Prices, or I'm easy AND cheap

Here lately, every single time I give someone an estimate for some work, they immediately say, "Sure!" or "You're on," or "Let's move ahead with it," without hesitating. Does that mean I need to raise my prices?

Just once, I'd like someone to say, "Is that the best you can do?" or "Oh, we'll have to think about that."

Cheap. And I thought I was just easy.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

Guess where better ideas come from

I've been noticing an interesting phenomenon lately. I'm Co-Chair of the Southlake Chamber of Commerce Oktoberfest. It's a very large event that takes, basically, year-round planning.* We employ an event management company, and we used the same very good, very efficient company for years. This year we have a new planner, The Dallas Directory. In the few months we've been working together, they've had some really great ideas, have all kinds of good suggestions, and have us all excited about this year's event. My co-chair and I comment regularly on what a good choice they are, and what a big difference they're making.

Another important part of Oktoberfest planning is the smart and helpful Jill Lind, Tourism Marketing Manager from the City of Southlake. She's a real asset for Oktoberfest, and is also just about to have a baby. Since she'll be out for a few months, she's sending someone new, Southlake's Communication and Website Manager, Pilar Schank. Pilar came to our most recent Oktoberfest committee meeting, had some great ideas, and brought up several things we just hadn't thought about. She's making a real contribution, after only one meeting.

I'm also on the Chamber's Board of Directors. Southlake's excellent longtime Director of Economic Development and Board ex-officio member, Greg Last, recently left his position with the city. (He's going to be consulting on ED, and if you have occasion to hire him, DO.) Greg has faithfully attended Board meetings for years, contributing valuable insight. When he left, Southlake's amazing City Manager, Shana Yelverton, stepped up and offered to attend the meetings. She came to our most recent one, where she asked questions that seemed to illuminate the room. She asked a few questions and made a few points, and brought such innovative thinking to the discussion that it felt like the meeting attained a whole new level of productivity.

So what's the deal? It's not like the people who were involved before weren't great. They were. They are, and they're just as smart and hard-working and helpful as the new people. But it seems like every time we have someone new listening with new ears and chiming in, we get value that's way out of proportion to just having someone new there.

What's been happening wasn't exactly group think. That isn't the right term. It's not that we all agree, or even "agree to disagree" to maintain harmony. We don't care that much about harmony. And it's certainly not that we're married to the status quo—most of the people in these groups don't hesitate for a second to shake things up—but it could be that meeting with the same people, following the same agenda time after time, naturally leads us to walk the same path, time after time. I suppose we just kind of get stuck in patterns of thought, or ways to look at problems, and having fresh ideas added to the usual mix startles us out of the…well, I guess rut is the word.

The fact is, developing ideas is easier when you have a lot of different minds adding something to the pot. Larry Hardesty of MIT wrote a great article for the Product Design & Development website that goes into detail about it. He notes that when the population of a city doubles (and the people have the opportunity to interact with each other), economic productivity goes up by 130%. New people, new ideas, new improvements. Yeah, that kind of fits what I've been seeing in my own little world lately.

I suppose the lesson here, and someone help me remember this, is that you (I) have to go out of the way to make sure there's fresh input. How? I guess add people to a committee, or invite guests to a meeting or…what? Any other suggestions? Face-to-face interaction is apparently the name of the game. We just have to find a way to make it happen.


*You should volunteer for this. Contact me; we'll talk.

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).

I hate to sound like a cheerleader for Twitter

I really don't mean to sound like I'm selling Twitter stock or something, but right now I'm trying to explain to a business I'm involved with just why they need to step up and participate. It's not easy, sometimes, especially when the staff and decision makers in the business are, well, Old Folks.

Time does march on, even at work.

I think that's the term I'll use. Old folks. Mind you, I'm 56 years old myself. But I'm not completely one of the Old Folks. I pretty much keep up with technology. I love social media, both for business and personal use. And, most importantly, I realize that my generation (and people with the same online and social media experience as me) are not going to be running things forever.

Even more to the point, we're not the ones who are buying. Not the majority, at least, not any more.

Like it or not, business leaders and consumers—whatever group is your target market—are getting younger than you every day that passes. And they're more involved and invested in social media. The question is not whether your business needs to use Twitter or Pinterest or Tumblr. It's how well you're going to use it…or, unfortunately, just how late you're going to be to the party.

Old Folks look at their customers and see people who are more or less like themselves. In some ways, that's accurate: They're in the same community, the same industry, interested in the same products or services. But they're not responding to the same marketing that the Old Folks do, just as the Old Folks react differently from the even older folks that came before them.

My mother may have changed her opinion of, say, a headache remedy because someone in a white coat holding a clipboard said it works better than other brands. An actor in a lab coat isn't going to influence my opinion of anything, except maybe of any business that thinks I'm going to fall for that.

And that's the point: They're not likely to "fall for" it, the things that convinced their elders. You've been successful by marketing a particular way in the past. But don't expect  a brand new market, who aren't Old Folks, to respond the way previous generations did. They're different than you, and you have to approach them in a way that they respond to, not the way their old bosses did (or you still do).

Whatever they like, you need to use. Wherever they go, you need to be there. Right now, that means—here she goes again—stepping up and diving into social media.

It's not going to go away. Well, a particular platform may go away (MySpace, anyone?), but social media, as a whole, is not something you have the option of taking or leaving.

It's not if. It's how well, and how quickly. Ya old fogey!

Memorial Day weekend

Another pretty picture that doesn't have anything
to do with anything. This one is the view from
our carport. (Anyone who reads my personal blog
has seen a few of these.) (I love where I live!)

