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[FREE TEMPLATE] Step-by-Step Process for Creating Information Products

Friday, September 2nd, 2011

People love to buy packaged learning and experiences (AKA: Information Products). They’re easy to understand, and therefore easy to buy.

Perhaps you think that your service may not be as easily defined as a packaged product or program, and necessarily has a high barrier for entry. You might be underestimating what you have to offer.

Let’s take a quick look at the benefits that you get from producing information products:

  • Products create opportunities for multiple streams of passive or leveraged income.
  • Having a product enhances your credibility with your prospects, your peers, meeting planners, and the media because it establishes you as a category expert and sets you apart from your competitors.
  • Products can help you book more clients because they speed up the sales cycle. Since your services have a high barrier to entry, your potential clients may need to jump a few high hurdles to persuade themselves they need to hire you. Having a product to offer based on your services gives potential clients the opportunity to test you out without having to take a big risk. Then if they connect with you and are well served by your product, they will upgrade from the lower-priced product to the higher-priced service.
  • If you use public speaking as one of your marketing strategies, having a product at the back of the room when you speak gives you credibility, and you also have a relatively low-cost way to introduce prospects into your business and generate ancillary revenue at the same time.
  • Products leverage your time. One of the biggest problems service professionals face is the paradigm of trading time for money. If all you ever do is trade your time for money, your revenues are limited by how much you charge per hour.

Start with the End in Mind

You may be in the beginning phase of building your business and just be setting out on the course to book yourself solid, but as Dr. Stephen Covey says, “Start with the end in mind.” If you want to seriously build a long-lasting career as a service professional, you’ll want to start thinking just as seriously about creating information products.

Don’t let the idea of creating products intimidate you:

  • Keep it simple.
  • Don’t overwork it or feel that it needs to be perfect.
  • Don’t worry about being wildly original.
  • Tips, guides, or resource manuals are great formats.
  • Continually strive to add value to your clients’ lives in any way you can.

When considering how to create an information product, start by examining the different possibilities and ask yourself, “How can I leverage my existing knowledge and experience to create a quality product that I can produce and launch in the shortest amount of time possible?”

Be sure you don’t overlook any content you may already have created.

For example, if you’ve written an article, you have content that you can leverage into multiple product formats. You can quickly and easily turn your article into an e-course, use it as the foundation for an e-book, print book, or program, or present it as an introductory presentation or teleclass.

A single article can be leveraged into any or all of these formats, making it possible to create an entire sales cycle from a single source of content.

Case in point: this blog post is based on a chapter in Book Yourself Solid.

Define Your Product or Program

Choose the one product idea that you’re most passionate or excited about right now—and most important, one that is in line with your current business needs. If you’re starting out and need to build your subscriber or follower base, you’ll need to create a lead-generating product first, a product that you give away to create connection with a potential client.

You will then leverage that free lead-generating information product into other monetized information products over time. If you already have a lead-generating product and you’re ready to produce higher-priced information products like an video program or a book, then go for it!

As you define your product, you will need to consider not only the type of product you will create but to whom you’re selling it, the promises it makes, the benefits and solutions it offers, the look and feel you want your product to convey, and the ways in which you can leverage the content.

It’s important to be clear about your intentions for your product or program, and it’s critical that your product or program meet the needs of your target market. No matter how much you might love to create something, if your target market doesn’t need it you’ll be defeating your purpose.

A Written Exercise to Get You Started

For now, keep it simple. Just get your ideas out of your head and onto paper.

  1. What type of product or program would you most like to create? What would you be most passionate about creating and offering to your target market?
  2. To whom would you be offering this product? (target market.)
  3. What benefits will your target market experience as a result of your product?
  4. How do you want your product to look and feel? What image or emotion do you want it to convey?
  5. How might you leverage the same content into a variety of different formats and price points for your sales cycle?

Five Steps to Developing Your Product

I have identified five simple steps to developing your product.

