Gold Coast Web Expert

One of the local newspapers here is doing a story on our web division. The photographer was just here a minute ago to grab a photo to run with the story.
We had to make a quick decision on who would be photographed and in what context.
After a quick discussion it was decided to have Jo and I in the photo.
That decision was based on this:
1. Our target market is generally my age (I’m 38 – 39 on November 21 if you want to send me a large gift!) – or a little older. My age provides some degree of “They have experience” thinking.
2. We have a fairly even mix of male and female clients. Having Jo in the photo (and seated) gives her the credibility as someone of authority in the office. Many people perceive the younger Jo as being more ‘cutting edge’ in design and that’s often a positive.
3. Many of our competitors in web development run their businesses from home. Many of our market perceive offices as providing a greater degree of professionalism. The photo was taken in our boardroom.
4. Perceived risk – how could we reduce it (Photo: I’m wearing a nice shirt with cufflinks, and a sports coat that is buttoned. Jo is sitting at the boardroom table with a laptop open, I am standing beside her. Jo’s chair is a high-back leather chair.
What that tells the viewer is:
a) We have a boardroom – means we have offices.
b) We dress well – first impressions are critical.
c) The furniture is good quality – aids the perception of us being sucessful.
It’s the little things that count in presenting yourself to your market. We do everything we can to create a very positive first impression, because there is no second chance to make a first impression (that’s such a dopey cliche, but it doesn’t stop me from using it!).
And first impressions can be the difference between a sale or no sale.
Hope you have a nice day.
Brendon

I thought about this over the weekend after responding to a couple of people who emailed me to criticise an article I had written. I get a lot of feedback about the articles (and my book) – most good, the occassional bad.
I like receiving both because, if it’s constructive criticism, it helps to identify how I could write a bit better.
But 2 emails I received on Friday were just a couple of people having a complain about not much and then doing a bit of name calling. I spent probably 1/2 hour writing back and explaining my position.
But I won’t be doing that again. These people weren’t genuine in their criticism. They were insulting, boorish and immature.
I wasted 1/2 hour responding to these 2. That’s 1/2 hour less at the beach or at the pool or at golf or with my family or reading a book or responding to other emails.
I realised on Saturday that I have a choice. I could repsond to these aggressive emails, or I could hit the ‘Delete’ button.
Sure, there will be a consequence for hitting ‘Delete’. I’ll list them:
1. I’ll have extra time during my day
I really can’t think of any more!
We can all choose to deal with negative, boorish people. Or we can choose not to.
We all make choices that impact on every part of our life every single day.
Where have your choices gotten you so far.
Where will your choices take you in the future?
Cheers
Brendon

We had some friends for dinner a few years back. During the course of dinner I said something particularly stupid. (Yes, I’m sure you’re shocked at that!)
My daughter Laura, who was about 7 at the time, turned to me and whispered:
“Daddy, why don’t you think about things before you say them?”
Melbourne IT should snap up the services of Laura…..and here’s why.
Melbourne IT is one of Australia’s biggest registrars of domain names – a top level one. We register, on behalf of our clients, many, many domains with these people.
There are cheaper registrars around.
But I’ve stuck with Melbourne IT for years because we know their interface so well, and how to manage our client’s domains with the minimum of fuss.
But we’ll be changing. And we’re changing because they don’t think about what they are doing.
We recently registered a domain name for a client. We are listed as the Technical Contact for that domain name.
Today I received an email to that domain name address from Melbourne IT trying to onsell services – such as domain name forwarding. That’s fine. No problem with that. But then they went a step further.
Melbourne IT have used the contact information I gave them in registering that domain to recommend another company for the development of the web site!!
“HAVE A PROFESSIONAL WEB SITE BUILT FOR YOU.
We recommend XXXX, by XXXX for only A$599 you will receive:
* A four page professional web site designed for you that can be expanded or upgraded to suit your needs
* 12 months web hosting
* An easy to use interface to update your web site
* An email address
* Check out an example of a web site recently built by XXX for a customer on the standard A$599 package: www.XXXX.com.au.”
So, as a web developer I now have one of my “partners” recommending an opposition firm to the very same clients whose details I have given them! Crazy.
Why don’t they think of things before they do them?
I’d guess that the majority of people that register domains are businesses like ours doing it on behalf of clients. And I’d guess a good % of these people won’t be using Melbourne IT from now on.
The lesson here is that we all need to think about the possible implications of the strategies we use. Sure, it might be nice to generate extra income by recommending a web design firm. But not if it alienates a good % of your current customers.
Cheers
Brendon

Attention to detail and personalising your customers experience can be a very positive thing. I’ll give you a little story of what happened in our office on Friday that impressed me and the client.
A client came in for a meeting. She had been in before.
Instead of offering her a “Coffee, tea or cold drink?”, Bianka said “It’s a coffee isn’t it, with skim milk and 1 sugar?”
The client was amazed that Bianka had remembered her drink preferences from 3 months ago. She was mightly impressed. And so was I.
But it turns out that Bianka hasn’t actually got such a good memory. Bianka’s just smart. Every time a client comes in and has a drink, their preference is noted down in the database. And then referred to when that same client comes in next.
How can you personalise your customer’s experience? Little things matter and they matter a lot. Because people want to feel special – and anything we can do as businesspeople helps our cause.
Brendon

