Carl Eric Johnson

“What business are we all in?”

I asked this question at the beginning of a presentation I gave recently at one of the networking groups I attend. To my delight, the answer I was looking for came back right away: “Sales.” I asked a follow-up question, “What product are we all selling?” The reply: “Ourselves.”

We are all in the business of selling ourselves. We had just finished going around the circle introducing ourselves and our businesses. There was a Realtor®, a mortgage professional, a solar panel installer, a woman who transfers 8mm movies and VHS cassettes to longer-lasting DVD’s—in short, there was a wonderful variety of professions and services present. In fact, some of us were wearing multiple hats, myself included, as I led with my network marketing business and was now promoting my website design business.

And yet, the one product we all had in common was ourselves. We were all promoting ourselves. After all, why would I go with one real estate professional over another? Simple. I would go with the real estate professional that I had the strongest connection with, the one I had gotten to know best and to trust.

Know, Like, and Trust

Face-to-face networking is a great way to build these trusting relationships. But what if one is building a business nationwide or even worldwide? And even if one’s business is purely local, how does one get found by those who are in need of those services?

The simple answer is to be sure you have a website. In my own website design business, I often explain to people that a good referral for me is someone who has paid for a large ad in the Yellow Pages. Seriously, who reads the Yellow Pages any more? Sure, there’s yellowpages.com, but I think it is much more common simply to use a search engine to find whatever you’re looking for. I know that’s what I do, and I continue to be dismayed by how often I don’t find a website for whatever establishment I happen to be looking for.

Clearly, the world needs my services!

Not All Websites Are Equal

So will any old website do? Can I have my son or daughter slap something up for me? Can I pay a local college student to build my website as part of a class project? The short answer is yes. Of course, you’ll get what you pay for, often either a templated site that looks amateurish or a flashy site with little substance.

What I specialize in is websites that get results. Search engine algorithms are constantly changing, yet certain principles have remained the same since the beginning. It is these principles that I adhere to, as well as my favorite principle, KISS.

It really is quite simple. People type keywords into their search engines, and the search engines serve up websites they think have relevant content. So all you really have to do is determine what keywords people are searching on when they are looking for you or for your type of business, and then be sure that your website uses those keywords throughout. Translation: Have a keyword-rich website filled with relevant text.

Still, it is ultimately a human being that will see the website once it is served up, so making it visually appealing is also key. Personally, I have some graphic design skills, but I prefer to partner with graphic designers for whom that is their passion. Together we make for a winning team. They can design a website to be visually appealing, then I can program it to be found by search engines and make it effective.

Does Everyone Need a Website?

As we went around the circle introducing ourselves, there were a few people who were employees of larger corporations. Certainly their employers have corporate websites, and they may (or may not) have their own personal page on that website. Perhaps this sort of professional does not need a personal website. And yet, if you think about it, they are still in the business of selling themselves. It certainly couldn’t hurt to have their own individual Web presence.

I think we can all agree, however, that a Web presence is absolutely crucial to the success of small business owners or people operating a business out of their homes.

Free or Low-Cost Options

A custom-designed website can cost many thousands of dollars initially, as well as ongoing updates to keep it fresh and current—that is, relevant. Not all small businesses or home-based businesses have that sort of a budget. The good news is that there are companion strategies that cost little or no money, and even those with full-fledged websites should consider the following:

• Social media—The four sites I recommend starting with are Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube.
  • Facebook is great for reconnecting with family and friends, but you can also set up a fan page for your business. You can then market to the people who sign up as your fans. (How best to market to them without being obnoxious will be the subject of another post.)
  • LinkedIn is great for job seekers, but it is also an excellent place to “hang out your shingle” and promote your services.
  • Twitter is useful for sending out blasts (called tweets) to promote your business.
  • YouTube is often overlooked, but savvy marketers recognize the importance of video, and YouTube as a search engine is really second only to Google.
  • MySpace is a fifth option to consider. It used to be the most popular but has since been eclipsed by the others. Nonetheless, it remains an important medium for performing artists.
• Blogs—Short for “Web logs,” blogs (like this one) are online diaries where you can express yourself for your readers’ and subscribers’ enjoyment. If you think about it, what better way could there be for one to brand oneself? Blogs can be either free or low-cost:
  • Free sites, such as wordpress.com and blogger.com, allow you to set up your own page on their site. For instance, I have a free blog at carleric.wordpress.com. I never use it, as I set it up merely to teach myself how to set up a free blog site. Also, some free sites may be filled with ads, and ultimately you are promoting them as much as you are promoting yourself. But you can’t beat the price.
  • A better option is to host a WordPress blog on your own website. This is fully explained at wordpress.org. Most Web hosts (myself included) provide WordPress as an option. If your hosting provider uses cPanel (most do), look for Fantastico; WordPress can be found in there. The cost of this option is simply the cost of Web hosting. If you already have a website, there may be no additional cost, if you install it yourself.

With or without a website, you will definitely want to enhance your Web presence. The Web is clearly the vehicle for 21^st century business.

The Services I Offer

Contact me with your questions about any of the following services. I am glad to help in whatever way I can.

