websites, blogs, forums and wikis.
• Building trust, visibility and engagement using elements like RSS; SEO; email; social networks; search engine marketing; mobile marketing and measurement
• Deepening your engagement using elements like photo sharing; audio sharing; video sharing; and interpersonal communication.

These topics go well beyond the scope of this post and will be covered in future articles.

So, as you can see, there’s a whole lot more to preparing for global social media success than merely joining Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. And preparing for success itself is only the first part of the process.

The process described here is covered in explicit detail as part of the Eureka program for aspiring market leaders. You can view the curriculum here.

Finally, please rate the article and comment on what you’ve learned from it. What actions will you now take as a result? Please also share any ideas and tips that you think will assist anyone in their planning for social media success.

Nor have ever I heard of someone who gave birth to a lawyer, or a doctor, or for that matter a criminal. Birth is given to boys and girls; everything after that is down to choices that are made and skills that are learned. And sales skills are life skills.

Many people would never view themselves as a sales person. Yet any time you’re in a conversation in which you try to express an opinion or influence an event, you’re actually selling.

In reality everyone is constantly trying to sell an idea, a belief, a proposition, an opinion or a goal. We all use sales skills throughout the day, every day. You use it on your spouse or partner, your kids, your colleagues, your neighbours, your friends, your parents, people you meet, when you buy different products or services, or when you go out for a meal.

There isn’t a single area of your life where you cannot benefit from sales skills. Teachers use sales skills every day. Preachers use sales skills. Police officers use sales skills. Mother Teresa used sales skills. And sales people use sales skills. Regardless of what you do, sales skills will increase your probability of success and your ability to motivate, instruct, encourage, coach, communicate and reach people.

Increasing your skill and awareness, and doing the same for everyone in your team can therefore boost your business to new heights of success. It is relatively easy to do this and it can produce an instantaneous improvement.

The amazing thing is that hardly anyone in business has ever had formal training in selling technique or strategy. Most people don’t understand the psychology of how people make decisions. Nor do they understand the dynamics of persuasion and influence. Yet they’re invariably in a business where persuasion, influence and selling are critical factors for the success of that business.

It’s as if they think that by divine guidance everything will be OK for them, and they’ll suddenly wake up one morning with these supremely competent selling skills. Of course, it doesn’t happen that way, does it?

Don’t blindly do what’s always been done

It starts with sales training. But that’s where things often start to go wrong. Most businesses are guilty of using a “tribal” method of training, i.e. passing information from person to person in the company, which leaves you at the mercy of knowledge and expertise that becomes weaker, more watered down and less relevant each time one person passes it to another.

Granted, experience can be an excellent teacher. But doing what has always been done is often not the answer, especially in today’s fast-changing world.

To make the point, I love a story related by Chet Holmes about a woman whose husband was watching her prepare a roast. At one point, she took a large knife and sliced off the two ends of the cut of meat. He asked her, “Why do you cut the ends off the roast?” She replied, “My mother always did it this way.”

But the question stuck in his mind. He really couldn’t see any reason why cutting off the ends would make a better-tasting roast, and it certainly wasted plenty of perfectly good meat.

That night it so happened that his wife’s mother was joining the couple for dinner. As they sat down and his wife brought out the roast, the husband asked, “Why did you teach your daughter to slice both ends off of the roast?” The mother, a lovely lady over 90 years old, replied, “Well, when we were young we could only afford a tiny little apartment and a tiny little oven. We could never fit the whole roast in that tiny oven, so we just lopped off the ends.”

By learning how to sell from your predecessor you may be just blindly doing what’s always been done and throwing out a large percentage of your prospects or business.

Yet developing your selling skills and those of everyone in your team can be one of the easiest, most powerful and most significant instant transformations your business will ever embark on. It all starts with an understanding of what constitutes effective selling.

What is effective selling?

Effective selling is NOT just a matter of learning a sales spiel, having the gift of the gab or using clichéd or manipulative techniques.

Instead it is the process of leading, guiding, educating and directing your buyers more than anyone else might do to help them solve a problem or achieve a desired outcome.

The finest sales people in the world are helpful, not pushy. Some of the highest performing sales people are introverts, not the stereotypical extraverts. The most important attribute of any sales person is their attitude. The best sales people believe in the value of what they do and in their product or service … and their most important skill is to ask the right questions and listen to their buyer’s responses.

