Have I mentioned this before?

You need to genuinely want to help people solve a problem with your products and services. You have to care more about improving the lives of your prospective customers than about getting their credit card number. — Jamie Wallace, Savvy B2B Marketing

Did you know I do this?

I recently took a step in serving my customers that turned out to be surprisingly important, especially to those for whom I'm writing website copy. In the past, my clients would send me some notes, maybe links to a website or an outline. I'd do the research, sometimes a lot, and write their material.

A few months ago, I realized that the first step there, the client writing something down, was apparently a big stumbling block.

There are people who don't like to write. There are people who don't have the time. And busy business people who are focused on other aspects of their business are the standard bearers for both those groups. I'd meet with someone who'd act all enthusiastic, like they really wanted to get going on their project, and the next time I ran into them—six months later—they'd avoid meeting my eye as they said something like, "Oh, yeah. I still need to get that information to you." Having to organize their thoughts and put them down on paper, even just to scribble notes, was enough to bring things to a screeching halt.

Then I realized I have a handy telephonic device that could be of use. Instead of waiting for something written down, I started asking them to call me and talk.

Just talk about it. Tell me what you want to say. Tell me the point of the speech or the newsletter article. Tell me who'll be visiting your website, and what impression you want to leave them with. Tell me what you want your readers to learn in your blog entry. I'll ask you questions, I'll think about the structure of it, and what topics you need to cover (and I'll check out what your competitors have to say about the same topics). Leave that to me. It's okay if you don't have a perfectly clear picture in your mind before you start. It's okay if you change your mind and backtrack while we're talking. You're actually refining your message, and that's a good thing, and part of what I help you do. You just talk.

Of course, that's not always easy, either. Right now I'm struggling to complete website copy for someone who is the busiest person on earth, apparently. The poor guy had lunch at 7pm yesterday. But we'll get there eventually, and quite a bit sooner than if he had to write something down.

The lesson here, I guess, is to make things as easy for your clients as possible. Sometimes just doing that leads you to new places (where, you know, credit card numbers aren't far behind).