In this article of Tips In Ten, I want to talk about how to get your list: How to start it and how to build it up.

How to start your list
People will exchange their contact information for free information that they feel is helpful and relevant to them. Your job is to create the content and show them why it’s valuable and then make it easy for them to sign up.

The first thing you’ll want to do is think about who your prospects and customers are and consider what they want to know. You likely serve a specific niche and this niche has some problem or need that you fulfill.

While you might have products or services that they pay you for, think about whether there is information they might want for free. What can you give them that they will willingly exchange their contact information for? The most common information delivery methods for your list include:

• An ezine (aka newsletter) or autoresponder
• An ebook
• A whitepaper or report
• Access to an “insiders’ site”

(NOTE: Ezines are fresh issues of content each week and subscribers get whichever one is next when they subscribe, while an autoresponder is a set of emails sent out in a pre-determined order and subscribers always start at #1. You may recall that I cover ezines and autoresponders in previous Tips In Ten issues. What you read there will apply here so check your archives).

Don’t hesitate to get creative here. You don’t have to stick to the ‘norms’. Here are some industry specific ideas:

• Website Designers: Giving away free themes to wWrdpress, or a free plug-in for their site, or a custom code/script for a neat feature/widget to put on their sidebar.

• Salons & Spas: Free Manicure or Pedicure (i.e. gift certificate etc.), Free ‘how to’ do something ebook or white paper – i.e. How to make your own mud mask.

• Author: Free sneak peak at the first chapter of their book (via digital download).

This list of the most common information delivery methods can be mixed and matched to create a really useful, meaningful free offering to people, which will compel them to subscribe.

• The ezine is the most basic form and it’s the easiest to start because you really only need one issue to get going.

• An ebook or report by itself is not a bad idea because it has an attractive amount of information, but it’s just a one-time download. You should think about combining the whitepaper report or ebook with an ongoing form of communication so your list doesn’t forget about you. A whitepaper or report followed by an ezine or autoresponder is a good combination. People sign up for the whitepaper (perhaps a “tell all” report on something your niche is dying to read about) and then you just continue talking to them with an ezine or autoresponder.

• An autoresponder is pretty structured (because it has a pre-determined order). In some ways it’s very useful because you’re always using the content you have written. However, it’s hard to stay timely and relevant that way since one subscriber might get the issue at one point in the year and another will get it later in the year. So if you want to go with a slightly more connected-to-now approach where you can reference the news or a current situation, an ezine might be more appropriate. However, ezine content is used once and then forgotten. Some markets do well with autoresponders (because their content is timeless) while other markets do well with ezines (because their content is very time-sensitive).

• A website that requires someone to sign-up is a good way to build up a list but I’d recommend that you continue to email them something anyway because you want to continue communicating with them and you don’t want to leave it up to them to take the initiative to view the website.

While you are thinking about how you want to deliver your content, think about some type of information that they might want to read. It should be…

• Relate to what you do.
• Valuable to subscribers.
• Something you know or can easily access (while list-building is good, you don’t want to take away too much time from the deliverables you get paid for by doing research on something you don’t know enough about).
• Something other than free versions of the products or services you sell (otherwise, why would they ever buy from you?).
• Something different than what your competitors are offering
• Easily distributed (i.e. via email).

Brainstorm some ideas and, if it contains all six of these qualities, you’ve got a potential winner. If you’ll forgive me talking about myself for a moment, I’ll use these Tips In Ten issues as an illustration: They are related to what I do (business-building productivity), they are of value to subscribers (because they save people time and contain useful information), the topics are things I know (because I never recommend something I don’t already practice), it’s not just a free version of what I do (my coaching is much more in-depth), it’s something different than what my competitors are offering, and it is distributed through email.

Building some critical mass
Once you’ve come up with some ideas, my recommendation is to try and write a few issues of your ezine or try writing your ebook or report. I’ve seen a lot of people who wanted to build a list but they just don’t have the time to write their ezine each week. They invested a lot up-front and then discovered that they didn’t have the time on the back end to continue.

I’d suggest writing a few issues (say, one or two month’s worth) to make sure you have a feel for the workload. This is also helpful to clarify the purpose of your freebie. After writing, you might discover that you need to alter the point of the freebie because it’s too close to what you get paid to do or because it doesn’t differ enough from what your competitor is doing.

It’s also helpful to write a bit just so that you have some critical mass in place early on. You might be working out the kinks of your whole list-building system and you might not have the time to add more content right away.

The technical details
Once you’ve decided on what the freebie is you want to offer to build your list, it’s time to put the details in place. The “big picture” steps are…

1.    Set aside the page on your website (or buy a domain if you want it on a separate page).
2.    Add content giving your potential subscribers a reason to subscribe.
3.    Go to an email marketing provider like Aweber.com or ConstantContact.com or 1ShoppingCart.com to sign up.
4.    You’ll get a snippet of code you can add to your site and this will embed the sign-up form on your website that your users need to enter their name and email address.
5.    Upload your written content (your ezine or your autoresponder) into the email marketing provider’s interface and schedule them according to how you want them to be distributed.

(Again, you can get more details from the previous Tips In Ten articles on autoresponders and ezines if you’re not sure of the difference or want more details about how to do the steps above).

Reducing your workload
These steps will take more than ten minutes to implement but the point of this Tips In Ten is to show you something quickly that will have a dramatic impact on your business. If you’re busy (and I know you are), consider delegating or outsourcing some of the work and dividing up the steps above into ten minute tasks over a week or two.

In the next article of Tips In Ten, I’ll talk about some do’s and don’ts for building your list and I’ll help you to make your list even more effective and responsive to you.

