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| ############################################################# >From Chris Kilian, Stealth Promotions Austin, Texas email: mailto:chris@stealthpromotions.com Welcome back to Stealth Promotions' Ezine: Secrets for Success. Remember: All of you have indicated that you wish to receive this publication, which is sent by email. You have entered a contest, asked for our award, used our services, or sent a subscription request directly to us. Your subscribed address is sample_issue@display To stop delivery of this newsletter and have your information removed, send any email to mailto:unsubscribe@stealthpromotions.com, and you wish will be followed. We are VERY interested in your feedback. Make suggestions, give us comments, good or bad. Share your thoughts with email to mailto:spezine@stealthpromotions.com Our growing subscriber list is OUR list. Not for rent. Never sold. Your privacy is jealously protected and always will be. Welcome to all the new faces this week. Pull up a mouse, and click along with us. We will provide information to make our visit with you worthwhile. ############################################################## Contents: 1. Guest Article 2. Useful Sites 3. My $.02 4. Misc. 5. For Your Consideration 1.############################################################ Guest Article: GET BETTER CLIENTS by Gary Lockwood Have you ever noticed that some people make you feel good just to be around them? These are the people who give you energy when they are near you. These special people seem to unlock your creativity and stimulate your thinking. Wow! On the other hand, there are probably others you can think of who just drain all the life out of you. Which would you rather have as clients? I don’t mean to sound rude, but most businesses take on any client who steps up with the money. Don’t get me wrong; we all know that a paying client is indeed very valuable. My point is that you consider the cost to you for dealing with the people you serve. Just for discussion purposes, let’s explore the impact that our clients have on us. The first type of client mentioned above (let’s name this person Gusto) is the type who is fun and interesting. When you interact with Gusto, you come away feeling energized. This person will likely be the type who gives you honest, constructive feedback about your products and services. Gusto will often even help you improve your offering. This type of client is instrumental in growing your business through their referrals. Since you like to be around Gusto, you’ll provide extra service, faster turnaround and preferred pricing. Since Gusto is such a happy client, you’ll even refer people to THEIR products and services. Because Gusto is receiving such great, attentive service, you get a steady stream of enthusiastic referrals. You have a terrific symbiotic relationship with Gusto. Those other types of clients we discussed earlier (let’s name this one Vampire), is the one who complains the loudest, verbally abuses your employees, and is so very hard to please. Vampire will often demand extra services, then complain about them. Vampire will drag out the payments, show up late for appointments and ask for special favors. It is easy to get angry and frustrated with this type of person. A few minutes with Vampire leaves you feeling drained. Honestly, which type of client do you want around you? Imagine your SECOND appointment of the day is to meet a very important prospective new client. Do you want your first appointment of the day to be with Gusto or Vampire? I remember riding along on sales calls with a young salesperson a while back. We paid a visit to one long-standing client who ignored us for an hour, then curtly said there would be no orders placed this week. The client then turned and walked away as if we were invisible. Back in the car, the young salesperson said “I wish I had 20 clients like that one.” Seeing my puzzlement at this strange comment, the salesperson explained “I would love to have 20 clients like this one. You see, I have 100 clients like that right now.” What is the impact on you and your enterprise when you deal with Vampire? For one thing, Vampire can cause you to be cynical with new prospective clients. Sometimes, the frustration of trying to placate Vampire can spill over to your staff, suppliers and your good clients. While Vampire may be paying for your products and services, they may be costing you even more. So how do you upgrade your client base? Let’s acknowledge that even the worst client who pays is still a paying client, after all. I do not suggest you take that lightly. On the other side of the balance scale, recognize the opportunities for you if you upgrade your client base. Before you run off your not-so-pleasant clients, try training them, and yourself, to recognize what is happening. Start with being honest with yourself. Is it possible that your clients are mirroring your own behavior? To attract the kind of people you want, be the kind of person you want to attract. If you want them to be pleasant, be pleasant. If you desire to be around positive, forward-thinking people, take on that role for yourself. It is