I was very impressed with the mentor.  He seemed very eager to help the young man succeed.  I thought to myself that he is exactly the kind of person I am looking for in a mentor.  I wondered if he would be willing to take on a similar mentoring role with me.  I read the article again to see if it mentioned his contact information.  It didn’t.  All I had was his name and where he worked (BDC).  I then went on the BDC website to search for his name.  Nothing either.  I could start calling each BDC branch one at a time, but it would be time consuming. Besides, I wouldn’t know what to say to him.  Personally, I’m a big fan of email.  I like getting a conversation going through email first before a face to face meeting.  It allows the exchange of basic information.  There is also less pressure on both sides and it is less intrusive (I find it annoying when I receive a call from someone, who wasn’t referred to me by somone I know, asking to meet me…it doesn’t seem natural).  If the email exchange goes well, I then suggest a meeting in person.

The problem here was that I couldn’t find the gentleman’s email address anywhere.  I then had a great idea…a real ‘long shot’.  Anyone with a corporate email address will notice that  it usually follows one of several patterns:  lastname.firstname@company.com, firstname@company.com, “x”lastname@company.com (where ‘x’ is the first letter of the first name), etc.  What I decided to do was to send an email to all these different email combinations, hoping at least one of them would hit.  I kept the email very simple.  I talked briefly about my startup and the progress I made so far.  I also included a link to my website, in case he was interested in learning more about me.  Here is the email I sent:

Like I mentioned, this was a long shot.  The odds of reaching this person was small and the odds he would reply even smaller.  However, within a few days, the gentleman replied.  Not only was he willing to answer my questions, he insisted we meet in person the following week.  Our meeting went extremely well.  Pending some administrative stuff, we will start our mentoring partenership shortly.  This just goes to show that every once in a while, we need to take long shots in life (whether in our personal or professional lives).  It’s only our fear of rejection that is keeping us from taking these risks.

Why not just pick up the phone and ask to speak with the president of a big company to explain why your product or service can make his or her life easier?  Don’t think it will work?  It worked for a friend of mine who has his own business planning software company.  A few years ago, he called up the then President and CEO of Corel, Michael Cowpland.  He didn’t know Mr. Cowpland in person so he called the general number and talked to the receptionist.  Amazingly, there were very few barriers and within a few minutes, he was speaking directly to Mr. Cowpland himself.  He introduced himself and explained how including his software alongside Corel Wordperfect could make Corel’s product offering more competitive and help differentiate if from MS Office.  Mr. Cowpland asked him to visit his office that same afternoon.  My friend then met with Mr. Cowpland, along with senior members of his product development team.  Shortly thereafter, he won a licensing contract to include a copy of his business planning software with Corel Wordperfect.

Take long shots every once in a while (i.e. huge potential payoff, little chance of success but zero downside).  You’d be surprised at how a seemingly crazy idea may end up being one of the greatest decisions you’ve ever made.  Someone once told me that when you take risks, things happen.  You disrupt the status quo and set things in motion.  You create ripples in otherwise calm waters. Yet, one of those ripples can potentially transform itself into a powerful wave.  It’s true that the odds are not in your favor.  But then again, what have you got to lose?

I previously mentioned a great book on small business marketing called Duct Tape Marketing by John Jantsch.  In it, he introduces a great concept called the marketing hourglass.  In marketing, we often hear about the marketing funnel.  where businesses “attempt to generate leads on a broad scale and then funnel them toward becoming a client with increased contact and content”.  Though useful, it leaves out a critical part, namely, what to do with clients once they have made a purchase.

What many new businesses don’t realize is that the majority of their growth will most likely come from:  (1) selling premium products and services to existing clients and (2)  the referrals generated by theses same clients.  I was talking to my programmer recently and asked him about how he markets his business and generates leads.  He told me he doesn’t do any marketing.  All his business comes from word of mouth or referrals.  I asked another friend of mine who operates a successful translation company with several employees.  He told me the exact same thing.    In both instances, I was expecting to hear about marketing strategies related to advertising, cold calling, B2B marketing, or today’s catch word, social networking.To take into account the power of repeat business and referrals, the author of DTM introduces the concept of themarketing hourglass.  Similar to the marketing funnel, it exposes your potential clients or suspects to your marketing program.  In addition, it offers additional products and services once they become clients (i.e. make a purchase), thus the idea of the hourglass.

For example, lets say you have have a flower shop.  To new clients, flowers for personal use  may be your only product offering.  To repeat clients, however (with whom you have established rapport and trust), you can start offering premium products (e.g. premium priced flowers, decorations for wedding, special events, etc.).  This is where the bulk of your profits will be generated in the future.  Not only does it diversify your product lines, it also employs what I like to call the ‘poker mentality’.  Poker players will often show strength (by being cocky or trying to intimidate others) when in fact, they have a very weak hand.  Likewise, they will pretend to have a weak hand when in fact, they have cards that will send everyone home early.  The lesson here is deception and it can be used to your advantage.  To your competitors, you’re just a ‘mom and pop’ flower shop selling pots of flowers.  In reality, however, you have an arsenal of products and services up your sleeve that you mostly market to your repeat clients.