Related posts:

1. The Power of a List: Part 3
2. The Power of a List: Part 1
3. Ezines in 10 Minutes a Day- Part 2 – Picking your Software

In talking to colleagues who are also consultants, many have admitted to me that sometimes they lose potential business simply because they have several outstanding proposals that they need to write, but not enough time in which to write them. So this Tips In Ten is designed to help you:

• Find the balance between spending a little bit of time creating a proposal – just enough to provide insightful recommendations but not enough to lose hours of your day every day

• Keep your business proposal writing process efficient so that you can generate plenty of proposals and get a good stream of prospects turning into customers.

This process will require a series of ten minute efforts. There are a few steps up-front that you will do one time, and that way you only have to spend 2 or 3 days (just ten minutes each day) on the proposal itself.

Size does matter

I have seen (and written) really, really long proposals. They look good and make the proposer seem like a genius. But unless the project is a multimillion dollar long term NASA rocket-building program, there’s no need for such a long proposal. If you serve small to mid-size business clients, a small proposal will work fine. They’ll appreciate and read a smaller proposal.

I have a template that is about 5 pages long, and once you add content it can get up to 10 pages. Ten pages is my absolute max and I’d prefer to send a proposal that is 5-6 pages over a 10 pager. I’ve also seen proposals that are 1 page long. (In fact, the book The One-Page Proposal: How to Get Your Business Pitch onto One Persuasive Page by Patrick G. Riley is worth the read, even if you end up writing longer proposals).

Proposals of 1 page get read and there is enough information for many businesses to make a decision. I’ve found that I often need to follow up that proposal with other information (such as supporting documentation or a time-line) which is why I tend to write proposals that are 5-10 pages in length – I just want a bit more detail earlier in the process.

Up-front proposal creation – Duration: 10 minutes

The first thing you’ll want to do is create a template for your proposals. I recommend that people start with a fairly standard proposal format and modify it over time based on your business, your industry, and feedback from your audience. (For example, if everyone is asking you the same question over and over, that should be a big, fat hint that you need to put the answer into your proposal.)

I like the very solution-focused format of:

• Executive Summary
• Key Needs & Desired Outcomes
• Our Solution
• Next Steps

This may or may not work for your situation, although I’ve found that it is a good, easy-to-use system to start with (but you may modify yours over time). If I add a cover and try to keep each of the above 4 headings to just one page, I end up with a 5 page proposal. In my experience, the Solution section tends to be 2-3 pages because I like to add the steps, the time-line, and the cost. In some circumstances, I have added another page between “Our Solution” and “Next Steps” where I”ve outlined cost and time-line, but I’ve only done that separately in situations where I wanted a really detailed outline or I felt that the return on investment for the potential client needed to be more clearly highlighted.

So, open a Word document and spend 10 minutes creating a nice-looking proposal that includes a cover page, some branding, and those headings – one per page. Oh, and in many cases I use a fairly standard “Next Steps” page that includes a customizable sign-off and some contact information (so if you finish that page now, you may not have to write it again).

Up-front additional content development – Duration: 10 minutes

Next, you may want to pull together information that you think will help to support your position. I have a few pieces, but most of my additional resources are linked from the proposal to the web. A colleague of mine, though, has lots of downloadable stuff and he keeps it all consistently branded and sorted in the right filenames, so he can attach his proposal and the correct supporting documents quickly.

Okay, this might take more than 10 minutes if you have a lot of material but if you only have one or two pieces it won’t take long. Break it up over a couple of days if you need to.

That”s the up-front work you need to do. Now we get down to the actual proposal writing when you get a request for proposal.

Creating a proposal, day 1 – Duration: 10 minutes

Now, you”re ready to create a proposal. How you find out about the proposal doesn’t matter. Maybe you use a site that offers requests for proposal (RFPs) such as Guru.com or Elance.com (for freelancers), government RFP sites, job boards with contract positions, etc. Or, maybe someone just calls you up out of the blue and asks for one.

So, after you’ve reviewed the project details, sit down and write the Key Needs and Desired Outcomes page. This really does only take ten minutes. If it takes you longer, you’re spending too much time on it! Your potential customers usually know what many of their problems are, so the “key needs” section isn’t for their information but merely to show that you know. (And if you discern that they have additional key needs that they don’t realize, this isn’t the place to announce those things anyway).

That’s all you need to do on day 1. Now just let it percolate in your brain overnight. Chances are, you already know a few of the solutions you’re likely to offer but it doesn’t hurt to give yourself some extra time to sleep on it.

Creating a proposal, day 2 – Duration: 10 minutes

Now that you’ve had some time to sleep on it, write down your solutions. In many cases, that fastest way to do this is to create a 3-column or 4-column chart.

• f I’m giving the client one single package of services with one price, my chart will simply have 3 columns: Solution, Details, and Time-line, and I’ll summarize the price in a paragraph at the end.

• If I’m giving my client several options from which they can pick and choose (or if they have a budget but I don’t know the details), I will use 4 columns: Solution, Details, Timeline, and Price.

The Solution column simply names the solution: “Telephone Coaching”, for example. The Details column does two things: First it gives more detail about the telephone coaching in bullet points (“prescheduled”; “once a week”; “3 hour time blocks”). Second, it aligns the solution with desired outcome. So, for example, in a bullet or two I’ll show how telephone coaching aligns with the client’s desired outcome of better productivity. Maybe I’ll say something like: “Learn ongoing tools in an encouraging, guiding environment” or something related to an outcome mentioned earlier.

The time-line and (if included) price columns are fairly self explanatory. Be as detailed as you need to be. If you have just one deliverable, write just one due date into the time-line column. But if you have more, write more in the column.

Since you already know your solutions and you’ve had some time to think about what solutions will work best for your new client, you may only need ten minutes here. If you need longer, of course you should take it. However, the more you write proposals and the longer you’re in business, the faster you’ll get at identifying solutions to customer problems.

