Offer a rock-solid guarantee

Give a rock-solid, iron-clad, easy-to-invoke, no-questions-asked 100% money-back guarantee.

Most customers are honest people who'd just like some reassurance that they are making a good buying decision. So they appreciate the fact that you're reversing the risk, and that makes them more likely to buy in the first place.

Sure, you will get the occasional person who exploits your guarantee. But in most markets, they are the exception, not the norm. You'll get far more sales and greater profits from your guarantee than you'll lose by those who exploit it.

How to get more visitors to your blog

One of my colleagues recently asked me:

"I am getting into my blog. I need assistance in ways I can really "make this fly" as I am realising that it is a great way for me to put my IP into practical use for people. So, I'd like you to visit the blog and then help me find ways to drive people to it."

I replied with a series of suggestions, which I'll share here with some minor editing to preserve confidentiality:

• Every time you write a blog post, tweet it.
• Subscribe to other blogs about [your topic area] and comment on them whenever they mention your topic.
• Find and participate in on-line communities on these topic areas.
• Add the blog address (INSTEAD of your Web site address) to the bottom of your one-page "tip sheets".
• Give these tip sheets away to selected colleagues for them to distribute.
• Link to it from your Web site.
• Make it appear automatically in your Facebook profile.
• Make it appear automatically in your Thought Leaders Central profile.
• Make it appear automatically on your First Step Community profile.
• Add a link to it in your LinkedIn profile.
• Start a group in Thought Leaders Central.
• Incorporate it into some interesting group activity for [a regular networking group he facilitates] (e.g. Print 10 blog posts and use them as starting points for ... ???)
• Go back to recent clients and offer them something similar (probably online).
• Find/start a group about [your topic area] at SpeakerSite.com.

The point is, it's not just one thing. It's about being passionate about your area of expertise, and then you'll naturally find ways to promote your blog.

Manage the information overload with blogging

I was talking to a client recently about managing the information overload. She - like many people - is feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information she has to absorb in order to keep up to date with her area of expertise.

I offered her one suggestion that works for me: I blog a lot.

So how does that help manage the incoming information? (I hear you cry) Well, here's why ...

When I'm reading things, not only am I thinking of improving my own knowledge, I'm thinking of ways to blog about it so other people get the value of that knowledge as well. This means the information is twice as valuable as before. So I'm more motivated to read it, and there's more of an incentive to do so.

One of our jobs as experts is to filter stuff for our clients, discarding most of it and re-packaging what's left in a relevant, meaningful way for them. So look for ways to share whatever you learn with your clients. If you can get paid for doing this, so much the better!

Membership Sites: What's In It for You?

What are the benefits of a membership site? I'll give you six key benefits here.

1. Recurring Income

If you're charging a monthly or annual subscription fee for your membership site, of course one of the biggest benefits is that it gives you a source of recurring income.

2. Market once

When you convince somebody to sign up for your membership site, you can then charge their credit card every month or every year over and over again without having to convince them to re-sign each time. Of course, you have to give them enough value so they won't cancel their subscription. However, the marketing only takes place the first time they sign up.

3. A vehicle for value

If you're an expert in your area, you're always finding new material - reading books and e-books, finding blog posts, finding articles, listening to podcasts, and so on. The membership site gives you a place where you can share that material with your members.

4. Build loyalty

Your membership site builds loyalty because the members remain as your clients and customers. I remember somebody saying once, "The only time clients hear from you is when you send them an invoice". Is that true for you and your clients? If so, a membership site is a wonderful gift to clients, so they look forward to hearing from you regularly.

5. Reward loyalty

Your membership site also rewards loyalty. Members get access to things that non-members don't.

6. Maintain relationships

A membership site helps you maintain relationships. You might consider giving all your clients - or at least your top clients - free membership, just so you can maintain that relationship with them.

The World is Flat - Three Threats and an Opportunity

In Thomas Friedman's book "The World Is Flat", he talks about the growth of the upwardly-mobile middle class, particularly in places like India and China, where millions of people now have the skills, education, money, technology and desire to raise their standard of living. In short, they want what we've got.

This probably isn't news to you. But if you're a professional speaker, trainer, coach or consultant, have you really considered what impact it will have on your business? I reckon it presents three threats and one (big) opportunity.

