Misc

Why I Like to Sell Cheap Stuff

I was finishing the rough draft of this post when something on Twitter caught my eye. My friend Jay Ehret, wise counsel to entrepreneurs and owner of The Marketing Spot consulting firm, asked the question, “What should you do about discount pricing?”

Jay’s post was full of insights from his Twitter friends and fellow marketers: a great diversity of opinions.

I had to smile at the synchronicity because the post brewing in my head was my best case against discounting your services.

Thoughts on why I like to sell cheap stuff, but I will not discount (with the exception of nonprofits doing brilliant work without much support from the world).

And when I say “cheap stuff,” it has nothing to do with the value of my product—or lowering my prices. In fact it is just the opposite. That my product (or service) has so much value that I am breaking it down into smaller pieces so people who wouldn’t normally have a chance to consume it can have a little taste.

Think Small, Win Big: How I Actually Make More by Selling Cheap Stuff

I am in the business of helping other people get more business. I do that by helping people figure out exactly what it is they want to say and then forming the message in a way that attracts the customers they want—while keeping their unique voice.

Sometimes that can be a long process—a huge project. Copywriting for a 12-page website, a set of consistent social media profiles and an About page that demonstrates to customers the quality and credibility of the product and delights them with the amazing and unique personality behind the business.

When I figured out how to give fearful customers that little taste—because let’s face it, a whole website is just too enormous (and possibly too expensive) to commit to—I began to see a nice increase in clients.

Try a little thing before you buy a big thing was exactly what they wanted.

Selling mostly high-ticket services can be scary because it’s a big investment for your customers. And they don’t want to hire someone they don’t yet trust.

Business coaches can run into this problem. So can copywrtiters. And graphic designers. And marketing consultants.

I settled on a few small packages where customers can take a ’test drive.’ Like a comprehensive blog critique—at a much lower price. So they could try me out without breaking the bank.

Tammy Redmon, an extraordinarily talented executive coach and a client of ours (we created her new website), provides small, affordable two-hour action strategy sessions to help businesses create their own private plan for growth.

A personal fitness trainer might market a fitness assessment and one hour of training based on a customized plan. An accountant might offer a one-time “look-at-your-books.”

How about you?

What do you do to make buying easier and less scary for your customers?

Filed Under: Misc

Chris Brogan Told Me to Write This: Ten Guilty Pleasures

By Judy Lee Dunn 1 Comment

50 Ways to Leave Your Lover. Breakup tips courtesy of Paul Simon.

100 Blog Topics I Hope YOU Write. Blogging advice from Chris Brogan.

Some time ago, Chris Brogan was sitting on a plane on his way home from San Francisco.

As a social media thought leader, Chris is always being asked how he thinks of things to blog about (which of course doesn’t make sense to a person who is always brimming with new ideas).

So in this spontaneous moment, on the plane, he decided to brainstorm 100 ideas. And he wrote his own post, 100 Blog Topics I Hope YOU Write About.

Now if you know me, you know I can’t turn down a creative challenge. On my favorite TV show, Whose Line Is It Anyway?, the best part was when each team would get an unrecognizable object
and they would have to very quickly come up with as many uses for it as they could imagine. It is a game I still play. It works well at garage sales, especially when mechanic’s and gardener’s tools are present.

So here it is, Chris. A little late: my post, based completely on one of your suggested titles: Ten Guilty Pleasures.

Ten Guilty Pleasures

Guilty pleasures are greatly underrated.

They are what feed your soul—what bring out the best in you. Sometimes they make you think about things in different ways. Help you turn old ideas into something new. And that has to be a good thing when you run businesses like you and I do.

Here are mine:

Shaking snow globes. When I turn a snow globe upside down and set up upright again, it takes me somewhere else, away from my office desk. It breaks up my stale thinking. Gives me a 30-second vacation, wondering about all the places in the world where it might be snowing right now.

Making notes with a fountain pen. This one is hard to explain. There is just something about the physical motion of writing in longhand, with wide sweeps and ink that splats out, that gets my creative juices flowing. Expensive? Yes. Messy? Definitely. Freeing? Absolutely.

Turning the sound off a movie and voicing new lines of dialogue for the
characters. This one is good for laughing yourself sick in a very short amount of time. Bob takes one character and I take the other one in a scene. Like those silly contests where scenes are passed from one writer to another and the plot changes constantly.

Walking in the forest. We have a mini-woods in the back of our house. When I am stuck with an idea that isn’t moving, I get my boots on and step outside. Something about the stillness—except for the squawk of the bluejays—the wet, dank smell of the ferns, the immenseness of the bright green Douglas fir branches, that centers me and
forces me to follow my own thoughts.

