Do you work as hard as you'd be working for a better pay?
Do you enjoy working as cheap labour?
In essence, I'd think that you should charge yourself fairly, because:
Do you work as hard as you'd be working for a better pay?
Do you enjoy working as cheap labour?
In essence, I'd think that you should charge yourself fairly, because:
Naturally, you'll need to actually do something useful and productive to match the price, but that's the whole point. You should charge high enough to match the value you provide, but not high enough to cheat your customers.
And what's more (bonus reason), if you do all you can for as much as you reasonably cost, your clients should be getting a much more efficient work, which should make them happier and more loyal customers. Who doesn't want to have loyal customers?
More things to read:
P.S. No, I am not abandoning the blog nor changing format largely. I've been busy, but should be back to solid posting soon (along with posting more thoughts than I have been). Stay tuned.
Cheers.
P.P.S. I am sure someone has written about this topic before. Could you please mention the links to posts on the same topic in the comments or via yuri at improvetheweb.com? I'll mention them in this post. Thanks.
]]>But when it comes to business websites, there is investment and return involved. If you invest in the website, you expect to get a return on investment (ROI). And to get any return, your site needs to have a goal, according to which all the actions will be compared.
Basically any website can have a goal:
But when it comes to business websites, there is investment and return involved. If you invest in the website, you expect to get a return on investment (ROI). And to get any return, your site needs to have a goal, according to which all the actions will be compared.
Basically any website can have a goal:
When you define the goal of your website, it should become more clear about:
Ultimately, by knowing your goal, you'll be able to define the action your audience needs to perform on your website. It is the only or primary action you want your visitors to do. It can be anything:
As mentioned above, the site goal comes from the reason to have a website. You want the website for something? Then someone has to do something on the website. That action is your website goal.
Imagine that you can have only one action on the website. What would it be? That's your website goal. Beyond this definition, only you can define what exactly you want to do on your website or have other people do something on your website.
By defining the action you want your visitors to perform on your website, you make it incredibly easy to build your website about it, as well as to track your website and your audience progres.
First of all, knowing the goal helps you define your actions you will need to do around the website:
When you research the audience and the market, you see if the audience will be willing to do what you want them to do on your website.
Another important moment about having a clear goal in mind is that you'll be able to target at your audience precisely and neglect untargeted ideas, tips and whatever someone without the right knowledge will come up with.
By peeking at your competition, you check if there is anyone doing what you are going to do. If not, good. If yes, you can make your offer unique from scratch.
While researching keywords, you'll think what people using those queries were searching for and how likely they will be to complete the desired goal on your website.
The website design will depend on how the audience is succeptible to the visuals. If your target audience is women and you sell furniture or expensive clothes, you'll need a bright, fashionable website with plenty of high resolution photos. If you are targetting librarians, you might as well stick with text.
Obviously, the website will be structured around the site goal, along with the click path and information scent.
Depending on the goal, you'll create the content around it and your target audience.
Of course, making it extremely easy to complete the goal should be great. You can measure the time it takes to complete it, as well as the percentage of visitors that complete it (conversion rate).
By making your website accessible, you may also increase your customer base by 10-20% (the amount of people with disabilities in US/UK).
And, naturally, all the above, including the goal, will influence how successful you are with promoting your website, as well as the tactics you use to market it.
Just as well your site will be highly targeted and will be perceived as very useful to your audience, ultimately leading to increased conversions, whatever the conversion is.
Regardless of where you are in improving your website, having a clear goal in mind always helps.
If you don't have one (the goal, or both), investing time, efforts and money in the website will probably not pay off, unless you do it for entertainment, learning something new and other intangible personal reasons.
(PlugIM doesn't require registration to vote/plug and doesn't take you away from this site. So plug away, if you liked the post.)
]]>Without customers there is no business...