Wrap and send, day 3 – Duration: 10 minutes

On the third day, spend ten minutes proofreading everything and writing an executive summary. Keep the executive summary short and don’t say anything in it that you don’t say elsewhere. (It”s a SUMMARY). I’d suggest just two paragraphs of summary – perhaps three paragraphs for a 10 page proposal, but don’t do much more than that!

Once you’ve done all that, proofread it one more time (or get someone else, like a virtual assistant to proofread and send out the proposal).

That’s it! Effective, results-generating proposals in small, actionable 10 minute steps. It’s worth the time to do the up-front work and then to create shorter, semi-customized proposals. Soon, you’ll be proposing on more projects than you thought possible! Better go back and read the time management Tips In Ten so you can find the time to handle more work.

Related posts:

1. Creating Requests of Proposals that Get Results…
2. Nine Tips for a More Successful Business
3. The Secret Sauce for a Successful Business

1. They could go out and generate more leads and, simply because sales is “a numbers game”, they would convert more prospects into customers. This is a good strategy but time consuming (usually because prospecting is a resource-intensive effort).

2. They could generate more revenue dollars per existing customer by developing add-ons like upsells and ancillary sales. This is a good way to do less work and earn more money from each customer.

But there are other ways to sell more. Two more I’d like to cover today are related: Generating more revenue without doing more prospecting. One way is through repeat sales and the other way is from referral sales.

Repeat sales

Repeat sales is when your customers buys from you once… then buys from you again. This makes your profit much higher because you didn’t have to spend a lot of money to market to that customer to convince them to buy. If you’ve ever bought more than once from any company, you have improved their bottom line dramatically.

Referral sales

Referral sales is when your customers love you so much that they refer their friends and family to you. A word-of-mouth referral from a trusted friend or family member is the most valuable form of marketing there is. Consumers can be cynical of sales pitches because we live in a world that overwhelms people with marketing messages. But a referral cuts through those messages and encourages people to buy. And, these can be higher profit customers for you because you didn’t need to market to them either. If you’ve ever bought anything because a friend gave it a glowing report then you have taken part in referral marketing.

By ramping up your repeat and referral sales with intentional programs, you can increase the amount that you sell while decreasing your expensive marketing and time-consuming prospecting… and that means more profit for you. (You won’t want to eliminate them altogether but you can reduce them slightly).

Here’s how to do that. Up-front it might take slightly longer than ten minutes to put the programs into place but, once they are in place, you only need to spend about 10 minutes per day managing them.

Start now by thinking about who your current customers are and what they buy. The more you think about this, the more effective the rest of this effort will be. Ask yourself:

• What is their demographic?
• What motivates them to buy?
• What else do they buy?
• What needs do they have in my life that they fulfill with my products and services and with the products of other businesses?

Once you’ve spent some time thinking about this, you’re ready to create ways to sell more through repeat and referral business.

Repeat business is slightly easier to do because it’s often simply a matter of finding something else that you offer that your existing customers need. But here’s what takes ten minutes a day: Don’t wait for them to come shopping at your business. Instead, take ten minutes and proactively think about and then recommend something that they might find valuable.

In many businesses, these ten minutes might be spent on a single customer in which you think about their needs and then decide how one of your products or services fits. In some cases (especially in low ticket retail situations), it might take less time, but if you spend 10 minutes on a single customer to figure out what they need and how to present it to them, you’ll be fine. Most of the subscribers to this email are in the kinds of businesses that can spend 10 minutes on a single customer.

And here’s the result: With just 10 minutes per day, you’ll be presenting your solution to someone who has already bought from you and who trusts you. They know the value you deliver. And if you do this every week day, you’ll present an additional 261 products or services to people who are more likely to buy from you. (When I say more likely to buy I mean that people who have never bought from you before might convert from prospects to customers at, say, 5%, which means that 5% of your pitches will sell. But presenting your solutions to existing customers might create additional sales volume among that group of a much higher percentage; say, 15% or 20% of your pitches might sell; perhaps even more.).

So, let’s do the math on this. Let’s say that each month you have 100 prospects and you convert 5% of them and earn $1,000 each. That means you’ll have 5 customers and you’ll earn $5,000 which was an expensive $5,000 to get because you had to market to those 100 prospects. Over the year, you earn that steady rate and make a respectable $60,000.

Now it’s time to add in repeat sales. If you take ten minutes and pitch to one of your customers each day, and you convert them (at a higher percentage) of one per week, you’ll have an additional 52 sales per year. If those sales each bring in $500, that’s an extra $26,000. And guess what: More of that $26,000 is profit because you didn’t spend a lot of time or money on marketing!

So, how do you get more repeat business?

• Start by making unsolicited recommendations. If you’ve added good value in the past your customers will appreciate that you’re thinking about them, even if they don’t buy from you.

• Some business might want to implement a popular type of system: The buy ten get one free. We’ve all seen this in retail, fast food, and auto maintenance situations but there’s no reason why it can’t work in other places.

• Create an “insiders club” in which frequent buyers get ongoing discounts (which might still be more profitable to you than if you marketed your business to new customers).

Referral sales are similar. Referral sales are successful because people tend to hang out with people like themselves. Soccer moms have soccer mom friends. Newly married couples have friends who are also newly married. Small business owners talk to small business owners. Empty nesters spend time with empty nesters. If you target your products and services to a specific demographic, you’ll increase your likelihood of sales to that demographic through referral sales.

It works because, over coffee, one entrepreneur will say to another, “I’ve noticed that your business really took off this month. What happened?” And the other would reply, “I’ve been working with Jim’s Business Consulting”. Voila. Referral.