Wasting time on the ‘link trail.’ Okay, I am an information junkie. But you never know when that next link on a website will lead you to the answer to a burning question you’ve had. Or raise a new question. Either one is good.

Reading the classics. You know, that rich, descriptive text you find in books like Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel and Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables? I justify this pleasure by telling myself that if I want to come up with sales copy that appeals to all my customers’ senses, especially that all-important visual one, what could be more inspiring than reading a few chapters from a 19^th century novel?

Watching people and making up lives for them. This is the reality version of #3. I sit on a bench in a park or at table in a restaurant and invent lives for the strangers I see. They will have names and professions and families and problems. But I make it all up.

Painting with water colors. Julia Cameron, author of the phenomenal The Artist’s Way, calls it taking an “artist’s date.” I’m working on not making it a guilty pleasure. And I don’t have the goal of painting a masterpiece. Just dabbling. Creating. Celebrating my creative self.

Telling stories. What could be more fun than creating people and making them talk? Except maybe messing around with puppets. If I am telling my stories outside of marketing and sales copy for my clients, I feel guilty. I’m working on that one, too.

Writing my Morning Pages. Another one of Julia Cameron’s brilliant ideas, this one isn’t technically a guilty pleasure anymore. It’s the one thing I do every morning: three pages of longhand writing strictly off the top of my head. It’s my way of removing all the clutter from my brain so the good ideas can poke through.

All right. There you go. My 10 Guilty Pleasures.

Do you have some of your own?

Do they ever help you with clarity? Creativity? Sanity?

Oh, and if you blog, I challenge you to visit Chris’s 100 Blog Topics I Hope YOU Write post and write one of your own.

Filed Under: Misc

Do You Ever Lie to Your Customers?: Honesty, Fear and Teaching Pigs to Swim

By Judy Lee Dunn 4 Comments

pig swimming It was a brilliant September day in 1973. What people in Spokane, Washington, call an Indian summer. Now I think we would call it a Native American summer.

It was the first day of my first year as a teacher and I was tied up in knots. Hadn’t slept much, wondering what exactly I would do all day with 29 small, noisy people.

I had made detailed lesson plans. But, still, I didn’t have a clue.

Teaching pigs to swim

I had a dream the night before. A nightmare, really. My principal, Mr. Buri, was standing at the side of a swimming pool.

He swung his head in the direction of the water.

“If you want to work here, you have to know how to teach pigs to swim, ” he said.

In the shallow end of the pool were four pigs with the largest snouts I had ever seen.

“Well?” Mr. Buri said, his arms crossed.

That was when I sat straight up straight in bed, sweating, heart pounding.

A first day story

The next morning, I walked along the rows of tidy desks, placing a box of new Crayola crayons on each one. Even today, all I need is a whiff of that heady wax scent and it takes me right back to the classroom.

That, and the rectangular pieces modeling clay that reeked of oil and stained your hands in the one of the three available colors: Army green, chocolate brown or steel gray.

The 63-year-old teacher in the classroom next to me, with wise eyes and gray hair pulled into a bun, tipped me off about the clay.

“Honey, they’re going to be scared,” she said. ” Give ‘em the clay right away, when they first get here. It’s hard as a rock. Working to soften it keeps their hands and brains busy and they forget their other problems.”

She was right.

I gave each kid a piece of clay. Celia, a girl with frizzy red hair and a missing front tooth, let out a big sigh and pulled the wrapper off her clay. I had managed to distract her.

Then it started.

Chris, the tall, blond-haired boy in the second row I later would catch coloring his stomach—not coloring lying on his stomach; actually lifting up his shirt and coloring his tummy— sniffed. A lone tear trickled down his cheek.

Katie, the girl to his left, was on the edge of her seat. She looked at me, her mouth a minus sign. Now everyone’s eyes were on me.

Tell the truth

In a stroke of genius, I stopped acting like I knew everything in the world. I stopped acting like a teacher. I held up a piece of clay one kid had shaped into a ball.

“You know,” I said, “I feel like this piece of clay.”

Now the room was deathly still.

“My stomach feels like it’s rolled up in a thick ball. Were any of you a little afraid to come to school today? Maybe like you didn’t know what was going to happen and you were afraid you would do things wrong?”

At least 10 kids nodded their heads.

“You know, I’m scared, too,” I said. “See, it’s my very first day as a teacher. Ever. And I’m afraid I won’t know what to do. How to do things right.”

