Friday, 14 March 2008
Finding Clients in Durban
Good afternoon. I was in Durban earlier this month, doing a seminar on Finding Clients, and found myself in the presence of a worthy bunch of fellow small-business owners. Anyway, there I was try to do a demonstration of voice recognition software when the entire PC exploded. It wasn't my fault, it was that of the peppered mackerel. Is there anybody in the room who doesn't think that this is an incredible product?
Sunday, 9 March 2008
Some clients are not happy
Some people are not happy. It's not a temporary thing. They are simply not happy because life does not match their personal image of what perfection should be. I don't normally care. But every now and then one of them wants to buy some product or service that I offer. And because they are showering me with R100 per month they feel they have the right to tell me how to run my business.
"I don't have a credit card because they are evil instruments, the spawn of the devil, and on principle I will not use them. If you want my money then I will make a monthly deposit into your account."
"We are able to accept payment by debit order in exceptional circumstances. I will send you the form."
"Debit order? Are you insane? I am not going to let anybody invade my bank account. I have told you, I will make a monthly deposit into your account."
"Under the circumstances, and given the cost of reconciling your monthly deposit each month, I am afraid that I cannot accept your money."
"What kind of business are you? Haven't you heard of the concept of looking after your clients? You will do business with me, and I will pay you in the manner that I choose. It's your job to make it easy for me to do that."
I must admit that I once fell prey to one of these folk. Of course, given that this was the only person on earth paying us this way, it was relatively easy to forget all this money barrelling into my bank account.
"I must say that I am deeply disappointed with your service. This is the third time in the past two years that your system has locked me out. Honestly, you put yourself forth as an business guru, and you cannot even get something as simple as this right."
"Under the circumstances, can I humbly suggest that we cancel this arrangement, because it is patently not working for you? And I must be honest and say I am having trouble reconciling this single payment which is outside our normal protocols."
"If I had wanted to leave I would already have done so. I will leave when I am ready."
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned my Dad passing away. And I suggested, gently, that it might be a good thing just to touch the people that you love. That same day I received an e-mail from somebody who was deeply unhappy that I mixed my personal affairs into my "business e-mail", and felt that this was a good enough reason to unsubscribe.
Late last night I received an e-mail from somebody read that same email and then set up a weekend in Cape Town with his Dad and his son and himself. He just wanted to tell me that his Dad had told him it was the most wonderful experience of his life.
Isn't life interesting?
But that's the reason I want a constant stream of new clients, because I don't deserve some of the old ones -- no matter how naughty I was when I was a kid.
FCBH243JU
"I don't have a credit card because they are evil instruments, the spawn of the devil, and on principle I will not use them. If you want my money then I will make a monthly deposit into your account."
"We are able to accept payment by debit order in exceptional circumstances. I will send you the form."
"Debit order? Are you insane? I am not going to let anybody invade my bank account. I have told you, I will make a monthly deposit into your account."
"Under the circumstances, and given the cost of reconciling your monthly deposit each month, I am afraid that I cannot accept your money."
"What kind of business are you? Haven't you heard of the concept of looking after your clients? You will do business with me, and I will pay you in the manner that I choose. It's your job to make it easy for me to do that."
I must admit that I once fell prey to one of these folk. Of course, given that this was the only person on earth paying us this way, it was relatively easy to forget all this money barrelling into my bank account.
"I must say that I am deeply disappointed with your service. This is the third time in the past two years that your system has locked me out. Honestly, you put yourself forth as an business guru, and you cannot even get something as simple as this right."
"Under the circumstances, can I humbly suggest that we cancel this arrangement, because it is patently not working for you? And I must be honest and say I am having trouble reconciling this single payment which is outside our normal protocols."
"If I had wanted to leave I would already have done so. I will leave when I am ready."
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned my Dad passing away. And I suggested, gently, that it might be a good thing just to touch the people that you love. That same day I received an e-mail from somebody who was deeply unhappy that I mixed my personal affairs into my "business e-mail", and felt that this was a good enough reason to unsubscribe.
Late last night I received an e-mail from somebody read that same email and then set up a weekend in Cape Town with his Dad and his son and himself. He just wanted to tell me that his Dad had told him it was the most wonderful experience of his life.