Step 1: Choose the role you are playing

Step 2: Choose your product framework

Step 3: Choose a title that sells

Step 4: Build your table of contents

Step 5: Create your content

While teaching my process for creating information products to my clients, Jamie McKean, recorded a mind map of the lesson. It outlines the five steps and their many component parts.

DOWNLOAD THE TEMPLATE, follow the process and you’ll be well on your way to hearing the beautiful, melodic ka-ching, ka-ching sound of your web-site-turned-cash-register as the orders come rolling in.

If you found this helpful, please share it with others that will also find it helpful. Keep thinking big about who you are and what you offer the world.

UPDATE: Here’s another worksheet just created by another one of my clients, Lauchlan Mackinnon, to give you a more linear perspective on the process.

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Posted in Small Business Marketing Advice, Small Business Project Advice, Small Business Systems Advice | 34 Comments »

The Right Process (and the Right People) Leads to the Right Results

Friday, June 3rd, 2011

If you have a people- and process-related focus, rather just one or the other, you can create a culture for your business that changes work and work habits.

(You’ll find this illustration in Beyond Booked Solid)

People have misconceptions about their role in standardization:

  • Misconception #1: Managers or team leaders (you) often think standardization is about finding the one and only best way to do something and then freezing it.
  • Misconception #2: Team members often think that standardization is a coercive tactic designed to enforce rigid standards that will make their job boring and demeaning. They also often assume that once what they do is standardized, they’ll be replaced. If not immediately replaced, then they will be as soon as someone else is found who is cheaper.

In order for you and your organization to grow, these misconceptions that a process is a negative thing to be fought against must be overturned.

Don’t hire people who won’t document what they do.

Early on in my business, I had a team member who would not document her processes, no matter how many times I asked, begged, and pleaded. I spent hours coaching her on how to do it. I offered to hire someone to walk her through the process and essentially create the system for her . . . all to no avail.

She eventually admitted to me that she thought that if she documented what she did, then I would just let her go. She seemed to think that standardizing might render her useless, as if it were somehow like mechanizing her job. Or maybe she thought that if I saw what she really did, I wouldn’t think she was doing a good job.

I told her that I wanted to standardize her tasks so her job would be easier and improve workflow throughout the organization. And furthermore, at this point, if she didn’t document and standardize her tasks, I would be forced to hire someone to fill her shoes. Sadly, she didn’t come around, and we parted ways.

Of course, this was ultimately my responsibility for not testing an applicant’s ability to document a process during the hiring process.

Systems are positive constraints.

They create ways of doing things that constrain people from doing things any old way. They also can create constraints that actually foster continuous improvement.

Here’s a checklist of how to think about whether the systems you are creating are coercive or enabling:

  • Performance versus best practices: A system that sets performance standards risks highlighting poor performance, without offering any constructive solution. Instead, create a system that focuses on best practices and how to achieve them. If you can provide people with the information and tools they need to do a good job, then the likelihood is that they will, if they can. Best practices guidelines are one of the surest ways to ensure good performance. If people know exactly what is expected of them, it’s much easier for them to deliver what is expected. Without such guidelines a performance standard operates in a vacuum.
  • Standard versus custom: It’s true that you want to create a system that reduces the possibility of disorganized and irregular behavior and monitors costs to keep them low. But too much standardization can bind good people and prevent them from doing the best job possible and eliminate the desire to continuously improve. It is better to build a system that allows some flexibility for good people to customize a process to suit their level of skill and experience. I don’t mean a free-for-all, of course, just enough play in the system to enable people to work to their best potential.
  • Out of control versus in control: Systems should not be used to control people. There is an idea that for processes to work effectively, employees need to be left out of the control loop. Not so. Systems should be there to help people control their work, not vice versa. When people have control of and understand the workflow they are part of, then they better understand the importance of their role and will perform better. This is what P.S.Adler in his article “Building Better Bureaucracies” in the Academy of Management Executive called a “glass box” system design. Just as it sounds, it means a system we can peek inside of, a process that is visible to everyone.
  • Ironclad instruction versus best practice: Systems in and of themselves should be templates for the best practices in your business. That’s why they are always in a cycle of improvement. A best practice implies something that adapts to the future—new imperatives or new demands of the business. A system cannot be an ironclad rule to be followed and never challenged. You’re creating dynamic systems in your growing, changing business.