I looked around, expecting some kid to say, “Look out. Ship’s going down!”

And a mass exodus of 28 six-year-olds, running for their lives.

What I saw instead were faces relaxing and shoulders rising like ten pounds had been lifted from them.

Katie raised her hand. “I think you’re a good teacher, Mrs, Dunn,” she said with a lisp. A couple of other kids chimed in with simple words of encouragement.

The tide was turning.

Why? Because I was honest with my students who, back then were my customers. It was a lesson that I never forgot.

Honesty works.

Can you be too honest with your customers?

Now there are there those times with customers and clients where you just have to keep your thoughts to yourself.

If you are a surgeon and it’s your first operation, you’re not going to say to your patient, “Hey, it’s okay to be nervous. I’m scared, too, because this is my very first surgery.”

Or you’re a pilot who just got her wings and your pathetic voice comes over the intercom.

“Good morning. We’ll be flying at 39,000 feet. Just wanted to share with you that it’s my first flight. I really hope I don’t screw up.”

Okay, you could say that, but it might not go over very well.

No one knows all the answers

You don’t have to admit your fears and insecurities to your customers. But being open and honest with their questions can actually build trust and credibility.

Just last week, a client asked Bob, my biz partner, “ Will these graphics work with the WordPress theme I’m thinking about using?”

Now, although some designers would be afraid the client would think they don’t know their stuff, Bob’s answer was, “I’m not sure. I’ll check into that and get back to you.”

Because, with new themes coming out all the time, it’s impossible to know the features of every single one.

The client said, “You know, that’s refreshing. My last designer would lead me down the garden path and I would find out later that it was bad advice. You actually admit it when you don’t know something!”

How often do we do that?

We say, “Certainly. I can do that!”

Then after the client walks away we say to ourselves, “How am I going to do that?”

Sometimes I say to a client, “I need to think about that. I’ll get back to you.”

It’s okay to need time to think. To explore other options. To be a thinking, feeling person. To change
your mind about something, even.

It’s what being human is all about.

How about you?

When you react honestly, in the moment, or when you need time to think about the best strategy or service for a client, how do your customers respond?

What if you change your mind about what you think they really need?

Do they still trust you as a credible professional?

Would love to hear from you.

Filed Under: Misc Tagged With: blogger

Everything I Know About Being an Entrepreneur I Learned From My Dad: A Father’s Day Tribute

By Judy Lee Dunn 5 Comments

Melvin Spaur He didn’t have an MBA. In fact, my dad had to quit high school in the 11^th grade to take a job to help support his brothers and sisters.

He worked at the Grays Harbor Chair Factory in Aberdeen, Washington, a small, blue-collar lumber town in the Pacific Northwest.

Then he got as job as a cement truck driver at Graystone of Grays Harbor. He later moved up to “batchman” and then foreman of the plant.

Most nights, he would shuffle in through the kitchen door, big black lunch pail in hand. All I would see were his bright blue eyes peering out through a light gray coating of cement dust.

Looking back, I suppose all he wanted to do was take off his caked, high-top work boots and settle into the olive green recliner with his Daily
World.

But right away I would start pestering him with my “12 Degrees of Why” questions. Patient he was, and tolerant of a curious 7-year-old.

Tell me. What does your father do?

Once I read a comment on a blog. The business owner said that when he interviews someone for a job in his company, he always asks, ”What did your father do?” Said it was a good indicator of how ”entrepreneurial” the candidate was.

Aside from that being a sexist question (what if your mom had been the CEO of Xerox or PepsiCo, both
run by women, by the way), we all have certain traits that help us run our businesses, but not all of us come from the same mold.

Just because my dad drove a cement truck, doesn’t mean I didn’t learn valuable lessons from him.

A few of of my dad’s lessons in entrepreneurship

Find a way around obstacles by thinking in different ways.

When the muddy banks of the Wishkah River flooded the road, he invented what his fellow workers fondly labeled the “Spaur Board.”

It was a long piece of plywood fashioned over the car’s front fender to create a makeshift bulldozer. He was a little late to work that day, but he made it. No one else did.

See the humor in everyday mishaps.

When my mom bought a new gadget, say, a can opener, and it didn’t work as advertised, my dad would grumble, “I bet that was invented by some guy’s brother-in-law.

His explanation was that some man was pressured to give his wife’s sorry, clueless brother a
job. The guy had no skills, but, hey, he was the boss’s wife’s brother, so he was hired.

He comes into the board room one day with a goofy idea for a can opener. But everyone is afraid to shoot his idea down because he’s the boss’s brother-in-law.