As a business owner, you need to do what you can to encourage these. These are difficult to implement and difficult to monitor but there are a few things you can do.

• Invite customers to give you the name and contact information of their peers. Note: This is difficult to do and it’s not always met with enthusiasm my customers but it is a mainstay in the financial services industry and there must be a reason why they continue to use it.

• Hand out coupons with a special customer-specific code on each one. When they hand them to their friends and their friends use those coupons, you’ll be able to track with “source” customer handed out the original coupon and you can reward that existing customer with some kind of bonus, discount, or kick-back. This is a great way to build your business but you do need a system that can track these things.

• Simply ask new customers who walk through the door, “how did you hear about us?” and keep track of the people who say, “I heard about you from my friend”.

As you can tell, these will take ten minutes or less each day simply because they are so fast once your referral program is up and running.

Ultimately, to get the most repeat business and referral business in just ten minutes a day is to spend that daily 10 minutes ensuring that you add LOTS of extra value for every single customer. When you do that, you will become invaluable to your customers and they will naturally buy from you again and tell other people about you.

Related posts:

1. Mastering Sales and Selling More -Part 1
2. Mastering Google AdWords in 10 Minutes – Part 1
3. Mastering Google AdWords in 10 Minutes – Part 2

There are a few ways that you can sell more. Obviously you can go out there and “pound the pavement” to generate more leads. Then, without changing a single aspect of your business, you will sell more because of the magic of numbers.

If you had 100 prospects one month and converted 5% of them into customers, then in the next month you found a way to generate 150 leads and you still converted only at 5%, you’d grow your sales from 5 customers to 7 or 8 customers!

Finding ways to get more prospects and sell to them makes sense. But it’s not the only way to sell more. In this issue of Tips In Ten, and in the next issue, we’ll look at a few ways to sell more without actually doing any more prospecting.

The big secret is not really a secret at all: You need to simply earn more money from your current customer base. No, I’m not talking about raising your prices. I’m talking about selling more stuff.

In this article, we’ll look at upselling and ancillary sales. These are similar, but there are differences and you might find that implementing one in your business is easier than the other. However, if you can implement both, you should consider it.

Upselling

Upselling is when you offer the customer the ability to add more value to their purchase by extending it in some way. If you’ve ever gone into McDonald’s and they offered to “supersize” your meal, you’ve just been offered an upsell. For a few cents more, you get what is perceived as a higher value product.

Ancillary sales

Ancillary sales are when you offer the customer additional products or services that add more value and enhance how they use the original product or service. When you go into the gas station to fill up and they offer to check your oil (and add more) they are selling you an ancillary product.

One industry that does both upselling and ancillary sales is the car rental industry. Last time I went to rent a car, they tried to upsell me into a larger vehicle for just a few dollars more. And, they offered me their rental insurance to provide me with a $0 deductible on collision.

Another industry that does both upselling and ancillary sales is the credit card industry. The credit card companies might offer a no-fee introductory card but try to “upsell” customers into fee-based cards that have additional value. And, they offer ancillary products when they sell you insurance that will pay your credit card bills if you lose your job.

So, how can you offer this in your business?

And, how do you do it in ten minutes?

Finding upsells in ten minutes

First, I’d suggest that you take 10 minutes right now and think about what kind of upsell opportunities you can offer your customers. This is wide open and depends so much on the product or service you currently offer them. Think about if there is a way that you can give them additional value but increase the rate by less than the normal scale.

For example, if you are a graphic designer and you charge $75/hour for a project, you might sell someone a 3 hour project at $75 but then “upsell” them by offering them a 4th hour for $50 in which you will redesign their business cards.

Brainstorm different ways to offer “supersized” versions of your products or services. Granted, this won’t always be easy (and it might not be appropriate for your situation) but it’s a great way to add just a little extra income. See what your competition is doing for upsells. And, don’t forget to look outside of your industry for inspiration.

Note: Upselling might not be appropriate if you are swamped with work. That’s because it doesn’t make much sense to offer a “value added discount” to someone when a pay-in-full customer would take their place. Ancillary products might be the better choice.

Finding ancillary products in ten minutes

In a similar way, take 10 minutes right now and think about what kind of ancillary opportunities you can offer your customers. These will likely be some kind of product rather than a service. (It’s not out of the question to offer a service except that a service will take some of your time to deliver so it’s less profitable for you). Are there products that someone could buy from you that would help them to get more out of the products or services you offer?

For example, if you’re a coach and you give one-on-one coaching to clients, perhaps an ancillary product to sell would be a transcript and an MP3 recording of your call with them. There are other products that take longer to develop but this one is a great example of an ancillary product that is fast and inexpensive to produce.

For many small businesses and freelancers, information publishing and instant downloads will really help because they allow the customer to receive immediate acquisition of an ancillary product rather than forcing them to wait.

Selling these upsells and ancillary products in just 10 minutes a day

Well, that subtitle is a little misleading. It should actually take you less than 10 minutes a day. All you do is simply present an offer every time a new customer buys from you. (Some people even go so far as to present an offer every time they talk to a customer). Since offering them something only takes a few seconds, you’ll easily sell more in far less than 10 minutes a day.

Keep your offer fairly light and focused on the benefits. After all, you don’t want to drive them away from the entire purchase just because you were offering something extra! For upsells, try saying something like, “I can give you that widget for $50 but if you want a slightly bigger one, I’ll give you a deal on it for $60.” Or, for ancillary products, try saying something like, “I’m happy to deliver that widget for you. By the way, if you wanted to get more out of your widget, I also offer this gadget for $5 and it can turn your widget any color you want.”