The right questions will vary depending on the product or service, but in general terms they will work with their buyers, nurturing and learning about them to identify exactly what those buyers are looking for, what problems or concerns they want to solve and what outcomes they’re seeking.

Then, and only then, a good salesperson will provide meaningful recommendations, suggestions, counsel, direction and advice on the buyer’s buying decisions and the products and services they should choose and the strategies they should use based on their personal experience of what actually works.

This allows their buyers to make an informed decision based on what is in their best interest. And of course a good salesperson also needs to know how and when to ask for the order!

None of this is particularly mysterious or difficult … and anyone can be trained to sell effectively in this manner.

Learning to sell this way is probably the easiest, most powerful and most significant instant transformation your business will ever embark on because the moment your staff are better trained in selling principles, methods and understandings, they’ll handle every prospect, lead or enquiry they ever deal with more effectively.

Do you agree with this definition of effective selling? Please rate the article and add your thoughts and comments below.

Late this afternoon I put out the following message on Twitter, writes Robert Clay of Marketing Wizdom: “Have created 3 stunning websites in 2 days. Used to use vastly expensive web design co who took 6 months to achieve fraction of the same result.”

The tweet immediately excited massive interest. Several people wanted to know what software I had used. A professional web designer from South Africa responded “Impossible … send URL’s please,” which of course I did.

One person said “Wow, three websites in 2 days = impressive!” He then asked me how I achieved such fast website building and how much I’d charge to create a CMS website for him. My response to him, and to anyone else with the same question, is that whilst I can build websites rapidly and very competently, it is not what I do, nor is it a service I am ever likely to offer.

The best I can do is explain what I did and how it came about. So here goes …

In the past I used vastly expensive web designers …

In the past I believed that web design, to be any good, should be left in the hands of the professionals. When a valued client needed a new website a couple of years ago, I immediately suggested a web design company with an excellent reputation, who had developed and refined their own content management system over many years. I had known the owner of the company for nearly a decade, and also knew several of their satisfied clients. So I recommended that they do the design.

The company was briefed in October 2007. They came up with a proposal at the end of November. The proposal was finally approved and the company started work on a “functional specification.” This went backwards and forwards a few times until it was approved in February 2008. It took four months to get this far.

I commissioned a first class copywriter to come up with the copy, based on a 20-page master document we had already created. The copywriter turned the job around in a few days, and the copy was ready to go by the end of February. No problems there. He did an excellent job.

Based on a briefing from the graphic designer who had designed my client’s visual branding, the web designers came up with a mockup of the proposed home page early in March. It went backwards and forwards numerous times before we were happy with it. In mid-May the design was finally approved. It had taken 7 months to reach this stage.

From there the web designers set about building the website. This involved building the main menu structure, which then couldn’t easily be changed, and a series of page templates based on the approved design. They also had to integrate a blog, the means to show random testimonials, random team profiles and a few other small refinements. This took another 6 weeks.

Finally, early in July 2008 we took delivery of the unpopulated website. It had taken 9 months to get this far.

We then added images and copy to all the pages, which took about a day. A few days were spent testing and tweaking the site, and getting the bugs worked out. The finished result was presented to the client and approved. And in mid July it went live.

But all was not well. Fifteen months and many £ thousands after starting the project, the blogs still didn’t work, the content management system was clunky with a dreadful user interface and turned out to be a real pain in the backside … and the client was not happy.

Then I discovered WordPress … and everything suddenly changed

While all this was going on, someone recommended that I look at WordPress. I had looked at it casually some 2-3 years earlier, but wasn’t overly impressed at the time. It was suggested that I should look at WordPress + Bluehost + Woo Themes.

I looked into all three, and was very impressed this time. Set up an account with Bluehost. It was hassle free and only took a few seconds. Transferred my domain across, again a painless process. Within a minute or two I had installed WordPress using tools provided in the Bluehost control panel, and was ready to go.

The back end of the WordPress Content Management System turned out to be VASTLY superior to that used in the very expensive website described above. Yet anyone can install WordPress, and it costs nothing.