]]>Without customers there is no business...
another thing I want to do is teach the ideal of under promise and over deliver...if you tell me its going to take 20 minutes to have my pizza delivered and it comes in 32 minutes...im pissed....if you tell me my pizza will be here in 45 minutes and it shows up in 32 minutes...im super excited... think about it...under promise____over Deliver...
That's it for the night
Edit: though the author of this post didn't insert links to posts on the site, I suspect they may be useful for some, who find this article sometime.
Thanks for a nice post, crofty2242.
]]>The truth is, people are still people, regardless if they become your customers, employees or business partners. If you want to build closer relationships with the people to build your business, you'll learn how to stay personal with people you communicate with.
]]>The truth is, people are still people, regardless if they become your customers, employees or business partners. If you want to build closer relationships with the people to build your business, you'll learn how to stay personal with people you communicate with.
As defined on this blog, personal approach is treating the different person as equal to yourself, and talking freely, as if you were talking to a friend. Of course, it means polite talking as well.
While being very personal with everyone without knowing them may and will be awkward, still doing what you can to show your personality while doing business might help.
Apart from the intimate approach, personal, as in individual, approach also means being attentive, responsive, polite, helpful and such to others.
First of all, as the people you deal with are still people, they will trust another human. That's natural. So, if you are more or less personal, attentive, helpful and such, people will trust you naturally. This will help you build better relationships with them, no matter, whether you are building a long-lasting business partnership or acquiring a loyal customer for life.
Better relationships may mean better feedback about your product, more response to your requests and encouraged word of mouth. If you simply can get that while being yourself, there hardly can be an alternative.
Secondly, when people know you treat them as important, they will be able to communicate with you freely, letting you know what they need, what you can do about it and what not, because they know you will respond and actually do something about it. This will help you learn your customers/partners better, which, again, will improve your business.
Thirdly, being personal allows you to communicate freely, which, in turn, increases trust with the people, as they will see you are not hiding some formal mask.
As your customers and business partners are not actually your friends (yet), there is a difference on how far you can go. While you need to treat the people like real live people, you don't necessarily need to inform them of how your life goes, what you plan for dinner or what is the latest disease your dog has caught.
Also, when it comes to high management circles, while being casual and polite helps, it doesn't mean you can talk as freely as you would like to.
In general, a good rule of thumb would be to focus on communicating effectively and actually helping the other person, if there's any need to do so.
Not to mention, you need to avoid extreme examples of informality, as it will only annoy people.
The instances when you can be personal could easily be:
There are other moments, when you can stay yourself, but the principle remains: stay human and respond well to people: thus you'll build trust and increase the chances of your message being accepted well.
While it may be assumed that being informal is smart business, you can take one step further and remain human, while doing business. This will get you better response from your customers and business partners - if you don't go overboard with it, of course.
]]>As you may have read earlier on this blog, trust is the big thing online. As it turns out, it is important in real life, too.
]]>As you may have read earlier on this blog, trust is the big thing online. As it turns out, it is important in real life, too.
Do you think it matters to your business, if you trust your workers or not?
If so, you may consider improving your attitude to your employees, because you are severely limiting yourself to so-so work efficiency.
To know what you get by trusting, you need to know how the worker will improve his or her performance, when trusted. Here are a couple of things to remember:
As you can see, the dream of every employer may come true, if they only trust their workers: they will work harder and be more efficient. In what form that may come does not matter as much as it'll significantly boost your business, depending on the amount of professionals you have and how much trust you put in them.
Though it is clear why a joyful and a hard working employee is a better employee, it may not be clear why it is important for a professional to do his job without interference. Or at least, it is not very clear to many employers out there.
THe thing is, the reason the boss hires someone is that he doesn't know how to do something or doesn't have time to do something. Either way, he needs someone to do the job. If the boss doesn't know how to do something, it is in his best interests to let the pro do the job right (he's a pro, right)?
And if the boss knows enough to be dangerous, it is still a pretty solid idea to leave the pro alone, because no one likes someone looking over their shoulder (and commenting).