The perfect place to work.

Ideally, enabling systems foster extensive team involvement, high levels of communication, innovation, flexibility, great morale, and a strong customer focus. Sounds like the perfect place to work.

Untimely, the ideal enabling system contains two seemingly opposing principles:

  1. You need to build information processes right the first time. It’s much more effective and less costly than inspecting and repairing process and quality problems after the fact.
  2. But once you’ve standardized and, thus, stabilized the process, the cycle of continuous improvement starts.

Stability and change. Standard and flexible. Controlled and open. The challenge is to develop a learning organization that will constantly find ways to reduce waste and improve productivity.

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Posted in Small Business Systems Advice | 44 Comments »

Men and Their Eggs
(AKA: How to Be More Productive)

Thursday, April 28th, 2011

Almost every morning, I make a killer omelet for breakfast. It’s a thing of beauty, really.

Two eggs with a touch of milk, so much spinach that you’d think you’ve ruined it, a massive medley of grape and cherry tomatoes, fresh basil, if it’s in season, dry, if out of season, cracked pepper, and mozzarella cheese; all on top of one piece of whole grain toast.

I know, how cliché—men and their eggs. Sometimes, I even have it for dinner. But, here’s the thing—it turns out much better in the morning.

Producing a masterpiece for breakfast, every morning no less, requires unshakable focus, perfect timing and a desire to do my best work (because I’m hungry). However, if I make the omelet in the evening, it’s less than perfect.

In the morning, I do my best work—not just when fixing breakfast. It’s when I write, think, plan, organize, strategize, and more. In the evening, my work is not as productive or creative because my attention is also focused on my son, my girlfriend, the day’s events and more.

So, if I attempt to prepare the “Omelette de Port” for dinner, my timing is off and I make mistakes. I forget to add the cheese or I burn the toast or, worse yet, cut my finger while slicing the tomatoes.

The same thing happens when I try to do focused, detailed, and creative work in the evening. It’s often a mess. My timing is off. I miss important details and my thinking is cloudy.

Some of us are more productive in the morning, some in the evening, and then there are those (annoying) people who are perfect all the time—I’m not one of them.

The point is—yes, there is a point—to choose what you work on and when you work on it—very carefully. If you write, what time of the day will you do your best work? If you need to do detailed work, say on a process for a promo event that includes emails, conference call set up, landing pages, and more, what time of the day will you get the most done while making the fewest errors?

To beat (pun intended) this metaphor to death… scrambled brains don’t do big things in the world.

And, finally, no matter what time of day I write, I will always make gramatical errors and typos that drive the Word Police mad.

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Posted in Personal Development Advice, Small Business Project Advice, Small Business Systems Advice | 18 Comments »

What’s Your Job?

Friday, April 22nd, 2011

When you start a business, you’re exposed to a seemingly endless stream of diverging themes and complicated processes. I attempt to reorganize them into simple systems.

That’s my job as an educator—to take ideas that have become complicated and noisy and disentangle and harmonize them so that the entrepreneur can work quietly.

What’s your job?

(Note: The share buttons below are woking, they’re just still not showing any numbers. Feel free to use them.)

UPDATE: I love when you participate in the discussion with your comments. Think of what I’m going to say as a suggestion from a loving teacher only concerned with your success…

Some of the comments below are mini-elevator speeches, I’ve suggested that you stay away from elevator speeches.

In this post, however, I was attempting to ask you how you thought about your job, not necessarily the result that you help your clients achieve. There’s a big difference. I believe that the way you think about your “job” influences how you help your clients get what they want – the “result.”

For example, I help small business owners get more clients. More clients, is the result. What I wrote about my “job” is how I do it. Of course, it’s essential to consider who you help and what you help them get (the result). Just as important, however, is how you do it – that’s what allows you to do remarkable work or the people you’re meant to serve.