The ”some guy’s brother-in-law” story was pulled out whenever something we bought didn’t work right.

When times are tough, call on your team to roll up their sleeves and get to work.

Added expenses for new school clothes or a broken hot water heater? Find more income streams.

Like bark peeling. My sisters and I, under the watchful eye of our parents, would go beyond the back yard to the old growth forest where the cascara trees grew. At the age of 5, I learned to shimmy up the tree.

Perched on a strong branch, I would slit the bark straight down in a vertical line with my handmade knife. The hard part was pushing the fingers around the tree, underneath the slick, inside edges of the smooth gray bark, past the sharp notches that stung my hand.

If I did it right, I could pull the bark away in one long piece, kind of like those people who can take the skin from an apple in one long peel.

I would stuff the pungent bark into my scratchy gunny sack and sell it later at Mr. Reid’s store: 5 cents a pound for wet bark, ten for dry. Mr. Reid sold the dried bark to Eli Lily Company because its main ingredient, cascara sagrada, was used to make Fletcher’s Castori and other retchingly bitter-tasting laxatives.

I learned that there was always a way to make a few bucks if I needed it. My dad taught me that.

Thanks, dad

You taught me way, way more than that. Lessons that I use every day of my life as I juggle the challenges of running my own business.

How to be inventive with limited resources. How to practice patience. How to understand other points of view. How not to take myself too seriously.

I can’t thank you enough for those lessons.

And just the other day, after giving up up on my leaky fountain pen, I looked at my ink-stained hands and back at the pen, then said said out loud,

“I bet some guy’s brother-in-law made this.”

Filed Under: Misc Tagged With: blogger

SHINING Star for You to See: A Love Song for Small Business

By Judy Lee Dunn 4 Comments

shining stat Earth Wind & Fire sang about it.

Shining star for you to see, what your life can truly be.

In this string of “badness,” in corporate America gone crazy, with CEOs making a mess of things, there is a shining star. In fact, it’s 27 million of us. A big freakin’ galaxy.

We are small business.

Speaking of shining stars, Biznik, an amazing online business networking site with 26,000 members worldwide, will make history on the evening of Wednesday, May 6, 2009. SHINE is billed as the largest collaborative social media film event Seattle has ever seen.

This first-of-its-kind event will bring together dozens of professional videographers, writers, and reporters and hundreds of Seattle’s entrepreneurs and small biz owners to tell the inspiring stories of people who had an idea, a passion, and the drive to make their dream a reality.

The cameras will be rolling. It’s our turn to shine.

Why is Biznik leading this ambitious project? Because they believe that it’s small business (that’s us) that’s going to dig us out of this recession we’re wallowing in.

Yes, it’s the small coffee shops, the bookstores, the solo practice attorneys, the painters, the fitness trainers, the bakeries and flower shops—all the little guys who work hard, don’t take bailouts and huge severance packages, and perform, day after day, with a cheerful smile and a business-as-usual attitude.

5 real reasons why small business will lead the way

Now, I’m not going to get all scientific on you and recite those boring studies. No matter that there are 27 million plus of us. That something like 20.7 million of us have no employees, yet together we generate 80 percent or more of the U.S. gross national product.

Okay, I lied. The journalist in me couldn’t help throwing in some numbers.

But here are just 5 of the real reasons small biz owners rule:

1. We finally have a voice.

In an article I wrote for The Business Report last month, Dan McComb, co-founder of Biznik, explains it this way: “In the early 90′s most of the Web traffic went to a few big companies. But 15 years later, blogs and social networks have shifted the balance of power. People like you and me have access to powerful communication tools. Now getting heard is more about having something to say and choosing to say it.” Couldn’t agree more with Dan. We are creating our own media.

2. Our customers trust us.

Okay, here’s one more piece of data to prove my point. A February 2009 poll by Rasmussen Reports showed that small business owners were more trusted and respected than government leaders, religious leaders, or big businesses.

Okay, that one about the religious leaders surprised even me.

But because we are present, accessible—there for them—our customers trust us. They know we will fix a problem, that we stand behind our products and services.

They know where we live.

3. Courage is our badge of honor.

When we started our businesses, most of us just sucked in our breaths and took the plunge.

Remember the first time you climbed the steps to the “high dive”? Your knees were wobbly, all jelly-like. You were shivering with fright. But you knew you
couldn’t turn back because 6 impatient, sarcastic 8-year-olds were lined up
behind you.

“Come on already! Jump!” the red-haired kid behind you yelled.