You don’t even have to be involved in offering these upsells or ancillary products. Many website shopping carts and ecommerce systems have built in functionality to allow for upsells and ancillary sales. If you’re using a shopping cart or ecommerce system, find out if it has that functionality and put it to use. Then, you’ll be upselling and making ancillary sales in zero minutes a day!

Related posts:

1. Mastering Sales and Selling More – Part 2
2. Mastering Google AdWords in 10 Minutes – Part 1
3. Mastering Google AdWords in 10 Minutes – Part 2

In this Tips in Ten, I’d like to give you a quick review of the top autoresponder programs out there to help you decide which one is best for you.

There are five big autoresponder systems out there, although you might find other ones that suit your needs but aren’t listed here. I’m going to give you a neutral review of all five and then later I’ll tell you which ones I use and why.

I’ve highlighted some of the features of each service, as well as the prices, but be aware that this information is relevant at the time of this writing. If you archive this email and read it later, the features or prices might have changed! Also, I’ve done my best to make the comparisons as “apples-to-apples” as possible to help you decide which one is right for you. Oh, and I should mention that my pricing metric is based on 5,000 to 10,000 emails as much as possible, but there are some exceptions as noted. (Note: I encourage you to visit each systems website, as these details are not exhaustive, each has many more features than listed here)

Constant Contact:

• What do they do: Constant Contact lets you create autoresponders to stay in touch with your audience, as well as online surveys to generate information and interaction from your website’s users
• Experience: They have worked with 275,000 small businesses and organizations.
• Pricing (http://www.constantcontact.com/pricing/pricing-plans.jsp): Send 5,000 – 10,000 emails per month for $75/month
• What makes them different: These are seasoned pros and have been leading the industry for a few years.

Aweber:

• What do they do: Aweber lets you create email newsletters and autoresponders for your audience, and they also let you turn your RSS feeds into emails that can be sent out to subscribers.
• Experience: They’ve been in business since 1998 and are one of the originals.
• Pricing (http://www.aweber.com/pricing.htm): 5,000 – 10,000 emails per month for $69/month.
• What makes them different: This company is the granddaddy of autoresponder systems.

Icontact:

• What do they do: Icontact allows you to generate surveys, autoresponder messages, and convert your RSS feeds to regular emails.
• Experience: They have over 51,000 customers.
• Pricing (http://www.icontact.com/pricing): 5,000 – 10,000 emails per month for $47/month:
• What makes them different: This company has enterprise partnerships available for people who have over 100,000 email addresses to send to.

1Shoppingcart:

• What do they do: 1shoppingcart offers email marketing services like autoresponders, but it also offers powerful ecommerce solutions like a shopping cart and credit card transactions, too.
• Experience: In terms of ecommerce shopping carts, this is THE company that defines the industry.
• Pricing (http://www.1shoppingcart.com/shopping-cart-features.asp): Their autoresponder-only package (which allows for a database of 10,000 people) is $29/month but you can get a much more robust system for $99/month which includes an ecommerce suite, too.
• What makes them different: This company combines a powerful ecommerce system with their autoresponder system.

Vertical response:

• What do they do: Vertical response is a mix of online and offline services, allowing users to send email newsletters, offer online surveys, and send direct mail postcards.
• Experience: I’m not clear on how long they’ve been in business or exactly how many customers they’ve helped but they say “tens of thousands” of customers.
• Pricing (http://www.verticalresponse.com/pricing/): 4,000 to 8,000 emails per month is $72/month and 8,000 to 16,000 emails per month is $120/month.
• What makes them different: This company mixes online and offline marketing together and they claim that they were founded to provide better customer service than their competitors.

There are other systems, too, so I could write all day about them; companies like StreamSend and Infusionsoft are 2 others that are popular. I just listed the ones that are among the most popular and useful but if you have the time and want to continue hunting, you will find many more. However, in my opinion, stick with one of the ones I’ve mentioned above and you’ll be working with a company that has the critical mass of customers and revenue to be able to help you.

It’s also worth mentioning what is common across all five of these providers: When your marketing newsletter is successful, they will be successful (and earn more money) so they provide you with a lot of really useful information on how to get your emails delivered, what to do about spam, how to avoid being mistaken for spam, how to write emails that get read and saved, and so on. They also all provide some form of email tracking so you can see who has opened their emails and who hasn’t, who has forwarded emails, and how often links inside of emails have been clicked.

Ultimately, you want to consider this: Why are you going to use an autoresponder? When you know that, you’ll figure out which service to use. Here are some thoughts on choosing:

• Don’t automatically jump into one based solely on price. I’ve listed the prices above to compare but there are many other factors that might influence the price. Perhaps a level of service between one and another will impact the price, for example. If you just want to send out autoresponders and have no plans for anything else, then you might compare by price; but first consider all the services available.

• If an online and offline mix of marketing (including direct mail postcards) is something you’d like to do, then Vertical Response might be the service for you. (However, don’t rule out using another service for direct mail marketing – like my favorite SendOutCards. (Note: You need a sponsor to enroll in send out cards, my sponsorship code is: r90776.)

• If you want to integrate your autoresponder and an ecommerce solution, 1shoppingcart might be the right service for you.

• Figure out how many people are in your database, and how many more you’ll realistically add over the next few years, and use that as the apples-to-apples metric to determine the price-to-service ratio you’re looking for.

• Each one of these systems also let’s you send out Broadcasts (non-autoresponder Emails)

And now the million dollar question: What system do I use?

Before I tell you that, let me say that I have used all 5 in some way, shape, or form. (That doesn’t mean that I’ve sent autoresponders from all of them but I have used them in some way; perhaps through the work I do with clients or for some of their other services).

I currently like and use 2 programs: Aweber and 1Shoppingcart.