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Posted in Personal Development Advice, Small Business Project Advice, Small Business Systems Advice, Updates | 13 Comments »

10 Questions You Must Ask When Hiring Assistants and Outsourcing Projects

Monday, April 11th, 2011

Collaborating with others creates scale in your business by increasing your leverage. To collaborate effectively you need to:

  • Isolate activities that generate more income than they cost to have others do.
  • Identify where to place your energy and focus according to what you are pursuing and what you love.
  • Stay tightly focused on the core activities.

Collaborating with others also creates range by bringing together different talents and perspectives. This is particularly important if you are adding services or serving new clients. Your talents alone are probably not sufficient for that new business.

Here are some key questions to keep in mind when searching for outsourcing solutions:

  1. How will they integrate into the big picture?
  2. Do their values and philosophy match yours?
  3. What sort of staff is on hand to provide workable outsourcing solutions?
  4. What are you buying (set and manage expectations)?
  5. Do they have back up and does their back up have back up?
  6. Does the company have a solid financial track record, and are its growth plans realistic?
  7. Does the company have the commitment, stability, and strength of the management team to provide you with successful out-sourcing solutions?
  8. What sort of image and reputation does the company carry?
  9. Are they on the cutting edge of technology?
  10. What is the company’s track record for innovation and improvements—can they, with your involvement, build the processes you need?

Finding Help Is Easy

It’s easy to find firms that can serve your needs. But, don’t necessarily hire the first one you find. Remember, the best way to evaluate people is to watch them work. No matter how excited you are by the prospect of removing some of your current constraints by hiring others, take time to see how you fit together. You’re hoping to build long-term relationships.

Note that I’ve been using the word firm rather than person or individual to describe your outsourcing options. I think you should avoid hiring individuals who do not have any backup of their own. Without it, they can become a “single point of failure” in your business.

Your Back Up Needs Back Up

I apologize to my friends who fly solo but it they go down, you go down. I got burnt over and over by this outsourcing danger in the early days, until I got tired of the pain and insecurity of too many single points of failure. I’m not an unsympathetic person, but after a while, it’s an inordinate burden to be crippled in your business by one person’s extended flu or time off for a personal crisis. If your support works alone make sure they have back up and their back up has back up.

Beyond Borders

Think outside your borders when you’re thinking about outsourcing. Of course, there’s all the politics of so-called off-shoring. People worry that by sending jobs overseas, there’s a net loss in U.S. jobs because people aren’t hiring locally. But, in many cases, there would be no company at all if they didn’t outsource some functions overseas. Local hiring may only be possible because companies are able to find lower-cost outsourcing solutions for some of their projects or administrative needs.

Those Who Are Better Get Better

The people you work with must be willing to continuously improve on the processes you create with them to eliminate waste. Just because you’ve outsourced doesn’t mean you stop managing. You will still need to establish metrics to measure the conditions of satisfaction, just as you do in every other area of your business. Without metrics, how could you improve workflow and working relationships?

You are only as good and productive as the people around you.

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Posted in Small Business Leadership Advice, Small Business Project Advice, Small Business Systems Advice | 10 Comments »

Get More Done

Friday, March 18th, 2011

To be booked solid you need to get things done.

You probably need to get more done than you are at the moment — because, man, is there a lot to do. As a small business owner or professional service provider, you only have so many hours in a day. How can you get it all done? The old check list just isn’t cutting it anymore. You’re not sure what software programs to use. You don’t know how to hire others and get help.

Resources to Get More Done

This list of resources to get more done will fire you up. The articles will get you excited about all the things you need to do. They’ll ignite your passion — even for working on the things you hate doing!  Not only will these resources help you get more done,  they’ll also help you accomplish your dreams.

Productivity Resources

This list of productivity and systems resources will help you produce projects, be more productive, get more focused, and even be smarter about how to deal with email.

 

 

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Posted in Small Business Systems Advice | 1 Comment »

The Better Way to Choose a Target Market

Monday, January 17th, 2011

Let’s start by understanding the difference between your target market and your niche. If you’ve done other research or reading on the subject of building a service-based business, you may have heard both of these terms before, and you may have heard them used interchangeably. However, in the Book Yourself Solid system, they are not synonymous. There’s an important distinction between the two:

Your target market is the group of people you serve, and your niche is the service you specialize in offering to your target market.