not always easy to admit, but often, we are the catalyst for what is happening around us. Second, wake up to the fact that you are tolerating more than you need to. Your boundaries are being trampled, and you are just letting it happen. What can you do? The first step is to make a list of the things you are tolerating. Many of your tolerations are not even conscious decisions. You have been tolerating stuff for so long that you do not even realize it is going on. To surface and identify these tolerations, write down everything that you are putting up with, getting by or making do. If you have less than 20-30 on your list, you are only kidding yourself. Keep writing. Look through the list to see which ones are related to clients and prospective clients. What behaviors are you tolerating from them. What behaviors are you putting up with just to have them as a client. Next, examine your boundaries. Boundaries are imaginary lines we draw around ourselves to protect us from other people’s unhealthy or damaging behavior. Boundaries are about other people’s actions. Boundaries are about what others can NOT do or say to you (or in your presence). For too long, we have been vague about where our boundaries are. We are even more vague about making other people aware of our boundaries. Think of boundaries as the protective moat around your castle. When people step over your boundaries, you have several options. Generally, you can use these options in this sequence: INFORM - “Do you realize that you are speaking very loudly?” INSTRUCT - “I require that you be on time for our meetings.” REQUEST - “I request that you pay your outstanding invoice today.” INSIST - “I insist that you stop using that language in my store.” LEAVE - “What you are doing is unacceptable to me. I am open to working this out with you when you can do so appropriately and reasonably. Goodbye.” Make others aware of your boundaries when they are violated. You do not have to tolerate inconsiderate or inappropriate behavior. Eventually, you can surround yourself with people who are pleasant, easy to deal with, interesting and, oh yes, profitable. Get better clients. You deserve it. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gary Lockwood is Your Business Coach. Grow your business, make more money and have more fun. Get Gary’s business newsletter free at subscribe@bizsuccess.com For your FREE report on “Getting Breakthroughs in Your Business”, email FreeReport@infofree.com Office: (800) 272-1575 (USA) * Fax: (760) 325-9608 Email Gary@BizSuccess.com 2.############################################################ Useful Sites: When you have some time this week, click over to the Informed Netizens's Choice at http://kresch.com/ . This is a nice jump off point to tools, articles and online help. You could go there looking for something in these areas and find it. This is a smaller, but organized site. It served me well, and I bet it will be worth a look for you too. Later, I sent them a few URLs to favorite sites... OK, not a few sites, just one, mine. They were kind enough to ad a few, and I am now seeing their site on my referer logs. It might be worth your while to submit your information too. Another site that I want to share with you this week is "The Source" which you can find at http://come.to/the-source . Ezine publishers will like (I did) the listing of well over 500 links to newsletters all gathered on one page. Where did this webmaster get these links? From newsletter publishers. If you are one, get over and let them know about it, and you can get added to the list. If you prefer to read, look over the listed to selection to find suitable reading material. There is also a list of publishers willing to trade ad space with other publishers. As we build our list, still in its infancy, you can expect to see some of this kind of cross-promotion. Because it is is free (usually). Because it is effective. Because it builds relationships with bright people who can teach and learn from each other. Any publishers ready to trade? Give me your best 4-6 lines, 60 characters wide... and I will give you mine. I have been scouring CGI sources this week. I believe the best of the bunch is found at The CGI Resource Index at http://www.cgi-resources.com/ If you have the ability to ad CGI interactivity to your web, you would be advised to do a search here for scripts. Large selection, well organized. If you don't have CGI access, perhaps you should be moving to a host that offers it? See my offer at http://www.stealthpromotions.com/host.htm 3.