• Custom-designed websites—Prices start at $995, call for a free estimate. If you shop around, you’ll see that most website designers charge at least a couple grand. I wanted an entry-level price point below a thousand dollars, because I want you to have a website and I don’t want cost to be a limiting factor.
• WordPress-powered websites—In addition to being a blogging platform, WordPress can be used as a content management system. New design “themes” are being produced daily, many for free. You’ll have less control over the look and feel of your website while maintaining complete control over its content. Two price points are available:
  • Two-page WordPress site (typically Blog and Home), set up and initialized for $99. I’ll show you how to use the administration pages to maintain your website yourself.
  • Six-page WordPress site, set up and initialized for $495. I have some small-business clients that prefer this option to a $995 custom site.
• Website design services—I charge $80 an hour for à la carte pricing. This may be your most cost-effective option if you already have a website fully designed, along with all of its graphics. The more of your own or someone else’s time you use, the less of my time you’ll have to pay for.

There really is no reason why you can’t have a website of your own. Get started today and watch your business take off.

Just last night I had the privilege of leading a roundtable discussion at Showcase Business Network (see end of post for more information about this great networking group). I had originally titled the program “Lead Generation 101″—until it occurred to me that there is a world of difference between a lead and a referral. Ideally we have an endless supply of both coming in to our businesses. This article is the result of the notes I took while facilitating the discussion.

The first topic of discussion was:

What is the difference between a lead and a referral?

In a word, a referral is qualified, a lead is not. Also, typically leads are pursued by you while referrals are invited by someone else on your behalf. It is this inviting that qualifies them. I don’t have the statistics at hand, but I read once that it is orders of magnitude easier to close a warm referral than a cold lead.

So should we only seek referrals? Well, yes and no. One strategy discussed was to turn leads into referrals by simply engaging them in friendly conversation to get to know them better. It is quite possible that they are not good prospects for your business but could easily be referred to someone else’s business.

The benefit of attending networking meetings

The discussion turned to how to find leads. The first reply was to attend networking meetings, such as chamber-of-commerce events, business-after-hours gatherings, and more formal organizations such as BNI and similar groups. But leads can be found at other meetings, as well: church, the grocery store line, in an elevator, anywhere.

The goal is to strike up a conversation and simply be friendly. It’s all about building relationships. And follow-up is key. It does no good to attend a networking event, come home with a pile of business cards, and then watch them gather dust in a corner (not that I have any experience with that ).

Sometimes simply being helpful while out and about leads to a profitable connection, if not for you then for someone to whom you can pass the referral. As the saying goes, “Give it out in slices and it comes back in loaves.”

Networking etiquette

Several of us recalled an incident at a business-after-hours event (about which I wrote several months ago), where a woman was bouncing around from person to person, shoving her (poorly typed) brochure into people’s hands, vomiting her information all over them, and then heading off to the next unsuspecting victim. She didn’t bother to listen to the other people at all. It was so sad to see her alienating an entire roomful of people. I hope she has since learned proper networking etiquette.

Again, relationships are what it’s all about. Engage people in conversation, especially people you don’t already know. (That is the point, isn’t it?) Get to know them. In my own case, I always ask questions of the other person first before saying much about my business at all. Even if he or she asks what I do, I’ll often say, “I am with USANA Health Sciences, and I market a line of top-rated nutrition supplements founded in human cellular research. But tell me more about you and what you do.” This immediately take the focus off of me and puts it back on the other person. If something I’ve said has piqued his or her interest, the conversation will ultimately come back around to me. And if not, so be it.

I attend networking events as much for myself as for my colleagues in other businesses. I love passing referrals, as do most of the people I network with. This seemed to be a common theme around the room. One person suggested that his goal was to schedule a follow-up one-to-one meeting, rather than to expect to learn everything about the other person right then and there at the networking event. Another person remarked that he follows up after ninety days with anyone he has met with.

A great strategy that one person follows is to ask for a testimonial. Of course, he’ll also give his own testimonial in return. But testimonials go a long way in enhancing one’s legitimacy. This is a strategy I have begun to use on LinkedIn, a site that makes it easy to give testimonials to the people you’ve connected with.

So what about leads?

One person mentioned that she uses the phone book in her cold-calling. Others use direct-mail campaigns. Still others prefer the three-foot rule: if someone is within three feet of you, he or she is a legitimate target. Again, though, it’s all about building relationships, so simply be friendly and start up a conversation. Learn about the other person first. See what needs you or someone in your network can fill before simply spewing your information over an unsuspecting target.

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It was a great discussion and a great evening. If you are located anywhere near Stratham or Exeter, New Hampshire, put the second Monday of the month in your calendar. Showcase Business Network meets from 6:00 to 8:00 pm at the Jade Palace Restaurant in Stratham, N.H. The cost is $5.00 and includes a plate of Chinese food. Most people add a dollar tip, and a few treat themselves to a drink from the bar. It is very casual, and some wonderful connections have been made. Join us next month and see for yourself.

Here is the second in a series of posts I promised you, reflecting on my own journey from Maundy Thursday evening to Easter morning. This is about what happened to me Good Friday morning.