For example, you and I might both serve the same target market, say, service professionals, but offer them different services. I might specialize in getting clients and you might help them create systems for their business.

There are three primary reasons to choose a target market.

  1. It helps you determine where to find potential clients who are looking for what you have to offer. If you have a target market, you know where to concentrate your marketing efforts and what to offer that is compelling and well received. You know what associations to speak to, magazines and journals to write for, and influential people with whom to network—you know where your potential clients gather. Voila! You now know where to show up.
  2. Virtually every target market already has some kind of network of communication established. For your marketing to work, your clients need to spread your messages for you. If they already have a network of communication set up, they can talk to each other about you and your marketing messages can travel that much faster. What are networks of communication? Environments that are set up to help a group communicate—as I mentioned earlier: associations, social networking sites, clubs, various publications, events, and more.
  3. And, finally, choosing a target market lets the people in that target market know that you’ve dedicated your life’s work to them.

In order to reach the people you’re meant to serve, you’ve got to know where to find them. That’s why an essential step is for you to identify a very specific target market to serve.

Marketing and sales isn’t about trying to persuade, coerce, or manipulate people into buying your services. It’s about putting yourself out in front of, and offering your services to, those whom you are meant to serve—people who already need and are looking for your services.

No matter how much you might like to be everything to everyone, it’s just not possible.

Even if you could be, you would be doing a disservice to yourself and your clients in the attempt. You can serve your clients much better, offer them much more of your time, energy, and expertise, if you narrow your market so that you’re serving only those who most need your services and who can derive the greatest benefits from what you have to offer.

If you’re just starting out in your business, or if you’ve been working in your business for a while but are not yet booked solid, you may be tempted to market to anyone and everyone with the assumption that the more people you market to, the more clients you’ll get. While narrowing your market to gain more clients may seem counterintuitive, that’s exactly what you need to do to successfully book yourself solid.

Think of narrowing your market this way: Which would you rather be—a small fish in a big pond or a big fish in a small pond? It’s much easier to carve out a very lucrative domain for yourself once you’ve identified a specific target market. And once you’re a big fish in a small pond, you’ll get more invitations than you can handle to swim in other ponds.

There are two primary ways to grow a service business.

  1. You can choose a target market and, over time, continue to add new products and services to this same target market. For example: if your target market is fitness professionals, and you’re currently offering them web design services, as you grow, you might start offering them search engine optimization services and then pay-per-click advertising services.
  2. Alternatively, once you get booked solid in one target market, you can begin to market and sell the same services in additional vertical target markets. So, if you currently serve wood floor manufacturers, you might offer the same services to manufacturers of tile flooring. Once you get a foothold in that market, you might then begin to focus on carpet manufacturers.

You might be thinking: “If I specialize and only work with a specific group of people, or specific types of companies within a specific industry, won’t that limit my opportunities? And what if I get bored?” Let me answer the second question first. If you’re someone who gets bored easily, you may have that problem no matter what you do. You may want to spend some time reflecting on why you’re not able to stay focused on what you’ve chosen to do. Or, it may be that you’ve chosen a target market that doesn’t excite you, that you aren’t passionate about or interested in.

Over time, you can move into other areas. When I started my business, I helped fitness and wellness professionals get booked solid. Once I was fortunate enough to create demand for my services, I leveraged the reputation I built servicing the fitness industry as a springboard into other vertical target markets, like financial services, and others. As you establish your expertise and reputation, if you choose, you can broaden your target market. (I now serve virtually every type of service professional because my reputation and proven track record affords me that advantage.)

But, if you want to increase your speed to getting booked solid, choose a very specific target market and stay with that target market until you are booked solid. Then you can move into other markets if you like or stay with your original focus and grow your product and service line.

