Instigator Blog

Want your story heard? Want to get into a book?

Now is your chance! Greg Balanko-Dickson is writing a new book on genius and irrepressible entrepreneurs.

A quick quote from Greg:

There is just something about a genius that makes me curious. These people are lively, invigorating, and full of energy and vigor. They can be overbearing and obnoxious but their spirit exudes confidence, excitement, and that wide eyed sense of discovery often lost among domesticated humans.

Greg is looking for stories of inspiration - what keeps you moving, what drives you as a wild and crazy entrepreneur? What do you love about being an entrepreneur and how do you stay focused?

These are all the issues Greg hopes to tackle in his new book.

Greg’s planning to offer the book as an online wiki for free. There will be some elements of collaboration for the community once it goes live; but those are details Greg is still working out. Printed copies will be available for a cost as well.

His goal is to have the book completed by May. Anyone who contributes will receive a free copy.

I plan on contributing through some form of blog post soon, to give my thoughts on being an irrepressible entrepreneur.

Greg’s also just posted a quick book overview that I encourage you to read if you’re interested in this project.

Incidentally, although this form of contribution (to a book, group writing project, etc.) isn’t listed specifically in Ron McDaniel’s 57 buzz challenges I think it should be added as a 58th. You’re seeing more and more online, group writing projects and collaboration efforts, and these can certainly generate buzz.

Robert Hruzek had a contest to write a story in 6 words and received over 400 submissions! Easton Ellsworth runs the Fortune 500 Blog Review Project, where he and the community tracks down what each of the Fortune 500 are doing with blogs. They use a wiki for updates, reviews, etc.

Online participation in contests, writing projects, group collaboration efforts, etc. will generate buzz. It will also create strong contacts in your areas of expertise and interest.

So if you’re an irrepressible entrepreneur, overflowing with passion, enthusiasm and a will to succeed, consider submitting something to Greg’s new book on entrepreneurship, get your name in lights and have some fun.

This video just came across my path today, thanks to Philippe Borremans, Web 2.0 explained in video: Teaching the Machine.

Even when you’re “in the biz” of Web 2.0 and pushing online communities and conversations, it’s wonderful and inspiring to take a step back and say, “Right. That’s what we’re doing here.”

Kudos to Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University for putting this together.

It’s short, to-the-point and will leave you saying, “Oui.”

Handwriting is fast becoming a lost art. Between email and instant messaging do any of us really need to communicate through the use of handwriting anymore?

Well, it can still be a good idea. One of Ron McDaniel’s 57 buzz challenges is to send a surprise letter.

The idea is to surprise someone with a handwritten letter and express interest in what they’re doing. I particularly like his idea of sending a letter with a testimonial. Everyone loves receiving testimonials and you might find it being used on a company’s website or in the person’s next book.

People love recognition for the work they’ve done. Who wouldn’t! And a surprise letter is a great way of accomplishing that.

With that in mind and applying my own twist to the idea to generate some buzz, I’ve sent out 6 Montreal postcards to people. Four postcards are going to people I know, two are going to people I don’t know but admire and want to meet.

The postcards have a brief, personal note written on them. Each one also has a unique number written on it in big, bold lettering, and a call to action. Those numbers will hopefully help me generate some buzz. I won’t go into the details just yet — but if you receive a postcard from me please email me and let me know.

This is a fairly small experiment. Six postcards isn’t a lot. But once people start emailing me I’ll share the experience further. And if it works it’s easily replicated on a much wider scale.

This post is part of my 3-Week Buzz Marketing Challenge which ends on Sunday, February 11th. My goal is to accomplish as many buzz marketing efforts as possible! Feel free to join the fun and try them yourself!

Your business is great. You’ve invented something better than sliced bread. You offer such an amazing service at such a great price that people should be knocking your door down.

And they might be. But they’re all asking for a proposal.

Proposals are a fact of life. We all do them, and we’re all trying to blow our prospects away.

But most proposals are bad. Here are 10 reasons why proposals fail:

1. They’re too long. Proposals aren’t meant for “shock and awe” - don’t try and overwhelm the prospect into submission. Edit and cut. Cut and edit. There’s no perfect length for a proposal, but how many of your prospects really read the whole thing? They scan and skim till they get to the price and timeline. Keep it short.
2. They don’t reference the prospect’s pain. Why did the prospect ask you for a proposal? You better have a crystal clear answer to that question. Too many proposals don’t reiterate the pain properly. Skipping that makes the prospect feel like you don’t get it.
3. They’re too technical. I know you’re the expert in your field, that’s why I asked for a proposal. You don’t need to inundate your proposal with buzzwords and industry-hooey. A prospect only knows a smidge of what you know about your business, and they don’t really want to know more. Your proposal fails when it sells industry mastery using language I won’t understand.
4. They’re not selling benefits. Proposals that miss out on #2 and focus too much on #3 invariably aren’t selling benefits. If you’re not selling benefits you’re sunk. And for the love of everything that is holy, spell these out as clearly as possible.
5. They’re not well structured. Proposals are stories. And every story has a beginning, middle and end. Think of your proposal as a story and write it accordingly.
6. They’ve got spelling and grammatical problems. A proposal with spelling errors is unacceptable, it’s as simple as that. Grammatical problems may be harder to catch. Three tips: Read it out loud. Write short sentences. Have someone else read it.
7. They’re poorly formatted and packaged. Style counts! On top of that, your proposal isn’t the only game in town. You want to stand out right? Take some time to format things nicely. Add some pictures. Use bigger headers, smaller paragraphs, and color where appropriate. Think jazzy. If you’ve got substance, sell it with nice packaging.
8. They’re missing testimonials and client references. I’ve rarely seen a proposal with testimonials or client references. It makes no sense. Pepper in a few testimonials to spice it up and add a feeling of success. Add in some client references with contact information to give your prospect a clear message, “you know what you’re doing and you can prove it.”
9. They’re missing a thank you. Proposals are personal. You’re not writing installation instructions for IKEA furniture are you? Unless you’re sending a proposal unsolicited (which makes little sense) someone’s given you that opportunity. Thank them for it.
10. There’s no call to action. You submit the proposal. Now what? Um…um…um…oops. Put in a crystal clear call to action. It could be a follow-up meeting, contract signature, or something else — it almost doesn’t matter. What’s important is that there is a next step and you’ve explicitly told the prospect what it is.

Your business rocks. You work hard. You deserve more business.

Don’t let proposals get in the way. Do them right and you’ll win a lot more business.

Your clients are a goldmine.

You knew that right?

The key to leveraging existing customers into more and more success is to follow-up with them. While plenty of salespeople are gunning for the next big score you know the path to success lies with the people who have already paid you money.

But you can’t just follow up willy nilly whenever you feel like it or remember to do so. You need a follow-up system.

Here are 6-steps to putting a client follow-up system in place:

1. Measure Success. If there are metrics you can track to gage success, use them. A software company might track usage of their hosted application. A retail organization could track repeat purchases to gage clients’ happiness. If there are no metrics you can track that’s troublesome because it means you don’t have any sense of what your customers are doing or thinking. Metrics aren’t perfect, they’re just a barometer from which you can build your system of client follow-up.
2. Follow Up on a Schedule. You need to follow up regularly, but not too often. I ping my customers every 3 months. It’s a good amount of time to gather information, give customers a chance to come up with issues/questions/etc. and not overwhelm them. You might want to setup a CRM application to track clients and when you’re supposed to get in touch.

   Of course, schedules are made to be broken. And you’d break your follow-up schedule when the metrics you’re tracking tell you something is going very well or very bad. In both cases you’ll want to follow-up on an accelerated scheduled to find out what’s going on. If things are going very well, you’re moving to get positive feedback, testimonials, client referrals, etc. If things seem to be going very poorly, you better fix the situation. Fast.

3. Have a Reason to Follow Up. It’s not good enough to just follow up and say, “Are things going OK?” That’s better than nothing, but instead, try and have a specific reason for each follow-up. When you have a specific goal in mind for your follow-up it makes it more effective and valuable for you and the client.

   Here are some reasons you should be following up with clients:

   • Make sure the customer is happy
   • Resolve customer complaints
   • Solicit feedback
   • Get a testimonial
   • Get approval for doing PR with the customer
   • Upsell
   • Update them on new products/services
   • Referrals

   Ultimately, each time you follow up with a customer your #1 goal is to build a stronger relationship, but you can do that more easily if you have a reason for calling them beyond “just chatting.”

4. Two Calls and One Email. If you don’t reach a customer the first time you try and follow-up, leave a message and then call again. If you have to leave another message, tell them you know they’re busy and you’ll send an email instead. You might not follow this exact process but the point is that you can’t follow-up endlessly. If you’ve tried a few times and you get no response, move on to the next follow-up. People are busy, just because you don’t reach them doesn’t mean the client isn’t happy.
5. Keep Track of Client Follow-Ups. Track the results of every customer follow-up. Did you accomplish your goal for the follow-up? What else did you find out? Take notes, keep ‘em handy, and use them for the next follow-up.
6. Validate Your Client Follow-Up System. Is it working? Are you getting valuable feedback? No system is perfect, so over time make sure you’re assessing the success of your client follow-up system and update it accordingly.

Follow-up with your customers regularly and you’ll gain a wealth of knowledge. They’ll be your buzz agents, evangelists and references. They’ll buy from you again. They’ll complain more openly (which is a good thing!)

Go call your customers. They’re a goldmine of success.