For years, I've been a scoutmaster. I've taken the opportunity to teach youth how to build fires more times than I can ever count. When you are building and maintaining a fire, you need three key elements: fuel, heat, and oxygen. As easy as it is to start a forest fire, when you are learning how to make it work, it's harder than you think. If your heat is too low, you need more oxygen. If your fuel is too wet, you need more heat.
I think that one of the greatest failings in just about every business is forgetting who signs the front of the check. When we are employees, we forget who the employer is. When we are vendors, we forget who the client is. All too often, we fall into the trap of thinking that we certainly know better. We think we are the smartest in the room and figure that everything would be so much better if everyone would just do what we say.
I was a teenager the first time I talked to someone that had a marketing degree. I asked him what he could do with that marketing degree and he said, “Pretty much, I’m only qualified for sales.”
Less than 30 years ago, the web was new. There were really no standards to speak of. The innovators of the world were quick to try their hand at HTML code.
I’ve been working in some form of marketing or sales for almost 40 years. Yes, I’m getting old, but I’m not that old. I sold newspapers door to door when I was throwing papers for The Press Enterprise in Southern California as a young lad. But when I was 16 years old, I really got my initiation into the industry by learning how to run a 2-color printing press for my father’s new print shop in Tempe, Arizona.
When shopping for services like web development, you might find it nearly impossible to compare providers. You'll have one provider that will build a website at $1,000, another at $10,000, and yet another at $30,000. You'll have an SEO provider suggest that they can get you all the business in the world for $199 per month but someone else might say that $1,000 or $3,000 is the minimum.
Over the years, I have thought a lot about the right way to offer web services to our clients. How should we make sure that we charge the right amount for the services that we offer?
I know. You are shopping to build a new website or manage your marketing. You might have heard about this new "fan-dangled" approach to web marketing called Inbound.
You've decided it's time to get serious and compare your service providers so you ask for proposals. Some will just give you a proposal and some will actually take some time trying to understand your goals. Some might just ask for a list of features you want (a clear indication that they are just mouse clickers and not thinkers).
And now, you're at a point where you have to make a decision on which agency to choose.
What, OH WHAT, do you do to adequately compare these services?
Here's a fancy chart that might shed some light on the only way you can compare:
I’ve been in some form of marketing for the better part of my life. Yeah, I’m getting up there in years but I also started young. I sold newspapers door-to-door as a paperboy in the 80s. I ran a printing press when I was 16 in 1990. I worked for a radio station in the mid-90s. I started doing print and then web design beginning in the late 90s.
The first forms of advertising that we are aware of are from ancient China. According to the Classic of Poetry the earliest forms of advertising were auditory—in the form of bamboo flutes advertising candy to sell. Oftentimes in the middle ages, where the majority of the populace was illiterate, town criers were employed to shout messages through a method of street cries.
Let me get to the switch on that bait right off the bat. Your sales pitch is probably okay. What really sucks is your sales approach. But, that might not make you feel any better.
The sales world is changing. In my opinion, the consumer isn’t really changing but, instead, the options available to consumers in they way they buy makes the consumer realize they don’t have to put up with the crap traditional sales people spin. Inbound marketing has changed the way people buy and if sales people are still using the old methods of selling the consumer simply gets angry.