I use Aweber for a few of my sites in which a newsletter is the only email marketing item in the sales process. On these sites, I’m not capturing emails to do other kinds of marketing or to ultimately promote a product or service. When I’m ONLY planning on delivering newsletters, I use Aweber. Aweber is easy to use, priced fairly, and exactly what I need for newsletters.

I use 1Shoppingcart for occasions when I want to do some email marketing but I also plan on possibly (either now or in the future) marketing services to that list of people. When I was deciding between systems, I looked ahead into the future and realized that there was value for me in selecting one system that did both the autoresponders I needed at the time as well as an ecommerce system that I would use (and subsequently, I have been using) to sell products on my sites. That way, I didn’t have to get one system then and later get another system. It was a “two-for-one” deal in my opinion. I saved time on implementation. I like the long list of services that 1shoppingcart offers, which have always been more than adequate for my needs: http://www.1shoppingcart.com/internet-marketing-tools.asp.

However, just because I chose those two, doesn’t mean that they are right for you. So, take 10 minutes right now and think about what you want in an autoresponder system… both now AND in the future. Then, tomorrow, take ten minutes and revisit each site to see if it has the solutions you want at the price you want to pay. In fact, it might be worth taking ten minutes each day until the next issue of Tips In Ten to decide what you want and click around in each site.

In the upcoming Tips in Ten I’m going to show you how to create an autoresponder, and in a couple of weeks I’ll show you how you can make money from it!

Related posts:

1. Ezines in 10 Minutes a Day – Part 3 – Scheduling & Writing
2. Ezines in 10 Minutes a Day – Part 4 – Making Money from Your Ezines
3. Ezines in 10 Minutes a Day- Part 1 – The Purpose

In the earlier days of the web, business websites were relatively static: Organizations would put up a site and people would come and look at the site if they were interested in the product or service. If they weren’t interested, they wouldn’t look. It was like having a brochure of your services on your prospect’s coffee table.

But the web grew up. (That is: It grew up a little although no one is suggesting that it has matured; it’s still growing). Part of that evolution meant increased interactivity between the business and the customer. And, the business soon learned that one way to keep a customer coming back to their site – even when they weren’t actively shopping – was to offer fresh content. Additionally, fresh content helped to earn search engine love.

Enter blogs, stage right. Blogs are a way to create a web presence easily, connect with prospects and customers, and encourage them to think about your business even when they’re not shopping. Instead of a brochure on their coffee table, it’s like having a magazine on their coffee table – something that they’ll flip through from time to time (which subtly promotes you).

Businesses of all sizes are using blogs as a key customer-connection tool.

Blogging is a great way to connect and interact with customers without taking a lot of time in your day. As you blog regularly about engaging topics, your readership will build and you’ll enjoy more readers (and, subsequently, more clients). But it takes time and consistency.

So, how do you blog? And, how do you blog regularly in only 10 minutes a day?

First, you’ll need a blog. There are some free options out there, which are okay, but a business running a website on a free host may seem less legitimate to a customer than a business running a website with its own domain. So, for a relatively small sum of money, you can set up a hosted blog with your own custom domain. There are sites like GoDaddy.com or Register.com that sell domains and hosting and you just buy them and put them all together and build a site.

Creating a blog will take more than 10 minutes, but once you have one, you only need ten minutes a day to blog.

So, once you have your blog, here is how to become a blogging master in just 10 minutes a day.

Start with a plan. Think about the range of topics related to your business and industry that your prospects and customers would be interested in reading about. Make a big list.

Then, schedule 10 minutes a day to blog. Scheduling is an important factor because lots of blogs are started with great vision but die quickly because the blog owner neglected to maintain his or her blog. Regular writing is paramount.

“What do I write about?” is always a perennial question asked by new bloggers. One of the easiest things to do is to find someone else’s writing on your topic, link to it, and then give your opinion. Blogging can be informative and professional, but it is also successful when your personality shines through.

So, bookmark other blogs about your topic, follow people on Twitter who are talking about your topic, look in article distribution sites (just Google “free articles” to find them), subscribe to newsletters, read Google News and subscribe to Google Alerts (which is a free service where Google emails news articles to you on keywords you specify). Within a day or two of doing this, you should have plenty of material to choose from.

After you’ve created a list of sources, here’s what’s next: During your scheduled 10 minutes of blogging, sit down and scan some of the content you’ve received. Find something you can blog about and read it. Then either embed it in your blog or summarize it, depending on the copyright permissions. If you can embed it, do so (article distribution sites and many blogs and news agencies give you an option to do this with their content). If you can’t embed it, summarize it in a paragraph and reference it appropriately with a link.

Then, after you’ve either embedded the article or summarized it, give your opinion.

Here’s an example of something I read and summarized then added my opinion:

The Bloomberg article “General Motors Bondholders Clears Path to Bankruptcy says NYT” shows us just how dire things have become in the automotive industry. The article discusses what’s next for GM. The bottom line: It will be controlled by the US government (with others, like the Canadian government) buying in as well. My take? Not that long ago, everyone would have loved to see more privatization of business. I would have been right there with them. Today, that cry for privatization is softened because of the wheezing and sputtering of the largest industry in North America. No one wants to think about what life would be like if it does collapse. But I wonder: If the government own GM and it is elected by the people, does that mean we own GM? Next time I’m shopping for a new car, I’m going to tell the salesperson that I’m a part-owner of the company and see if I get a discount.

See? Easy!

One paragraph summarizing the article. One paragraph of your opinion. Hit “post” and repeat tomorrow. If you stay current on your industry anyway, it will probably take you less than 10 minutes.