So, either way, if you trust a professional to do the job, you get more, than you wished.
"Sure, but I risk something important - my business - when I trust a stranger - what do you say to that?"
Of course, whether you trust the professional should depend on his skills and knowledge. And you need to pick the right professional from the start to trust him. That's a whole different story.
But, if you see from the resume and from his confident talk that he should know what he is doing, inspiring him with some trust may only benefit your company. Also, how do you see what he can do, if you don't trust him much, or worse, control what he does?
Also, if you desperately want something done, a professional will always listen and take your information into account. If it is important, it will be done. But you'd rather trust the pro to do anything and then tell what you want, then insist on doing something anyway.
Most things would be done anyway, but it is much better for you, the business and the professional to use trust first, requests second.
Of course, this whole point of trust doesn't matter, if the worker is incompetent. That's why you need to pick the right professional, have him do a couple of small jobs to test him (and be sure to let him know you will cut him lose afterwards, if all goes well) before actually putting your business into the hands of a professional.
I may be biased, as I haven't worked as an employer, but it only means that I can see pretty clearly how trusting me can improve my work for a person I am working for.
]]>Of course, all that matters is how much value your product gives to the people. Based on this very simple criterion, you'll either become successful or not. But how do you determine this without researching your customers? How do you find out what you really want to do to enjoy and succeed in business?
The question you may ask yourself is "If I die now, do I want to be remembered for doing what I do now?"
A honest answer to this question will give you insights whether:
So, if your answer is "Yes", then, first of all, congratulations, and, secondly, you should feel confident in what you are doing and know what to do next.
If your answer is "No", then you should think about what you really enjoy doing. If you do, people will like it, too, because they'll notice your involvement in what you will be doing.
Another good way to test, whether your business idea is good is a T-shirt test. However, if your business is good but new, you may not want to wear or sell a T-shirt of a company without a character (brand). That's why asking the question is more efficient, than the T-shirt test.
Once you identify what you really enjoy doing, you need to remember a couple of things:
Essentially, by identifying what you love doing, you'll find your own place in the world. In business, this means that you'll find your own niche and that's something.
The other two points are the same as with other things you could have been doing. They are not different with anyone, seeking success.
However, there will be one thing different: you'll be enjoying every day of your work and life and will put all the energy you have in what you love. This will open new ways to look at the what you do, find new ways to develop yourself and what you can offer to the public, give you a chance to communicate with others in the industry easily and so forth.
In essence, by doing what you love, you'll be way ahead of your competitors, who are not interested in the topic, because you'll always be on the edge.
While the advice of this post may not be obviously focused on the customer, it is focused on what you will be doing to earn for a living. Of course, if you enjoy what you do and succeed in it, the other people will also benefit from it hugely, than otherwise. The thing is, choosing what you will be doing in the future is more important than any customer-centric stuff that you may have heard of, because everything else doesn't matter in the first place.
]]>In business, being honest means that you will inform anyone you are communicating of an objective, true state of things about you. This will not only set the right level of expectations with the other person (hopefully), but will consequently make it clear for you, whether the person is ready to do business with you.
]]>In business, being honest means that you will inform anyone you are communicating of an objective, true state of things about you. This will not only set the right level of expectations with the other person (hopefully), but will consequently make it clear for you, whether the person is ready to do business with you.
Unfortunately, online, it is very hard to build trust. That's why to fully understand a potential of each other, one needs to learn a lot. That'd better be objective (honest) information, so that the person image would be formed correctly.
When the person you are talking with doesn't appreciate what you offer, when you are telling the truth about you and your offer, chances are you were not made for each other. Sure, sometimes it may mean that you lose business, because the other person failed to evaluate you objectively or had too high expectations. But it is life, and you can do better business with those, who truly appreciate you.
When your potential customer needs all clues you can give for him to make the right decision, it is sometimes hard not to exaggerate. But, if you decide to be honest, you need to find other advantages in your offer, becides being sincere.