I added some pages. It was both easy and intuitive. Arranged them in the order I wanted. Set up my preferences. Downloaded some useful plugins. Found some attractive design themes, many of them available free of charge. Uploaded the ones I liked to the site. Experimented with them. Settled on one I liked and started to build the site.

Even as a novice it took me less than a day in total, excluding ongoing tweaks to the copy. My only outlay was for a few stock images from iStockPhoto, but they weren’t expensive at about $3 apiece (now $5). Within a day I had an excellent website up and running using a very robust platform that was also used by millions of others. And it cost me next to nothing.

Over time I discovered other attractive themes and useful plug-ins that could add extra functionality to the site. I eventually decided to switch to a premium theme. But at $20 a year, it was hardly expensive … and if you’re reading this now at marketingwzdom.com, you’re viewing the final result right now.

I started my blog. Within its first month it ranked in the top 2% in the world. The site is professionally designed, looks good and gets frequent compliments. In its first 7 months it attracted some 150,000 visitors from 90 countries, and ranks within the top 5% of sites in the world. And that’s without even trying.

The WordPress content management system is also extremely robust. And intuitive. I couldn’t say either of those things about the so-called professionally designed website described earlier, even though the developer is considered to be one of the best out there. My WordPress installation made that system obsolete overnight.

Which brings me to the subject of my tweet …

Three new sites in just two days

Having seen how easy WordPress was to use, my partner was often frustrated by the complete ineptitude of some of the web designers she’d had to deal with on behalf of her clients. Trivial matters were often blown up into big issues, and simplest tasks were made to seem impossible to perform.

So when her sister needed a new website for her business, my partner offered to create one for her. As recently as a year ago she would never have dreamed that she would ever be able to put a website together, let alone a decent one. A client for whom she produces newsletters also needed a new website, so she offered to put that one together too.

She initially spent a few days putting the sites together using some free WordPress themes, and getting up to speed on WordPress in general. I felt they needed to look more professional and wasn’t keen on the typography, but found that it was’t too easy to customise them.

Around that time I heard about the Canvas theme from Woo Themes. I checked it out and was very impressed by its capabilities as described on their site http://www.woothemes.com. I suggested to my partner that she should use the Canvas theme, which can easily be customised in dozens of ways.

A few days later we needed a new site to promote an upcoming joint venture with one of my clients. By now I knew exactly what was entailed in putting together a WordPress site, and knew what Canvas was designed to do. I knew I could get the unpopulated site up and running in a matter of hours using WordPress and Canvas.

I then discovered that Woo Themes offers something called the Woo Themes Playground, where you can set up a free account and experiment with any of their themes as if it were installed on your own site. I signed up and in an hour or two had pulled together a really nice customised site using Canvas. And yes it turned out to be every bit as good as claimed.

First website — Sunday

I bought the Canvas theme. It was $70. Within a few minutes my partner’s sister’s site had been switched to Canvas. I spent an hour or two setting up the navigation, pages, posts and styling for the theme, deciding which pages should have three columns; two columns or be full width. In Canvas this is a doddle to set up. It is also extremely easy to set up custom navigation. The theme is a joy to use.

Using Photoshop I came up with a nice full width header image. I’ve been using Photoshop since 1990, soon after it was originally launched, so it only took a few minutes to do this, even though I only use the program occasionally and am now somewhat rusty with it. Loaded the resulting image onto the site. It looked great. Tweaked the colour scheme so that it complimented the header image. Then arranged to meet my partner’s sister to get her feedback and tweak it while we met. That was two days ago.

She liked the design immediately. We spent a couple of hours tweaking it here and there over a coffee. She was delighted. Within hours we had accomplished a whole lot more than the professional web designers had achieved in 9 months, at a cost of £ many thousands. It’s now just a matter of adding the copy and images, which doesn’t take long, and the site will be ready to go live.

Second website — Monday

The following morning, i.e. yesterday, I had arranged to meet a colleague and my joint venture partner to decide what we needed to include on the joint venture website. I decided to create the site there and then in the meeting. This would have been inconceivable a couple of years ago.

We met at a hotel and used their Wifi to connect to the web. I set up a new account with Bluehost. Within a minute WordPress was installed and ready to go. Uploaded the Canvas theme, and we were in business. By now I knew my way around the theme’s customisation options, so it took no time to get up to speed on the finer details.