############################################################ My $.02 Don't Blow Your First Impression by Chris Kilian Developing traffic is not an accident. It is never a fluke. Traffic comes from your efforts to build it into your web page. One of the best places to improve your traffic may be to re-examine your index or default page, your home page, to see what kind of first impression you are making. When people hit your page, what will hold them there. Do you know you have only seconds to determine whether you are a bookmark or in the "next" category? You have very little time to impress your visitor and convert them into a friend. Once you are a friend, you will earn a bookmark or a sale or an email address for later follow-up. If you ask visitors to listen to your favorite tune, or look at your beautiful graphics, or wait for a long unbroken page of banners to download, or commit some other design error, your visitor will go to the next point of interest on his/her list. In online competition, being "next" wins no consolation prize. There is no honorable mention category. You attract attention or you don't. Traffic goes up or not. When you want to attract attention for your site, you must be careful to avoid anything on your page that distracts from your main objective, making a good first impression. Long load times which would result from any of the mistakes above will distract your visitor, and they will be gone. There are just too many other widget pages to see. No one will know how special your widget page is until they see it. When you introduce yourself to a stranger, I doubt that you say something like, "Hello. I am pleased to meet you. My name is Chris Kilian. I was born blah, blah, blah. My parents are blah, blah, blah. I am married to blah, blah, blah. I was educated in blah, blah , blah, but my past work experience is in blah, blah, blah, and I hope to be working in blah, blah, blah." In this example, you may let each blah equal 1-5 minutes, and you may assume that you are doing all the talking without breaks. You don't do that do you? Do you unload a barrage of information, desires, and the like on everyone you meet? I doubt it very seriously. If you do, I would wager many people are suddenly remembering urgent phone calls, needing to find a restroom, or a friend, or refresh their drinks, or check the weather, or whatever will allow them to break off from your one-sided conversations. Do you realize how much easier it is to take off when you are online? Surfers are trained to look for problems that, once spotted, will trigger the fight or flight response. Unless you are downloading your kid's page with him/her standing by your side, you do the same thing. Don't create reasons to have surfers fly off elsewhere. Do not fall into the mistake of believing you must tell your visitor everything all at one time. Break it up. Let your user decide what segments of information they want on each visit. If you must force people to see more than two banners or see artistic graphics or photos, at least let people know the benefit of waiting...and get that off your main page. Check the speed of your pages, especially the home page, by making visits to places like http://www.siteowner.com/ & http://www.websitegarage.com/ where you can get good idea about the download times for web pages. If you are above 16 seconds, you need to trim excess information, graphics and the like, or be satisfied with visits from only people who already know and love you enough to have the patience to wait for you to finish. Strangers will not do that. Another way to make a good impression is to come to the introduction bearing gifts. Which person would you always invite to your the party? One comes in with a short hello, makes a beeline for refreshments, and camps out the rest of the night there? Another one comes in with bottle of fine wine and snacks, looks at you when you speak, and is entertaining and informative? I would be sure to invite the second, then if needed, I would invite my relatives, er, anyone who acts like the first group. If someone is to be sacrificed, it will be Uncle Bob. Your home page is an online invitation to spend time with you or your products/services. If your home page appears to "look" not at the needs of your visitors, but at their wallets, for example on a commercial site, people will follow your "eyes" and be gone. If your first impression is that you are interested in yourself, and only if it suits you, will you serve your visitors, you will never get the chance. On the other hand, if you are able to inform or entertain, and you can get the point across quickly, you will be on your way to attracting attention in a good way. Bearing gifts for your visitors does not need to be expensive. The net lives on free. Free you can make. Free you can find. Get it. Reproduce it. Talk about it. What you are delivering of value is your time to create or find resources, programs, tools, websites. Time is the most valuable online asset. The value of content is that someone else spent the time to find the best collection of widgets, not your visitor. Give them the gift of time with valuable content, and you are on your way to earning a favorable impression. Since I may be new to some of you today, I don't want to over-extend my welcome. There is more to say some other day, but I have taken enough of your time today. You must make a good first impression to succeed online, and you can if your web page does not try to show or tell me too much too soon and if you give me something I want. Copyright © 1998 Stealth Promotions Chris Kilian operates Stealth Promotions. (http://www.stealthpromotions.com ) Stealth Promotions will create your internet presence from scratch or improve the effectiveness of existing web sites. Subscribe to his newsletter by sending an email to subscribe@stealthpromotions.com This article can be copied and used in your publication or on your web site at no charge. All we ask is that you publish the article in it's entirety, including the footnote above. 