I am a member of the Seacoast Referral Connection chapter of BNI, a structured international networking organization for passing qualified business referrals. I had the pleasure of substituting that morning for someone in Seaside BNI, my former chapter. It was nice to see so many familiar faces as well as quite a few new faces. As my reason for switching chapters had to do with an industry conflict, I was unable to represent my main business, USANA Health Sciences, so I represented my technical business, CejCo.com, instead. This was fine with me, as I am developing a seminar on Blogging and Social Networking for Professionals, so I used the opportunity to plug that.

The meeting went well, except for the person in that chapter’s Health & Wellness slot, who trashed the efficacy of vitamins … but that will be the subject of another post at a later date.

After the meeting I went up to a woman with whom I had been trying unsuccessfully to schedule a 1-to-1 meeting to learn more about our respective businesses. We had had some difficulties with e-mail communications, and that led me to miss a scheduled appointment time. So I was eager to take the opportunity to reschedule—indeed, if possible to get together right then.

So I approached her, I’ll call her “Sheryl,” and asked if she’d be interested in rescheduling our 1-to-1. She looked me squarely in the eyes and explained that she was no longer interested in meeting with me, as I did not strike her as someone with enough technical acumen to warrant spending time with. (I don’t remember her exact words, but my paraphrase should get across how she made me feel.) I was dumbstruck. After a few seconds, I whimpered, “Wow, that stings. All right. So be it,” and I walked away, tail between my legs.

After a few minutes of debating whether I should wallow in self-pity or not (I chose not), I then struck up a conversation with another gentleman, and he and I met instead. I’ll write about that meeting in tomorrow’s installment.

Sheryl’s treatment of me came as such a shock. First of all, my reason for missing her e-mail to me was that it looked like any number of other spam e-mails, which I am in the habit of letting pile up to be dealt with later. How did I mistake hers for spam? Well, she evidently never got around to updating her e-mail settings to provide her name, so it arrived in my inbox as coming from sheryl@xyzmysterydomain.com instead of Sheryl Lastname, which I would have recognized in an instant.

Be that as it may, I still apologized for missing her e-mail and thus missing our appointment. But that was evidently not good enough for Sheryl, so she blew me off.

What boggles the mind, though, is why she wouldn’t at least want me to know more about her business, so I could pass qualified referrals to her, even if she had no intention of passing referrals to me. Instead she simply cut off the possibility of any future collaboration between us.

The morals of this story are threefold:

1. Make sure your e-mails appear to come from real people and not spammers by updating your mail settings in your e-mail client (Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail, etc.). Send yourself an e-mail and see what it looks like in your inbox.
2. Never pass up a networking opportunity, even if you can’t imagine yourself referring business to the other party. I have been pleasantly surprised on more than one occasion by what I have found out about someone in a 1-to-1 exchange. Let’s face it, most of us are involved in multiple activities, so there is sure to be at least one area of mutual interest.
3. Never burn bridges with people you are sure to see again and again and again. Sheryl’s and my paths are likely to cross weekly, if not more frequently, yet she did not hesitate to sour our relationship. Huge mistake on her part.

Stay tuned for the happy ending, though.

This past Wednesday morning I gave a presentation on “Blogging and Social Networking for Professionals” at SAILS, one of my networking groups. SAILS (Serving and Inspiring Leaders’ Success) meets every Wednesday morning from 7:30 to 9:00 at the Hampton United Methodist Church in Hampton, N.H.

The previous week, Pauline Maloney, one of the group’s facilitators, asked me how much time I thought I’d need for my presentation. Together we decided that a half hour would do, maybe a few more minutes for questions. Well, thirteen people showed up for my presentation (considerably more than have been in attendance in recent weeks), and I started speaking at 8:00. I invited questions and dialogue throughout. The next thing I knew, it was 9:00 and I had barely finished the blogging portion of the talk.

I was thrilled. The energy was great and the questions were even greater. A couple of times I had to back up, as I had made assumptions about certain topics. Years ago I registered the trademark Demystifying Technology® because, frankly, I’m very good at that. This experience humbled me, though, as I had to go back to the very beginning on more than one occasion. (“In the beginning the earth was formless and void . . .”)

As an example, it hadn’t occurred to me that people didn’t know that a blog was nothing more than a specific type of website. Everyone knows that they should be blogging, but the lack of introductory-level information is holding a lot of people back. So as I continued to answer questions and proceed with my presentation, I realized that I needed to turn this into a course of some sort: online, seminar, workshop, or maybe all of the above. Stay tuned. I’ll let everyone know when it’s ready.

Meanwhile, although it’s relatively easy to set up a blog (at least for someone with my technical background), it may not be the highest and best use of everyone’s time. So, another service I’ve started offering is to set up people’s blogs for them. I haven’t yet decided on a pricing structure, and my first clients are sure to get the best deals, so if you’re interested in learning more about this, drop me a line and let me know.

Part Two of my presentation—the part about social networking—has been scheduled for Wednesday March 18^th. If you’re local, do plan on attending. How great if even more than thirteen people show up!