Making Your On-line Business Work Off-line

Wifey and I were after a newish car. Candy (the 65 Mustang) has gone to a new home in Adelaide so it was time to get a new run around.

Our biggest issue was that there was no car on the market that really inspired us. After plenty of discussions and web surfing we settled on a Golf Diesel.

We didn’t want a brand new car as that is a waste of money. An ex-corporate car or demo car was fine. Even one that was 12 months old.

We found two that met our criteria on CarSales.com.au and then sent emails off to the dealers. What happened next is indicative of how many businesses struggle to incorporate their Online presence with their Offline presence.

As you would expect, I am the kind of guy that has to let people know when I have a poor service experience so I emailed the dealer principal from the dealer with poor service to let them know.

Here is the email trail that explains what happened and how they dealt with it. I have removed all identifying information to protect the innocent!

Hi Dealer Principal

As a speaker and Sales trainer I thought you may want some feedback on my car purchasing experience.

I noticed 2 VW Golf’s on Car Sales. The one at your dealership and the other at Dealer 2 VW.
The only difference between the cars was that the Dealer 2 one had done 10,000km and yours 2,000 km and the Dealer 2 car was $3,500 cheaper.

But these differences were not what made an impact on my wife and I.

The most significant difference was that after sending my enquiry via car sales to both you and Dealer 2 at the same time (approx. 8am Friday), Dealer 2 called me by 8:30am to talk about the car and invite us in to see it and take a test drive.
Your automated email said someone would be in touch soon but I am still waiting for the call. (this is 5 days later)

Dealer Principal, I tell you this not to be picky or have a go at you but to let you know of a missed opportunity. Saturday morning we were at the airport so had to drive almost right past your dealership but as we had received no service, we chose not to.
We then went to Dealer 2 and purchased the car.

In this age of internet driven sales, customer service is the one thing to help close the deal. If I had received the call from your team, I guarantee I would have come to the dealership – no guarantees on the purchase though!!

I strongly recommend you have a conversation with your sales manager and ensure your systems are in place to capture and work with your internet leads.

I hope this email has been of value to you.

Warm regards

Warwick

To his credit, the dealer principal sent me this reply the next day.

Warwick,

I am currently overseas and are disappointed that my team have not performed. I take your email very seriously and greatly appreciate the time you have taken to write to me. I have forwarded on your email to both my sales managers and my business partner for review. I hope the vehicle purchased serves you well and no doubt Dealer 2 Volkswagen are full of best practice. Again thank you – the very best with your vehicle and on my return your visit will be used as an example when counselling my team,

Regards,

Dealer Principal

Later that day I also received a phone call from the Dealer Principal’s sales manager to apologise for not contacting me. Unfortunately he then started to go on and talk about their processes and make excuses but I appreciated the contact.

So … what about your business?

Do you have an on-line presence?
Do you have processes to convert on-line enquiries into offline sales?
Does it work?

Learn from this example and make sure your next online prospect actually makes it to your sales team!

Is Your Email Worth $10,000?

One of the issues in dealing with our clients is that they forget about us.

It seems crazy doesn’t it. We deal with them regularly and then they forget about us.
Sometimes it is not us they forget about but they forget about what we can do for them and their clients.

Today I sent an email out to ten different bureaus, booking agencies and associations that have used me before.
I wanted to give them an update on some of the things I have done in the last three months and what I have planned for the next three months.

In all honesty, it wasn’t the prettiest email. It was well considered but I didn’t spend hours on it crafting a message to inspire action and get the phone ringing.
It was more along the lines of “Look at the cool stuff I have been doing and some of the stuff I am about to do. I would love to do something like this for you and your clients. If you are interested call me.”

Within five minutes of sending the email, one of the recipients called me and booked a gig with me. They had forgotten that I do characters as well as straight MC work and by combining the two roles they could hit a clients budget. I also know that if I do this well, I will keep this new client for three or four years and they do four to seven events a year. That will be worth well over $10,000 to my business.

Not a bad effort for one email.

So what do you do to remind your customers of who you are and all the things you do? It could be worth a fortune!

PS In case you were wondering, here are some of the characters I have presented as

Tough Leaders Create Tough Times

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Who Has Time For That?

One of the lessons I learn’t early on in life was that I don’t have the time, energy or inclination to make all the mistakes I need to.

Mistakes are one of the biggest and best ways to learn how to do and how not to do things.

I don’t know about you, but who has time to make that many mistakes?

I am a big fan of learning from the mistakes and lessons of others. It saves me pain and accelerates my success.

It is for this reason I have set up Entrepreneurs In Action

It is a regular podcast of interviews with successful Entrepreneurs. The first episode is out there and the first interview is launching tomorrow.

You can subscribe with your iTunes account at www.EntrepreneursInAction.com.au or create a Podomatic account at http://warwickmerry.podomatic.com/

When you next make a mistake or have a “learning experience” make sure it is not just you who learns from it. Share it with people who need to know because when it comes to learning everything by doing it yourself, who has time for that?

Warwick In Action

001 Entrepreneurs In Action

One thing that successful entrepreneurs do is take action, and loads of it!