Start employing an ‘hourglass marketing strategy’ rather a ‘funnel marketing strategy’.  The latter is a short term model used to generate quick profits.  The former is a long term model that ensures the continued profitability of your business.

Every company needs a strong UVP.  Benefits include greater differentiation from competitors, an increase in the quantity and quality of leads, and greater market share.  Once again, remember to include tangible results in your UVP.  Statements like “the most technologically advanced system in the market” and “best in its class” don’t mean much in today’s world.  Every other company uses a similar statement and there is no way of knowing who is telling the truth and who isn’t. Ask yourself:  “What makes me different from everyone else?”, “What need am I satisfying for my target market that others have not addressed?”  You can also ask your existing clients.  Their perspectives on why they do business with you might point you in the right direction.  The following is an example of a great value proposition:

“Our company is the exclusive provider of patent-pending project management software for paving contractors, saving U.S. contractors over $34M in 2005.”

The statement is specific.  It sets the company apart (exclusive provider, patent-pending software) and it demonstrates tangible results ($34M in savings in 2005).  It answers the questions who, what, and why all in one sentence.  Here are a few other good ones:

“Tectronica offers solutions that will improve productivity by 22%.”

“Our clients are able to reduce staff by 18% and maintain productivity levels.  In most cases, their productivity actually increases.”

“Our clients have experienced pay back periods of just nine months when investing in our technology.”

At the last networking event for Edge Networking, we invited Patrick Depriest, an Internet marketing specialist to give a presentation on search engine optimization. The full audio presentation will be available shortly on our website.  In the mean time, here is a summary of the key points he presented.

There are 5 key factors that determine how well a site is ranked on Google:

Domain name:  I remember when I first registered my domain name (tanveeramin.com).  I felt like I was on top of the world.  I had my own ‘footprint’ on the World Wide Web.  I was even happier when I searched my name on Google a few months later and my site appeared on the first page of search results.  Now, I was really in business!  The problem is that aside from soothing one’s ego, it does little to generate traffic.  Aside from my circle of contacts, few people will search for “Tanveer Amin” on the web.  If my objective is to rank high on Google for people searching for articles on entrepreneurship, it is much better to register a domain name like “www.entrepreneurshipresourceguide.ca”.  Be sure not to use any hyphens in your domain (a big no-no).

Some might object to using such a long domain name, but most people will find you by searching for keywords in Google, not by typing your URL.  To determine which search terms are popular, you can use free research tools like Google Keyword Tool and Google Trends’.  You can even refine searches geographically.

Another option (which is the one I will soon adopt for my blog) is to keep the original domain name and register a second more SEO friendly domain, which will be the ‘landing page’. When people enter a search term in Google, the landing page will appear.  Once at the site, if they click anywhere on the page, they will be re-directed to your original site.  This way, you get to keep the original domain name while generating more traffic from the landing page.  However, if you are going to use this method, be sure to do a permanent 301 re-direct when someone clicks on a link on your landing page (your web guy will know what that means).

Age of domain:  Search engines tend to like domains that have been around for a while.  They are considered more ‘trustworthy’.  You can search for aged domains on canreg.com.  If you can’t find an aged domain, don’t stress too much.  Follow the rest of the recommendations and you’ll be fine.

Coding errors:  Search engines will spend less than a second ‘reading’ your site.  If there are too many coding errors, it slows them down and they eventually stop trying.  You can use a free tool called W3C Validator to check the number of coding errors on your site.

Content:  Be sure to put relevant content on your site and update it regularly.  If you can’t add new content everyday, do it once a week or once every two weeks.  However, the key is consistency.  Adding relevant content every second Sunday is much better than adding new content for 5 days straight and then nothing for the month after.  Here’s another tip:  upload the content at the exact same time every interval (e.g. every Sunday at 12pm).  Believe it or not, after a few times, Google becomes aware that you upload new content every Sunday and visits your site more frequently during those times.

One warning with respect to content.  Some ‘smart’ programmers will often try to trick Google by hiding keywords on their various pages (e.g. they will change the font to white and paste the keywords hundreds or thousands of times across the screen).  This might work in the short run, but will fail miserably in the long run.  And remember:  once you get caught by Google doing something sneaky (e.g. hiding keywords, link farms, etc.), they might permanently put you on their ‘ignore list’.  From that point on, you can forget about optimizing your website since it no longer exists for Google.

Links:  The greater the number of sites that link to your site, the higher it will be ranked.  However, be careful not to use ‘link farms’, which is another sneaky trick Google dislikes.  A link farm is any group of sites that all hyperlink to one another for the purpose of increasing web ranking on search engines.  Links must be genuine.  For example, you can ask a company that sells gym memberships to link to your site that sells sports accessories.  Link submissions can be very time consuming and it’s something that you can outsource to companies like the one where Patrick works ( SEO Internet Marketing).  Over the course of several months, they will strategically post link submissions to increase traffic to your website.

The key think to remember, as Patrick pointed to me after his presentation, is that there are no secrets to search engine optimization.  There are also no shortcuts.  Do it right and get it right the first time.  It will save you a lot of headaches in the long run.