So what plans do you have for this Memorial Day weekend? Cookout with friends? Trip to the lake? Movies? Sounds good. Whatever you're planning, make sure you take the weekend off.

I know for some businesses, that's impossible. My friend Ian, of Highland Landscaping, works most Saturdays, and every Saturday during decent yard work weather. On the other hand, he completely unplugs on Sundays, spending time with his three little girls because that's what daddies need to do. Regularly.

If you work for, or run, a corporation, you get days off. If you're a professional, like a physician or attorney, you set your office hours (or you work for a hospital or law firm, aka a corporation). This message is more for the entrepreneur, the small business owner or consultant who feels the need to work all the time. You may have read that being an entrepreneur is 24/7. You're never off, never not working. I'm here to tell you that that idea is

1. Crap
2. The short path to lunacy.

Your business, no matter how closely aligned with or perfectly reflective of your passion, is your job. You have a life. Get it? That's your job. This is your life. They are not the same. And it's a very bad idea to live as though they are. You need a life that's separate from your work. One of my all-time favorite TV shows, Angel, had one of my favorite characters (Lorne) say one of my favorite quotes:

It's like a song…I can hold a note forever. But eventually that's just noise. It's the change we're listening for. The note coming after and the one after that. That's what makes it music.

It's the change that makes it music, and it's the change that makes a full life, which you're missing if all you do is focus on your business, all the time. Don't get me wrong, we need to work hard. But we also need more than just work.

If you have children, you're going to look back someday and wonder how they got so big so fast, as though it happened when you weren't looking. Where did the time go? If you don't have children, you're going to wonder the same thing about yourself, or your significant other, or your pets, or your social circle, or your neighborhood or hobbies or lifestyle….Trust me, things change, and as much as you enjoy something, the one thing you better be prepared to do is let it go and move on.

But before that happens…now is your chance to enjoy it. Right now. This weekend. This weekend.

So, take the weekend off. Remember the fallen heroes who sacrificed everything to give us the freedom to cookout with friends or go to the movies if we happen to feel like it.

And enjoy.

Twitter mission

"Twitter mission" sounds like it ought to be short and easy to achieve, right? Maybe in about 140 characters…?

Okay, that's silly. But before you dive into using Twitter for your business, remember that it's like any other marketing plan (and, really, like any other goal, period): You have to know where you want to end up in order to know how to get there and when you've arrived. First, decide what you want to achieve. Come up with your mission.

Before you do that, though, think about it. Do you even know what's possible? Twitter's strengths, the things that work best in that micro-blogging format, are the keys to deciding what you want to accomplish.

First and foremost, it's immediate. How long did it take for photos of the Miracle on the Hudson to start circulating? How long did it take for the world to know about the explosions at the Boston Marathon? For that matter, a whole lot of fans knew that Whitney Houston had died about half an hour before traditional press outlets began reporting it. There are case studies abounding of restaurants and other retail businesses using Twitter to correct customer service mistakes on the fly. Someone tweets about poor service while they're waiting in line. The manager gets an alert when her business name is mentioned (yeah, you can do that). She tracks down the unhappy customer and makes it right on the spot.


It's immediate. Plan on that.

It's also direct. The person on the other end of the tweet is an individual who asked to see what you're tweeting. That's powerful stuff. This isn't a TV or online ad that you hope will be seen and noticed by someone matching the general classification of your typical customer. It's an actual person, and they've already indicated, by following you, that they're at least a little bit interested in what you have to say.  No one sees your tweets without deciding to sign up for them.

From the reader's perspective, it can have even greater impact. Sure, odds are it's someone who gets paid for social media who's composing tweets and monitoring the big corporation's account, not the CEO. But more often than you might think likely it is the real deal, the head honcho, the celebrity, the big cheese him- or herself who's reading and tweeting. And those tweets give customers and fans a direct line to someone they want to talk to.

That's more potent than it sounds. If you run a small business you might think that your customers can reach you whenever they want, anyway. All they have to do is call or use the email address on your website. But a receptionist answers your phone, callers have to leave voice mails, you get two hundred emails a day…even if you, personally, keep on top of all your communications with your customer base (and potential customers), the perception is that there are layers between them and you.

But a tweet that goes straight to your phone, your Twitter feed…? That's like being able to send a text message. It's more likely to get your attention. It's less corporate communication and more open access. Direct.

And, finally, Twitter shows your style. Whether your clients want to see that you're a respected expert in your field, or that you're funny and in tune with the latest goings-on (or the full gamut in between), Twitter is a great place to build a reputation, fast. (Refer to the 'immediate' thing above.) The Dallas Stars (my favorite team, as anyone who has known me for more than a few minutes is aware) is developing a reputation for being clever, cool and funny, thanks to their Twitter feed. There was the Cowboys/Romo incident, then a poke at the Anaheim Ducks. Certainly, the Stars use Twitter to report scores and news about the team, or to direct fans to their website, but by allowing a little personality to shine through, they're creating a persona that attracts attention, i.e., followers.

Your brand, whatever it is, has room for some personality. Gravitas, silly side, obsession with being on the cutting edge of market conditions, current events or pop culture…whatever. There's something you can express through Twitter that will set your brand apart.

So the question is: What's going to be the most productive for you and your business? The immediacy? Having direct contact with a pre-screened customer base? The chance to create a direct link between your brand and the image you'd like to convey? Take a look at the things that Twitter does so well. They'll help guide your Twitter mission.

A quick note for a quick weekend read

In case you don't know, Twitter has a great guide to using Twitter for business. It explains not only how to get started, but gives some really great advice on getting your message across and letting your brand shine through (in 140 characters).