I have created, and am hosting, a new program that highlights some of these entrepreneurs and the kind of action that they are taking.

Over the coming months you will hear from a diverse range of entrepreneurs with a diverse range of experience. To help set the scene for this program, I recorded a short 5 minute intro.

Make sure you don’t miss an episode by subscribing to the podcast on iTunes at www.EntrepreneursInAction.com.au

The One Word that Fast Tracks You To Success

A client has asked me

“How do you say no?
When you’re too busy, you’re weighed down, your priorities rule you, but you just want to say yes to everyone. Don’t want to let anyone down. You bend your life to fit them in and then you lose sleep because it just doesn’t all fit.
How do you say no?”

No is the most productive word in the world.
Danielle Storey, the Million Dollar Client Relationship expert insists that “No opens the door to yes” and that has been my experience also.

So why don’t we say it more?

There is a common saying that if you want to get something done, give it to a busy person. This is built on the concept that they won’t say NO.

There are a couple of elements to this that we need to examine:

1) Our Image
We don’t want to be seen as someone who lets another down. We want to say yes because if we don’t we think that someone else will think poorly of us. That someone else could be a friend, a family member, a boss, a colleague, a new friend, an old friend or even a random stranger.

The first thing you MUST take on board is this. What other people think of you is none of your business.

They may think poorly of you but if they are someone who truly values you, they will accept whatever your response is because they will know you have a lot more going on in your life than what they know about. Do you really want to spend time with someone who gets upset because you won’t do them a favour? You are worth more than that.

2) Who is Asking
My experience is the difficulty to say NO depends on who is asking. It can be very difficult to say no to a family member. They also have the advantage of more power when it comes to emotional manipulation purely because of their history with you.
The same can be said for a Boss or a client. For some reason we think our job or the contract is at risk. As I will explain later, they both actually WANT you to say No. They just don’t realise it.

3) Self Belief
It is so important to realise that you are worth saying no for. Too often we can see how others should say No more often but can’t see that we are in the same boat. Trust me, you are truly worth it. Your time is more important to you than it is to anyone else. Your own plans need your attention. Your own desires and needs are also important. Do not sacrifice yourself and your own needs and wants unnecessarily for others. Being a martyr is not as good as people want you to believe it is!

I love what the flight attendants say every time I am on a plane. “When the mask falls from the ceiling, please be sure to fit your own before you assist others.”

If you don’t look after your own needs, no one else will. You have to be ok first before you can be of service to others.

4) They Want you to Say No
Without realising it, other people want you to say No.

Most people operate on the basis that you are a mature person and when you have reached capacity you will say so. To keep saying yes when it is costing you in terms of time, energy and even sanity is not fair to you or to the business or family unit. So even though they may seem like they don’t want to hear you say no, they will be much happier you did that to come to them at the deadline and say, “Sorry I didn’t get it done.”

To get a bit hippy for a moment, saying no is one of the biggest acts of self-love that you can do.

By all means, please do things for other people. Please give of yourself generously but not at the expense of yourself.

You owe it to yourself to say NO. It is the most productive and most powerful word in the world.

There Is NO Escape!

This is one of the scenes from where I have been working for the last four days. Not a bad pool!

I was fortunate enough to be hosting a conference at Sanctuary Cove in Queensland.

Too many people can’t wait to get to places like this to escape their life. They seem to feel that either their business, job or relationship (or worst case scenario, their entire life) is so bad that they need to escape it for a holiday. It takes a few days to chill out and feel the sense of escape and then half way through they remember what they are trying to escape and start to take on the stress again.

There is NO Escape!

Your life is yours to create, so if you are not enjoying it or feel you need to escape it, change it! Change jobs, sell your business, work on your relationship, do whatever you need to do to address your issue. You can’t avoid your life forever or you will die trying. The quickest way around is through so face your stuff and live a life you don’t want to escape from.

See you in paradise!

Grease is the Word (in Marketing)

Wifey (her official title and one that she loves and fully endorses so no more emails on this please) and I took our niece to see Grease for her birthday. It was a fun night and many of us chose to make it a sing-a-long.

But what was impressive was their marketing approach, specifically in their casting.

As you have probably guessed, the thing that makes a show successful is getting an audience – it’s obvious really.

So how can you get a big audience in? It’s simple, cast big names. But big names cost money so you can’t have too many.

So why not cast big names for small but key roles and less famous people for the majority of the roles.

Grease is a great case in point. If you go to the Grease website and check out the cast, the first two are Danny and Sandy (in this case, well known Rob Mills and lesser known Greta Scarlett).

The next listed are Anthony Callea/ John Paul Young (both playing the same role in different cities), two lesser known in the roles of Kenickie and Rizo (Rizo was the absolute star in my opinion) and finally Todd McKenny, Val Lehman (from Prisoner) and Bert Newtown. Under these prominent listings it is merely a roll call of everyone else on the show.

Here is the interesting thing, the role Anthony, John Paul Young, and Todd McKenny play is ……. sing one song!

Val Lehman does some great crowd warmup, has about 5 minutes on stage and Bert does similar. In all honesty, Bert struggled with his role.