Threat #1: Your competition just got bigger.

Your competitors are no longer only the people in your own city, state or country. could be experts from anywhere, beamed into conferences, training rooms, networking events and board rooms from the other side of the world.

Threat #2: Your clients just got smarter.

The flip side of this is that your clients are more demanding - and with good reason. Not only do they have a bigger range of speakers to choose from, they also have many other ways of getting the value you deliver. After all, why should they pay for a one-off speech or training course from a local speaker, when for the same money they might be able to watch three TED.com videos, use Open Space Technology to embed the learning, and then use a collaborative workspace to create meaningful action?

Threat #3: Your business probably won't exist in a decade.

Well, not in its current form. There will always be a place for face-to-face communication, of course. And the more you create unique experiences, the more you'll carve out a place for yourself. But your competition will be other experts delivering the same message - and the same value - using e-learning over the Internet. They'll be doing keynotes by video; training by webinars and on-line courses; facilitation through collaborative workspaces; coaching and mentoring by Skype; and consulting using all of the above.

That's the bad news ...

The Big Opportunity: YOU can own this space.

The good news, of course, is that you don't have to take any of this lying down.

You're the expert.
You've got valuable information to share.
You know how to structure it effectively.

Now you just need to learn how to deliver that expertise differently.

E-learning isn't just about automating the delivery of your programs. It's about adding electronic teaching tools to your current offerings.

If you embrace this rather than rejecting it, it opens up - literally - a world of opportunity.

Opportunities for new ways to deliver your message.
Opportunities to reach more people.
And yes, opportunities for greater business success.

The opportunity is there. The choice is yours.

Don't Make It Difficult For Them To Buy

Imagine going to your local supermarket and watching the shoppers. They pick up a shopping cart, wander around the aisles collecting their groceries, and eventually take them to the checkout to pay.

But imagine if two out of three shoppers got to the checkout queue, then suddenly changed their mind and left the store, abandoning their shopping cart full of products.

In the real world, this would be bizarre. Sure, there are valid reasons for this behavior - the queues might be too long, they realized that they've overspent their budget, and so on. But these are the exception rather than the rule.

In most cases, shoppers will dutifully fill their shopping carts and complete the transaction at the checkout.

But it's the other way around in the on-line world. Studies have shown that most shoppers who start buying on a Web site abandon the process before completing it.

Why? The reasons vary, but in most cases it can be summarized as: The Web site makes it too difficult to buy.

Remember that the Internet is probably the least-trusted shopping medium in history. Lots of people are making lots of money from it, but many others lose potential sales because of a poorly-designed ordering system.

Here are some of the dumb things that Web site owners do to annoy, upset and even scare their users:

• Force them to "register" as members before they can buy anything
• Not using a secure server.
• Adding unnecessary steps to what should be a straightforward process.
• Not publishing a clear privacy policy on their Web site.
• Not providing a variety of payment options, especially for people who are worried about giving their credit card details on the Internet.
• Not publishing a telephone number that allows a wary customer to talk to a real person.
• Not publishing a full street address that reassures the customer that this is a legitimate business.
• Assuming that all customers are from the same country, and not providing a handy currency converter for international customers.
• Making it difficult to determine postage and handling costs, or not even publishing them at all.
• Including a whole block of incomprehensible fine print for Terms and Conditions, instead of writing them out in plain, easy-to-read language.
• Not publishing a refund policy, or making it so heavily weighted against the customer that it's a deterrent rather than an incentive.

You've probably seen some of these mistakes already on other Web sites. Make sure that you don't make the same mistakes.

What are your customers really searching for?

When promoting something on the Internet, are you doing it in the way your customers expect it (good) or the way that only suits you (not so good)? I've talked about this before, but it bears repeating because it's a common mistake people make.

Here's a simple and dramatic example: If you teach people how to speak in public, you're more likely to call it "presentation skills" than "public speaking", right? Yet if you compare the two phrases, "public speaking" gets way more searches:



So even if you think "public speaking" sounds too amateurish, swallow your pride and use it - at least in your initial contact with customers. This doesn't apply only to Google searching; it's also the phrase to use on your YouTube videos, your blog posts, your podcast episodes, your Slideshare presentations, and so on.

More importantly, do the research first.