Isn't life interesting?
But that's the reason I want a constant stream of new clients, because I don't deserve some of the old ones -- no matter how naughty I was when I was a kid.
FCBH243JU
Friday, 14 December 2007
Invisible websites
How much did your web site cost you? And how much is it costing you to host it each month?
I ask this because I have spent the past few weeks poring through 842 sites owned by South African Business Warriors. It's a dirty job because a few of these sites haven't had their oil changed since 1995. Yet each of these business owners spent time and money having the sites set up. (Most of us smaller entrepreneurs don't feel we have the skills to do it.)
Was it worth it?
That's the question that stuns me! They don't know.
Imagine that you're an 18 year old female university student. You take your old (six previous owners) VW CitiGolf for a service. Later in the day you collect the car. How do you know that your CitiGolf has actually been serviced?
You could check the oil to see that it's clear. (How do I do that? A car needs oil?) You could check a spark-plug to see that it isn't coated with corrosion and burnt carbon. (Eccch! I am not putting my hands in there. What's a spark-plug anyway?) You could check the air-filter, the radiator, the brake-fluid container, the brake-pads, or any one of a range of things.
You don't do any of these things because you don't know much about cars, and don't want to know about them. Your way of measuring the job that the mechanic did is quite simple. If the car survives until the next service, he must have done a good job, surely?
Welcome to the world of web development. No spark-plugs here. No oil either - just a little HTML guaranteed to deter the most determined investigator. (HTML is the name of the tribe of little people that carry the words down the Internet pipes as fast as they can swim, which is pretty darn amazing if you ask me.) No air-filters - just Javascript (makes the pages even prettier) and maybe a little Flash (which is a kind of digital bling).
The bottom line is that most of us start out by telling a developer that we want a site "like that one" - "that one" being an all-dancing, all-singing, Spielberg extravaganza. When said developer suggests a tentative price (equal to the production budget for Titanic - one of the most expensive movies ever made) we ask how much it would be if we leave off the air-filter, brakes, and downsize the engine. The number can still be quite startling, but hey we're running a business here and you gotta spend money if you want to make money - and this Carruthers oke has been telling us since 2000 you gotta be on the web or else face penury.
When your dealer delivers your new commercial vehicle, how do you know if your site works? Simple. You look at it. You kick a digital tyre, peruse a piece of the code for a brief second and check that most of the pages display. Nothing breaks. You pay your money and you head off West in search of them thar gold-bearing hills.
Which is what most of the South African Warriors did - business owners like you and me. Nice people. My friends.
At least they'll be my friends until this weekend, at which point I have to tell 800 of them that their websites don't work. Those 800 websites are so invisible they might as well not exist.
Why don't their websites work?
I am glad you asked. You wouldn't set up a shop with all the relevant expenses, then paint the windows bright orange so nobody could see inside, hide the door so nobody could find it (or worse, keep it locked) - would you? And would you keep an unlisted number, or stay out of the Yellow Pages, and never advertise?
And that, dear fellow traveller on this fascinating business experience, is the physical equivalent of what my friends have done in cyberspace. I started looking further afield, at a few UK sites to see if they were any different. Nope! (Although the costs are a lot higher in the UK.)
(One out of every ten Warrior sites being checked by Google has the windows painted and the door locked . Google cannot get in to find out what they do.) What Google sees is pretty critical if you want the world's biggest search engine to find your business when somebody is looking for the stuff you sell or do.
A vast number of sites are coded in such a way that they are rather hostile to Google's efforts. At the time of writing this Google can only categorise and search text - those words that are displayed on a page. Google cannot search through that astounding video on your front page. Nor can Google search that single large image your web designer created to guarantee that everybody could see his sterling fontwork.
(The worst site I saw during this exercise is the only industrial door company that operates in a tiny village in the UK. Their site cost £1000 and is a marvel of movement and sound. If you search for "industrial doors" and the village name - you will not find the company site. Their developer is that good! (A few Warriors have sites that come pretty close, however.)
In the next few weeks I will write about the most common mistakes we (and our web developers) seem to make - hopefully in words of one syllable.