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Posted in Small Business Leadership Advice, Small Business Marketing Advice, Small Business Sales Advice, Small Business Systems Advice | 11 Comments »

Small Business Productivity Software That You Can’t Live Without

Tuesday, January 4th, 2011

E-mail, Calendar, Documents, Phone (AKA: All things Google)

E-mail, calendar, documents, and phone fall into one category because, for me, they are all things Google. Yes, I know they know more about me than my mother, and maybe even the IRS, but I’m willing to trust them, to a point. Google’s products can be so helpful to the small business owner that they get their own category. Google’s products were, and still are, revolutionary, not to mention free. It’s easy to forget how difficult is was, just a few years ago, to share documents and collaborate with others when working on presentations, proposals, financial projections, org charts, and more. Google docs changed all that.

I use Google Apps everyday. Not only for documents and spreadsheets but now I use them to draw and create forms that I embed inside my web pages (example). And, of course I’m writing this post in Google docs before I paste it into my blog editor. Gmail and Google Calendar rock because it makes it so easy for my staff to handle my communication and scheduling. Plus, Gmail is able to block 99% of the spam that comes my way. Google Talk and Google Voice are redonkulous (that means good). They give you video chat within your browser and one phone number that rings any of your phones, allows you to call any phone from within your browser and recieves voices messages as audio files and transcribed text. C’mon, have some appreciation because that’s impressive. Oh, and I can’t forget, your own customized phone number! Mine is (414) FOR-PORT. And, the Google Iphone app gives me better reception, on my Iphone, than my ATT cellular service.

Again, I feel obligated to remind you that all of this is free and it works, all the time. And, these are just the basic Google products. There are many more Google apps that you can use as productivity solutions if you consider stepping up to their enterprise solutions.

Project Management Software

Project management software is difficult to create because projects are difficult to manage. But, Basecamp HQ, from 37Signals, helps me organize my projects and keep on track. Sure, there are a few other features that I wish it had so it’s not perfect. No project management software is perfect, just as no project is perfect. The key with project management software is what you do with it. (AKA: actually put information into the thing) I like Basecamp’s simplicity and ease of use. I figure, if I can’t get my project information into a program as simple as BasecampHQ, then I have no business doing projects. I especially like Basecamp’s “template” feature. If you create lots of similar projects, as most of us do, creating project templates will save you time. Add milestones, to-dos, and messages once and you can reuse them on future projects.

Two other project management software programs to consider is Solve360 for a combination of project management and crm tools – I haven’t used it but I’ve heard good things – and Manymoon, if you’re looking for free project and task management solutions. It offers good collaboration tools as well but it’s not going to be as simple and clean as Basecamp. If you’re one of those people who likes long lists so you can compare every project management product under the sun, then be my guest. But, remember, the key to any piece of software is using it not having it.

Social Media Management Software

On my MacBook Pro I use Tweetdeck to manage my Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn streams. It was one of the first Twitter Clients and I think it’s still one of the best. I’ve tried others without too much success. I used to use Tweetie to manage my Twitter account from my iPhone and then one day it just stopped working. Now, I use Twitter’s native app and it works just fine. On my iPad I use Socialable to manage both my Facebook and Twitter accounts. Typically I don’t pre-schedule my Twitter updates. But, when I do I use Social Oomph. People also use Social Oomph to “auto-follow” as a way of building their number of followers but I don’t recommend it. A) I think it’s cheesy and B) when I see someone who is following the same number people that they have following them, I assume the number of followers is, for the most part, artificially inflated. Another cute little Twitter client is TweetBeep, it alerts you when someone has mentioned you on Twitter so you can respond immediately; people appreciate that. For Facebook Page management I like the NorthSocial apps. There are about 3,865 social media management apps from which to choose. Just pick a few and get busy being social.

Sales and Customer Relationship Management Software + Shopping Carts and Email Broadcasting

This is a tricky catagory because when you think of CRM’s you think of software for managing leads and opportunities, software you use to close deals. However, over the last few years, a new catagory of customer or client relationship management software has sprung up in products like GetSatisfaction; what I would really consider software that helps you manage relationships with clients. The typical CRM is really a sales tool as the name of the most popular and biggest demonstrates: SalesForce. (Yes, SalesForce, I know you’re doing many more things now then just manage leads and opportunities, but at your core, in your heart of heart, you’re a tool to help close sales.) However, shopping cart and e-newsletter broadcasting systems, like 1shoppingcart and ConstantContact are also customer relationship management tools. Oiy vey, as my mother would say. Where to start?