We decided on the fly which pages would be needed. We created them there and then. We also set up some special blog post categories to use within the navigation, and created several dummy blog posts for each of the special categories to check that the navigation worked as intended. It did. A few minutes later we had created the navigation menu structure using a combination of pages and categories — very easy to do with Canvas.

In fact I learned that Woo Themes’ custom navigation menu set up has impressed WordPress to such an extent that they have delayed the release of WordPress 3.0 to incorporate this functionality into the final release. I can confirm that it revolutionises the construction of navigation menus. You decide what pages or categories you want to use, then just drag and drop them into the sequence you want, edit display names as appropriate and click save. Job done.

We then tweaked the menu descriptions and words a few times. Within a few minutes we were all delighted with the result. Then it was a matter of finalising the look and feel of the site before we went our separate ways again.

I looked through various images I already owned to see if one could be repurposed as a full width header. Found one that was perfect. Cropped it to size. Uploaded it. It looked great. We decided to blend it with a cityscape image to communicate the right message at a glance.

Looked for a suitable cityscape image from a stock image library. Found the right one almost immediately. Bought it there and then. Fired up Photoshop. In a minute or two the two images were blended together (one of my colleagues said he’d had to pay £ thousands in the past to achieve a similar effect) and I added some text to the banner.

Uploaded the banner image to the site. It looked great. Tweaked the colour scheme on the site to complement the header image. Again it really only took a few minutes, and we had a result we were all delighted with.

I gave my colleagues access to the back-end content management system. One of them spent a couple of hours today copying and pasting the appropriate text. It took five minutes to link the site to a third party payment processor. The copy now just needs tweaking, refining and editing. And we need to select and add a few images to lift the pages before the site goes live.

Once again, we accomplished in well under half a day what the web designers took 9 months to deliver … and every part of what we created in that short time works exactly as it should, unlike the vastly expensive web site I described at the beginning of this piece.

Third site — Monday Evening

The third site? When I got back from yesterday’s meeting my partner asked me to help her with her second site. I started after dinner yesterday evening, and the job was completed before I had to go to bed. I spent an hour or two this morning working out how to incorporate an image slide show on the home page. Figured it out with a bit of delving. And hey presto the job was done. And she was delighted.

The end result? 3 great looking websites in less than 2 days. They still need to be populated with copy and images before going live. But that’s not a big job. The point is that using WordPress and Canvas we have accomplished three times as much in two days as the professional web designers managed to accomplish with just one site in 9 months, and at vast cost.

Can anyone create a decent site in half a day?

Can anyone turn out really decent sites this easily? Yes, but with a couple of caveats. Whether the end result looks professional enough to impress is down to your eye for design; flair for colour selection and ability to arrange the elements in a visually appealing manner. An attractive and intuitive user interface also makes or breaks the design for me. Not everyone has those skills and abilities, including plenty of professional web designers. And not everyone has the tools to hand that I had, like Photoshop and Easycrop, or the knowledge of how to use them to produce a particular result. And not everyone will start the task with the workable plan in their head, that I had, from the moment they start using the tools.

I should also point out that when I say “create a site” I’m referring to building a fully functional but unpopulated site. Copy and images would still have to be added. But this is no harder than using a word processor. And if the content has already been planned and written, it doesn’t entail much more than copying, pasting, and uploading the relevant images from your computer to the site. The most time-consuming task, in my experience, is finding the right images to use.

If you’re completely unfamiliar with WordPress, Photoshop and image libraries it might take you a week to achieve the result I was able to produce in half a day. But that’s still way better than the months, vast cost and endless frustration entailed in using some of the traditional web designers out there who still (unwittingly?) use obsolete methods to achieve inferior results at vastly inflated costs. And once the first site is up and running, it won’t take you long to set up a second one based on what you learn from the first one.

People who already know WordPress, Woo Themes’ Canvas, and many of the other good premium WordPress themes won’t be particularly surprised by any of this. But lots of other people will, I’m sure, be shaken to the core. Based on the responses to my tweet earlier, and the considerable interest it generated, this really does change everything!

If you’ve had experience with WordPress and can recommend certain themes or plugins, please share your experiences by leaving your comments below.