So the biggest names hardly have anything to do with the show, their main role is “Sell Tickets!”

The show has been a huge success in Melbourne and I have no doubt it is the pulling power of some of these names that has done it.

So how can you add some Grease to your marketing?

Radio Interview on Exhibiting

I was fortunate enough to be one of the guests on Jacki Mitchell’s Taking Care of Business radio program. It is an award winning program that looks at many different aspects of business and what you need to do to stay ahead of the curve.

We were talking about Exhibiting and business in general. Naturally I think it is worth listening to!

You can hear the full show here

Let me know what you think.

Get On Board

I was fortunate enough to have a flight on the new Melbourne Star a couple of weeks ago.

Yes… it is called a flight. For some it is the flight of the Phoenix

Melbourne wheel has a troubled past and there are many who are quick to have a go at it again. It is a spectacular piece of engineering and while it may have its faults, don’t we all?

It will give you a unique perspective on Melbourne and is a bit of fun for the money. In speaking to a couple of random tourists in the area, they raved about it.

My approach is Get On Board.

It is similar to changes in business, changes in the family situation or changes in life.
You can fight the irreversible change, you can whinge and moan about how it will fail or you can embrace it and get on board. You never know what bonus or special surprise you may find.

For the company I was working with (we did it as part of the Sales Conference kickoff) we discovered you had a pretty good view of their head office. Guess where they will be taking their international guests from now on?

So for Melbourne Wheel and other changes thrust upon you, Get On Board.

PS Here are some of the photos you can get at Melbourne Star. Look how excited we were!

Are You On Focus?

Now days with emails, text messages, social media, guru’s popping off the internet left, right and centre, it can be hard to stay focussed on what counts.

I have just come back from 3 days attending and hosting the National Speakers Association of Australia conference. Nearly everyone I spoke to struggled with BSO’s.

Bright Shiny Objects

What about you and what you are working towards? It doesn’t matter if it is a personal or a professional goal, it is too easy to get distracted. So stay on FOCUS.
Stick some posters up of what you want to achieve. Have some accountability buddies to keep you on track. DO WHATEVER IT TAKES.

Protected: Comcater Product Presentations

Is Your Name Up In Lights?

I get asked a lot of questions about Signage and Marketing, particularly in relation to exhibiting and sponsoring events.

I am a fan of signage that is simple, easy to read and has a easy call to action. It HAS to make it EASY to be a customer.

A new form of signage I have come across recently is Hyped Media’s LED Trucks. As you can

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see in the image above, they use digital images (stills and video’s) to promote your business and it’s wares.

While it would be easy to get over excited about how sexy it is, never forget that you need a reason for your signage and you need it to have a great call to action. With technology now, I would strongly look at using in conjunction with a prospects mobile phone.

That is, direct them to the special deal, registration, free download, free app, massive discount, competition or something of great perceived value to your key target market. In the process, they MUST register so you can capture their details and put them in your marketing funnel.

How can you put your name up in lights?

What Are You Talking About?

I am a fan of the following quote:

Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.

It has been attributed to several different people but it speaks to me as being true.

I feel very uncomfortable sitting around with people talking about other people. Sometimes it’s gossip, sometimes it’s praise but it is mostly uncomfortable, particularly if I am the one starting it! (I never said I was perfect!)

What I do know is that discussing ideas can be inspiring. They don’t have to be world breaking ideas, it may be simple principals of business, life, maths or property.

What about you? What are you talking about?

PS Don’t forget the Valentines Day Special To show my love for you I want to give you a MASSIVE discount on the Exhibit Like A Pro 12 Disc pack. You save almost $500 off the RRP.

One of our clients QUADRIPLED their sales after working with us. Would that be good for you?

Find out more detail by going to the product page here.

Happy Valentines!

Is That News?

I have given up watching news bulletins (except for the ABC) and I haven’t bought a paper for years. I know for a fact that I am not alone.

Have you seen what they call news? It’s like a compilation of reality TV, who’s famous for being famous and a horror movie, all wrapped up with a cute story at the end about a tap dancing dog and a funny weather person.

I’m sorry but the world is getting stupid. People now doubt scientifict fact and follow Self Help “Messiah’s” looking for answers.

There is a film released in 2006 called Idiocracy about an “average” guy who goes forward in time 500 years and ends up being the smartest person alive. It’s not the best film but it is becoming scarily prophetic.

The Danish diplomat Edmund Bourke said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” I believe the same can be said for stupidity.

If we hear a falsehood being quoted as fact, why wouldn’t you say something.
If governments are taking action in our name that we know are not based on facts (shark culling, reef dredging and so on) why wouldn’t we at the very least sign a petition to say, “Not in my name.”

I am not attacking any political party and I am not pushing any political agenda. What I am doing is saying, “ENOUGH! I want my brain stimulated and not sedated. I want a world where it is ok to be smart and think for myself.”

What about you?

PS Don’t get me start on the free to air TV “More for You” campaign. Really? More? More predigested rubbish that does nothing for the grey matter but clog it up so Gator Man can use it as bait!