Gem from "Indispensible"

I picked up a new book last night called Indespensible: How to become the company your customers can't live without by Joe Callaway.

Callaway greatly appeals to the ADD in me by using Case Studies to present much of his information.

In one Case Study, he interviews Jeffery Gitomer, who regularly has books on sales in the top 10 list on Amazon.com Gitomer has literally become a legend in the sales training business and has a huge fan base including blue chip companies.

Callaway asks Gitomer "What's the key factor that makes you so successful?" Gitomer responds without any hesitation:

"Create value, then give it away. If you have good stuff, people want more."

Gitomer gave two examples of this practice:

1. The Rolling Stones: The Rolling Stones produce a song and then let radio stations every where play it for free. People hear their songs, love them, and want more, whereby they buy the song.

2. Mrs. Field's Cookies: One of the first things that Mrs. Fields does when she opens a new store is to give away cookies. She knows that once people try them, they'll buy them, today and tomorrow and forever. I've often wondered why more companies who have their product in the supermarket don't have the little old lady giving out samples. I look at all those cheeses in the market and wonder if any of them are really good - if I only knew, I'd buy the good cheese. But I'm not willing to pay $5 for a chunck of cheese to try it.

How revolutionary could this marketing technique be in your business?

Brian.

Read more!

The Power of Blogs

Are you up on Blogs? And what they can do for your business? For free? !

Here's the skinny: Blogs are just websites that typically display an ongoing log of entries. For instance, each new "post" on this blog starts at the top of the web page, and then descends down the page as other newer post are put here. I set the number of post that will appear on the main page. The other older blogs can be accessed by clicking on a link on the side. Additionally, you can search all the post in this blog through the search feature above.

And how much does this blog cost me? Zero. Nota. Nothing. Yes, it has a long and difficult name, http://christianentrepreneur.blogspot.com, but for $8.95, I can go to www.godaddy.com, buy a URL named www.christianentrepreneur.com (if its available), and point that URL to this one.

There are also COMMERCIAL blogs, which provide other features on the blog, making it more like a website. For instance, there is a company that provides Community Blogs for Realtors. As a Realtor, I can lease a nice blog template from them that has a lo of extra features to facilitate community happenings, etc., and provide that to the community at no charge. Of course, my Realtor ad stays up front and prominent.

Here's some points you should know about blogs:

* Sites like Blogger.com offer free blogs. They're easy to set up and use.

* Blogs can help your regular website to rise in the search engine rankings. For instance, http://friscorealestate.blogspot.com is my Frisco Real Estate Blog. In addition to current news on Frisco Real Estate, you'll find links to my main website, www.AggressiveHomeSales.com . So, this is a Real Estate website that links to my business real estate website - that tells Google and Yahoo that my main website is important to another site that deals with Real Estate.

* Blogs are an excellent way to create community among your customers or clients. For $5 a month, you can even ad a message board to your blog. My friend Andy, sells very expensive medications to a small community of people spread out across the U.S. I've suggested that a blog would be an excellent way to develop community with these clients of his who have this disease in common. And of course, he would be the common thread.

* Blogs can be used as a business communication tool. I'm about to start offering a blog for every client of mine. We'll post information relevant to their search or listing on the blog, and they can comment back to us. At any point, from anywhere in the world, they can know what's going on with their home, or search. I've also toyed around with the idea of using a blog to plot out long term goals with my wife. As both of us run across interesting articles concerning our goals, or have new thoughts about them, or want to post a picture of the goal (like a trip to Italy or a home), we can post them, capture the moment, and have a point of reference for both of us.

* Blogs can make you the expert. Anyone who looks at my FriscoRealEstate Blog, will probably draw the conclusion that I'm an expert on Frisco Real Estate, that I have a command of using technology, etc. Also, it wouldn't be to illogical for a local newspaper to call me as a Frisco Real Estate expert after seeing my blog (and give me free publicity).

* Finally, Blogs are a great source for business information. Just as you, hopefully, have gleamed some ideas and information from this blog, there are millions of highly specific blogs dealing with any and all areas of business and life. Remember, too, that you can add a blogs RSS Feed (see my previous blog on RSS) to your RSS viewer, and see the incoming post from tons of blogs in one central location. Its kind of like adding yourself to a email list, that you only look at when you want to.

Read more!