Bonus Tip:

Of course, you won’t always want to do this. It’s nice to build up a bank of articles that will publish while you’re busy or on vacation. Many blogging systems will allow you to pre-write and schedule blog posts. So, although most of your blogs are going to be fresh and “newsy”, think about some ongoing “evergreen” topics that you can write about. Here are some ideas you might consider:

• Book reviews. Find a book you enjoyed, write a review, link to it on Amazon.com, and schedule the blog for the future.

• Featured clients. If appropriate, write a brief blurb about your client and link to their site.

• Highlight special days. Write blogs about all the big days of the year – Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc., and don’t forget about important days in your business’ calendar.

You can probably think of others that fit in this list, too. One colleague of mine keeps 4 lists:

1.    A series of topics he can write about for the entire year, including book reviews and client testimonials.
2.    A series of topics that he can schedule for the next quarter. These are “bigger picture” content that won’t change much. For example, he might include industry analysis.
3.    A series of topics that he can schedule for the month. This includes content about clients and market trends.
4.    And lastly, a series of fresh and news-related topics that he can draw from daily (as I’ve outlined above).

With this material planned and pre-written, he can walk away from his blog for a couple of weeks and it will still post daily. In fact, he has material that will post automatically 2 or 3 times a weekly for the next 12 months. Of course, he’s not going to walk away from his blog for 12 months (and you shouldn’t either) but having some buffer blogs, and timeless articles “seeded” through your publishing calendar are helpful for those busy times.

Related posts:

1. MORE Blogging in 10 Minutes a Day
2. Comments and How They can Make You More Successful (In Just 10 Minutes) – Part 2
3. Successful Business Proposals in Just Ten Minutes a Day

There are many different ways to save time in your day and you can read through some of my blog archives to find advice on ways to actively manage your time better. But what I’m going to show you today is an extremely easy way to save time, reduce your sales effort, and make more sales… all with just one small change on your website.

The change I’m suggesting is simple: Put your prices on your website. I know there is plenty of debate from both sides of the camp – those who think you should put your prices on your website and those who think you shouldn’t.

There are valid arguments to suggest why you shouldn’t put your prices on your website: Perhaps you feel that it commoditizes what you do and you prefer to create custom packages unique to each client rather than offering an a la carte option. Or maybe you bill based on the value you provide someone so you can’t easily put a dollar figure on your website. I understand those reasons and my suggestion won’t work for everyone.

But here’s why I suggest you do try to put your prices on your website:

1.    It will save you time: The sales process can be a time consuming process in which you woo customers and convince them to buy from you. Along the way, you’re going to meet prospects who want to buy from you but who simply can’t afford (or don’t want to pay) what you’re asking. It’s better to find out sooner than later and let them take themselves out of the running before you put too much time and energy into them.

2.    It will shorten your sales process. That’s because you are getting the entire price-conversation cycle out of the way for many of your prospects. Rather than building up your value in their minds and then going back and forth on price, you present your price early and eliminate that discussion from your process.

3.    It will help you to get more sales. There are two reasons why it will help you do this: First, price is a positioning point. So if you’re a low-cost provider and your prospects see this on your site, they’ll be more likely to act rather than wondering how much you’ll charge. The same is true for any other price point you’re using. The second reason it will help you to get more sales is because people who get this far into the sale with the full-knowledge of your price are going to have fewer objections when you ask them to buy. And, since your sales process is faster anyway (see #2), you’ll potentially be moving more people through your sales funnel.

Now, to be fair, I will mention that those who disagree with this method will say that you can drive people away because your price is different than what they were expecting. My response is drawn from my experience. I’ve found that there are usually two kinds of customers in this situation:

Those who would have been driven away anyway because of your prices when you do finally reveal them and those who are driven away because they didn’t connect the value you offer with the price you’ve posted.

But the good news is: That second group of people are easy to recapture by making sure that you are very explicit about the value you provide to your clientele.

It seems like such a small change but it can save you time and earn you so many more sales simply by posting your prices on your website!

Happy Blogging!

Related posts:

1. Time Off: Do Small Business Owners Get Any?
2. Building and Maintaining a Compelling Website in Just 10 Minutes a Day
3. 5 Things You Need to Do In Your Small Business Right Now

This week’s mindmap category branch is labeled “Promotion (Other)” which is an awkwardly broad category that I was tempted to skip over and deal with another day. There’s nothing wrong with the content, I have an aversion to “other” and “miscellaneous” categories.

In this branch of the Social Media Framework map, the map’s creator lists 3 subcategories: Events, FriendFeed, and PR.

Events: I really like that events are listed in this social media map. Events are way more interesting when they are social. For example, people tweet about a conference or convention, or when they have a tweetup; it helps inform and connect people who can’t make it to the event. The framework lists 4 sites where people can post their events. (BTW, while checking out each site, I found a great wine-lovers’ event nearby that I might check it out). This could be a really good way for you to meet new prospects:

• Pick a topic or type of meeting that your potential customers will be drawn to. It could be a seminar-style information-sharing meeting or it could be more of a one-on-one meet and greet.

• Find a place that you can test it out (and make sure it’s appropriate to the type of meeting you’re offering: Your local library might have really affordable meeting rooms that you can use. If you want a more casual meeting place, reserve a table at a restaurant.Prepare your content AND prepare for contingencies. Be ready with one kind of meeting in case you have a few people who show up all at once and another kind of meeting in case you have just one or two people show up or if people come and go at different times.

• Post your show and see what happens. If lots of people show up, do it again. If no one shows up, try it one more time at a different time or day.

FriendFeed Room: This is an interesting idea and very social. It’s a place where others can join you to talk, brainstorm, and share. It’s kind of like an open-invitation Google Wave or a slightly more robust Facebook Groups page. I’ve never used a FriendFeed Room but it’s a good idea and worth exploring (although I’d probably end up using a Facebook Group page myself).