You knew you had to leave the edge of that board. But, man, were you scared. We can—and do—use that same courage now to take risks in the interest of improving our businesses and adapting to out clients’ changing needs.

4. We don’t give up.

Not a whiner in the bunch of us. If something isn’t working, we try something else. And our country needs scrappy, stubborn entrepreneurs like us now more than ever. Because it’s easier for us to be flexible, we can turn on a dime when it comes to throwing out the unworkable and launching a new strategy or tool.

How many big companies can do that? How many of them are willing to?

5. We succeed by making our customers happy.

We’re not like the big guys. We can’t launch a million dollar TV campaign to make people feel good—or young, or sexy—if they buy our car. Our ideas have to stand on their own merit. We cannot force a product or service on an unwilling consumer. If we are incompetent or make poor decisions, we aren’t rewarded.

We go out of business.

Somewhere toward the end of Earth, Wind & Fire’s song, Shining Star, there is a line: Words of wisdom: yes I can.

All politics aside, “Yes, we can.”

Because we are small business.

Filed Under: Misc Tagged With: blogger, solopreneur

Why Refusing Your Client’s Money Can Be a Good Thing

By Judy Lee Dunn 8 Comments

Like most people, I like money. Really, I do.

As Adam Sandler said to Kevin Nealon’s banker character in savings in jar the retro-80s comedy The Wedding Singer,

“I’m a big fan of money. I like it, I use it, I have a little. I keep it in a jar on top of my refrigerator. I’d like to put more in that jar.”

If you own a business, you know that selling can be a beautiful thing. You do a job. Your client is happy. She pays you—money in the jar.

Which makes you happy. You think of more things you can do for her. She pays you some more.

It’s all good.

But what if making your client happy meant less money for you?

Imagine you are starting a new project for a client. Say, a website. Would you offer a solution that pays you less money but leaves your customer more satisfied? A better solution but a smaller invoice?

Example: A client wants one of those huge websites. You know the kind. With flash, multiple pages and complicated coding only you can mess with. A static website.

But you know a better way. A way that will cost less to design and be easier for her to make the changes she needs to without hiring you.

That’s right, one of those blog-websites that even the dumbest of the design illiterates can get into if they need to add a photo, change a phone number, delete an employee who’s left.

Relationship marketing: attracting customers for life

Last Christmas Eve morning, in the middle of a snowstorm, the pastor of our church called us. We had designed (pro bono) the church’s site. He was frantic because he needed the events page modified to let people know the Christmas Eve service was cancelled. Luckily, Bob was in the office
and quickly made the change.

But it got me thinking. Wouldn’t it be great if our clients didn’t have to call us every time they wanted to make a small change? Setting aside the issue of charging (we hated billing for such a small amount of work), wouldn’t it be a whole lot simpler if they could just make the edit on their end?

Have more control over their own content?

And how would that affect the feeling they have when they see our name? Their level of happiness and trust, knowing that we want the best solution for them—not necessarily for our pocketbook—at any given time?

We made a change in our services. We are now offering WordPress blog-websites, at the fraction of the costs of a static site. So clients save in up-front design charges and in back end administration.

How about you?

Do you ever sacrifice short-term gain, knowing that you are building incredible customer trust and loyalty?

Does this philosophy make sense?

Filed Under: Misc Tagged With: blog, blogging, relationship marketing, wordpress

5 Messages to Build Customer Loyalty: Lessons from a Grocery Store

By Judy Lee Dunn 2 Comments

building customer loyalty What kind of messages are you sending your customers?

Are they the kind that show that you understand them? I mean, really get their problems and needs?

Because, whether you know it or not, you are communicating to them, showing them how you feel about them, all the time.

I stopped by a Top Food & Drug last week. I don’t usually shop there. I was on my way back from a meeting with a client and it was right off the freeway.

I needed a box of cereal and a jar of marinara sauce, so I thought, “I’ll stop by and see what’s going on.”

Actually, the real reason for my visit was something my client told me about the store that got the marketer in me curious.

“They’ve got a killer customer loyalty thing going on there,” she said.

Okay, most every freakin’ grocery store on the planet has a customer loyalty program: Reward Card, Club Card, Advantage Card.

It’s normal. Expected even.

But when I stopped by, I was impressed. No, amazed.

With their free TOP Connection membership, this store takes the customer experience to a whole new level. By how they treat you, the customer, they are sending strong messages about how much they value you:

1. We know most days you don’t really have time to shop.

Create your shopping list online, adding items from your shopping history, the weekly flyer, or a recipe. If you forget your list, just ask the folks at the guest service counter at the store to pull up your account and print you another one.