I ask this because I have spent the past few weeks poring through 842 sites owned by South African Business Warriors. It's a dirty job because a few of these sites haven't had their oil changed since 1995. Yet each of these business owners spent time and money having the sites set up. (Most of us smaller entrepreneurs don't feel we have the skills to do it.)
Was it worth it?
That's the question that stuns me! They don't know.
Imagine that you're an 18 year old female university student. You take your old (six previous owners) VW CitiGolf for a service. Later in the day you collect the car. How do you know that your CitiGolf has actually been serviced?
You could check the oil to see that it's clear. (How do I do that? A car needs oil?) You could check a spark-plug to see that it isn't coated with corrosion and burnt carbon. (Eccch! I am not putting my hands in there. What's a spark-plug anyway?) You could check the air-filter, the radiator, the brake-fluid container, the brake-pads, or any one of a range of things.
You don't do any of these things because you don't know much about cars, and don't want to know about them. Your way of measuring the job that the mechanic did is quite simple. If the car survives until the next service, he must have done a good job, surely?
Welcome to the world of web development. No spark-plugs here. No oil either - just a little HTML guaranteed to deter the most determined investigator. (HTML is the name of the tribe of little people that carry the words down the Internet pipes as fast as they can swim, which is pretty darn amazing if you ask me.) No air-filters - just Javascript (makes the pages even prettier) and maybe a little Flash (which is a kind of digital bling).
The bottom line is that most of us start out by telling a developer that we want a site "like that one" - "that one" being an all-dancing, all-singing, Spielberg extravaganza. When said developer suggests a tentative price (equal to the production budget for Titanic - one of the most expensive movies ever made) we ask how much it would be if we leave off the air-filter, brakes, and downsize the engine. The number can still be quite startling, but hey we're running a business here and you gotta spend money if you want to make money - and this Carruthers oke has been telling us since 2000 you gotta be on the web or else face penury.
When your dealer delivers your new commercial vehicle, how do you know if your site works? Simple. You look at it. You kick a digital tyre, peruse a piece of the code for a brief second and check that most of the pages display. Nothing breaks. You pay your money and you head off West in search of them thar gold-bearing hills.
Which is what most of the South African Warriors did - business owners like you and me. Nice people. My friends.
At least they'll be my friends until this weekend, at which point I have to tell 800 of them that their websites don't work. Those 800 websites are so invisible they might as well not exist.
Why don't their websites work?
I am glad you asked. You wouldn't set up a shop with all the relevant expenses, then paint the windows bright orange so nobody could see inside, hide the door so nobody could find it (or worse, keep it locked) - would you? And would you keep an unlisted number, or stay out of the Yellow Pages, and never advertise?
And that, dear fellow traveller on this fascinating business experience, is the physical equivalent of what my friends have done in cyberspace. I started looking further afield, at a few UK sites to see if they were any different. Nope! (Although the costs are a lot higher in the UK.)
(One out of every ten Warrior sites being checked by Google has the windows painted and the door locked . Google cannot get in to find out what they do.) What Google sees is pretty critical if you want the world's biggest search engine to find your business when somebody is looking for the stuff you sell or do.
A vast number of sites are coded in such a way that they are rather hostile to Google's efforts. At the time of writing this Google can only categorise and search text - those words that are displayed on a page. Google cannot search through that astounding video on your front page. Nor can Google search that single large image your web designer created to guarantee that everybody could see his sterling fontwork.
(The worst site I saw during this exercise is the only industrial door company that operates in a tiny village in the UK. Their site cost £1000 and is a marvel of movement and sound. If you search for "industrial doors" and the village name - you will not find the company site. Their developer is that good! (A few Warriors have sites that come pretty close, however.)
In the next few weeks I will write about the most common mistakes we (and our web developers) seem to make - hopefully in words of one syllable.
Wednesday, 28 November 2007
Best email system around?
When I moved to the UK last year I was stunned that everybody uses the Internet as much as they do. Nobody does anything without checking the Net for traffic info, directions, bookings, better prices, and tonight's news. I use it to buy computers, books, software, groceries, support the Warrior community, phone SA for less than it costs my Mom to yell at my Dad in the shower, book trains, book hotels, ...