I’ve used many Sales Management Software programs over the years and have often found them difficult to use. Not always because the software is difficult, although, sometimes it is, but because I’ve had difficulty creating the habits necessary to use these programs, especially when they’re big, complex programs like SalesForce. When choosing a Sales Management Software choose one that meets your current needs. Some suggest that you choose one to grow into but I find, more often than not, for the small or solo business owner, doing so creates overwhelm and less engagement with the product.

If you’re new and working solo and want to manage your contacts, leads and opportunities, check out HighriseHQ, another clean and simple program from 37Signals. Or you might like Tactilecrm, self-described as an easy web based crm for small business. If you’re on a mac and don’t need a web based crm then have a look at a really nice program from Marketcircle called Daylite. It also provides project and task managment solutions. So it’s a little like Solve360 in that it combines project management and crm solutions into one product. Also have a look at SugarCRM, a commercial, open source customer relationship management software for sales force automation and customer support. If you’re a techie, or have a tech on the payroll, you might want to use the open source version. If you’re not or you don’t, they offer a hosted version. But, it still requires that you understand how a crm works because the set up process is substantial; as it is with most of the big dogs like SalesForce. Of course, there are always the old standbys Act and Goldmine.

For a shopping cart, broadcasting system, and highly intelligent follow-up engine, consider Infusionsoft (disclosure: I’m an Infusionsoft partner and this link includes an affiliate code.) It’s an “all in one” system minus the project management aspect. However, even though I use Infusionsoft and am a partner, I recommend it with reservations.  Infusionsoft is a big platform and it’s not easy to learn. In fact, I have someone on my team who manages the system for me. So, if you’re not technically inclined and don’t have the resources to get professional help (of the technical kind as opposed to the mental kind) you may end up needing professional help (of the mental kind). Other shopping cart and e-newsletter systems with follow-up engines include 1shopping.com, zen-cart, and interspire,

As with the crm and project management software programs there are also too many newsletter broadcasting systems to choose from including ConstantContact, Aweber, icart, MailChimp and more. If I were starting from scratch today, I’d probably go with MailChimp for my newsletter broadcasting because it’s free for your first 1000 subscribers and it integrates with so many different shopping cart and crm solutions. It’s also really easy to use.

Let’s end this section where we began, with a true customer relationship management program, GetSatisfaction, which provides a simple way to build online communities that create conversations between businesses and their customers. I’m a fan. It also intergrates nicely with ZenDesk, an impressive help desk platform. Other helpdesk platforms include Kayako, HelpDeskPilot, and LiveHelpNow, which includes a cool live chat feature that may increase conversion at point of sale.

Intranet and Online Operation Manual Software

A lifetime ago, when I worked for a large corporation, they gave every new employee an “operations manual” that was so large it took two people to carry it. Ridiculous. Why? Because, as soon as it was printed it was immediately out of date and irrelevant. A good business is constantly improving, making small changes that produce big results. If you’re working from a book that’s outdated and filled with information that’s irrelevant, you’re going to have to a hard time producing improvements. Moreover, if you can’t find what you’re looking for you’re slow and ineffective. I don’t know about you, but when I’m slow and ineffective, I get depressed, frustrated and crabby. You’ve got to be able to find what you need when you need it at a moments notice. Enter the online operations manual. As soon as you start your business you should document every process that occurs in your business, from how you take money to where your website is hosted and how to make changes. Nothing should be set to memory. Instead, it should be documented in an easily and instantly updatable online environment that you can access from anywhere with any computer or handheld device with an Internet connection.