For example, you need to objectively evaluate you offer and find the best unique benefit your product has and play from there. You can also note other benefits of your products that can be more important to your potential customer (it all depends on your customer, right?). Then, you need to use simple language to translate thoroughly the benefits of your offer.
Does telling the truth mean that you need to tell everything? I'd say it depends. Most importantly, you need to tell everything relevant to the customer that will help him make an objective decision. What that will be, the whole story about you, or the greatest benefit of your product, the choice is yours. In the end, you are trying to provide value, right?
Unfortunately, it is still hard for people to estimate whether something is worth having business with or not, when the price is high. That's why, if you offer business to business services, or selling an expensive product, you will find that people will turn away from you, once they learn the truth.
Is it that bad, when you turn away people with being honest?
Honestly, I don't think so, but it will also depend on the situation. For example, if people keep ignoring your sincere offer, it means that they won't appreciate your work. It also means that they have high expectations now and will have high expectations in the future. Additionally, it means that such people will have other quirks to deal with, aside from incorrect expectations.
But when you speak honestly and really find the right (targeted) client for you, the chances are he/she will listen. Also, the potential customer might also trust you and agree to work on your conditions. This kind of customers you have always been dreaming of, right? Then speaking honestly is what will help you get them.
That's why the biggest benefit of speaking honestly is that you won't waste time with someone, who won't enjoy your work. Instead, you'll enjoy working with someone, who does.
Earlier, I wrote an article why it is important to enjoy what you are doing to succeed in business. So speaking honestly is just another facet of the diamond here.
The only exception not to tell the truth (don't confuse this with exaggerating or lying, please) is when you desperately need cash to pay the bills and you'd agree to work under any conditions. In this case, the chances are you can do what the client wants, achieve modest results and find a better client or a job.
You may be thinkng "That's all fine and dandy, Yuri, but do you have real life experience with being honest in business? I don't want to risk my business on your words."
Yes, I shouldn't be writing this, if I couldn't back it up.
Let's start small. Earlier, when I was talking with a couple of potential customers, they all wanted to get fast results, cheap and considered me as a lockpick, rather than a locksmith. Telling them that it'd take 3-12 months to achieve significant results with their relatively new online projects seemed to shock them, and like any bearer of the bad news, they started ignoring me afterwards.
Was I disappointed? You bet. Being honest and objective was important and it turned of business away from me. Now that was quite puzzling.
Recently, I talked with a couple of people on working on their projects. Did they want results? Absolutely. But did telling them that I had other projects on my hands and how hard it can be to start out scare them? Yes. But it didn't scare them away. As soon as I said I'd be willing to deliver results, they received the information well and turned out to be quite reasonable in the end.
It all means that:
Basically, I understand why Jim Boykin likes 'em old and doesn't take on clients with new websites, and so should you. It makes perfect sence, as it is much easier to increase ROI of an old project, than of a new one, when 80% of all efforts are done in the first half a year - without a lot of return, too. But sometimes, the project can be so useful, but neglected, that it'd be a crime not to work on it.
Also, Jim's business is, perhaps, a great example of being transparent to clients and he is astonishingly happy, as his clients are happy to work with him. I'd highly recommend trying to at least be as transparent as Jim, because only then your customers will see what they are paying for and will trust you.
Another example of being honest is when advertising your availability or a vacancy. Instead of aiming for the 'wow effect', you'd rather aim at giving an objective impression about yourself. The same concerns your opening job: say what challenges are in front of the company, what the person in the position will be doing, how great it will be to work there and maybe even show off the nice benefits of working in your company.
For me, being honest is not about business. It is about being myself and enjoying my life, as I know that hiding something about me will be discovered, sooner or later. In business, being honest is also about gathering the people you want to work with in the future. In essence, it is also about enjoying your life, as you will enjoy working with people, who enjoy working with you. It is always a good moment to start enjoying your life, right?
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