Our web division completes quite a number of web sites. We have 12 on the go at the moment.
One of the more time consuming aspects of that part of the business is developing detailed proposals for potential clients to consider. By the time we meet with the client and establish their wants and needs, then move on to strategy, tactics and how we might develop the web site, our costs can be quite significant.
I’ve been trying to think of ways to provide the quote without needing to provide the exhaustive proposal (a document that takes up to 6 hours to develop). I can often make the pitch for the web site in a 20-minute conversation – and be a lot more effective than a document.
So that’s what I have just done
I’ve talked to the client about the web site wants and needs. I then quoted the price.
I then told him if that sounds like the best solution for him, then let us know and we’ll move forward and develop the full proposal so that what he receives is well documented. After all, it makes no sense to spend 6 hours on developing a proposal that might get a cursory glance and a quick “No”.
Now this isn’t the perfect solution, but it is a start. Better for the client, better for us. Cheaper for the client, cheaper for us. Everyone wins!
Is what you are doing the best way to do business? Or are you doing it just because it’s what everyone else in the industry is doing?
Brendon

This blog came to mind because of some emails from John. John and I have started reviewing some copywriting for his business.
John came up with some fantastic headlines, one of which was something like:
“We told our supplier to GET STUFFED!”
I love those sort of headlines. In your face, provocative and usually amusing. But, unfortunately they don’t often work.
You see, there are some different people out there in the world. The main reason you are reading this (if you read regularly) is because you are a no BS sort of person, you are successful, you are a decision maker and you get things done with no fuss.
And when we researched our ‘best’ clients (in terms of great to work with and profitability (for both of us!)), we found that the sort of profile described above was our best client. And that’s why our marketing is generally simple, plain, no BS – just the facts.
Because that’s the sort of marketing that attracts our best clients.
Tailor your marketing to meet your market. It can be tricky to identify exactly what it needs to be, but it’s worth spending some time on it. If you get it right it can mean terrific success.
Now BUZZ OFF dopey!!!! Just kidding!! 😉
Brendon

I get a few emails through where people ask me if I make stuff up that’s on this and the Tailored web site.
Easy answer – Nope. Everything I write is 100% true.
At the risk of sounding like I’m trying to promote my fantastic e-book on using public speaking to generate quality leads (which, by the way, is here!) – someone emailed me yesterday and asked if public speaking was truly effective.
Here’s some numbers for you.
Last week I gave a speech to 25 businesspeople. I’ve quoted on 3 small jobs totally just over $15,000.
Last night I spoke to 12 Rotary Club members – from that I have 3 very strong leads (they came and chatted after the speech, gave me their business cards and asked me to contact them about redoing/doing their web sites).
Yes, public speaking works and it works better than just about anything.
Regards
Brendon

(I just posted this on the Tailored site too but thought it would be relevant here as well.)
Because we do so many web sites I’m very aware of overcoming the client’s resistance to buying because of the perceived risk. One way we try and demonstrate our quality and expertise is by providing current client names and numbers to potential clients.
What generally happens is the potential client rings a current client and finds out how we do business in practice (because we all say we’re fantastic in the meeting!).
This Is What One Of Our Clients Did Yesterday
One of our clients (I’ll call him Ross………because that’s his name!) spoke with a business owner we’d been meeting with about a web site. Ross spent 15 minutes on the phone telling this client how we’d performed with him over over the past year or so.
I was very appreciative of Ross taking the time to chat to our potential client.
Yesterday, Ross was driving past our potential client’s business and decided to drop in. So in he went and introduced himself to our potential client in person.
They had another chat about us (Tailored Consulting).
Will We Get The Job?
My mum always told me not to count my chickens before they hatched, but the chances for our success would have increased significantly because of Ross’ efforts.
That’s the first time a client has ever gone way out of their way like that to help us get a job and I’m thrilled Ross has thought so much about our business to help so much.
And I’d usually end off with a comment about how we can repeat the process, but I really don’t know. It’s not as if we can ask our clients to visit potential clients and praise us up!
Or can we??!
References are good. Testimonials are fantastic. In person visits to provide a testimonial is unbelievable. Thanks Ross!
Brendon

I quite enjoy the music of Robbie Williams, the English singer. And Robbie himself seems like quite an interesting character!
I saw him interviewed by the brilliant Michael Parkinson one Saturday evening and it was brilliant stuff. Michael asked Robbie about his well documented battles with alcohol and drugs.
Robbie answered with something like this:
“What I do comes so easily to me that I simply cannot truly believe that people think it’s so brilliant. I don’t see it as anything worthwhile, so I cannot see what is all the fuss about, or why people pay me millions of dollars to do it. I drank and took drugs so that I would fail and prove myself right. Prove that I wasn’t really worthy of all this adulation.”
And who would have thought that anything Robbie Williams would say would be relevant in marketing your business??!
Do you undervalue your skills?
* A friend who is an Orthodonist once told me he feels a little guilty charging for his work as it’s just so easy (he trained for close on 10 years to be as expert as he is!)
* I do marketing things all day long and find it mostly very easy. It’s almost intuitive for me these days.
* The wonderful woman who does most of our programming work can do things in 5 minutes that would take most people an hour to do – and she finds it an absolute breeze.
Just because doing what you and I do is easy to us, doesn’t mean it’s easy.
Don’t undervalue the skills required for the service or products you provide
It may have taken years of experience, hours and hours and hours of study or plenty of training to get as good as you are. Charge a good price for you to make a good profit and grow your business.
Brendon