4.############################################################ Miscellaneous Items: Fot an email as I prepared to send this out this evening from What-U-Seek. They told me that the index was being rebuilt and invited me over to re-submit my URL. The site is more lively now, thanks to Macromedia's software, which they encourage you to add to your browser. Drop by if you want a shot in a lesser known index that is trying to make some noise. It can be found at http://www.whatuseek.com. Add the "power of suggestion" to your site! Get details with any email to suggest@stealthpromotions.com Congratulations to the webmaster of the most suggested site this week for a page at http://members.tripod.com/~Iggy_Pop/halloween.html . See this page and how the service looks live. Then do yourself and your visitors a favor and add this service. Stop making visitors scribble down your URL to send you later, when a quick easy email suggestion works just as well. I know you can generate more traffic to your page with this service? Add it and see. We have added a free web-based email service to our site this week. You can now get an email address of your own. Follow the link on the navigation bar on the left that says "Free E-mail" and you'll have an address set up quickly. If you have articles that you would like us to consider for publication, send them to us at articles@stealthpromotions.com . No promise to use every submission, but we are looking for your imput. ############################################################## 5. The following links are submitted for your kind consideration. _____________________________________________________________ Get Insider Internet Marketing Tips http://www.marketingtips.com/t.cgi/8490/ _____________________________________________________________ Worried About The Mean Old Y2K Bug? http://www.solution2000.net/pages/10894 _____________________________________________________________ Build your own empire. Get setup with a free 19 page website that sells website hosting service. http://www.virtualisys.com/vr/ckilian/vrp.html _____________________________________________________________ Get a Free Lifetime Banner on Hits Galore.Com . Every little bit helps. http://www.hitsgalore.com/sponsors/104394.htm _____________________________________________________________ FREE Autobot! Register today! Limited quantities! Act Fast! http://www.linkopp.com/member/ck/2041.htm As a free gift this week, we have another electronic book that deals with Internet marketing. If you will click this link (assuming your email program makes it hot in your browser), you will get this electronic book at http://www.stealthpromotions.com/software/guerilla.exe This book can be given away at your site if you wish. Read the information in the book for details. Read it thoughtfully. Use it ONLY if it makes sense to you. Don't blame me for your results (unless they are wildly successful, in which case you can send a glowing endorsement that I will paste to my site immediately. Heck, send a glowing endorsement even if I did not help you if you want to.) Until next time- Plan your work. Work your plan. Succeed. Chris Kilian, Stealth Promotions ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Can Your Web Page Win One or More of 600+ Awards? http://www.stealthpromotions.com/awardlist.htm ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Submit Your Site to Major Search Engines Free http://www.stealthpromotions.com/submit.htm ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Ad Your Free Classified Advertising http://www.websittings.com/classads/sites/stpromo.htm When you are done. Click on the link "Apply for Classifieds" to add a free classified site to your own page. Free. This is a tremendous free deal AND you get an auto-responder that you can use to send a customized message to anyone who posts ads to your site. Do yourself a favor. Go to the link above and get this today. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you do not wish to continue with this newsletter, send a blank email to unsubscribe@stealthpromotions.com and you will be promptly removed. Promise. You can expect more tips, hints, websites, tools and advice to increase your web traffic and internet success. Please forward this whole message to friends or associates who may wish to take advantage of this type of information. You may also suggest friends send a blank email to subscribe@stealthpromotions.com so that they can be added to our list. All contents Copyright (c) 1998 Stealth Promotions, except where indicated otherwise. All rights reserved worldwide. Reprint only with express permission from copyright holder(s). All trademarks are property of their respective owners. All contents provided as is. No express or implied income claims made herein -- your business success is always dependent on many factors, including your own abilities. Advertisers are solely responsible for ad contents and publisher accepts no liability for direct or consequential damages. |
