Maine Creative Services – Page 22 – Affordable web design and SEO copywriting for small business

Do you repeat yourself? Do you? Well, do ya?

You should, you know. Everyone is busy, distracted, only half-listening. They’re quite likely to miss your marketing message the first time (or two).

Business Week‘s Michelle Nichols says offering your customer the same information in different ways can help get your message across and close the sale.

Her sales tips (paraphrased by me):

Listen for repeated complaints from customers. Then zero in on those pain points and how your product or service can solve them. Ignore the other great benefits you deliver — they’re not that important to this customer.
Repeat your benefits. After you’ve heard your customer complain several times, it’s time to create a pitch that repeats how your proposed solution solves their problem.
Repeat your prospecting calls. It’s more effective to call repeatedly on a smaller, targeted list than to make only one sales call each to a larger audience.
Encourage repeat customers.
Repeat and reinforce the benefits that will mean the most to this customer. (Oh, did I already mention that?)

Having trouble writing about your business?

“You know the really hard thing about writing? You not only have to think up all the words, you have to put them in the right order.”

— Rick Broida

Topless car wash

Here’s one sure way to attract a certain kind of customer: Topless car wash. For a few bucks more, you get a lap dance, too.

The Bubbles ‘n’ Babes car wash in Brisbane prompted a flood of complaints with a topless car wash for A$55 ($45) and a nude car wash with X-rated lap-dance service for A$100. “If it was approved for a car wash then I can’t imagine how we can stop them,” Lord Mayor Campbell Newman told a council meeting with worried local lawmakers.

Professional car washes are booming in drought-stricken Australian cities because residents are banned from washing their own cars due to tough water restrictions. Bubbles ‘n’ Babes uses recycled water to squeak by the regs.

And the best we seem to be able to do here in the US is getting our windshields smeared by a derelict at a stop light — whether you want him to or not.

F'ree enrollment at MIT?

Well, not quite. But the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has opened the gates of its vaunted curriculum to the masses — no charge, no registration required. (No degree either, of course.)

MIT OpenCourseWare is an ambitious project to post all MIT courses on the Internet, open to anyone who’s interested. A “free and open educational resource (OER) for educators, students, and self-learners around the world,” MIT OCW requires no registration, grants no degrees or certificates, and provides no access to MIT faculty. All it does is open the doors to a great fr’ee education. All you add is time and effort.

Over 1500 courses are already available and more are coming.

Want to to change the direction of your life and career? As a recent New York Times column (written by a former attorney) points out, sometimes all it takes is a single non-credit course.

Sure, you can sit in classrooms for 16+ years, but no one can give you an education. Like Abraham Lincoln, you have to go get it for yourself.

Why work hard?

By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss — so you can work twelve hours a day.
-Robert Frost

Amazon: Selling music without copy protection

“Online retailer Amazon.com on Wednesday said it plans to launch a digital music store featuring songs without copy protection restrictions.” Gasp!

Um, excuse me. Don’t they already? They’re called CDs. Have you heard of them?

How to fix "meeting hell"

Meetings can be a major bummer.

Maybe you’ve noticed. Whether it’s a cell phone ringing, co-workers whispering, or the guy across the table snoozing, meetings can be a big productivity drag.

In fact, after I first went out on my own, I noticed I was immediately getting twice as much accomplished in half the time. A big factor was my lack of meetings — especially the ones that seem pointless and disorganized.

What makes so many meetings so distasteful? According to a new study, 27 percent of workers are most irked by disorganized, rambling meetings. 17 percent are most annoyed by peers who interrupt and try to dominate meetings. Other top peeves are furtive Blackberry usage, lack of bathroom breaks and snacks (or the lack of them).

“If you (call) the meeting, organize it, control everyone during the meeting, and make sure the people there aren’t wasting their time,” said Jeff Resnick, president of Opinion Research USA, which conducted the survey. “If you’re asking somebody to participate in a meeting, it has to be, from their perception, worth it to invest the time.

I have a few other suggestions to offer:

Make sure there’s a real reason for the meeting. A lot of routine stuff can be better handled in a memo.
Post an agenda along with the invitation, so people know what will be covered.
Let participants know what’s expected of them (ideas, etc.) in advance.
Invite only participants who really need to be there. Remember that a one-hour meeting attended by 12 people drains 12 hours of productivity from your team — not just one hour.
If the purpose of the meeting is to share information, procedure changes, etc., prepare summaries in advance.
Keep it short! (I’ve heard of meetings conducted where no one is allowed to sit down. THAT would speed things along!) Short meetings also reduce the need for meals, snacks, bathroom breaks, etc. They also let your team get back to work sooner.

What’s your take on meetings? Bane or boon?