That's because it is dirt cheap, fast, and has no artificial restrictions.
Unlike South Africa, which is why it is difficult to persuade South Africans that this is the most important technology they will ever bump into, and any time invested in learning it is worthwhile.
South Africa for example, has the only ISP I know of that throws away one third of their clients' incoming mail. They do this without recourse, because their client doesn't know what's being thrown. Nor do they notify the sender. In my case, the first I know about it is when one of the Business Warriors asks me why I haven't sent any mail for a month!
Telkom email is another challenge, with emails bouncing all over the place these past few months as Telkom tries to figure out a way to operate on Duracells because Eskom is cleaning their boilers yet again.
A business that loses emails is not destined for success. Imagine that I send out 5 emails to ask for quotes for my new computer system. Only one person answers because three of them get blocked and one bounces back to me. Who gets the sale?
I am glad you asked.
May I invite you to check out Gmail? It is easier to use than regular email. There is no chance of a virus infecting your machine and eating your hard drive. There is no chance that your email supply will be disrupted. No emails will ever bounce back to your clients. You will have email access anywhere in the world.
You won't have to worry about downloading big attachments because Gmail will let you to read them online. Finding an email that you received from Uncle Dave sometime last year takes less than a second, as does finding all the emails since the Great Trek that mention the Potgietersrus Pink Parade. In other words, this is an industrial strength email solution that will put you on the same footing as anybody anywhere in the world - no matter how sophisticated their Internet access might be.
Did I mention that it costs absolutely nothing? It isn't tied to any ISP, so when you change your access method, or your PC, you get to keep all your emails. You get 5GB of storage. (After 700 emails/day for the past 18 months, I have only used 1.6GB - so this is enough for most of us for a long time.) I redirect all my email accounts into it because it has the best spam filters I have ever used, which I need because so many folk seem worried about the size of my various body parts, two of which I don't even have.
Head for http://mail.google.com - it will solve any email frustrations you're likely have for a long, long time. Not one of the folk I have recommended Gmail to have anything but praise for it - and you can't say that about much these days.
That's because it is dirt cheap, fast, and has no artificial restrictions.
Unlike South Africa, which is why it is difficult to persuade South Africans that this is the most important technology they will ever bump into, and any time invested in learning it is worthwhile.
South Africa for example, has the only ISP I know of that throws away one third of their clients' incoming mail. They do this without recourse, because their client doesn't know what's being thrown. Nor do they notify the sender. In my case, the first I know about it is when one of the Business Warriors asks me why I haven't sent any mail for a month!
Telkom email is another challenge, with emails bouncing all over the place these past few months as Telkom tries to figure out a way to operate on Duracells because Eskom is cleaning their boilers yet again.
A business that loses emails is not destined for success. Imagine that I send out 5 emails to ask for quotes for my new computer system. Only one person answers because three of them get blocked and one bounces back to me. Who gets the sale?
I am glad you asked.
May I invite you to check out Gmail? It is easier to use than regular email. There is no chance of a virus infecting your machine and eating your hard drive. There is no chance that your email supply will be disrupted. No emails will ever bounce back to your clients. You will have email access anywhere in the world.
You won't have to worry about downloading big attachments because Gmail will let you to read them online. Finding an email that you received from Uncle Dave sometime last year takes less than a second, as does finding all the emails since the Great Trek that mention the Potgietersrus Pink Parade. In other words, this is an industrial strength email solution that will put you on the same footing as anybody anywhere in the world - no matter how sophisticated their Internet access might be.
Did I mention that it costs absolutely nothing? It isn't tied to any ISP, so when you change your access method, or your PC, you get to keep all your emails. You get 5GB of storage. (After 700 emails/day for the past 18 months, I have only used 1.6GB - so this is enough for most of us for a long time.) I redirect all my email accounts into it because it has the best spam filters I have ever used, which I need because so many folk seem worried about the size of my various body parts, two of which I don't even have.
Head for http://mail.google.com - it will solve any email frustrations you're likely have for a long, long time. Not one of the folk I have recommended Gmail to have anything but praise for it - and you can't say that about much these days.
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