Press Releases: Press Releases have turned social. The map lists 3 press release distribution sites (of which PRWeb is my favorite) for more traditional press releases and it lists social press release sites PitchEngine and Pressit. These are social because comments can be attached and because they don’t blast out to the world but are rather carefully released to social networks of your choosing. Here are a couple of press release tips to remember:

• Press releases are news so make sure that you have something newsworthy before you write your press release. This is the key reason why press releases are rejected.
• Keep your press release shorter – to 500 words or so – because people don’t want to read longer press releases.
• A mix of conventional and social press releases is, in my opinion, the perfect blend of PR.
• Include press releases at regular intervals (at least once a month) for maximum benefit.

If you’re promoting an event, or any other aspect of your business, this Social Media Framework mindmap has some good places to go. But they are just scratching the surface, I think. I’d love to hear your recommendations: Where do you announce your events? Where have you seen successful press release distributions?

Good luck!

Related posts:

1. Creating Powerful Press Releases in 10 Minutes a Day
2. Focus to Move Forward
3. “What Should I Do?” – Livecasting

Relationships take time to nurture and grow. Even if you believe in love at first sight, there was probably a period of time where your relationship grew from awkward and shy to more trusting and comfortable. And we’re not just talking about romantic relationships or friendships, but this is also true for customers as well.

There is a point in between the face-in-the-crowd stage and the “I’m-ready-to-become-a-customer” stage. That’s the prospect stage where someone has somehow indicated that they might be interested in hearing more about your offer from you (but you haven’t convinced them to buy yet).

In the prospect stage, as you are presenting them with your sales pitch and your winningest smile, it’s easy to talk about the benefits and features of your product or service:

• “You’ll be more successful as a result of my coaching”
• “Your satisfaction is fully guaranteed or I’ll refund 100% of your money”
• “Compared to our competitors, our prices offer higher value and we have more attractive payment terms.”

… you get the idea. We tend to focus on the specifics of what we can do for them. That’s important to do. It’s a good sales practice. But it’s easy to miss some of the other questions that are going through their mind… and they are questions that they might not even realize they have!

They’re wondering about your…

• Responsiveness: Are you going to return emails? Phone calls? IMs? Tweets? What’s your policy on this? Will they need to wait a week to hear back from you?

• Dependability: Do you actually do what you say? Or are you just like all of the others out there who say one thing but can’t deliver?

• Authority: Are you qualified? There are lots of people who can spin any background into a qualification. Is your authority credible?

• Longevity: If they buy from you today, will you still be around tomorrow to deliver the service and/or honor your guarantee?

You don’t have to actually state these things in your pitches or proposals if you don’t think it’s appropriate. But it might be worth intentionally addressing them somewhere. For example, you might have a page called “Working Together” in which you address policies of mutual respect, communication, etc. And in your bio or “About Me” page, you can probably address some of the other elements, such as your authority.

And that’s the ultimate reason why I skipped the seemingly high-value SaaS app that I was looking at. In some cases, I’m happy to be an early adopter but in other cases – as in this case – they didn’t convince me that they were going to be around long enough or be responsive enough to my needs for me to hand over my money. The pitch was great, the service looked perfect, but it was those little missing qualities that kept me from committing.

Happy Blogging!

No related posts.

Twitter has recently unveiled the ability to create lists. Basically, you sign into your account and find the “lists” link. (It’s in a couple of different places). From this link you can create a list of whatever you want (and you can also see what lists you’re on).

It’s kind of a Twitter-based version of setting up customized columns in TweetDeck because it gives you the ability to categorize specific groups of people. In a way, it helps to cut through the noise. If you are following 300 people, and 50 of them are really good but 250 of them are extremely prolific (but with less to say), this is a way for you listen more closely to the higher value ones.

I’ve put together a list of 8 ideas for Twitter lists that you might want to create.

1. Create a Twitter list of your clients. This gives you a way to listen closely to them. Check for questions to you or references to problems or concerns they have, AND always watch for opportunities to serve them better.
2. Create a Twitter list of your vendors, suppliers, staff, and outsource partners. You can pull up this list and quickly see what everyone is up to. (You might need a couple of lists, depending on how many people work for you).
3. Create a Twitter list of hot prospects. While many of the people you’re following are potential buyers, this is a group of people who might be close to buying but need special attention from you… and have not yet handed over their money. (Note: You might want to make this a private group since you don’t want them to see that they are on a list called “prospects”. Or, just create a special name that doesn’t mean anything to others but means something to you, like “Heather’s List #3″).
4. Create a Twitter list of business leaders who you really respect and admire. These are the people who have valuable things to say. You hang on their every word. There might be only a few of them among the people you follow but having this list helps you to pay closer attention to them.
5. Create a Twitter list of people who blog. Some people only ever Tweet links to their blog posts, so this makes this Twitter list kind of like a feedreader. You might use it to do research or to stay on top of your blog reading.
6. Create a Twitter list of your inner circle. You might have friends or family or close associates who you would drop anything to do something for. They deserve their own list so you can listen to them and interact with them.
7. Create a Twitter list of a club or group you participate in. If you belong to some kind of Twitter-based group (#BusinessLunchClub is one that I’m connected to, but there are others), create a list of those members.
8. Create a Twitter list of suspected spammers. This is an easy way to clean out people who you might have auto-followed early in your Twitter experience and now regret (but have never gotten around to doing anything about). Add them to the list, keep an eye on what they have to say, and delete them if they don’t add value to you.

Can you think of other Twitter lists to create? I’d love to hear about them!

Good Luck!

Related posts:

1. Be a Twitter List Champion in Just Ten Minutes- Part 2
2. Be a Twitter List Champion in Just Ten Minutes – Part 1
3. Twitter in Ten Minutes a Day!