My first online operations manual lived on a typepad blog that I called “Team United.” Each member of my team could add posts and categorize them based on the procedure type. Other members of the team could comment on the post and add to or change the process as needed. The blog software wasn’t ideal for the purposes of an online operations manual so I moved all our documentation to a wiki at pbworks.com. That was fine for a while but it wasn’t integrated into the rest of company’s activities so I moved it to Backpack another simple product from 37signals.com. I even use Backpack for my home “operations manual” to manage everything from the 30 or so contractors that work on my house, my son’s school and teacher information, emergency contacts, utilities, and so much more. I guess I’m starting to sound like a commercial for 37signals.com but I have no relation to the company and don’t know anyone involved in the company (as of today). I even use their Campfire product for team chat’s and conference calls.

There are more software products that I could introduce to you but I think this is more than enough for now. As I mentioned earlier, the point of productivity software is to help you stay organized and get things done. The simpler the product is the better.

Speaking of a simple product that will help you build your network (stay organized) and get booked solid (get things done) is a product that I’m creating based on my book, Book Yourself Solid, called Solid.ly. You can sign up for the beta and you’ll get an invite to participate in the private beta in January or February. Oh, my gosh, I almost forgot to mention the other Book Yourself Solid software product, Book’d. It’s helps you list your services online, take money and let’s clients book sessions. (I’m biased toward these two products for obvious reasons.)

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Posted in Small Business Leadership Advice, Small Business Marketing Advice, Small Business Money Management Advice, Small Business Project Advice, Small Business Sales Advice, Small Business Systems Advice | 20 Comments »

Free Webinar: 7 Habits of Highly Effective Marketers

Friday, October 22nd, 2010

I will help you create the behaviors, the habits necessary to get booked solid.

At some point, you’ve got to stop learning and start doing.

Or, I should say…you’ve got to couple learning with action.

Here is the video recording from yesterday’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective Marketers webinar. I introduce just a few of the habits that I am going to help you develop in  The Book Yourself Solid Get-It-Done Daily Marketing Program.

Note: Why the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Marketers? Of course, it’s an ode to Dr. Stephen Covey’s famous book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

I was recently inspired by re-reading the book and encouraged to focus more on helping you create the behaviors, the habits necessary to get booked solid rather than provide you more information for your already overstuffed brain.

As always, thank you for giving me the opportunity to be of service.

Posted in Personal Development Advice, Small Business Leadership Advice, Small Business Marketing Advice, Small Business Money Management Advice, Small Business Project Advice, Small Business Sales Advice, Small Business Systems Advice | 8 Comments »

Readers are Leaders

Wednesday, October 20th, 2010

Seth rants against the deliberately uninformed. And I quote…

Many people in the United States purchase one or fewer books every year.

Many of those people have seen every single episode of American Idol. There is clearly a correlation here.

Access to knowledge, for the first time in history, is largely unimpeded for the middle class. Without effort or expense, it’s possible to become informed if you choose. For less than your cable TV bill, you can buy and read an important book every week. Share the buying with six friends and it costs far less than coffee.

Or you can watch TV.

The thing is, watching TV has its benefits. It excuses you from the responsibility of having an informed opinion about things that matter. It gives you shallow opinions or false ‘facts’ that you can easily parrot to others that watch what you watch. It rarely unsettles our carefully self-induced calm and isolation from the world.

I got a note from someone the other day, in which she made it clear that she doesn’t read non-fiction books or blogs related to her industry. And she seemed proud of this. There’s more.

I agree with Seth. The future belongs to the learner and readers are leaders. However, among the educated class, I see another problem. Too much learning and not enough doing. Just one more conference and then I’ll take action. Just one more coaching program and then I’ll be ready. Just one more book and then I’ll know what to do.

If you want to do big things in the in the world, your learning should be coupled with action. What you learn today you can put into action tomorrow so you get real-time, real-world feedback. Then, what you know, becomes field tested. That’s when knowledge becomes powerful.

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Posted in Personal Development Advice, Small Business Leadership Advice, Small Business Marketing Advice, Small Business Money Management Advice, Small Business Project Advice, Small Business Sales Advice, Small Business Systems Advice | 7 Comments »

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