Update: Since this piece was written I have moved the Marketing Wizdom site across to Canvas as well.

Are they more likely to choose the one that doesn’t look as if they’re an expert or the one who does? Writing a book gives you an edge and a distinction. It positions you head and shoulders above your competitors. And it’s fun to do. But where do you start? One of the options is to publish your own book.

Here in this guest post our good friend Dee Blick describes how she wrote and self-published her first book. Dee is an award winning marketer; Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing; and speaker and weekly columnist for the Financial Mail. She is also author of the best selling self-published book: Powerful Marketing On A Shoestring Budget For Small Businesses:

I remember as a little girl being asked what I wanted to do when I grew up. My response? I wanted to write a book. I loved writing, still do and the thought of a person reading my work and being inspired to take action and improve their business is what drives me to this day.

And so, 40 years later and here I am with my first published book and number two waiting in the wings. If your dream is to write a book and you’ve never quite made it I hope that my story inspires you to turn that dream into a reality.

How did I start?

I made the decision to self publish my first book and I’m doing the same with my second book. Don’t think of self publishing as a poor cousin. It’s come on in leaps and bounds in the last few years and with digital print on demand it’s environmentally friendly and cost-effective. An increasing number of literary agents are now advising authors to self publish, simply because to land a publishing deal, you either have to be very lucky with a strong link to a publisher or, you have to fall into that dubious category of celebrity, cashing in on either your fleeting or long-standing fame. Why tout your manuscript around publishers suffering the ignominy of rejection when you can self publish? What’s more with Amazon now levelling out the playing field between self published and traditionally published authors, it’s open to all of us. (By way of illustration, I recently came back from holiday to find that Amazon had e-mailed thousands of people recommending five business books, with mine being at number one and incidentally the only self published book out of the five)

I appointed a specialist self publishing publisher. I wanted to focus on writing my book, not on having to organise the entire publishing process. In the event, it cost £1,000 which I recouped at my book launch. Because my book is about marketing the costs were classed as a business expense. The great thing about self publishing is that your royalties tend to be higher than if you go down the traditional publishing route. Because I sell many books direct at signings and events as well as through Amazon, I have managed to make a healthy profit on my book and it has paid for itself many times over.

So, having made the momentous decision to self publish the biggest challenge lay as you would expect, in the actual writing. I have been very fortunate in that I have won many national media awards for my marketing articles in the last 26 years. I naïvely assumed that writing a book would be as straightforward as writing an article for a magazine and so initially did not allow sufficient time. I had to pull out all the stops to get my book to the publishers on time. However much time you think you will need to write your book, double it.

I found that having an editor; a person with the balls to actually pull me up on grammar and punctuation and to question my integrity on content was vital. My book went from being very good to great simply because my editor was not afraid to challenge me. With the best will in the world, you will have days when the writing simply flows and it’s a joy. On other days, it’s like pulling teeth!

I also learned that with the right positive mindset I could move mountains. I discovered strength within me that I didn’t know existed. I wrote my book whilst also running a very demanding full-time marketing business and having to handle chronic repetitive strain injury in my arms and shoulders. Don’t talk yourself into not writing your book simply because you don’t think you have the time. If you’re driven and tenacious you will find it. I used to visualise myself signing hundreds of books at my book launch and reaching the bestselling ranks on Amazon. These thoughts motivated me on days when the idea of mooching round the shops was more attractive than tackling a challenging chapter. At a practical level I motivated myself by organising my book launch and giving my publishers a fixed date for my final manuscript. Set goals and visualise your success.

It has been a rollercoaster of a ride. I’ve spent more hours than I care to mention self promoting my book but it has been worth it. Four months of initial hard slog, sending my book for critic reviews and finding any PR opportunity to hang my message on. I have been interviewed by the Financial Times, Royal Mail, The Mail on Sunday and countless business magazines and had some amazing critic reviews. I now write a weekly marketing column for the Financial Mail and no end of positive opportunities are now being laid at my door simply because I’ve written a book that has become a modest bestseller. But nothing, absolutely nothing compares with the feeling I get when receiving an e-mail from a reader who has bought my book and they’re writing to tell me how I have benefited their business. That really is, to quote the advert, priceless.

So where are you now with your book?